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She poured two mugs of coffee and handed one to him. “What do you think, should we just get down to business?”
He tried not to remember his conversation with Cameron and Antonio the other night about what kind of business he and Chelsea had been getting down to. “Sure. We’ve got a lot to cover.”
She gave him a wary look before setting out for her office. “And what is it that you want to cover?” she asked over her shoulder.
“Relax. I just mean I want to set out for you everything that I’ve seen so far and the areas where I think you could improve. I also want to hear about your plans—what direction you want to go in and see if there are any suggestions I can make that will help you there.”
She took a seat at her desk and gestured for him to do the same. “Why?”
He frowned. “I thought you’d be pleased. You’ve made it pretty clear that you’re not going to be up for running the place as a purely profit-based concern, which is what your father wants. My understanding is that you plan to go out on your own, and to run things your way, you’ll have different goals, and therefore, I’d have different recommendations.”
“I know that, but why?”
He cocked his head to one side.
“I mean, that’s not your job. You weren’t brought in to help me, so why would you want to?”
He shrugged. He hadn’t asked himself that question until now. “I’d like to feel I’m going to make some contribution here. If everything I suggest is going to be rejected when you and your father part ways, then it’ll kind of be a waste of my time. If I offer you a different plan that you can run with, then at least I’ll feel as though this wasn’t a wasted effort—that I earned my fee, even if not in the way I expected.”
She nodded slowly and took a sip of her coffee. “And that’s all?”
“What else would it be?”
It was her turn to shrug. “I don’t know, I just wondered if …”
He smiled. “You think it’s got something to do with you and me? Like it’s personal?”
She nodded but didn’t meet his gaze.
“Well, to be completely honest, maybe it has.”
She looked up at him.
“I was thinking about it just this morning. I’m not sure if I’d have any time for or interest in someone else if they were running their business the way you want to. I don’t usually factor sentimentality into business decisions.”
To his surprise, she glowered at him. “You think I’m sentimental?”
Oh, shit. He hadn’t meant to get her back up. “Maybe that was a bad choice of words. I just meant that you’re not driven by …” He almost said logic but thought better of that. “Purely by profit. There’s a reason people use the term cold, hard, business sense. There’s no room for emotional drivers in a standard business. You’re more concerned with the welfare of your people and the experience of your customers.”
She frowned at him, but she wasn’t angry. She seemed more puzzled. “I guess it depends on what you see as logical. I believe it’s logical for everyone in a business to benefit from its success. To me, that’s common sense. What I perceive as logic, you see as sentimentality, and what you see as business sense, I see as greed. Why would I want to make two hundred thousand dollars in profit when I don’t need it? I’d be happier making one hundred thousand and giving ten of my employees an extra ten thousand each. To me, that’s logical, but to you, that probably sounds crazy.”
Grant stared at her for a long moment. He wasn’t thinking she was crazy. He was thinking that they lived in a crazy world, where her way of thinking was seen as wrong. He didn’t know what to say, though.
She smiled. “Sorry. I don’t expect you to understand. Why don’t we just get on with what we’re supposed to do? You tell me what you’ve seen so far, and tell me all the cuts my father will be happy to hear that we could make.”
He continued to stare at her for a few moments. Part of him wanted to forget all of that and instead ask her to lay out her plan. But he came to his senses. “Okay.” He pulled his laptop out of his briefcase and set it on the table. She came around the desk and pulled up a chair beside him. Just what he hadn’t wanted. She was too close; she smelled too good. He turned his head slightly and noticed that her cheeks were pink—she felt it too, he knew she did.
~ ~ ~
Chelsea forced herself to stare at the screen. She couldn’t allow herself to be affected by him. For the next hour and a half, he talked her through all his findings. Even though she didn’t agree with them, she could see that he’d been thorough. He’d identified a whole bunch of cost savings they could make, just in his first few days here. Some of his ideas would be useful to her, most of them wouldn’t. It might be true that they could cut three salaries from the distribution team and two from sales. It might be more efficient if they worked his way. But what he wasn’t taking into account was that those salaries weren’t just numbers to her. They were the livelihoods of people she cared about. Okay, soJosé in distribution might be slow, in most senses, but he did the best he could. She was much happier knowing that his wage was supporting him and his family than she would be if she could show that much extra as profit at the end of the year. No way would seeing an extra profit of forty-five thousand dollars mean anything at all to her if it meant that Sally in sales no longer had a job. Chelsea did her best to accept that in business, profit was king, but she truly didn’t understand why. The satisfaction she got from knowing that she provided employment for a single mom of three teenaged boys was worth so much more to her than any extra zeros on the profit line could ever be.
When they finally stopped for a break, Grant got up to stretch his legs and went to stare out the window. “Is there any point continuing?” he asked. He didn’t sound angry, more like resigned.
“We could. I know you’re making sense.” She gave him a weak smile. “I know Dad will love all of your proposals and think you’re awesome.”
He gave her a rueful smile. “But you don’t.”
“I do think you’re awesome.” Oops. She’d said it before she could stop herself.
