by E A Hunt
“I’m going as fast as I can,” Gideon replied, giving her leg a little squeeze. Esme was so different from when he’d first seen her. She wasn’t the same independent child who thought she needed to do everything for herself because she didn’t have anyone to help her. Now she was a happy little girl who knew her Daddy was there to help her put on her tap shoes or make sure she had food to eat every morning, noon and night or made it to her new school on time. He was there to make all her nightmares go away and protect her from anything and anyone who could hurt her. Gideon smiled at Esme. He’d never thought he wanted children. Never wanted to pass on any of the lingering effects his mother’s callousness had had on him as a child. But now that he had Esme, he couldn’t imagine his life without her. Couldn’t imagine not waking to her in the morning calling him ‘Daddy’ and telling him she was gonna be late for school if he didn’t hurry.
“Anessa!” Esme called joyfully, standing from her seat with one tap shoe tied, while the satin laces from the other hung loose. She rushed over to the friend. “I missed you,” she told her friend, as she engulfed her in a hug.
“I missed you too!” Anessa replied, hugging her friend back.
“Come meet my Daddy?” Esme said, she grabbed her friend’s hand, pulling her towards her Dad. “Daddy, this Anessa,” she told him proudly.
Gideon smiled at the autumn-brown skinned little girl. Like Esme, her hair was in a dancer’s bun while she wore an all-black dance leotard.
“Hello Anessa, it’s nice to meet you,” Gideon replied with a smile. After the month they’d spent at the Peony, Gideon had brought a happy and healthier Esme to a four-bedroom three-and-a-half-bath, two-story home with dark stones and a light trim, in a northern suburb of Atlanta. He’d purchased the sight-unseen home one night while holding Esme after a pretty nasty nightmare where she’d thought he’d abandoned her and she was back living with her mother.
He’d taken a look at the home from the staged pictures the agent had posted and knew the family-friendly neighborhood, something his condo in downtown Atlanta was not, was the perfect place for his daughter. With the home and all its furnishings purchased, he’d enrolled his daughter in the local public school – one of the best in the area.
At first, Esme had been wary about leaving his side but he’d stayed at the school with her for the first two days, sitting outside her classroom so she could see him and feel comfortable. Then one day, she’d told him he could leave. Told him she was ok and that her friend Anessa, who was in another kindergarten class, would be with her. He’d inquired about the change, not wanting to set his daughter back, and was told that the kindergarten classes were going to be combined into one. And that Anessa and Esme had become fast friends while playing at recess –
the one time of the day he could be out of his daughter’s sight and she wouldn’t miss him.
Anessa had also been the reason Esme started dance. Anessa’s mother had signed her up and Esme wanted to do what Anessa did. Something Sookie was on board with. His mother thought Esme needed more interaction with other children outside of school. So, with his credit card in hand, Sookie signed Esme up at Great Dance and bought her more dance gear than Gideon thought the little girl needed.
“Hi,” Anessa waved at the man before her. He was big but he wasn’t scary like she thought he would be. When Esme would talk about her Daddy at school and how he was big and could hurt anyone who hurt them, Anessa had been a little scared but now she wasn’t. Esme’s Daddy was big, but he was also nice.
“We gotta go, Daddy,” Esme kissed her Daddy’s cheek before she pulled Anessa away with her towards the classroom.
Gideon chuckled at the click-clack of the girls’ tap shoes as they rushed into the classroom. He saw Anessa give a little wave when she looked at him to say her goodbyes. He waved back, glad Esme had a friend who didn’t care about the fact she was a little pushy.
He blamed her pushiness completely on Sookie. She was no-nonsense and Esme was becoming a lot like her as they spent more time together.
Sitting back in the chair, Gideon pulled out his phone from his pocket. GidMaron’s newest vodka was hitting stores today. Their sponsorship of the singles event had been a hit. Not only had several people posted it on their social media accounts but many had talked about the smooth taste of the vodka and how great it was – either when you couldn’t find the right person or when the right person was drinking it from your navel or licking it off your for turning you on. Gideon had shaken his head at the sexual post, then been overjoyed that so many were contacting them about where they could get another bottle.
With that kind of response, they’d ended up with at least three dozen stores in Atlanta that wanted to carry the vodka, because customers were actually coming in asking for it. And another two hundred stores in various other parts of the country were also ordering due to the social media buzz.
Once the orders started pouring in, he and Sax realized they didn’t have the fleet needed in order to carry out all the other orders. So, they’d outsourced several of the Atlanta deliveries to a trucking company called Tridal. It had a decent reputation and Gideon had liked working with them over the last six weeks. Well, not so much working with the company. He’d enjoyed working with Nia Collins, Tridal’s Transportation Manager. The woman was competent. Knowledgeable about what was going on – and had a wonderful voice. He could listen to her for hours. He’d found himself going to sleep with her voice whispering ‘Good Night.’ He didn’t know what it was about her. No, that wasn’t true, he knew. Her voice reminded him of his Sprite.
A woman he’d met six months ago and still thought about. He dreamed about peeling off the clothes she’d had on that night, leaving her mask on as he kissed every inch of her body, delighting in the moans she would give him as his heated mouth devoured every inch of her skin.
He wished he could have found her. He’d asked Valerie for the names of the women who’d signed up but when he’d contacted them, no one knew what he was talking about when he’d called them Sprite. Some had tried to flirt back but he wasn’t interested. He was only interested in his Sprite and she was out in the world without him by her side or her by his.
Pushing his Sprite from his thoughts Gideon, focused on the call coming into his phone and the woman he knew he could find. “Ms. Nia,” he greeted lazily. When he and Nia had first started talking it had been all business but as they continued to work together, they became more familiar with each other. Cracking jokes and trying to make their workdays a little lighter.
“Gideon,” Nia started, hating the fact she was making this call. It was bad business to tell a client what she had to tell Gideon. Tridal needed the business GidMaron was giving them. Needed it more than anyone even knew and here she was about to sink her company deeper into a hole than it already was.
“I’m sure it’s not that bad,” Gideon joked, not liking the defeated sound in Nia’s voice. Nia should never sound defeated. She had to be the most knowledgeable person he knew when it came to shipping – and his Transportation Manager was a former truck driver!
“Yes, it is,” Nia released a breath. “One of our drivers was involved in an accident while delivering a shipment of your new product.” She shook her head and continued, “We believe we lost the whole load.”
That was not what Gideon wanted to hear. He’d been tracking his fleet all morning without incident. To have this happen to his local runs had never crossed his mind.
“Is your driver all right?” He asked, wanting to make sure the man or woman was alive and well before he dealt with what they’d lost.
“Yes, thank you for asking,” Nia replied, she knew he was just being polite. While this account was make-or-break for Tridal, GidMaron’s new product’s arrival, or in this case non-arrival, was a hit to their reputation. Something no company wanted. A company’s reputation was its most important asset.
“You are very welcome,” Gideon replied. He needed to call Sax, then his head of product
ion. They would need to put another shipment together as fast as possible in order to get the product to the customers who’d ordered it.
“Gideon, please know how sorry we are that this happened. I have the manifest before me and I can email you the name and locations where this driver was scheduled to deliver,” Nia said, as she sat before her computer.
When she’d received the call from her driver about the accident two hours ago, she’d called her sitter to come and take her daughter, Anessa, to dance and sit with her for a few hours after. Then she’d come straight to her office to not only see where this shipment was supposed to be delivered but also see what Tridal was liable for when it came to the GidMaron shipment.
After an hour of research and three different spreadsheets, she’d learned Tridal was on the hook for more than the company could afford. GidMaron’s shipments were supposed to help Tridal. Put them back in the black. Now, it would sink them. Once the claim came in from GidMaron, Tridal would be closing its doors.
Gideon wanted to comfort Nia. Wanted to say, ‘Hey this happens!’ But he couldn’t because he had never lost a shipment in the entire time he’d been running this company –
and that included when he and Sax were delivering cases of wine from their own personal vehicles.
“Send the information Nia,” he said. He didn’t mean to snap at her, but this incident could possibly harm their reputation as a company that always delivered their products on time. A bad reputation as a company just wasn’t sustainable. Not with a new product coming out, whilst riding the wave of high demand.
“I –” Nia wanted to apologize again. Wanted to tell him they would do all they could, if allowed, to deliver the new shipment which she was sure he was going to send out, but she knew that wasn’t going to happen. Tridal had lost this client and there was not a lot she could do about it. “I’ll get it over to you as soon as possible.”
“Thanks,” Gideon ended the call. He was being an ass to her this he knew. He also knew it wasn’t her fault her driver had had an accident, losing thousands of dollars’ worth of product, but he was treating it as if it was her fault and he shouldn’t. Though he knew these things he didn’t have the luxury of dealing with her feelings right now. He needed to see if they had any product left over from the last run and if they did see how fast they could get it packaged and delivered
Looking at his phone with it chimed with an email notification. Gideon released a saddened breath. Usually when an email came through with Nia’s name attached, he would open it and imagine she was reading it to him. Running the numbers with him. Making his stomach clench as she voiced her opinions, made changes and gave updates. Now… Nothing. He felt nothing. And that wasn’t what he wanted to feel when it came to Nia Collins.
Chapter Three
She couldn’t have heard him right. She couldn’t have possibly heard Harvey Tridal, owner of Tridal Transportation since his father’s death two years ago, speaking to her as if she was an imbecile and he was the only one who knew what was going on.
She would have laughed if she wasn’t busy trying to figure out why in hell this weaselly little man, who stood no taller than her five-four, was barging into her office wearing a too-small, off-white cotton dress shirt with visible pit stains and pants that were three sizes too big hanging off his non-existent hips as his calmly looking skin shined with sweat was screaming at the top of his lungs.
“Wait! Stop!” Nia gained her composure. There was no reason to lose her cool when it came to this man. Harvey thought he knew this business inside out. He was wrong. He’d only come to work here three years ago and knew nothing about the business which had been around for the last forty-five years. “Are you telling me that the accident was all my fault?” Nia asked, wanting to make sure she understood what he was saying. How could the accident that had happened five days ago be her fault? She wasn’t driving the damn truck! Hell, since the day it happened she’d been doing everything she could to make the hit to Tridal’s bottom line less brutal!
“Do I need to talk in slower sentences?” Harvey snapped. He’d been in his office checking out his newest assistant and wondering how far she was willing to go to keep her job when accounting had emailed him the bill they’d received from GidMaron. One look at the bill and he’d known Nia and her incompetence was to blame.
Did she need to speak slower? Nia wanted to counter. This man did nothing but sit in his office all day, playing video games and banging his assistants. He didn’t attend client or staff meetings and certainly didn’t take calls from upset customers who wanted to speak with the owner of the company when their product wasn’t delivered on time. Nor did he make any attempt to bring in new, much needed, business to Tridal – which wasn’t growing no matter how hard she tried.
She was the one who had brought GidMaron’s ad to Deni’s attention when she was looking at load boards. Deni was the head of their Sales Department and when Gideon had posted the ad for companies with a fleet of at least five trucks. Which was all Tridal had left. Once Harvey took over, many of their drivers had left because they weren’t getting the hours or the loads they’d once had when Harold, Harvey’s father, had been in charge. Nia had tried to get them to stay but had understood they had families, lives to live and they just couldn’t make do on what Harvey was giving them.
“I don’t need the sarcasm, Harvey. I just need for you to tell me what’s going on. Because you walked in here and started acting like something was all my fault. Then you went on and on about the accident. And I’m just not understanding how you could possibly think that the accident was all my fault.” Nia said sharply.
“You vouched for the driver who had the accident – said he was one of our best. That he could to the job!”
And he was one of the best, Nia thought. He was the last of the drivers Harold had hired who hadn’t given up on the company. Griffin had kept driving for them when everyone else had bailed. It wasn’t Griffin’s fault that the driver in the small, eco-friendly car had been weaving in and out of traffic for twenty miles. Before he’d cut Griffin, and several other drivers, off. It just so happened that when he’d cut Griffin off, right before traffic came to a standstill, he, Griffin, hadn’t been able to slow down and had had to over-correct, causing the trailer to swing back and forth, eventually tipping over.
Once all the information had come through – which took a few days – the police cited the eco-car driver and Tridal’s insurance company hadn’t hit them so hard. She’d even been able to find another driver who had already finished his own deliveries to come and pick up some of the shipments Griffin had. In the end, they were actually able to make the majority of their deliveries for GidMaron. Nia had even sent a spreadsheet to Gideon with all the deliveries made and missed, though she hadn’t gotten the response she’d hoped for.
In fact, Gideon hadn’t talked to her since the accident. She’d tried to call but every time she called, he was in a meeting or couldn’t be disturbed. After the third call in three days, she’d stopped hoping she’d hear his baritone voice again. A voice that triggered a memory she only pulled out when she was in her bed alone, wishing she could have the arms of the man from the singles masquerade wrapped around her.
When she’d first heard Gideon’s voice and been transported back to that night, she’d thought it fate they were both named Gideon. But she knew that her Gideon – the one who called her Sprite – and the Gideon who told bad jokes and made her feel all warm and fuzzy inside, couldn’t be the same person.
The Gideon on the GidMaron website looked like he was in his twenties, while her masquerade Gideon was older. Much older and so much more sexier than the man whose photo she’d found during her GidMaron research with Deni.
“Nia!” Harvey shouted, snapping his fingers. She wasn’t listening to a word he said!
Snapping back to the conversation, Nia scowled at Harvey, “Don’t snap at me!”
“Then don’t zone out like you’re on drugs. I was talking to
you!”
“No, you were screaming at me and you have no right,” Nia countered. “Griffin was doing his job. And I will stand by him on this. Especially when I’ve spent the last five days dealing with the insurance company, the police and GidMaron.”
“Then you’ve been doing a shit job because GidMaron just sent us a bill for the whole shipment,” Harvey said, still shouting as he shoved the piece of paper at Nia.
She took it, making sure not to touch Harvey in any way. His hands were always so sweaty. She looked at the bill. This wasn’t right. They didn’t owe this much money to GidMaron, she knew they didn’t. She’d done the math three times. They only owed a third of this.
“Don’t stare at it like you don’t know what it is. Just get on the phone with whoever you’ve been talking to over there and fix the mess you made!” Harvey demanded. “I have no clue why my father kept your dumbass around,” he muttered loudly as he turned and walked out of her office.
Sitting down at her desk, Nia couldn’t stop staring at the number before her. Hadn’t Gideon received her updates? Her spreadsheets? She knew he was upset about the shipment. She’d been upset too but she’d pushed hard to get as much of the shipment where it needed to be as possible. There was no reason to charge them for the whole shipment.
“Collins,” Nia answered absently as she picked up her office phone. She needed to get ahold of Gideon. Come to some kind of agreement when it came to this bill.
“Your day sounds as bad as mine.”
“Gideon?” she asked, startled. She hadn’t been expecting him to be on the other end. Had he found out about the bill and called her before she could reach out to him?
“Yes,” Gideon replied. She was acting as if she didn’t know who he was. He knew he hadn’t talked to her in almost a week, but he was positive she knew who was on the other end of her phone.
“I’ve been trying to reach you,” Nia replied. ‘Trying to hear your voice so I could feel some sort of comfort,’ she added to herself silently.
