Kelly Jamieson - Sweet Deal

The thought crossed her mind that maybe this was a bit more than they needed to do to convince Andrew, since Andrew never actually saw them. But then, she wasn’t a very good liar and this way, when Andrew asked Monday morning how her weekend was, it would certainly be sincere and convincing when she told him it was the best weekend she’d ever had.

Monday morning was back to reality though, with project meetings and much work to be done on her project plan. She had a team to assemble, deliverables to nail down, and a communications strategy to plan. And that was just a start.

When Andrew called her to his office, she hesitated. What was this meeting going to be like? Another casual chat about anything and everything? Or was he still annoyed about all the invitations she’d turned down last week?

She smoothed her skirt down as she walked along the carpeted corridor between gray fabric panels dividing the cubicles, through the hum of computers, tap of keyboards and low voices discussing business. She smiled at Susan, who waved her into Andrew’s office with a brief smile and not even a bit of attitude.

“Good morning.” She smiled at Andrew too.

“Morning, Shelby. Come on in. Shut the door.”

Oookay. It was going to be a closed-door meeting. Her stomach tightened as she shut the office door and sat in a chair. He moved around from behind his desk and also sat.

“How was your weekend?”

Fanfreakingtastic. She nibbled her bottom lip briefly. “It was good,” she said, unable to stop her smile from breaking free. “Nothing exciting. Jake and I did a little shopping, a little cooking. Went for a walk.” She lifted one shoulder, trying to downplay the amazing time she’d had with Jake, her insides doing a little flip of excitement thinking about him again. “How about you?”

“It was okay.” He paused, watching her. Normally, he’d invite her to go for coffee, tell her about the chick flick Gianna had dragged him to and how bad it was, or how she’d made him have dinner with her parents who he always called the “outlaws”. He hated Gianna’s family and that apparently caused conflict between them. She’d heard it more than once. But he said nothing like that.

“Last week you met with Davis and Bram.”

Okay. On to business. “Yes. Twice.”

He nodded, his face serious as he took a chair. “How did that go?”

“Well, I mentioned to you earlier in the week that there seems to be conflict between their divisions. But I think after Friday’s meeting, I’ve gotten them more or less on board. Why?”

“Davis came to see me first thing this morning. Both he and Bram are questioning your ability to manage the project, given how short a time you’ve worked here.”

Her mouth fell open and her stomach swooped. Heat swept over her, burning her face. “You’re kidding.”

He leaned back in his chair. “No.”

“Well.” She searched for something to say. “They did mention that in our meeting, but I thought I’d addressed it.” She frowned at Andrew. “Are you concerned about that?”

Geez. He wasn’t going to take this project away from her now, was he? Was this all because she’d turned down his invitations last week?

The heat sliding over her intensified and a flare of anger burned inside her. If that’s what this was about…oh, man. This could not be happening to her. Not again.

“No,” he said, putting his fingertips together. “I chose you to lead this project and I have confidence in your abilities.”

Relief filtered through her, but even so her stomach was still knotted and tight. “Thank you.”

“They also weren’t happy because they think the whole intake process needs to be revised.”

“They mentioned that.” She gazed across the table at him. “That’s not in the scope of this project, though. I told them that, and I told them if there are processes that need to be reviewed, we would make note of them and I can make recommendations for future changes. They seemed fine with that.”

The fact that the two men had gone to her boss behind her back was starting to piss her off. Heat slid through her veins. She felt like slamming her leather portfolio on the table. Repeatedly.

Andrew nodded thoughtfully.

“You don’t think I should include that, do you?” She leaned forward. “You know how scope creep can destroy a project.”

“Yeah. I know. But the intake process is critical. What if it compromises the success of this project because it wasn’t included?”

She gritted her teeth. “Fine. I’ll look at it. But I’m not committing to including it in this project.”

“That’s okay. If you look at it, hopefully it will satisfy them.”

Shelby inhaled a deep breath and met Andrew’s eyes. “What about the bigger problem here?”

“What’s that?”

“The fact that they came to you behind my back, instead of coming to me.”

Andrew’s eyes narrowed and his chin lowered. “Oh. Yeah.”

She shook her head, her mouth twisting. “I wish you had told them to come to me if they have concerns, Andrew.”

His eyes widened and he sat back a little in his chair. He gazed back at her. “I…”

“That’s okay.” She waved a hand and stood, trembling on the inside but wanting to appear confident and in control. She smiled. “I’ll go talk to them about it.”

She walked out of his office, fury boiling inside her, both at Andrew and at the other two men. What kind of bullshit was this?

She wanted to walk straight to Bram’s office while she still had the momentum, but paused outside her own cubicle. Maybe she should let the emotion die down a little and plan what she wanted to say to him before she went storming in there. Yeah.

So she sat at her desk and stared at the dark computer monitor for long moments.

It wasn’t as if she’d never encountered this kind of problem before. In her years at RBM she’d dealt with a whole lot of problems on various projects. She knew what she had to do. Why was she second-guessing herself?

She picked up three squares of sticky notes and stacked them one on top of another in a perfect neat pile. Straightened some files into an equally neat pile. Smoothed some dust particles off the corner of the desk. Replaced a paper clip in the holder.

Was it just because of Andrew and her worries that he was giving her too much responsibility? Or was it her past coming back to haunt her, making her doubt her abilities? Making her too sensitive to things she should be able to easily deal with.

She’d automatically jumped to the conclusion that Andrew was going to pull the project from her when he’d mentioned the problem. She shouldn’t have assumed that, but after the things her last boss had done, she was jumpy and paranoid. She rubbed her aching forehead and leaned her hand into it, elbow on her desk.

The fact that he hadn’t taken the project away from her, had stood up for her, caused her even more confusion. Yes, she should be happy her boss supported her. That’s what she’d expect from a boss. But there was still that niggle of worry about his attention to her and what his intentions were. Although this morning had been completely businesslike.

She’d give it a couple of hours and then go talk to Bram and Davis.

Jake’s Monday morning wasn’t going so well. It was getting more and more difficult to ignore the frustration he felt at the lack of vision his superiors had for the company and the boredom of doing the same work day in and day out. Yes, times were tough, yes, they had to be careful about decisions they made, but they were really in a good position to take on new challenges and, in fact, to take advantage of the markets the way they were. And Jake missed the excitement of being on the front lines of something new.

Maybe if he went for coffee at Java the Hut, he’d run into Shelby.

Maybe he was losing his mind.

She lifted him up, though, with her sense of humor and eternal optimism, how she didn’t let things keep her down for long, and strangely, after spending most of the weekend with her, not being with her left him feeling hollow. What the fuck was that?

He poked his head into Drew Rutherford’s office, one of his colleagues he’d gotten to be buddies with, who shared some of his frustrations. “Hey, Drew. Wanna get a coffee?”

“Hell yeah.” The other man looked up from his laptop. He appeared to be working on both the laptop and the computer on the desk. Jake grinned. Drew rubbed his face. “These budget projections are all screwed up.”

“Let’s go to Starbucks,” Jake suggested, now for some reason not wanting to take the chance of running into Shelby. He needed to put some distance between them. This idea that he might be—fuck!—missing her after the weekend scared the crap out of him. That wasn’t supposed to happen.

“No, too far,” Drew complained as they rode down in the elevator. “Let’s just go to Java the Hut.”

“Sure, okay.” Jake swallowed his sigh.

They ordered their coffees and decided to sit outside on the patio. Another perfect sunny day in Southern California.

“How was your weekend?” Drew asked.

Jake hesitated. “Actually it was pretty unbelievable.”

Drew grinned. “Hot chick?”

“Oh yeah.” And that’s all it was. A hot chick and a lot of time in bed.

“Sounds good. You have all the luck. I’m jealous, man.”

Drew was happily married and Jake knew he didn’t really mean that.

“What do you think about this idea of implementing a new database for Payroll?” Jake asked him, changing the subject away from anything to do with Shelby.

Sexy, funny, spunky Shelby Rose.