“So… you don’t want to mess it up, right?”
I turned to face her. I wasn’t going to kiss her on the street with God knows who was watching, but I did use my thumb to pretend wipe some sauce from her face.
“Keep your boss happy, right?” My voice was low, husky.
She stared at me.
“I have a boyfriend,” she said, carefully.
“And he doesn’t want you to make your boss happy?” I tried to make light of the conversation, but she turned away.
“What’s wrong with you?” she hissed, stomping her foot in a rather adorable fashion.
I shrugged and had to laugh. The whole scene was charming, somehow, I couldn’t see the harm in us hanging out together and I told her so.
“I have a girlfriend too, if that makes you feel better?”
“It does not!”
She stormed off in the direction of the office. I walked after her, amused by Lauren’s reaction. When I got back inside, she was waiting for the lift, arms folded.
We weren’t alone anymore. Other people joined us at the elevator, and we couldn’t talk. We went up to her office and at her floor, I stepped out with her again.
I was determined to continue our conversation but when we got into her office, Diaz was waiting for her at her desk.
“Good, you’re back,” he said, frowning at a piece of paper.
“I want to talk to you about the email you sent earlier.”
“Diaz,” I said, and I saw him doing a double take.
“Mr. Waterstone! Everything okay?”
“Yeah, I was just welcoming Miss Lambert to the office.”
“Right,” he said, not sounding entirely convinced.
“I wanted to check about a tweet I saw last night,” I said, making it up on the spot.
“Oh?”
“Is that the sort of thing I speak to her about?” I pointed to Lauren.
“Uhm, yes, sure,” Diaz said, and sounded caught off guard.
“Maybe you haven’t had time to go through the latest update from marketing?” I said, a trace of sarcasm in my voice. He was becoming more uncomfortable by the moment. I did sometimes take a secret pleasure in wrong-footing my employees. It kept them on their toes, stopped them from becoming too complacent.
“We’ve been getting some bad publicity about the Freezas product as you must know.”
Neither of them knew what I was talking about. I could see it in their eyes, the frantic look that passed between them. I had expected the head of marketing, Tanya Chang, to talk to them about it, but it seemed she hadn’t. Freezas was a frozen fruit lolly that was supposed to be sugar-free and without additives or colorants. But a child had fallen ill shortly after eating one and now everyone was blaming the product.
“This is your department. Communications is part of marketing, right?” I said, my tone serious. “You haven’t been informed about the Freezas nightmare?”
“Uh, I’ll check with Tanya,” Diaz said and walked off quickly.
I found my good mood from earlier had evaporated. Instead, I was filled with irritation that the communications team had no idea what was going on with one of our big product lines.
“You don’t have to have lunch with me if you don’t want to,” I said, rather coldly. “But you do have to be good at your job. That is a prerequisite for this position.”