by Alice Ward
“Okay, so let’s think on this some more. This meeting’s adjourned,” I said, looking around the boardroom and splaying my hands on the table. “But I’d like HR, accounting, and legal to stick around.”
The rest of the directors began to filter out, looking vaguely shell-shocked, as if I’d told them they were all fired. My father ran these meetings a certain way, where nothing new ever happened, and that had been fine when Vaughn Industries’ numbers were up. But desperate times…
We needed this action. More than ever.
Juliana knew that. And she was right. We were the largest packaged foods distributor in the country. But we wouldn’t be for long if we continued the way we were headed. It was time to stop sitting back and defending our actions. We needed to listen. We needed to act.
I rubbed my hands together. Time to make something happen.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Juliana
I smiled at Emily as she stepped off the scale. “You’re down five pounds,” I said, almost as excited as if I’d lost the weight myself.
“Really?” she asked, still meekly, but with a broad smile on her face. “And you’re right. I do feel better.”
We’d gone over everything she’d started doing. She’d cut out the snack cakes and began eating more vegetables. She’d replaced soda with seltzer. She’d begun exercising moderately after school. And probably most importantly, her mother had gotten the entire family on board.
“I’m amazed,” her mother said to me, her tone apologetic. “I never thought that she would be able to do it, but once we got together and made a plan for all of us to follow, it was fun. We all feel great.”
“That’s terrific,” I said, making a few notes on her file. “And her blood sugar has been under control? Ketones in check?”
Emily nodded. “It’s been perfect. I haven’t really felt the need to cheat at all. Turns out, I love edamame. Tofu, I can do without.” She wrinkled her nose.
“Oh, well, there is plenty of other stuff you can eat in place of it.”
“I even started jogging around the block after school,” she announced. “I have that much energy. I might join the track team.”
I wanted to pump my fist in joy. Some days of following my passion, like today, everything just went right. All of my clients had had breakthroughs. It was a good, good day.
“I can’t tell you how happy I am to hear that,” I said as we stood up and guided them to the door. “These are the things I love to hear at my appointments! So just keep on with the plan, and I’ll see you in another month.”
When they left, I fished out my phone and saw a text from Leah: Gym in 20?
I grinned and typed in a yes. I hadn’t seen Leah in forever, and though I’d filled her in via text about what had happened at the open forum, I’d been too busy lately to tell her much more. I finished completing my report on Emily Aker, grabbed my gym bag, and hurried for the elevator.
When I got to the gym, Leah wasn’t there. I dressed quickly and was just sitting on the locker room bench, waiting for her, when she walked in.
She stopped in her tracks. “Oh, my god.”
I looked down at my body, making sure I had all my limbs. “What’s wrong?”
“You’re in love!” she shouted at me. “It’s all over your face.”
I felt my face. Was it?
She threw her gym bag down. “Did you catch that goofy smile you’re sporting? It has L-O-V-E written all over it, girl.”
I stood up, went to the mirror, and looked at myself. I was flushed, healthy, smiling, yes, but that was because I’d had an awesome day so far. There was no goofy lovestruck smile to be seen. At least, I hoped. “I’m just happy because I’m having a good day.”
She eyed me suspiciously as she kicked out of her heels. “You’ve been totally mum about this Zach guy. The last you told me was that you’d seen him again at the open forum. If that isn’t fate, I don’t know what is.”
“Yeah. But it turned out, he was on the other side of everything I stood for. His company? They make the Heigh-di-Ho.”
“Really? Wait, what’s a Heigh-di-Ho?”
“You know. Sugar. Fat. Carbs. Death.”
“And…?”
And well, I got so pissed off at him that I fucked him in the janitor’s closet. Yeah, that made a lot of sense. “And, what?”
“That was like a month ago. So… what did I miss? Is he the one you’re in love with?”
“I’m not in love,” I corrected, practically shouting the words.
She raised a brow. “Protest much?”
I sighed. Time to divert the conversation. “What about you and that guy? Secret Agent Brock?”
She rolled her eyes. “Oh. Yeah. Well. Listen to this. He was texting me fast and furious for like, weeks, and I was starting to get into him. Big lead-in to our first date. And…”
She had me on the edge of my seat. “And?”
“And, nothing. Sad trumpets. He showed up, and after all that waiting and buildup, it was a total letdown. He was self-absorbed, jerky, and he’s like thirty-five and still lives at home with his mother.”
She gave me a yeech face, which I returned. Yeah, that was definitely yeech. And here I’d thought for so long that if anyone could find true love, it would be Leah, hands down. She’d had so many prospects, after all.
Turned out, guess all you really needed was one good one. But I still wasn’t sure. Was Zach the good one? Sometimes, it sure felt that way.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
She shrugged like it was nothing. “I’m not.” Quickly, the attention swayed back to me. “Okay, if you’re not in love, you’re definitely in something. So spill.”
She pulled on her workout outfit, grabbed a towel, and looked at me expectantly, waiting for the whole story.
Whatever I was in, I didn’t know. Yes, it had been lust. But for the past few weeks, Zach had been texting me. Asking me questions about healthy food. We’d been building a bridge, one with a lot of fiery conversation and debates, and even more amazing sex.
Was that love? Maybe Leah would know; she knew relationships a million times better than I did.
“Fine.”
So I told her. I told her everything. It felt like forever had passed since we’d spoken, and Leah always liked to interject questions, so it took pretty much our entire thirty-minute elliptical run to get the entire thing out.
I told her how I’d met him again at the forum, and he’d completely trashed everything I tried to say. How he’d thought, on that first night, that I was a prostitute and that I still had the seven thousand dollars in that stupid purse because he wouldn’t let me give it back.
Then I told her all the good stuff. How he’d taken me to his factory, let me speak in front of his board, and I’d brought him to a school. How we had amazing sex. I told her how as different as we were in so many ways, some things about us just gelled. And now, whenever I wasn’t with him, I wished I could be.
When I was done, she shook her head, wiping sweat from her forehead. “Holy cupid. It’s fate. Don’t you see that? It’s like the perfect romance.”
“The perfect romance?” I scoffed. “I’m a nutritionist. He makes desserts that kill people. I don’t know how you can call that fate. We can’t even really hold hands in public because we’re both afraid what people will say if they see us ‘together.’”
“Hello? Opposites attract. You guys are perfect for each other.” She grinned out the window. “Plus. He owns a huge company. He must be rolling in it.”
I rolled my eyes. “Yeah. I guess. But what does that say about me? Spending my life crusading against his company, only to do what I’m doing? Sleeping with the enemy?”
“He’s not the enemy. He just has flaws, like everyone else.”
“Yeah. And my flaw is that I want to tear down the company that has been in his family for seventy years. I don’t think his family will be welcoming me with open arms.”
We finished o
ur exercise session, and I walked, jelly legged and sweaty, to the water cooler, where I gulped down three little cups in quick succession. After a shower, I pulled my bag out of my locker and checked my phone.
I had a text from Zach. Can you meet me after work?
Leah came out of her shower, wrapped in a towel. “Is that from lover boy?” she said in a dreamy voice.
“Yeah. How did you know?”
She pointed at her mouth. “Goofy grin.”
I put it in check. But even after I said goodbye to Leah and went back to the office, I found it climbing up there. I texted Zach and arranged to meet him at his offices downtown. It was odd. We’d gone out to dinner before, always at vegan restaurants, and he’d always swung by and met me in a cab. This request was different.
What did he have to show me at his office, after hours? Whatever it was, he had me worrying. It sounded stiff, businesslike. He hadn’t really ever been playful in his texts, but for some reason, I was anticipating the worst.
Or maybe he wanted to fulfill one of his sex fantasies that involved his boardroom table.
Not that I would be against that, but… I had the feeling this was something more.
When I got to the revolving doors to his office and stepped inside, he was waiting in the lobby, chatting up security. Suit, tie… same old, same old, and yet he always seemed to take away a little more of my breath every time I saw him.
He turned to me, grinning, which relaxed me at once. “Why did you want to see me here?” I asked as we walked through the open elevator doors.
He put a finger to his lips, the same thing I’d done when I’d taken him to the elementary school. “It’s a surprise.”
As the doors slid closed, he hit the button for the twenty-fifth floor, which I thought was odd. I’d thought he’d mentioned the corporate offices were on the twenty-fourth floor.
He took my hand when we were alone in the elevator, kissing my knuckles. Then he pressed me into the corner, kissing an openmouthed trail down my neck. His hands roamed, lifting the simple blue polo dress I was wearing over my thighs. “You look delicious in this dress.”
Maybe the boardroom table sex fantasy hadn’t been too off the mark. I stifled a gasp, unwilling to submit just yet to how good his mouth felt on my skin.
“Thank you,” I said, trying not to appear so affected by his touch.
He pulled away and studied me. “Aw, are you worried about my surprise? Afraid I might be turning the tables on you or something?”
I snorted. “It just better not be a surprise party. I hate surprise parties.”
His eyes widened. “Wait, when is your birthday?”
I looked him directly in the eye. “Yesterday.”
His entire face fell, like the skin was melting from the bone. “Oh shit. Really? Your birthday was yesterday?”
I couldn’t hold it in any longer. “Nope. It’s actually October thirteenth.”
He sagged against the wall. “You vixen, you scared the hell out of me.”
My heart squeezed. He had been genuinely upset at the thought of missing it. What did that mean? That he actually… cared?
He recovered quickly, taking my face in his hands. “It’s scary what a good liar you can be.”
I grinned. “Got to keep you on your toes. But I was serious. I really don’t like surprise birthday parties.”
“Mental note: No surprise parties for Juliana’s birthday,” he murmured to himself as the elevator stopped at the top floor. “October thirteenth, right?”
I nodded. He asked it like we might still be together then. Emotion thickened my throat, even though I knew I was reading too much into things.
When the door opened, I was hit by the distinct smell of new carpet, new paint, of freshly plastered walls. The floor was dark. He nudged me to follow him.
Into complete darkness? There was probably a serial killer story somewhere that started this way. Nice to know that from our first date to our last, Zach was always pulling me out of my comfort zone.
I hesitated. “Wait… where are we going?”
“Come on.”
He led me into a foyer and my heels sank into inch deep carpeting. It was a small lobby with plain, white walls. We stepped through one corridor and out onto a giant, empty floor. Only part of the cubicles there had been assembled; the rest had just been roughed in.
“Are you expanding your operations?” I asked.
“You could say that.”
We walked in a U around the vast office, and he switched on lights as we went. It was a good office space, I guessed, not that I was the person to consult about it. Walls, check. Roof, check. That was all I knew, and they seemed to be in working order. Engineers, people who understood his business… maybe them. But me? What did I know?
I glanced at him, and he was giving me a sly smile, like he had something up his sleeve. Maybe he’d had a fantasy about doing it in an abandoned office?
I stopped at a wall where the builders had taped a blueprint of the layout, peering up at it. It was mostly set up to be a sea of cubicles, but there were a few offices on the other side of the wall I’d been looking at. Three of them, to be exact; two smaller and one large, executive corner office.
“It’s nice,” I said with a smile. That was basically all I could offer right now. “Really nice.”
“Come this way.”
He motioned me around the wall to the offices. They’d been completed. They didn’t have furniture yet, but the two smaller offices were nicely sized, and the biggest one?
It was huge, easily bigger than my apartment in Queens. A corner spot with two enormous windows overlooking Midtown, and lush gray carpeting, it looked like something for a king, like there should be a throne at the very end. I hovered in the doorway, almost afraid to go in.
“Nice. Are you thinking of moving up to this office?”
He shook his head. “Nope. I’ll be downstairs like always.”
I frowned. “Oh. So what will be up here?”
He dug his hands into his pants pockets. “Well, this whole floor is going to be allocated to our Health and Prosperity Division.”
I raised an eyebrow. “I didn’t know Vaughn Industries had a Health and Prosperity Division.”
“Well, they didn’t.” He rubbed the back of his neck sheepishly. “Until now.”
“You mean…” I looked around. I’d already been having a pretty good day, but now, it was about to go down in the record books. “What, exactly, would the Health and Prosperity Division do?”
“Well,” he said, taking my hand and drawing me toward him. “That’s really up for debate at this point. But they’ll be responsible for ensuring our food labels conform to the FDA’s recommendations and that we’re exploiting every avenue possible in order to make our products as healthy and good-tasting as possible. The first job I’d like them to tackle would be making sure that our school lunches are healthy but still fun.”
I could barely bring myself to speak. Tears pricked the corners of my eyes, burning a trail up my sinuses. All I could think was that I’d done it. That difference I’d wanted to make? I’d finally done it.
“So what do you think of this office?” he asked as we walked farther into the massive corner space.
“Huge. You could probably fit ten of my current office at Healthy Steps in here.”
He rocked back on his heels. “So, you like it?”
Was there sweat on his forehead? “Yes. But why—?”
“Then it’s yours,” he practically shouted. He cleared his throat and lowered his voice. “If there’s too much space you can, I don’t know, set up a treadmill in the corner.”
I blinked rapidly, trying to comprehend. “Wait. What?”
“If you want to paint it something different, it’ll be up to you, of course,” he said, nodding. “Pick out whatever furniture you like. Make it feel like home. Make the whole damn floor feel like home. This is your domain.”
“Wait. Back up. What?” I
was nearly choking on my breath. “It’s mine? My… domain?”
He nodded. “Yeah. I want you to be the Director of the Health and Prosperity Division, Juliana. You’re the only person I know who’d handle it with the level of passion I want.”
I stared at him. He couldn’t be serious. I was a nutritionist, and I loved my job. Well, most days. Never in my life did I aspire to work for the maker of snack cakes. Wouldn’t it be like Luke, deciding to take up shop on the Death Star?
“I… I mean, thank you… but… hiring me?” I stammered. “There has to be someone with more… business sense, right? Who knows the business?”
“I know, I know. People might wonder what you’re doing at first, joining our ranks. But I really think we will benefit from an outsider here. And once you start making a difference…” He shrugged. “It’ll make sense. Think about it.”
I was thinking about it. My mind was in overdrive, thinking about it. A thousand thoughts were swarming in my head like bees, and I could barely make sense of any of them. I’d wanted to make a difference, and this was the way. It did make sense. But giving up everything I loved… all the Emilys of the world who I’d been working so hard to help. The children of the city needed this, but my clients needed me. “But I can’t. You know, my job…”
“This’ll be part-time to start. So you can do both, if you want.”
I could? Okay. That wasn’t an excuse. In fact, I was out of excuses. It felt like everything I wanted was in my reach. Maybe I hadn’t aspired to help children as part of the world’s largest maker of snack cakes, but fate had a funny way of working things out. I could still consult with clients and… my face felt hot. I couldn’t breathe. It wasn’t bad though. It was exhilarating, all these possibilities flooding through my head.
I opened my mouth to just go for it when he held up a finger. “There’s just one problem.”
I bit my tongue, clenched my teeth. This was where the bottom usually fell out from under me.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Zachary
She stared at me, biting her lip. “What problem?”
“Well…” I took a deep breath, willing the courage to speak what I was thinking. Gavin would have killed me for even considering this. But I couldn’t back out now. The way she was looking at me, my sexy, sweet, Juliana… I’d never wanted a woman more. “I want this to be real.”
