"I gathered that,” I told him, lips twitching. “What kind of proposition?"
Justin eyed me, his gimlet stare piercing me with a precision that surprised me. Although when I thought about it, it shouldn't have surprised me. Justin might play the part of the mad professor, might even be the mad professor for a while, but there was a shrewd businessman buried within the hazy depths of his genius—I just hadn’t expected to see it after his drifting off like that. "I'd like you to think about working for me."
"There is no role for me here," was all I said, taking a seat on one of the uncomfortable guest chairs without being invited. I was used to the discomfort. I'd been sitting here for nearly all my meetings with Justin. And I was used to having to be rude—Justin forgot about the niceties.
They simply didn’t exist to him.
"There is. At the moment, I have no choice but to hire out for my marketing needs. I've often thought about taking somebody on but I hadn't found anyone who gelled well with me and with my team. Considering the most intrinsic part of that team seems to be in love with you, it makes sense to ask you if you’d be interested in the position. On top of that, we work well together."
He wasn't wrong. We did work well together. Though I knew Lauren liked her boss, I was also aware that he did things that pissed her off. And those very same things rarely irritated me. Maybe it was because I'd needed a lot of patience to deal with my mother, maybe it was because I'd had to hold down a lot of irritating jobs before I found my place in the marketing agency that had hired me from college. Either way, Justin's foibles rarely peeved me.
Because of that, because of the patience I had for him and his unusual work methods, we did gel well. But that didn't mean it was right for me to work for him.
"My contract with Leviathan and Dronig is pretty substantial, Justin."
Justin snorted. "My coffers are bare?"
"Course not. But that doesn't mean you're willing to spend as much as I'm worth, does it?"
"Do I look like the sort of man who haggles? Do I look like the sort of man who needs to haggle?"
I shook my head at the admittedly stupid question, but I was paid a hell of a lot of money for my current job, and I wasn’t about to take a pay cut. Not when I was worth my weight. "What position would I have here?"
"Similar to the role you play now." Until then, Justin had been standing by the desk, but with his words, he moved the desk chair out of the way and squatted down to the floor.
I sat up, wondering what the hell he was doing, then heard the sounds of keys clattering, then a lock opening. I realized he had a safe down there, or a strongbox of some kind.
Curious now, I waited a tad impatiently for him to retrieve whatever he was looking for, and to return to the surface.
When he did surface, I had to wonder what in the hell kind of safe he had under there. The papers in his hands were huge, the file dockets equally as large. I looked at him, then at the files in his hand. "What's in them?"
He shrugged. "More ideas. More concepts." He gave another shrug. "Whatever you want to call them."
I frowned. "You want to market them all?"
He nodded. “It’s about time.” His lips pursed. “These have been gathering dust for far too long. It’s about time they saw the light of day.
“We work well together, I like your ideas, I like your work ethic… I see no reason to cease working with you.”
He shoved the folders my way, and rather than reply to him, I flicked through them. Some of the designs would require further explanation from him, but others required no explanation at all.
In fact, the potential in those folders blew me away. I whistled, impressed despite myself. Still, honesty had me admitting, “There’s some exciting stuff in there.”
He wasn’t small, at all, when he said, “I know. Exciting enough that you want to work with me?”
“I’m a loyal man, Justin.”
“You say that like it’s a bad thing,” Justin retorted. “If anything, that pleases me more. Not just on Lauren’s behalf, but on my own. She’ll tell you that I prize loyalty above anything else in my employees. Even efficiency.”
; I sighed. “Leviathan and Dronig have been very good to me. The last thing I want to do is upset the apple cart.” I rubbed my chin. “Also, one advantage to working with the agency: they have contacts. With a lot of people. You and I both know that James Leviathan is renowned for connecting his clients, it’s one of the reasons the agency is as popular as it is. Some of those ideas would do very well if he was batting on your side.”
It was his turn to rub his chin. “You and I also know that one reason your agency fit me in is because of my surname. If I contracted them it would mean you staying up here anyway. The terms of my agreement wouldn’t change just because the products had. You know this, so why put a spanner in the works?”
“I’m not, I’m just saying that having their backing would be of far more use to you than me just working for you as a single team member.”
But either way, he was right. It would mean more time in Maine. More time with Lauren. More time to figure out what we both wanted from one another. I was certain, as I’d been when we’d broken up, that she wouldn’t be happy in New York.