Authors: Lexy Timms
“I'm in agreement with that.” Alex's arms wrapped around her, and he lay his head against her chest again, slowly breathing in and out. Jamie held him close, and they slipped into dreams together.
“Paul. Come see me in my office, please.”
Message sent, Alex sighed, and waited for his new senior advisor to knock on the door. It was only a matter of minutes before his request was answered.
“Come in,” he called, and the door opened wide enough for the younger man to step through, closing it behind him.
Since Paul had arrived, things had been relatively quiet. There wasn't anything going any more wrong than it had been going since Zander's betrayal, and Alex was counting that as a success. But that didn't mean that things weren't still going wrong. He'd put Paul on light duty, giving him some time to get re-acclimated to the business, but now it was time to really get him involved. “Take a seat.”
Paul sat, and Alex leaned forward a little, turning his computer screen so that it faced the opposite side of the desk.
“This is the situation we're in right now,” he said. “It's much better than it was when I fired Zander several months ago, but there are still consequences coming down the line from that mess. So I want to know how you're going to handle it.”
There was a bit of uncertainty in Paul's expression, but nothing that looked like panic. Alex took that as a good sign. The other man’s eyebrows drew together as he regarded the screen in front of him.
“Honestly? I know it probably sounds overly simplistic, but my first instinct is just to talk to the guy. See why he feels the way he does and if there's any way to pull him back from the ledge, so to speak.”
“Not a bad solution,” Alex said. “And one we've been using since the fallout started.” He folded his hands on the edge of the desk. “Immediately after the news got out, a lot of our clients were leaving because they felt like they should. Everyone was talking about it. Everyone was leaving. So they had to get out, too, before things got as bad for them as they were for Reid Enterprises. Most of those people were easy enough to talk out of it once they realized we were making strides toward keeping negative consequences from touching our client base at all.”
Paul nodded, and Alex reached out and tapped the edge of the computer screen.
“The problem here is that we're several months out now, and this person is just deciding to leave, which means that either they were living on a remote tropical island with no internet access when Zander hit the news, or something has happened to make them decide that there were complications that affected their own bottom line after all. Which means they're going to be harder to handle than the easy sells who were jumping ship when others were.”
Again, the younger man nodded. He looked at the screen again. “Going by what's in the complaint—this line about the company not doing enough to make sure Zander didn't have a ripple effect—that reads to me like something did happen that affected them. The problem is going to be in figuring out how to remedy that.”
“Exactly.” Alex pulled up a smile that he didn't quite feel. “You're doing well. I'm glad I decided to invite you back.”
The smile that answered him was more sincere than his own. “I'm glad, too,” Paul said. “I mean, I didn't ever really consider coming back here after I left, but the moment that you called and I knew what you were offering, I knew what my answer was going to be.”
Alex laughed. “So I didn't have to bribe you with all of those concessions?”
“Probably not,” Paul agreed, smile widening. “But I'm not going to let you back out of them now.”
It was teasing, and Alex let it slide. The joking was more familiar than he usually allowed his employees to be, but if the younger man was going to be one of his top advisors, Alex was going to have to treat him a little differently than a standard employee. It probably wouldn’t hurt anything to indulge in the occasional bit of friendly banter. Might even improve morale.
“I'm sure that I could find a way if I really looked for it, but it seems more convenient just to pay you.”
“You don't seem like the lazy type to me,” Paul said. “But I'll take it.”
They fell silent, then, and the silence stretched itself out between them until it felt almost awkward, waiting for someone to say something. Alex could see that Paul was wondering if he should, or if Alex would if he waited just a little longer. Alex considered speaking, but wanted to see what Paul would do if left to his own devices.
“So,” he finally said, “I'm thinking that if you don't mind me being the one to make the call here, I have a few points that I think will at least serve as food for thought, even if I can't bring Mr. Blein back to the company right away.”
“If you can't bring him back now,” Alex answered, “he won't come back.”
The words weren't harsh, only matter-of-fact. Paul looked for a moment like he wasn't sure what he should say, but then nodded.
“Yes,” he said. “Of course you're right. I'll keep the food for thought aimed at the people who haven't decided whether or not they want to join the company in the first place.”
“Probably a better plan,” Alex agreed.
There was silence again, but this time Paul broke it before it had a chance to stretch uncomfortably. “I'm going to go make the call then, Mr. Reid.”
“Thank you, Paul. Let me know what the results were.”
The younger man returned to his own office, and Alex returned to the paperwork he'd been doing. Mr. Blein wasn't one of their biggest investors. If Paul lost him it wouldn't be a disaster, which was why Alex had given him the task, but he trusted that Paul would be more than adequate. If he didn't, he wouldn't have brought him back in the first place, let alone as senior advisor.
With luck, things would finish running their course soon. Most of those who were going to leave after Zander had already done so, and the few who were lingering wouldn't be lingering much longer. Soon, the incident would be more or less behind them. Alex was looking forward to it.
Two Months Later
“What's the finish date looking like on this?”
The construction foreman glanced over at the half-finished restructuring of the ninth hole that Mark had pointed out. “We're looking at another two days, probably. Not anything more than that.”
There was nothing in the construction that obstructed guests from playing the hole; Mark had made sure this would be the case on anything that the team wasn't able to put together in a single night. He was sure that most of them weren't his biggest fans, after the restrictions he'd placed on them and the requests that he kept naming, but they were professionals and, so far, he hadn’t seen any sign of it.
“That's fine, then. After that you have what... The seventeenth hole and the landscaping on the east edge of the course?”
“There's not a lot there. Most of that’ll need to be handled by a landscaping crew, which you know. What we're going to be doing is altering the terrain a bit.”
“Of course,” Mark said. He did know. “As we discussed.”
“After that—” The foreman glanced down at his phone. “After that, we've just got the pool up by the clubhouse to do, and that’ll be pretty much it.”
That was a thought. The club had been under construction for more than three months straight, and Mark was sure that everyone else would be as glad as he was to see the finished product.
Of course, it also meant the tournament was coming up rapidly, and there was still so much to do for it. Still so much to do for the wedding as well. Some days it seemed like they were finally coming close to being finished, and others it felt like they’d hardly gotten anything done in comparison to how much they still had to do. Realistically, they had made progress, and they were closer to the finish line than the start, but the closer they got to that line the more Mark worried about something going wrong.
And he wasn't the only one who'd been strung tight lately. As the wedding started to get closer, Erica's stress levels were going up, too.
“Glad to hear it,” Mark said, dragging himself back out of his thoughts to answer the construction foreman when he realized that he hadn't said anything for almost a full minute and the other man was standing there waiting for his response. “And I'm sure you'll be glad to have the job over and done with.”
The foreman shrugged. “I've worked worse places for worse people, Mr. Reid. If you ever need anything else done around here, you know who to call.”
Mark smiled. “I do,” he said, holding out his hand.
The foreman clasped it in his own and shook it briefly, then turned back to his men and the construction going on.
Sighing, Mark turned toward the clubhouse and started the walk across the course. He didn't doubt that when he got back to the apartment he was going to find Erica sitting on the couch with a pile of bridal magazines in front of her, still trying to decide on various pieces of the wedding décor and what she wanted to do for a dress. She'd changed her mind at least six times about some of them, which he didn't really mind, but if they didn't settle on something soon there wasn't going to be time to actually get everything in order, even with the wedding planner to help.
In the clubhouse, he made a stop at the bar for a bottle of wine and a pair of glasses, which he carried up the stairs with him. Maybe she'd be a little more relaxed if she had a drink or two.
“Hey,” he said as the door swung open.
Erica barely looked up from the magazines she had in her lap. She was, as he'd expected her to be, sitting on the couch and reading, swatches of fabric spread out on the table.
“How's it going?” Mark set the glasses down, out of the way of the things she had scattered around, and poured the wine. When he held out a glass for Erica, she didn't notice.
“It's going, I guess,” she said. “I think I've found table settings that I like. But I don't know. I'll probably discuss it with the wedding planner, and see what Jamie and Christine think of it.”
That was one good thing that had come out of the stress over the wedding, at least. Erica was friends with his sisters-in-law, and they seemed to be getting along great. Mark was happy to see it. He cleared his throat, trying to get her attention, and held the glass a little further into her view.
Erica looked up finally, and smiled at him tiredly, curling her fingers around the stem of the glass and taking a sip. Some of the tension in her shoulders relaxed. “Thank you, babe.” She leaned over and pecked him on the cheek. “I'm sorry. I know that I've been kind of a mess over the wedding stuff lately. I promise I'll try to chill out about it.”
“You don't have to apologize for anything. Something like this isn't exactly a walk in the park. And it’s not like I’m going to tell you that you can’t take your time figuring out what you want to do at your own wedding.”
“
Our
own wedding.”
Mark smiled. “Our wedding, then. Although, that doesn’t mean I’m helping you pick fabric colors.”
She shuddered. “Not even a chance after the colors you picked out last time.”
He really hadn’t thought they were that bad, but apparently salmon and pink were entirely different colors. How was he supposed to know that? And she was the one who had said gold in the first place; no one had informed him that shiny gold fabric was a crime against nature. “I do get to help pick the cake flavor, though, right?” He looked at her with an expectant expression.
Erica laughed. “Yes, Mark. You get to help pick the cake flavor. I’ll just make sure the icing hides it.”
She was much more cheerful than he’d expected her to be, and Mark relaxed a little, too, taking a drink. “Do you know something?” he asked as he moved to set it down. “I—Fuck!”
The bottom of the glass had hit the edge of the table wrong, because he’d been looking at Erica while he spoke, and it tipped, spilling wine across the magazines and fabric swatches. Erica shot out of her seat, eyes wide, and started yanking things out of the way while Mark fumbled to put the glass in a safe place so that he could help her rescue her planning supplies.
“Pay attention next time!” she snapped as she shook wine off the glossy pages. “Shit, Mark! These actually cost money.”
“It’s not like I did it on purpose,” Mark retorted.
Erica sighed sharply through her nose. “No,” she said, reaching up and rubbing two fingers against her temples now that the magazines were out of harm's way. “I know that you didn't. It's just that I feel like there a million things to do, and spilling wine on the magazines is just kind of the last straw.”
“I know how you feel,” Mark said, reaching out to her. She didn't look at him and he dropped his hand, going to get paper towels from the counter instead. “I've got all this stuff going on with the golf course, and the tournament’s coming up much faster than I thought it would be. That on top of the wedding stuff, for both of us, is a lot.” He came back with the paper towels and began wiping up the mess. They were going to have to take a damp cloth to it afterward, or the table would be sticky.
“It is,” Erica agreed. She sank down on the couch and watched him wipe up the wine, then clean off the table before he joined her there. This time when he held out an arm, she leaned into it.
“You know,” Mark said, “I think we've made really good progress. If something like this had happened before the break up, we would have been screaming at each other.” He smiled. “Now we're sitting down on the couch together and just talking about it.”
Erica turned her head to look up at him, and smiled back. “That's true,” she said, tone a little rueful. “I guess that's one plus to having split for a little while, although I wish we had figured things out without that.”
Mark's arm tightened around her. “So do I.”
For a moment they sat in silence, staring at the bridal magazines on the table, and then Erica lay her head against his shoulder. “Thank you for not letting this escalate into something we both would have regretted after I yelled at you.”
“Thank you for not continuing to yell at me,” Mark answered, pressing his lips to the top of her head. He gathered her up and pulled her closer so that she rested in his lap, and her arms wrapped around him in return.
Outside, the light was fading, slanting in golden through the blinds. She probably would go back to the magazines if he let her, but Mark didn't really want to let her. Not in that moment. He stood, instead, carefully to balance her weight so that they wouldn't both go toppling back to the couch, and then he carried her over to the bed, laying her down gently on her side.
“I was actually in the middle of something,” she said, but she didn't sound like she was actually that intent on protest.
“It’ll be there in the morning.” Mark leaned down and kissed her and she let him, long and slow. “We'll worry about everything else then. For now, just lay with me.”
He settled down on the bed, and she came willingly into his arms, her head against his chest. Mark smiled up at the ceiling.
“I love you,” he said, voice soft.
“I love you, too.” She turned her head enough to kiss his neck. “I can't wait for the wedding, no matter how much of a pain in the butt it's going to be getting there.”
“Neither can I.” Mark looked down at her. “Soon you're going to be Mrs. Reid, and then I'm going to steal you away and have you all to myself. Ravish you every night and then some.”
She laughed. “That sounds like paradise.”
He couldn't have agreed more.