I straightened up a little in my chair but tried my best not to looktoointerested. Though, in all honesty, I was very intrigued. I had never been to Japan, but I’d always wanted to go. What an adventure, I thought.
And to gowithJonah—now that was a dream.
“But anyway, like I said, that deal is not set in stone yet, so let’s focus on the projects we already have in the bag, shall we?” He pulled his chair out and sat down. “I am going to need two people to come with me on Wednesday for the first round of meetings for possible stores to go in the mall. There will be three representatives from three different companies coming to see the location for the mall as well as the blueprints and drawings of what the actual building will look like. So, I want you, Vince, to come with me.” Vince was the lead architect of the firm. “And Penny.”
When he said my supervisor’s name, I saw that he only just then realized she wasn’t in the room.
“Where’s Penny?” He frowned.
“She’s out today,” I said. “But she told me to come to the meeting for her. She also said that she wasn’t sure how many days she would be in the office this week, so I should just take over everything for her.”
To be fair to Penny, that’s not really what she said at all. She’d sent me an email that morning telling me to go to all the meetings for the next couple of days and take notes, and to get back to her if there was any ‘urgent’ business she needed to address herself. I didn’t qualify this trip to the location as urgent business, since I was perfectly capable of handling it myself, so I decided what she didn’t know would only give her more time with her beloved baby.
“She—she what?” He balked. “She can’t just—”
“Seriously, it’s fine,” I said. I didn’t want to get Penny in trouble, and I knew there was a way I could spin this so that we both came out looking good. “I told her that I wanted to take on more responsibility, and that I thought this would be the best way for me to learn. I was the one who insisted on taking on all the extra work, and I would really appreciate the opportunity to show you why you hired me in the first place.”
He sighed. “Your work ethic is admirable, Kat—Katherine—” I wondered why he suddenly used my full name when I had instructed everyone in the office, including him, to call me Kat. “—and this is nothing personal, I just need everything to go well at these meetings and it would be nice to have someone there with a little more experience with these sorts of things.”
I nodded. “Yes. Of course. I understand.” This is what I said out loud, but on the inside, I was busy cooking up a plan that would get me in the car with Jonah Wednesday morning, on our way to the middle of nowhere, just the two of us.
The rest of the meeting consisted mostly of a few general check-ins and updates, and then everyone was dismissed. I waited until everyone left the room except Jonah. He was looking down at his notes and didn’t notice me until I got up and moved to the chair closest to his.
Glancing up, he smiled politely. “Oh, sorry. I didn’t know you were still here.”
“I wanted to talk to you, just one-on-one.”
He leaned back. “Sure, go ahead.” For a moment, I thought I saw his eyebrow twitch, as if he was nervous. He probably thought I was going to bring up the events of Friday night, and I would be lying if I said I didn’t enjoy having that sort of power over him, even if it was fleeting.
“So, listen.” I folded my hands on the table in front of me. “I love Penny. I think she’s great at her job, and I know from what my dad has told me that she is normally a very hard worker. Very dedicated. That being said, she’s been distracted lately, and who could blame her? She has a whole new person in her life that she has to take care of, of course she’s distracted. I’m sure you remember what it was like to have to work and take care of Victoria when she was just a baby.”
He scoffed. “Do I? Those were some of the most exhausting months of my life, when Vic was a newborn.”
“Exactly, so you understand that even when Penny is here in the office, she’s not fully here, right?”
“I guess that’s probably true, yeah.”
“And I was just thinking, since this project is so important and these meetings on Wednesday need to go flawlessly, that maybe you might want someone else to come with you from the marketing department. Someone a little more—focused.”
“Someone like you?”
I smirked. “Well, that was an easy guess since I’m the only other person qualified to go.”
He considered this for a moment or two, looking down at his notes then back up at me. “I’m just not sure.”
“Then let me convince you.” I reached over and slid his notes over so that I could read them. “One of the companies we are meeting with is that eco-friendly clothing brand, right?”
“Yes,” he said. “Their name is like Lolli or something? I can’t remember, but all their clothes are made from recycled material, and they are carbon neutral.”
“I’ve heard of them,” I said. “They started in the UK. In fact, they had a store right down the street from my first apartment in London. I went in there once, and only once, and do you want to know why I never went back there?”
“Why?” I could tell I had him on the hook—which wasrightwhere I wanted him. I was giving him the same pitch I would give the brand ambassadors, and so long as I could hook them just as easily, we would be shaking hands with them long before the meeting was over.
“Because the store layout was a goddamn mess,” I said. “And their marketing was borderline insulting.”
He raised a brow. “Go on.”
I stood up out of my chair, getting on my feet just like I would be in the official meeting, and went about painting a picture for him. “First of all, when I walked in, there was very little room to move around. They had way too many products out, so that I was immediately overwhelmed and could hardly navigate my way around the store. They had crammed too much stuff into too small a space, which is why we will be offering them one of our larger units, andIwill be convincing them that they absolutely need that much space, higher rent be damned.”