SWNOVELS : Chapter 122
Fiona
I was back in my office already when Conrad called.
“You still doing alright over there?” he asked, loud and fast-talking as ever.
“Yes and no,” I answered. “Things are fine, yes. We’re handling it. But we hit a snag with the expansion project. And by snag, I mean a dead stop. It’s a huge problem, actually.”
“Yes,” he said. “I heard.”
I wondered if he heard about this from my fiancé, the owner of the company and the man with whom I’d chatted about my work problems over breakfast this morning. Could just as easily have been any of the other, many people the CEO regularly communicated with here. It didn’t really matter either way. But I wondered.
“I’m coming back earlier than I told you last,” Conrad continued. “I will be back by Friday. I still need you running the meeting that morning, of course. I’m not sure what time I will be able to get into the office, and I wouldn’t be prepared anyway. But I will see you in the afternoon and we can debrief then.”
What a freaking relief.
“That’s great.” I did my best to hide how deeply I meant that, trying to sound flatly professional instead.
“Anything you need from me in the interim?” he asked.
“Actually, yes.”
Here it was. I’d been a bit daring when I offered my coworkers monetary compensation for their pledged overtime. It was not something I had been authorized to do. And now I just needed to actually make it happen.
I just hadn’t been able to stomach the idea of standing before my equals – salaried employees with no incentive to work fifteen, sixteen hour days – and demanding they put their personal lives on hold simply because I was telling them to do so. I had to reward them for their labor. It was the right thing to do as a person in a leadership position, temporary or otherwise. After all, I very well knew how physically
punishing it could be to work such long hours day over day. And how badly it felt, sometimes, to know that you were not actually being compensated for all that extra effort.
I summoned all my confidence and told Conrad what I needed, as directly as I could.
“I created a task force to deal with the problem,” I said. “Gerald, Emmie, Tavis. They stayed late with me last night so that we could get a plan in place and draft a proposal, which I was able to deliver to the client by sunup this morning.”
“Great.”
“And I asked them to commit to working some long nights for the rest of this week as well. They all agreed. We’ve got a lot of work to do but the client is as happy as they can be, and I intend to keep it that
“Sounds like you have a handle on it. What is it that you need from me?”
“I need to get the team a bonus, or something like that. They need to be rewarded for all the extra time they’re putting in. They’re doing a great job, by the way. And I am sure they will continue to do so.”
“Great. I’ll write the checks on Friday. Anything else?”
Well. That was easier than I expected.
“Thanks. No, that was all I needed. I guess I’ll see you Friday. You have anything else for me?”
“Yes…” His voice sounded distracted and far away for a moment. I got the feeling he was in the car and had me on speaker. “You should consider hiring yourself
an assistant,” he said. “Why don’t you go ahead and get the ball rolling on that?”
I was alone in my office, so I let my face do what it wanted. My eyes went wide with a feeling of bewilderment. I wanted to say, “Really?”
Instead I said, “Okay.”
“Call HR. They can get a posting up and assign a recruiter to screen applicants.”
Conrad was gone the second I said goodbye to him. I wondered if he meant to hang up without bidding me any farewell in response, or if he’d accidentally hit a button on his car dashboard too soon. He was a little hit-and-miss with tech savviness. And patience.
The medication worked well enough. I was able to retrieve my salad from the breakroom fridge a couple
hours later and managed to choke it down and keep it down.
I felt cold, though, and tired. Just still not quite right. I was drafting a boring email when I spaced out for a moment and had a vivid fantasy of my and Alexander’s big, comfy bed… sliding underneath the silky sheets and curling up with my big warm Alpha.
Which reminded me…
I decided to take a little break. I got up and locked my office door, then took out my phone to check and see if Alexander had sent me something yet.
Yes. He had sent me a picture of himself. And what a picture it was.
He was fresh out of the shower in a bathroom mirror selfie. His long hair was damp. His sculpted golden
body glistened with moisture. He was naked save for a towel slung low on his hips.
I could tell he had just been working out, because all the chiseled muscles on his big arms and chest were swollen, positively bulging. He wasn’t looking at the camera or smiling. His freshly shaved jawline looked impossibly angular, like the profile of a god sculpted out of marble.
I no longer felt cold. In an instant I was warm all over instead.
Looking at the unbelievable picture he’d just sent me, my wolf brain could only think one thought: Alexander really was a god.
I’d thought that the very first time I ever saw him, too.
Come to think of it, he actually looked a lot like he did in the photo, that first time we met in the hotel…
squeaky clean, half naked, coolly confident, impossibly gorgeous.
I had no idea how to reply to this. I loved the image and quickly typed out a crude one-word response that seemed like the only way to summarize my honest reaction. He sent a winking face back, and then said it was my turn.
I tried not to think of it as a competition – how could I match his offering? – and finally did the damn thing. I touched up my lipstick, ran my hands through my hair to give it some extra volume, and snapped about a dozen selfies. I scrolled through and deleted the great majority of them. And then sent the two that felt acceptable, before I could overthink it.
He responded first, to my great amusement, with a string heart-eyes emojis.
Alexander: Absolutely gorgeous. Thank you for this. I needed it.
And then came an unwelcome knock on my door that snapped me right back down to earth.
I told Alexander I had to go and that I’d text him later, flipped my phone upside down and crossed the room to open the door. I held a hand to my cheek; I was flushed.
“Just a moment,” I called out calmly. I paused to retrieve a bottle of water from my desk and took a couple sips, trying to cool down.
Fortunately it was just Gerald at the door, and he didn’t look suspicious at all about my delay when I finally let him in. He was apologetic for interrupting me, got to his question quickly and out of my hair just as fast once I’d given him a decision on the matter
with which he’d needed my help.
I resisted the temptation to look at the photo of Alexander again when I was alone in my office once more. I put my phone away in the drawer instead. I could pick up with that fun distraction later, after I got some more things done. It was good to have a treat to look forward to later, anyway.