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“Hi, Mom,” I said, trying to slip out the door.
She was too quick for me and cornered me.
“What’s wrong with you?” she asked.
“What do you mean?”
“Did your father and I not teach you anything? Running a company is a tremendous responsibility. It’s not just about making the right business decisions or choosing the right sponsorships. You have power when you run a company, and you have to respect that power and how it affects other people,” she continued.
“Mom,” I started, wanting to stop her where she was, but not getting very far.
“No. You’re going to let me finish. There have been problems between you and Merry since the day she started working here, and I don’t understand how we got here. A fling? Really Quentin? With an employee?”
“A fling that didn’t go anywhere,” I reminded her.
“Do you really think that makes a difference? If anything, that makes it worse,” she said.
“How could that make it worse?” I asked.
“You slept with an employee, Quentin. You are in a position of power. That creates a dynamic that should never be taken advantage of. Especially if it’s just something you’re going to throw by the wayside because you didn’t think it was going to go anywhere. That could be disastrous. She could quit, and nobody here wants that. I don’t know what’s going through your head or what you’re doing to her head by toying with her like this, but you better figure it out. And do it fast before you lose her.”
There was really nothing I could say. Arguing with her wouldn’t do any good, and neither would trying to defend myself. I nodded and took my lecture, then left work, not even bothering to stop by the garage. Hearing my mother talk about ‘losing’ Merry had hit me in the gut in a way I didn’t like. I knew she meant from a work standpoint, but my damn heart was already feeling something different.
28
Merry
I needed a break. That might have been a tremendous understatement. I needed to get the hell out of the office and away from every person who was staring at me and all the questions they thought were fair game but were definitely not. As soon as I started working at the Freeman Racing complex, I felt the bond of the small group. Like Quentin had said, it was like a family, and there were major benefits to that. I felt welcomed and supported, I didn’t have to worry about maintaining a strictly professional attitude all the time. I didn’t have to wear pantyhose to work. That was one of my favorites. But now I knew the downside.
Apparently, the price of getting to work in the tight-knit environment meant being up for conversation whenever something interesting happened. That conversation quickly turned to gossip, and it burned through the complex so fast it would have devastated Smokey the Bear. And that was exactly what had happened with Quentin’s and my fling. News of us hooking up spread through everybody who worked for the company so fast when I got to work, Glenda was already bubbling over with questions. It didn’t seem to strike her as odd or inappropriate at all to try to glean every little detail out of me.
I wasn’t sharing. They might have invited me into the grapevine, but I wasn’t having any of it. The point of us saying we had a fling that didn’t work out was to keep everybody from making too much of a big deal out of it. Clearly that didn’t work out. We’d managed to start everybody chatting like old women in the hair salon, and by lunch I was just waiting for the complex to churn out their own tabloid just so we could be splashed on the cover.
It wasn’t malicious. At least, it didn’t feel that way. They weren’t judging or criticizing, or even teasing. It was a lot of curiosity and intrigue, but it was too much. It had all gotten way too big, and I felt like I couldn’t breathe. I needed air and I slipped out of the office to try to steal a few minutes to myself.
My favorite tree was appealing, but it was too out in the open. I didn’t want to be sitting there and have someone else who hadn’t already gotten their words in to stumble on me and decide I was open season because I was away from my office. Wanting to make sure I was as alone as possible, I headed further into the complex, toward the pond I’d seen on my first day. The thought of sitting there looking out over the water and enjoying some calm sounded amazing. Maybe I would even get to see the family of ducks that sometimes splashed around there.
As I went past the test track and approached the pond, though, I realized it was a bad idea. I wasn’t going to be as alone as I wanted to be. But I didn’t get the chance to change my mind and turn away. I was already caught.
