by Julia London
“I do not think—”
“I’ve had enough of your bullshit—”
“You don’t even know what happened!” she cried angrily. Her blood was boiling; she could feel it inflaming her face. She glanced at Mr. Fix-it, who was staring at her like she was starring in some made for-TV movie. Mortified, she turned and hurried to her bedroom for a little privacy.
“I don’t need to know what happened!” Dad was yelling at her. “I already know that you got arrested and your goddam office—”
“Stop yelling, Dad,” she said, and shut her bedroom door shut behind her.
“Ah to hell with it! I didn’t do you right, Robin. I didn’t teach you the ropes; I didn’t show you how to run a business. I just let you prance around—”
“Oh God, not this again,” she moaned, sinking onto her bed.
“I know you try hard, but you just don’t know a damn thing. Now, I’ve given this a lot of thought. I gave you too much too fast. I think the best thing to do right now is send you to school.”
“School?” She snorted. “What school?”
“The school of life. The school of the business world, of working your way up the ropes. You have no business being in a vice presidency, not with your lack of experience—”
“I’ve been with the company four years, Dad.”
“And in four years you haven’t learned enough to keep one freight yard afloat. I’ve talked this over with your mother and my mind is made up.”
Panic set in; Robin gripped the phone tightly. “Talked what over with Mom?”
“I’ve decided to put you in a position where you can learn a little about the freight industry. Iverson and I’ve been thinking of acquiring a subsidiary company—packing materials. It’s something you can do from home.”
She did not like the direction this was going. “What do you mean, ‘do from home’? Do what from home?”
“Put together a proposal for acquiring one of the two companies we’ve been considering. They teach you that in business school, don’t they? Cost-benefit analysis? Acquisition strategies? I hope so, or else I paid a fortune for nothing.”
Stunned, Robin collapsed back on the bed, blinked up at her ten foot ceilings. This could not be happening. She was stuck smack in the middle of one horrendously long nightmare.
“One of the companies we’ve been looking at is in Minot, North Dakota,” Dad blithely continued. “They make bubble wrap, foam packing products, et cetera. The other is in Burdette, Louisiana, just this side of Baton Rouge. It’s the same sort of operation, only a little bigger. You need to get out to see them.”
Minot, North Dakota? Louisiana? Robin used to New York and Paris and Stockholm—not Burdette. “Dad!” she exclaimed in horror, “you aren’t making any sense! You don’t mean I am going to Burdette! What would I do there?”
“Well, for one, you would meet with the folks and learn about packing materials—”
“Dad! You want me to learn about the stuff that goes into boxes and crates?”
“Well . . . and boxes and crates, too. You know, how they make them, what it takes to operate an outfit like that, sales volume, revenues, the whole nine yards. And while you’re at it, you are going to try and sell yourself and LTI and convince them that letting LTI buy them out is the best thing they could do for the long-term health of their company and their employees. Then you are going to study which one you think we ought to acquire and work out a deal.”
“A deal for Styrofoam peanuts and bubble wrap?” she asked helplessly, teetering on the verge of torrential tears for the umpteenth time that day. “Are you trying to punish me? If you want to punish me, choose something a little more urbane, would you? I can’t go to Burdette!”
“Oh yes, you can,” he growled, “and if you think that is beneath you, or that, for some reason, you are entitled to your salary and perks just because of who you are instead of what you know, then I guess I have no choice.”
The meds were making him crazy. Robin suddenly rolled over, propped herself on her elbows to try a different tact. “Dad,” she said calmly, “let’s talk about what’s really bothering you. I know you are mad at me, but—”
“The good thing is that you can work from home and it won’t be as time-consuming as what you were doing, although God knows what that was. Don’t you see what I am doing here? I want you to slow down, get you to take the time to understand what’s important in life. I’m doing this because I love you and I want to do the right thing by you, Robbie. I don’t want to leave behind a spoiled kid with no idea how to succeed me, much less run my company.”
Myriad emotions—anger, hurt, sadness—filled her throat, and Robin closed her eyes. “You make it sound as if I offer no value to LTI.”
“You’ll be a whole lot more valuable when you know what you are doing.”
A tear slipped from the corner of her eye and raced down her cheek. “And if I don’t want to go to Minot or Burdette?”
Dad sighed heavily. “If you don’t want to go, then I guess you better find yourself another job, baby.”
Stabbed through the heart.
“Now listen! You’re going to learn a lot! I’m making you an acquisitions specialist, working directly for Evan. He’s going to guide you every step of the way.”
Robin caught her breath and abruptly sat up. “So basically, you are demoting me to bubble wrap.”
“Think of it as training. Evan is the best in the business and he’s been telling me for a long time you need this and he’s more than happy to do it.”
Well hell, thanks a lot, Evan. And now, of all the people in the universe, was going to be her mentor. Robin’s fragile ego was in a death spiral.
“Now. What about this arrest? What do I need to do?”
He had already humiliated her enough; she didn’t need any more of his help. “It’s taken care of.”
“What about the office? The operations manager at the freight yard says it is gone.”
“Dad, I’m really tired, okay? I don’t want to talk about it right now.”
He paused, said reluctantly, “Okay, baby. You get some rest. We’ll talk again on Monday.”
Oh boy, she could hardly wait. “Bye,” she said tightly, clicked off, and tossed the phone onto a pillow. So this was what an alternate universe looked like. Robin Through the Looking Glass, where she was not the VP of the Southwest Region any longer, but Queen of Peanuts and Bubble Wrap. With a groan, Robin pushed herself up off the bed, went to her closet and pulled, from the maybe pile, a pair of old jeans ripped at the knees and a cutoff Houston Astros T-shirt. Her mind was numb, devoid of everything but two very basic facts: She was hungry. And she needed a drink.
But when she emerged from her bedroom, Robin was startled for the thousandth time by the presence of Jacob Manning. Hadn’t he gone home yet? She frowned at his back as she padded into the dining room. Well, if she was going to have to get used to him being around, at least he wasn’t hard to look at. Now that she knew he wasn’t a total weirdo. She casually took in the breadth of his shoulders, his lean waist, and his very nice butt. He was scraping something; she walked toward him, saw the hint of a tattoo under the sleeve of his T-shirt.
She moved closer.
Handydude glanced at her from the corner of his eye.
Her face burned. He must have heard quite a lot of her exchange with Dad. “Why are you still here?” she demanded, acutely conscious of her flush.
“Ah. I see Godzilla is up and at ‘em again. You hired me, remember? Signed a contract?”
“Damn that contract,” she muttered.
Fix-it Guy grinned and pointed with his blade to the brick. “See this?”
Robin peered closely.
“Antique brick. People pay a fortune for it now.” He paused, stepped back to admire it. “No telling how much of it there is. We’ll know when we strip away these hard layers of paint. I’m going to test different areas so we’ll know how best to remove it. Then I’ll get my crews star
ted.” He looked at Robin then, his gaze drifting up to her hair.
Self-conscious, Robin ran a hand over the top of her head, wincing at the wild feel of it. Embarrassed again, she glanced down and remembered she was wearing dirty, torn jeans and an ancient T-shirt cut off at the midriff. Well, looky here, she was already dressing the part of Bubble Wrap Queen. The only thing missing was the double-wide.
Not that Handy Andy seemed to notice. As he continued to brush away years of paint, Robin noticed that he had a very muscular arm. An Atlas arm, one of those you see in commercials holding up the world and babies in tires. An Atlas arm that was connected to an Atlas torso, and—
She abruptly turned away, appalled that, in spite of her total misery, she was ogling a workman in her house. Not good. Actually, pretty bad.
She stalked to the dining room, remembered the spilled coffee. A roll of paper towels later, she reminded herself she was starving, and marched to her kitchen and flung open the fridge. Like she was going to find anything there, other than a pack of AA batteries, two containers of yogurt, and a jar of crushed garlic. Ugh. She slammed that door, opened the pantry door. A box of spaghetti she figured dated to World War II, some oil, and one can of stewed tomatoes.
As the food supply wasn’t looking too good, she moved to the next cabinet with the pullout wine rack, which usually held several bottles of wine. Except there were none, and Robin vaguely remembered polishing off the last couple of bottles a couple of weeks ago when Mia was fighting with Michael. There was, however, a bottle of vodka, which of course she didn’t remember acquiring. Nonetheless, she took the bottle out of the cabinet and returned to the fridge hoping she had overlooked some cranberry juice. Naturally, she had not. “Damn,” she exclaimed with great irritation, her voice echoing off the bare walls and floor.
“What’s that?” El Contractordodo said from the dining room.
Robin took two steps back, looked at him through the arched doorway. He was wiping his hands on a dirty towel, looking pretty damn virile. “Oh, don’t mind me. I’m just expiring over here with no food, one lousy bottle of vodka, and nothing to mix it with.”
He actually laughed at that, the same warm laugh she had heard on the phone when they had discussed her renovations, which, upon sudden reflection, seemed like fifteen centuries ago. “You expire? I think you’re too ornery,” he said, still smiling.
Robin sighed. “I know you must think I am a grade-A fruitcake, but I’m not usually so . . . so . . .”
“So much trouble?” he finished for her.
Her eyes narrowed.
Hammerman brandished a charmingly lopsided, infectious smile, and Robin could feel a smile of her own spreading across her lips for the first time that day. “Aha—you do think I am a complete nutcase!”
“No, I do not think you are a complete nutcase. No more than three-quarters.”
Robin couldn’t help it—she laughed in spite of herself. “Well, I’m sure you’ve heard enough by now to know why, Mr. Manning.”
“Hey, call me Jake,” he said affably, dropped the towel, and put his hands on his hips to better consider her. “And for what it is worth, I figure there’s a good explanation for everything.”
“Really?” she asked hopefully.
Jake Manning frowned and shook his head. “No. Not really.” With a chuckle, he went down on his (very fine) haunches, opened up his backpack, and extracted a soda.
Robin realized she was checking him out yet again and quickly looked at the bottle of vodka she held. Yeah well, he really was a very handsome man in a worker-guy sort of way. She looked up as he took a big swig of his soda.
“Code Red Mountain Dew,” he said. “Good for what ails you and a perfect complement to any meal.”
“You actually drink that stuff?” she asked, coming out of the kitchen.
“Sure. It’s pretty good.” His cell phone rang; he put the plastic bottle on the table and wrestled the phone off his belt. “Try some with that and you’ll appreciate it,” he said, nodding at the bottle she held. He answered his phone with a short “Yeah,” paused for a moment, then walked out the front door.
Girlfriend, Robin mused, and strolled to the table where he had left his Code Red Mountain Dew. She picked it up, immediately flipped around to the nutrition chart and frowned. “Look at the sugar!” she muttered to herself, and carried it back into the kitchen and mixed the vodka with his drink.
By the time Jake came back in, looking a little flushed, she thought, Robin lifted the bright red drink on which she had managed to put a frothy pink head. “Salut,” she said and sipped the concoction, then flopped down on a dining room chair.
Jake looked at her drink, then at the table. “You used all of it?”
Robin nodded. He’d offered it to her, hadn’t he?
He frowned. He picked up a putty knife and began to scrape around the window casings with a vengeance, chipping off bigger and bigger pieces of paint. Robin sipped, watching him, wondering what she could say to break the silence. “Seems like that would go a lot quicker if you used one of those chemical peels,” she observed, ignoring the fact that all she knew about chemical peels came from facials.
Jake spared her a glance. “I’ll do that with the wall. Right now I am trying to see what is underneath.”
“You should at least get a bigger knife.”
He threw down the knife and picked up the towel. “So,” he said casually, wiping his hands, “you hit a police officer, then burned down your office?”
“I didn’t hit him!” Robin instantly cried. “I just mouthed off.”
“Imagine that.”
“The incident has been blown way out of proportion by my grandma.”
Jake looked up from his hands, the copper in his eyes shining with . . . something. Inappropriate glee? “So what’d you say?”
She shrugged sheepishly, examined the ice bobbing in her drink for a moment. “I called him an idiot cop. Which probably wouldn’t have been so bad if I could have found my wallet, but my wallet was being burned in the fire at my office at the time, apparently. And then . . . I refused to give him my name.”
Jake nodded thoughtfully, seemed to mull it over. “Why? Was he one of your perverts or something?”
Oh, hardy har. Squirming a bit, she thought about exactly why she had done it, and winced. “Because he was bothering me,” she finally muttered, realizing how ridiculous she sounded, especially since it was the God’s honest truth. She was such an idiot.
To confirm it, Jake shook his head in disbelief. “So what did he say?”
“He called me a smartass and read me my rights.”
Jake made a sound as if he were choking, then smiled with far too much satisfaction.
“Is that a smirk?” she asked curiously. “Are you smirking?”
“Damn straight it’s a smirk,” he cheerfully admitted. “So did you start the fire, too?”
“No! I was in jail, remember? There is no possible way I could have started it!”
“So let me see if I have this,” he said, drawing to his full height and putting his hands on his hips. “You’re just a smartass, but not an arsonist, right?” Then he laughed at his lame little joke and started to gather his things. “Probably some wiring gone bad. Happens all the time.”
“See? That’s exactly what I was thinking.” she said, nodding emphatically. “Wiring! Old building, old wires—but a big wire, right? I mean, it would be almost impossible for something like, say, an unattended coffeepot to do it . . . right?”
He paused, gave her a look. “Don’t tell me you left the coffeepot on.”
Robin was on her feet before she knew it, one hand wildly gesturing, the other gripping her glass tightly. “I don’t know!” she cried helplessly. “I think I unplugged it, but I don’t know for sure! Oh man, could one little coffeepot do that? It was an accident! I had just come back from the ranch, and my dad told me he was dying, and then told me I was pretty useless to him, and I couldn’t sleep, and I coul
dn’t work, and I made a pot of coffee. But what if it was me? Can they arrest me for that?”
Jake shrugged. “Who knows with these idiot cops?
“Touché.” Robin groaned.
Jake smiled, nodded at the glass she was holding. “You’re sloshing it around,” he said, nodding to several large wet splotches on the tiled floor.
Robin sat down.
“That’s rough about your dad.”
“Yeah,” she said wearily. “It was just such a shock. He has always been so . . . so strong,” she said.
“What does he do?”
“What does he do? Everything . . .”
Amazing, Robin later thought, how easily she began to talk about something as complicated as Dad. Jake was a good listener, seemed interested in what she was saying, and really, the whole thing just sort of spilled out of her. For some reason, she didn’t stop with her arrest, she even gave him the humiliating news of her demotion and new status as Queen of Bubble Wrap.
By the time she had finished spilling her guts, she was feeling exhausted and a little loopy from the vodka, and was actually laughing about the absurdity of her new job. “Bubble wrap, can you imagine? Me?”
“Why not?” he asked.
Robin snorted. “In case you haven’t notice, I’m not exactly a Styrofoam products kind of person.”
“I don’t see why not,” Jake said with a shrug. “Someone’s got to make it. They could call you Bubbles?”
“Not funny.”
“Okay. How about Peanut?”
He was playing with her. “How about boss?” she said cheekily.
Jake chuckled, folded his, arms across his chest. “How about convict?”
“How about fired?”
“Uppity?”
“Unpaid contractor?”
“Maybe,” he said, nodding, his gaze drifting to her bare middle.
“You’re a nice guy, Jake,” she said with a crooked smile. “You didn’t have to listen to my wretched life.”
“Oh, I bet you do okay most of the time, boss. Doesn’t look like you’re hurting.”
She was about to answer that looks weren’t everything when Jake’s cell phone rang. He glanced at the number display. “I’d better be going,” he said and stuffed the cell down inside his backpack without bothering to answer it.
