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“Go get your club, and come have a seat,” she said.
I obeyed, coming back with my own sandwich and plate. I could wait for the waitress to come back and serve me, but with the bar being so busy, I didn’t want to make any of them try to go back and forth from the bar to the restaurant. I was okay with waiting for the food over at the bar, then taking it back with me when I went back to join Laurel.
“How was your day so far?” she asked. “I didn’t see you around the place.”
“Did you need me?” I asked, taking a bite of my sandwich.
She shook her head. “No, but I was getting used to you being that guy who’s just always around when I look over my shoulder. There were a few times today when I felt like I could use one of your quips to get me through a moment. But that’s okay. I just wondered where you were, that’s all.”
“I thought I’d take the bird up in the air for a spin,” I said. “I wanted to get out of my own head for a minute, and I find the best way to get out of my own head is to get my head in the clouds, if you know what I mean.”
“That makes sense,” she said with a nod. “Okay, fair. You would have been pretty bored to try to hang out with me today anyway.”
“I don’t know about that,” I said. “You keep things interesting.”
“Pretty sure you’re the one who keeps things interesting, but again, I managed without you. I had to go deal with the guy at the furniture store today. I wanted to put in the order online, but there was a discrepancy with what they had in store and what they had online. So I had to go down and talk to the guy directly, and once again, things aren’t adding up.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“I mean that when I looked online, they said that the colors they had in store weren’t the same as what we looked at yesterday. I wanted to make sure that wasn’t a real issue since I wanted to have it delivered tomorrow. But I kept getting stonewalled with what was online versus what is in store. So I finally went over there, explained the whole thing to the owner, and he gave me the list of prices that they had so I could get things going in that realm before delivery tomorrow.”
“What’s the issue?” I asked, still unable to see what the problem was.
“I went through the numbers, and they’re not adding up. Basically, with what I was looking at in store and what I found online, to what he quoted me here, I don’t have the money to spend without going way over budget. I’m trying to find out what the issue was, and when I got back in touch with him, he said that it had to do with the fact that this is going to a big hotel chain. He raised the prices on me for the mere fact that we are going to be furnishing a full chain rather than the one hotel.”
“Can he do that?” I asked in surprise.
“Unfortunately, he can do whatever he wants,” Laurel said with a sigh. “But when I told him that it was out of budget for us to go that high, he told me that he’s pretty sure Jason Weir has the money to spend, he’s just not going to spend it. The guy down at the furniture store wants to make a buck on this, but if he was doing that, he would do it without giving me a discount for the big order.”
“I see,” I replied. “So you were hoping to get the better price by ordering in bulk, and instead of giving you a better price, he upped the entire thing.”
“That’s right,” she said. “And when I told him it was out of budget that way, he told me that he had the right to make a dollar. Now, I would be happier if he would just go back to the original price, and we don’t have to deal with any of the big order discounts or anything, but now that he knows who this is for, he’s not budging.”
“What are you going to do?” I asked. “I mean, if he’s going to be a dick about it, I would think that it would be better to just go somewhere else altogether.”
“Sure,” she said with a sigh. “But you saw how long it took us to find that set. I don’t know if I have the time to go through that again with this particular lobby. I don’t want to get in touch with Jason again, either, because I already cleared the rest of it with him before this guy went and raised the price on me. It’s frustrating.”
“I bet it is,” I told her. “Tell you what, don’t stress about it. Let me see what I can do.”
“I appreciate that,” she said with a smile. “I don’t know how much you can do, but I do appreciate it.”
“I might be able to work a little magic of my own,” I said with another wink that made her blush all over again.
I turned my attention to my sandwich, grinning to myself as I did. I wasn’t sure if there would be much I could do to help out at this point, either, but for Laurel, I would sure as hell give it a shot.
I would do just about anything for this girl, really.
She was just that amazing.
TWELVE
Laurel
I putmy finger under my chin as I walked back and forth along the length of the lobby, taking my time to look over the space in front of me, trying to decide how I was going to work with the space.
I was disappointed with the way that things hadn’t worked out so well with the man in the furniture store. I wanted to believe that I had done the right thing with being up front and honest with him about why I wanted the deal, but there was a part of me that wished I had just kept my mouth shut over the reason why I wanted the discount in the first place.
Then, there was the side of me that felt it was his right to be able to raise the price on me like that. It wasn’t like it was my personal money that was being taken here. It came from the client, and it came from the company. But, the fact that he had done that out of the desire to make more money himself left me with a bad taste in my mouth.
