by Rachel Hauck
“One giant to slay at a time, Zane. I moved that project to next year.”
He raised a steely gaze to her as he moved behind his desk. “You should ask me before you move things. I am the head of this company.”
“And I’m the neck.” Her determination locked with his. Steady. Don’t break. She exhaled when he flashed his charmed grin.
“My neck is a little stiff right now.” He kicked out his chair and sat, flopping the Post open over his laptop and yesterday’s coffee cup. Lexa reached for the cup and set it on the corner to take back to the employee kitchen. “I trust you, but let’s be sure to address it in January. That cart vendor offered us an amazing deal.”
“Did you read the contract? The small print on his maintenance offer was ridiculous.” She read every vendor and supplier contract multiple times, on alert for twisted wording and provisional clauses. “By the way, I’ve made Quent my assistant.”
The Harvard MBA grad was a Zane hire. He reasoned the Boston blue blood gave the Nebraska boy some clout, if not a bit of swagger. But so far, he had proved to be as ordinary as they come, if not a bit lazy and entitled.
“Quent? The man with a Harvard degree in marketing and business strategy?”
“Don’t be wowed, Zane. Apparently Harvard needs to add a class on how to show up on time and do the work you’ve been assigned. I’ve asked him four times for an update on his Zaney Days projects. So far, crickets.”
“He’s young.”
“You were launching a business at his age. No excuses. Anyway, he’s my assistant until he grows a better work ethic.”
Zane regarded her for a moment, chin raised, quizzing her with his eyes. She braced for a fight.
“Fine, but have him see me when he gets in.”
“I’m doing what’s best for the company, Zane.”
“It just feels like you’re cutting me out, Lex.”
“I’m doing the CEO job, and I think you should hire—”
“I know, I know. Hire someone for the job. You’re right. I need to fill the position. I’m just nervous to rock the balance of our little family company.”
“Yes, you do need to hire someone.” Lexa pulled a chair forward to sit. “As a matter of fact, I was thinking—”
Zane’s cell rang and he answered it with vigor. “Tim, yes, hello.” He pressed the phone to his chest. “Lex, can you give me a minute?”
“Yeah, sure.”
Back at her desk, her inner voice mocked her. Coward.
What was she supposed to do? Blurt out her request? He always said no when asked a question he wasn’t prepared to answer.
The timing had to be right. Perfect.
She’d just started her to-do list when Zane appeared again. Grinning. Like a lovesick teen.
“Yes?” Lexa said.
Zane offered his phone. “Sabrina just texted.”
Ah, his new love. A Hollywood starlet he met at a charity benefit in London.
“By the size of your Nebraska smile, I take it she said yes to the Gottlieb Gala?”
The Gottlieb Gala for Young Entrepreneurs had named Zane their Young Entrepreneur of the Year and were honoring him next Friday night at a fancy soiree atop the Waldorf Astoria, in the enchanting Starlight Room.
“She’s catching the red-eye next Thursday. Can you order flowers for her room?”
“Done. I figured if she didn’t come I’d take the room myself for a luxurious weekend of bubble baths and champagne.”
“Why don’t you move?” Zane huffed and puffed, but he could not change her mind. “A girl needs a bathtub.”
“Not if it costs another two hundred a month. Or more.”
“Are you hinting for a raise?” Zane pushed up from the desk and started for his office.
“As a matter of fact, Zane, I would like to talk to you about—”
“Oh, what about my speech? For the gala?” He turned back toward her. “Did you get my notes on your draft?”
“I sent the updated version three days ago. Do you ever read your email?”
“That’s what you’re for.” He laughed without conviction as he aimed for his office again. “I’ll go find it.”
“You do that.”
She had refused to write his speeches at first, but he worked her soft side, her team-player heart, and she caved. She should’ve never told him she’d aced a speech-writing class at Florida State.
Lexa had a love-hate relationship with her “soft side.” It was the one she used to make friends every time the family moved. The one that got her into the in-crowd in high school. Yet it was the side that opened her up to wounding and hurt.
“Oh, one more thing? What about the mini ZB Burgers for the gala?”
“Really, Zane, read my emails if you don’t read anyone else’s. The Forty-Sixth Street store is making them. You know if they’re a success we’re going to have to add them to the menu.”
“That’s the idea. See you at ten o’clock.” And he disappeared into his office.
With a sigh, Lexa stared at her computer screen. She should just ask him. Right now. Go into his office and ask.
“Will you make me your CEO?”
She’d been noodling on this plan for almost a year. Without an execution plan, it gnawed at her. Rooted deep and kept her awake at night.
She saw herself in the role to an extent she wasn’t sure what she’d do if he said no. So she hesitated. Waited. Surely Zane could see for himself she was the woman for the job.
Lexa gazed out over the common work area called the Think Tank. When she started with Zane seven years ago, they were in a crowded Canal Street office working around the clock to open the Forty-Sixth Street store.
With her husband in grad school, she had been the sole breadwinner, and she loved it. Loved doing her part to help him achieve his dream while living out hers.
Working for smart and savvy Zane was fun, if not wild. There were so many eleventh-hour wins in that first year, they created a Wall of Fame.
Most of all she loved being on a team. Moving eight times from first grade to twelfth, she barely had time to fit in before her air force doctor father would be reassigned.
Her parents and little sister, Skipper, were her best friends. Yet, how she longed to be accepted by the cool kids at school.
She glanced at Zane’s door. He was a cool kid. And he’d accepted her. Almost.
The trouble with longing for acceptance was inequitable conditions. What one considered acceptance, another did not. Lexa learned long ago to see her inclusion into her peer groups for what they offered, not what she expected.
She might see herself as CEO, but Zane might not. Then what? Did she just have to accept it?
“Lex, is Zane in yet?” Fatima from the test kitchen flashed a requisition form. “I need him to sign it unless you can.”
Lexa pointed to his office. “He just complained I don’t let him know what’s going on.”
Fatima laughed. “Doesn’t he know you’re the neck?”
Lexa raised her hands. I know, right? Seeing Fatima reminded her to text Quent.
See Zane when you get in.
What’s up? Just heading into the shower.
It was a quarter to nine and he was just getting out of bed?
Not sure but try to make it before lunch.
Gathering herself, she worked on the Zaney Days update for the meeting. But her attention landed on a meme she’d printed out a few months ago and taped to the side of her computer: “‘Courage!’ he said and pointed toward the land. ‘This mounting wave will roll us shoreward soon.’”
The Tennyson poem had been a favorite of her dad’s every time they moved. Every time Lexa and Skipper started a new school.
“Courage isn’t the absence of fear,” he would say. “It’s going forward anyway.”
So why the big chicken imitation over asking Zane to make her CEO? It’d be a huge job-title change and enormous raise.
But could she make such a giant leap? A
thin fear twisted in her chest.
No wasn’t necessarily a rejection, but it always felt that way to her. If he said no would it ruin their relationship? What if she didn’t want to be Zane’s executive assistant the rest of her life?
Besides her business degree with a focus on corporate governance, she knew ZB Enterprises inside out.
In the last seven years she’d hired and fired more than half the Think Tank, scouted vendors and suppliers, written the employee handbook, set the job titles and salary ranges, and created every job. Met with accountants and outside contractors. Even sat in on board meetings.
So . . . could she leave? Put herself out there and find a position as CEO or close to it?
The truth was, she’d envisioned an entirely different life for herself. But it didn’t pan out, and now she was twenty-nine. Time to get going. Move on.
Even Dad was encouraging her to raise her wings.
Last Christmas, as the fog of her divorce began to lift, old Dad sidled up to her with a cup of spiked eggnog.
“You can’t stop living, Lex. I know this divorce isn’t what you wanted, but it’s time to get a new plan.”
“I have a plan.”
“Tell me about it.”
“It’s a work in progress.”
He chuckled and hooked his arm around her shoulders. “I did you no favors dragging you, your mother, and sister around the world from post to post, but it made you a strong, independent woman.”
“It also made me an insecure woman. Will they love me? Will I fit in?”
“You’re a big girl now. Time to command your own life. Don’t get stuck, Lex. The time for mourning your marriage is over. Though I have to say, he surprised me. I thought he’d love you until his last breath.”
So did she. He pledged to do so in his vows and repeated it to her often in their first year of marriage, in the afterglow of lovemaking. Or over breakfast, or during a walk in the park.
Lexa handed over her heart the night he proposed and never expected it back. He was a man she could love and trust without fear or regret.
Then they imploded. In the quiet, between awake and asleep, her heart sometimes asked her soul, “What exactly happened?”
A new email dropped into her in-box. The cast of the Broadway hit Lost in Nashvegas agreed to appear for Zaney Days.
Outstanding. Zane would go nuts for this. The cast rarely made appearances and had turned down everyone from the governor to late-night talk-show hosts.
Lexa added the news to the Zaney Days robust agenda.
By nine thirty she had the data she needed and sent the agenda to the printer, then searched her desk for a loose dollar bill to feed the drink machine for a sparkling water.
As she rounded the corner for the employee kitchen, Quent zipped toward her in a wrinkled blue button-down splattered with drops from his dark, wet hair.
“I’m here.”
Lexa pointed to Zane’s office door. “Go on in. When you’re done, grab the Zaney Days agenda from the printer and take it to the conference room.”
At the drink machine, she fed the slot her dollar bill and selected a cherry-flavored water. Her ex liked cherry-flavored water. And pie. Ice cream. Pretty much anything with a cherry flavoring. Even her cherry lip gloss.
The reminiscing irritated her. She was over him. At least ninety percent. Maybe eighty-five. Eighty. For sure eighty percent.
Yet love was such a powerful potion. It made a girl dream of things she never wanted before. Like being a wife and mom, nesting in New Rochelle or a Long Island fixer-upper Cape Cod, where she’d raise three kids and a dog while proofing her husband’s manuscripts and secretly hunting for a vacation house on the beach in Florida near her folks.
Heading back to her work space, she peered into Zane’s office. He and Quent were sitting under the large picture window that framed a million-dollar lower-Manhattan scene.
They chatted like a couple of bros. Probably about football instead of work.
Lexa set her drink on a coaster, took a sticky notepad from the middle drawer, and wrote September 30 on the top sheet. Tearing it off, she stuck it to the bottom of her computer screen.
The date was her deadline to be ZB Enterprises’ first CEO. Or else.
Or else what? She had no idea but left the answer for tomorrow. For now, back to work. She might as well get the printouts. Quent would be in there until Zane left for the conference room.
It was then she noticed the plain, cream-colored envelope resting on the edge of her desk.
Bending back the flap, she tugged out a matching invitation.
You are cordially invited to the Fifth Avenue Story Society.
The Fifth Avenue Literary Society Library
The Bower Room
Monday, September 9 @ 8:00 p.m.
Chapter 3
Chuck
In the shadows between the street lamps, he watched from the side of the curb, waiting for a glimpse of his kids as they passed by the plate-glass window.
Every now and then the urge to check up on his kids overcame him. So he returned to the old neighborhood, parked five blocks away, and snuck through the night toward the house, risking his rights, his future, just for a glimpse.
He’d already spent a few nights in jail because of his ex-wife. Then, more recently, because of a loud, handsy groomsman.
Chuck winced at the memory. He’d never intended to mess up Jack and Jenn’s reception, but once the mean and lean, floppy-haired professor set up the confrontation, Chuck got caught up in the action.
Running his hand over his jaw, he still felt the power of the professor’s punch.
He’d contacted his lawyer Monday morning to let him know he’d been arrested but not charged. Not that the slick Manhattan lawyer was worth any of the thousands Chuck had already paid him.
Now, five days later, the knot in his middle was finally easing up. He didn’t flinch every time his phone rang. Sunday night had no fallout.
Yet here he was again, being stupid, creeping along the edges of his temporary restraining order, the TRO, for a glimpse of Jakey and Riley.
Trudy kept the twins on a strict routine—which her hyperorganized, control-freakish self demanded.
She had them dressed, ready for bed, and sitting on her fancy designer couch for story time every night by seven.
Crouching near the ground away from the spill of the streetlight, Chuck picked at the summer grass beneath his feet.
Last time he snuck over here, about a month ago, he caught sight of Jakey’s head. The boy was growing like a weed. Going to be tall like his old man.
Riley remained his petite princess. How he ached to swing her up in a bear hug.
He resisted the stab of tears. Getting emotional changed nothing. In fact, too much emotion was the reason for this mess. The reason he hunkered down five hundred feet—give or take—from his family.
He stretched up, shaking the kinks from his knees, and sensed the tension in his middle. Once he spied Jakey, or the Old Battle-ax, he’d sneak across the street, press against the house’s stone exterior, let his adrenaline drain, then rise up to peek inside.
Six months ago he was nearly caught when Trudy’s snot-nosed, hedge-fund boyfriend came home just as Chuck was about to tip-toe up.
What a tale his great romance had turned out to be. The beautiful rich girl who fell for the blue-collar boy turned out to be a cheater.
He blamed himself. Did he really think a smoking-hot Princeton grad with a brand new six-figure job on Wall Street would fall for a junior-college dropout who worked long days at Newark Star Steel?
But Trudy Murdock did fall for him. He’d hit the love lotto.
Twelve years ago—was it that long already?—he and his friends threw a Labor Day–weekend End-of-Summer Beach Party Blow-Out.
When Trudy walked in, she electrified the atmosphere, and Chuck was a goner. Handed over his heart without knowing her name.
Headlights flashed down the street. Chuc
k ducked behind the lamppost. But the car turned into a driveway a few houses down.
Then a shadow crossed the front window of the house, and Chuck arched up to see if it was one of the kids. Shoot. Nothing but the cat jumping onto the table. He smacked his hand to his chest. Dang, he even missed the cat.
Just as he crouched down again, hiding between light and shadow, Trudy walked by in a tight blouse and shorts, scooped up the cat, and waved to someone beyond the square pane.
Jakey’s blond head bobbed by. Then Riley’s.
Clenching his fists and filling his lungs, Chuck stole toward the house. Sensing the coast was clear, he looked inside before sliding down to hug the brick.
Beautiful. His children sat on either side of their mother, heads pressed against her arms as she read to them.
As much as he deplored his ex, he admired her parental devotion. She didn’t allow the twins to go stupid in front of the television at night or zone out with video games.
She surrounded them with books and puzzles, board games and music. He heard from his mom—Trudy allowed her access to the kids—that they were clever and smart, able to hold conversations with adults.
In about two months they’d turn six, and where was he? In their lives? No—ducked down behind the front hedge, risking his future with his kids because he couldn’t help himself. Man, if Trudy saw him, she’d call the police.
Running his palm over his knuckles, still a bit blue from Sunday night’s brawl, frustration rumbled through him.
She had cheated, then kicked him out. Now he violated the law to see the two people he loved most in the world.
How was that justice?
Yeah, sure, he’d overreacted. A little. Maybe a lot. But big deal. He was human after all.
Then her father, Chuck’s boss at the Murdock Family Trucking Company, laid him off. Between his fists-flying outburst, his unemployment, and the Murdock money, Chuck lost before the divorce proceedings began.
Regret was a bitter, bitter pill.
Checking to make sure the coast was clear, he stretched up again to see inside. Jakey looked through the bookshelf for another read while Trudy brushed Riley’s hair.
