Master Class

by Carr, Cassandra

  “K.”

  In her home office he found some paper and a pen to write her a note.

  I feel kind of shitty, leaving you with just a note, but you were sleeping so soundly I couldn’t bear to wake you to say good-bye. Please call me tomorrow morning as soon as you wake, so I know you’re feeling all right. We’ll make more plans then.

  —Ryan

  He left the note folded in half propped up on her beside lamp, where she couldn’t miss it when she woke, and after a quick look around to make sure he wasn’t leaving a huge mess, he shut off both the television and the fireplace and crept out the door, making sure it locked behind him.

  In no mood to cook that night, Ryan stopped at a fast-food drive-through and then dropped into the recliner in his own living room with the food on his lap, strangely exhausted.

  What was this woman doing to him?

  * * * *

  Lisette’s day went to hell the moment she walked in the door at work Monday. Not good, especially after a weekend of not feeling well. There were two people who did her event planning job, herself and Mary. Mary was the senior person, as she’d been with the company for almost twenty years versus six for Lisette. Each of them covered different events, and since Mary worked from home, the two of them actually had little interaction.

  She hadn’t even had a chance to get to her desk before her boss, Grace, called her into her office. Grace, who was only a few years older than Lisette, looked haggard, and immediately Lisette’s hackles were up.

  “What’s going on?” A look at Grace’s face showed it was lined with stress. Lisette had never seen her like this.

  “Mary’s gone. Well, not gone, but on leave.”

  “Leave? Why?”

  Plopping her elbows on the desk and rubbing her forehead, Grace shook her head. “I can’t even believe it.” She looked up at Lisette. “She’s married to Johnny. They’ve been secretly married for a couple of years.”

  “Married?” Johnny was the foreman of the main crew the company used to set up and tear down their trade shows. Lisette didn’t work with him that often, since she was paired up with Steve, the foreman of the smaller crew, but she knew Johnny.

  “Yes, and it looks like they may’ve been way overcharging us for things and probably pocketing the difference.”

  “Oh no.”

  “But without concrete proof, we can’t fire her, so she’s on leave, effective immediately.

  “Okay…”

  “That leaves the Denver Midwinter show to you.”

  The Denver Midwinter trade show was the largest show, by far, her dental products manufacturer company did. Lisette had only served as a fill-in doing tasks Mary didn’t have time for, and she knew little about it. Not that she couldn’t learn, but it would be a steep learning curve in a short time. The show was in nine weeks if Lisette’s quick math was correct, and they were debuting a new product to make false teeth with. It was the biggest product launch in years.

  “There’s more.”

  “Oh, God.”

  “Mary apparently hasn’t done any of the prep work for the show.”

  Lisette’s mouth fell open. “None of it?”

  “Well, we have our booth space. That’s about all, though.”

  “Then we’ve already missed deadlines.”

  “I would imagine so.”

  “Even if we can get everything done, it’s going to cost extra with the late fees. Some of the stuff might just be unavailable.”

  “I know.”

  “Did she have anything to say for herself and why she did this?” Grace made a face. Lisette knew she and Mary were close, so this must be a devastating blow to her boss.

  “I can’t say for legal reasons. And unfortunately HR won’t let us have any contact with her during the investigation, so we’re on our own for the Midwinter show.”

  Immediately Lisette went into what her colleagues jokingly referred to as her “get shit done” mode. “That’s fine. We can do this. We have nine weeks or so, right?”

  “Yeah, but that includes the holidays. Nothing ever gets done during the holidays.”

  Lisette shrugged. “We’ll be the exception.”

  “So you can really do this, along with your regular workload?”

  “Don’t have much of a choice, do we?”

  “No.” Grace sighed.” I’m going to tell the staff you’ll be heavily delegating. I want you to use them for whatever you can. You just make sure we actually have a booth standing when the show opens—that’s your main job.”

  “There will be a booth, don’t worry about it. Do we even have the book for the show?”

  “Yeah, Mary gave it to HR.” Grace reached for a bag near her feet. “Along with some stuff for other shows.” Groaning, she handed the bag over. “I don’t even want to think about the other shows. We’re debuting Optimate at the Midwinter show. If we don’t have everything perfect for that, we’re screwed. It’s our biggest product introduction in years. Can you call Marty to see where we stand with the Optimate booth?”

  “Of course. And I’ll go through the show book first thing and prioritize.”

  “Sounds good. I’m going to go back through my spreadsheet and figure out what I can take over, off your back. I’m thinking the sales meeting, the sales dinner, and the client party at the very least.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “No other choice, right?” Grace’s face finally softened. “I’m so sorry about this. We’re going to pay you overtime for the work. I insisted. I guess we’ll have to reclassify you to do that, but this is going to take major hours on your part, and you shouldn’t be killing yourself for free over something that wasn’t your fault.”

  Lisette was stunned. “Thank you.”

  “I know you have a lot of family, and you had the time between Christmas and New Year’s marked off for vacation. I can’t let you go that long.”

  She shrugged. “We’ll work it out. My family will understand.”

  They’ll have to.

  Grace rose, and Lisette followed suit. Her boss’s arms wound around her in a tight hug. Considering Grace wasn’t a real touchy-feely type, the oddness of the situation continued to grow. She hadn’t even begun to process that Mary and Johnny were secretly married and bilking the company. It was like a soap opera.

  Grabbing the bag, Lisette scooted back to her own office and shut the door. Leaning against it, she closed her eyes for several seconds to ground herself and then pushed away, dropping into her chair. She found she wanted to call Ryan and tell him about this, but she’d spoken to him in one capacity or another for the past three days and wasn’t sure she should call him again. She bit her lip and considered. He was probably in class, and it wasn’t like he was her boyfriend. Despite all that, she still found herself dialing his number. It was scary how attached to him she’d gotten in such a short time. Already he was her rock.

  “Hello?”

  “Ryan?”

  “Lisette? Is everything okay?”

  “Do you have a minute?”

  “I have class in about ten, and I’m on my way, but sure. What’s going on? Are you all right?”

  “Yes. But that’s not what I called about. I don’t want to get into the whole sordid tale right now, but something happened at work, and I’m going to be putting in a metric ton of hours over the next two months or so. I can’t even begin to fathom how many.”

  “Okay.”

  Ryan drew the word out to a couple of syllables as if she was a skittish dog. Lisette wasn’t sure that was too far from the truth. She definitely felt a little out of control, though she hoped she was hiding it well.

  “How can I help?”

  “There’s not much you can do, but I wanted to tell you that I’m not sure when we’ll be able to…play again.”

  “Don’t worry about that. Your health and well-being are more important.”

  “Thank you. I really do appreciate that.”

  “Listen, I’ve gotta run, but
I’m going to call you later, and we’ll talk more, all right?”

  “Sure.”

  Lisette disconnected their call and turned to the three-inch binder every company received from the trade-show organizers and opened the front cover. Fortunately Grace had been able to get that from Mary, or things would be an even bigger mess. Inside, in the little pocket, was a map of the show floor. Grace had mentioned they had booth space secured, but Lisette wanted to see it for herself. She let out a little relieved sigh, when, sure enough, right in the middle of the floor there was a large outline in highlighter with their company’s name printed inside the space. Then she looked closer and noticed the dimensions.

  “Holy shit,” she said out loud. “That much space?”

  Upon further inspection, it was clear there were actually two booth spaces, one for the new Optimate booth, and then another space adjacent to it for the company itself. Lisette had never worked on this scale. Her shows certainly weren’t small, but she knew her company spent over a million dollars at this show alone. Acid churned in her stomach.

  Andrea bustled into her office a little while later. “What the hell?”

  “I know.”

  “There are all kinds of crazy rumors flying around about Mary.”

  “Not sure how crazy they are. But listen, hon, I can’t really talk about it. Right now I need to assess and prioritize. This is a mess.”

  “I understand, hon. Call me if you need me.”

  Andrea was a salesperson, so Lisette doubted the other woman could help, but she appreciated the gesture.

  “I will. Later.”

  Before she got caught up in the forms for the show and forgot entirely, she called Marty, the team leader of the company building their Optimate booth. After perfunctory greetings and a scaled-down version of the truth, she got down to brass tacks.

  “What step are we in the building process?”

  “We’ve been waiting for Mary and Grace to okay the design before we started roughing it out.”

  “You haven’t even started that?” She knew her voice was beginning to sound panicky, but what the hell had Mary been doing all this time? And why hadn’t she told Grace that Marty was waiting for approval?

  “No, and I’ve been calling Mary at least twice a day to find out when that was going to get done. We were getting pretty nervous over here. It’s gonna be cutting it close to get it done in time for the show. We may be building it on the show floor, which I hate doing.”

  Lisette swore under her breath. “I need to talk to Grace. I’ll call you back. You’ll get the approval as soon as I can drag it out of someone.” Lisette found Grace in her office. She looked like she wanted to punch somebody after Lisette told her about the latest fire.

  “Have Sue book both of us on a flight to Connecticut tomorrow morning. Do the return flight for later that day, maybe around four just to leave us some time in case there’s a problem. We’ll go, approve the design, appeal to their humanity, and be back to work the next day. That’s all we can do.”

  “Marty likes me. That should help.”

  “We need all the help we can get.”

  The rest of the day didn’t get better. Lisette now had the binder spread all over her office, including piles on the floor, which she hated, and she’d just finished filling out the form to rent carpet for the booth when her phone rang. One of the best things about her office was the cordless headset she’d begged Grace for a couple of months ago, and she pressed the Talk button as she rose and made her way down the hall to hit the copier, so she could duplicate the form before sending it in. She made copies of absolutely everything she did for every show. Maybe it was paranoid, but if she had a hard copy of every form, filled out with a date stamp, and something went wrong, at least the company wouldn’t pay for it. Not good for the environment, but the policy had saved her more than once.

  “Hey, it’s me.”

  “Ryan. Thank God.”

  “That bad?”

  “Let’s just say I want to knock some heads right about now and leave it at that.” She arrived in the copy room and turned on the copier, which had gone into sleep mode. “What’s up?”

  “Wanted to see if you’d had dinner.”

  “What time is it?”

  “Almost six.”

  “Seriously?” Lisette went to the door of the room and looked around. Sure enough, the place was all but deserted. “I don’t really have time—”

  “I wasn’t offering to take you out. I know you can’t do that, but you have to eat, so I thought I’d bring you something.”

  “You don’t have to—”

  “Are you seriously going to argue with me about this?”

  “I won’t have time to sit down and eat with you. I need to keep going on this.”

  “That’s fine. How’s pasta? You need your fuel.”

  “Sure.”

  “Okay. Be there in about forty-five minutes. I’ll call you from the parking lot.”

  “Sounds good.”

  They disconnected, and Lisette went back to her office after putting together an express package for the carpet form. Why all these forms had to be mailed to a million different places in this day and age, she had no idea. Every freaking vendor needed their form sent directly to them. Usually it wasn’t a problem, since she always did her forms with plenty of time before the deadlines, but now they’d be spending a fortune on express mail. Maybe Ryan could drop off the package… She shook her head. She couldn’t take advantage of him like that. Throwing the package on top of a pile of other crap that also needed to be mailed, she went back to work.

  Ryan arrived with dinner and insisted on staying, running back and forth from the copier room and putting together endless express envelopes. At nine he made her leave the office, taking the express stuff with him and telling her to go straight home. She gave him a tired kiss and thanked him for about the millionth time before getting in her car and going home to bed.

  The day after their little excursion to Connecticut was much the same. Ryan called her at six thirty from the parking lot with dinner in hand and then once again insisted on staying to act as her gofer.

  “I really appreciate this, but surely you have better things to do with your time than get a workout going from the copier to my office and back a million times.”

  “And what do I always say? You let me be the judge of how I spend my time.”

  “Don’t you have papers to grade or something?”

  He grinned. “Did ’em while you were away yesterday.” Ryan turned her in the swivel chair to face him. “Besides, if I bring you dinner and help you, I know you’re eating at least one decent meal a day, I’m hopefully lowering your stress level, and I can be sure you don’t spend twenty-four hours a day in the office.”

  “You’re making me feel like I need a babysitter.”

  “Everyone can use someone who takes care of them in their time of need.”

  She wasn’t sure that was all it was, but Ryan pressed a quick kiss to her forehead and continued.

  “Look, if it makes you feel any better, I’ll bring grading tomorrow night. But as long as you’re working fourteen-hour days, I’m going to be here as often as I can. Live with it.”

  “Don’t you trust me?”

  Ryan’s eyes narrowed. “Do I have a reason not to?”

  “Of course not,” she answered, throwing up her hands.

  “You’ll forgive me if I’m a little paranoid about stuff like that since my divorce.”

  “I understand, but Ryan, you need to let me in. You need to trust me.”

  “I’m working on it. But I’m still not leaving.”

  “Bossy.”

  “Don’t you forget it.”

  With a groan she turned back to her work. A moment later he was massaging her shoulders. She felt bad about accusing him of not trusting her. He’d been nothing but good to her, and at the first sign of trouble, she’d gone on the offensive. That wasn’t fair to him. Lisette swiveled her
chair to face him.

  “Can I, um, say thank you?”

  “You already have.”

  “No, I mean”—her gaze darted down to his crotch—“really say thank you?”

  “That you can do this weekend.”

  “I don’t know if I’ll be able to play on Saturday.”

  Ryan fixed her with a stern look. “I expect you there.”

  “But—”

  He raised a brow. Dammit. Just that simple move practically shoved her into subspace. “I’ll try.”

  “As Yoda says, ‘Do or do not. There is no try.’ And I expect you there. If you’re not, I’ll come to your house.”

  Why was he pushing so hard? He knew how busy she was.

  “Fine.”

  “Glad we agree. You’ll need the diversion and stress release.”

  She grumbled and turned back to her desk.

  See if I relieve anything of yours now. Hmph.

  Chapter Nine

  Saturday night came, and Lisette was in a foul mood. When she arrived, he was lounging on the couch, talking to another Dominant, and as she approached, he turned to her. “Lisette, have you met Master Mark?”

  Without looking at him, she muttered, “Nice to meet you.”

  Ryan’s face hardened for a moment, but then he dropped a cushion on the floor. “Kneel.” Ignoring her after she did so, he continued his conversation with Master Mark. She began to fidget. Almost without breaking stride in his conversation, he barked, “Stop.”

  “Sir, I—”

  “Hush.”

  What am I, a dog?

  Ryan looked back at Master Mark. “Thanks for the talk.”

  Master Mark left. Ryan crossed his arms over his chest and stared at her. Ryan did not look happy, but that wasn’t her problem. She was exhausted and cranky and not in the mood to deal with his evasiveness.

  “Pick an implement out of my bag.”

  “What?”

  “You heard me. Actually, now you can pick two.”

  “You’re going to spank me?” Her voice betrayed her incredulity. Here he’d been a saint all week long, helping her and keeping her sane, and now he wanted to spank her? What, for some cheap thrill?