“You might when you realise how important they are to our cattle feed operation. They’re the ones manufacturing our kelp farm infrastructure in China, but reports are coming back that their practices don’t comply with international labour laws,” Lucien said with a frown.
“Something you’ll fix,” Max said with a wave. “I’ll come to your room, and we can make a start on setting up the project as well.”
“In our personal assistant’s room?” Beau asked. Max just nodded. “Perhaps you should come down to the café?”
“Too much noise.” Max rubbed at his ears then, as if he could already hear the background chatter, but then his eyes met mine. “Though if you’re not comfortable with that, I could ask the hotel for a separate workspace.”
“It’s fine,” I replied with a smile, ready and willing to make sure it was.
Except not right now.We were assigned our rooms, and I saw that each of the men had been placed in the rooms either side of mine or on the opposite side of the hall. I wheeled my suitcase in, stripped off my jacket, and then tossed it on the bed, joining it not long afterwards, letting the cool air conditioning wash over me. That was when I felt like I could take my first full breath.
I thought working for Lucien would make this all terribly awkward, but fuck, the sheer scope, the history this business had with their assistants, had my hands rubbing at my temples. But damn, if I could dickhead whisper this pack of alphas, I could walk into any boardroom, any corporate tower in the country, with a reference that could prove I could be an asset in any one of them.
Then I heard a knock on the door.
I leapt up, kicking off my heels and padding barefooted across to the door to find Max waiting there.
“So, did you want…?”
His voice trailed away as his eyes dropped down. I should’ve put my jacket back on or changed my top, not lie there like a stunned mullet, because now one of my bosses was treated to the sight of what was once a cute little camisole top peeking out from behind my jacket but was now a silky little piece of satin that struggled to contain the girls.
Not all plus size chicks have big tits, but lucky or no, I was blessed with them. As they were one of the parts of my body that people seemed to almost universally respond positively to, I didn’t mind showcasing them on occasion, but not this one. Not when Max looked like he was having some kind of brain aneurysm, trying to map the entirety of my heaving bosom, looking like he just wanted to dive into my cleavage.
“Come in,” I said briskly, stepping backwards. “I’ll just change my top.”
“You don’t have to on my account,” he said hurriedly.
Yeah, I do, I thought, but I just indicated the table and chairs set up by the big bay window framing a spectacular view of Sydney Harbour. I unzipped my case and pulled out a much more comfortable boxy T-shirt, then disappeared into the bathroom.
I looked somewhat flushed. My makeup had held up, but there were red spots in my cheeks no blush had been applied to create. I just nodded at my wide-eyed reflection, then pulled off the cami and replaced it with the T-shirt. I could’ve tucked it in, tried to look a bit more professional, but I didn’t think Max would mind. When I returned, his focus was entirely on his computer, which had a device attached to it creating several screens from the one that came with the laptop.
“So we need to decide on which software we want to work with,” Max said, looking up as I came closer, his eyes lingering on the T-shirt but not for long. “What’re you familiar with?”
“I’ve used Microsoft Project”—his nose wrinkled at that— “JIRA and…” I smiled. “What do you usually use?”
“Something I developed myself,” he said, clicking on an icon on his desktop with palpable excitement. The company logo popped up, and then I was confronted by the sight of a massive workspace. “I tried to incorporate the dynamic nature of JIRA with some of the features of MS Project, because that’s what a lot of people come to us with an understanding of. There’s also a live message stream that’s a little like Slack…”
His voice washed over me, taking me on a journey through something I realised immediately was very important to this man. He’d analysed every other project management software on the market, identified the features he wanted, and then…created his own?
“So where is Crystal’s work?” I asked, feeling a rush of excitement. She had been in a relationship of sorts with Max. If he’d coaxed her in here, got her to do some of her work, I could—
“Ah…she found it hard to adapt to this working environment,” he said. “I sat down and tried to explain it to her a few times. So did Joey. She said it just didn’t click.”
Of course she did. I rubbed my forehead, then blinked.
“OK, so I’ll grab my laptop, and we’ll set up the bare bones of the project together. We’ll invite the others into the workspace and start getting them populating their areas of expertise with deliverables and dependant tasks.” I walked across the room to retrieve the device.
“You can try.”
“What?”
I turned around and frowned slightly, but Max shrugged.
“I’ve tried to get them working in this program before, but…” He smiled then, but it was a wistful thing, not a happy one. “I’m just the brother with his head stuck in the computer the whole time. I don’t really work in my office, preferring to be down on the IT level with Joey and the others, so it makes it easy.”
“Makes what easy?” I lowered myself down into my chair, wanting to know, but not really.
“To ignore me and my advice.” He shrugged again, making me wonder how often he did that. “I was instrumental at the beginning of the company, helping set up our ordering systems, our website. They brought everything to me, just to see if their mad schemes would work.” He shook his head slightly. “We were terrified it was all going to fall apart, but now… We were a team then, and now we’re not, something you should know. What you suggested, it’s the only way to get this symposium off the ground, but I’m not at all confident we will.”