“Leave her alone, John,” my mother said as she brought a stack of plates out and set them on the dining room table. “She’s got it under control.”
“I know she does,” my dad said, a tiny hint of defensiveness in his tone. “I’m just asking.”
“She doesn’t need you to ask. She’s got it.”
I grinned at my mom and mouthed a thanks.
She blew me a kiss and went back into the kitchen.
“Don’t worry, Dad. It’s all good. I’ve kept up with all my appointments, even with this cold.” I didn’t tell him I’d almost fainted on Friday and Mary forced me to pack up my things so she could drive me home. I was kind of surprised she hadn’t called him and told him herself, but I think over the past couple of years, her loyalty has shifted from him to me, especially once I proved I was able to run the place on my own.
“I can send your brother if you need help.”
“No,” I said, too quickly, and my dad looked at me. “I’m fine. I don’t need any help.” My brother Scott and I were so very different in so many ways, it was often hard to believe we had the same genes. We were very different physically—he’s got sandy hair and those damn blue eyes and he’s a very tall 6′4″; I have dark hair and dark eyes and I’m a very average 5′5″. Both our parents have light hair and my mom’s eyes are hazel, so Scott took great delight in spending our childhood trying to convince me I was adopted. I believed him on more than one occasion, as little sisters tend to do.
My big brother is spontaneous, a fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants kind of guy who tends to put himself first, one of his few bad traits. Don’t get me wrong; he’s a good guy and he’s crazy smart. I’ve always wanted to be like him. I mean, doesn’t every little girl want a big brother who’s tall and gorgeous and looks out for his younger sister, and want to follow in his footsteps a bit? Like I said, though, we’re really not that much alike at all. I’m okay with that.
But it doesn’t mean I need his help running my business.
“He’s good with numbers,” my dad was saying. “You know he is. He could blow through a stack of those returns like there’s no tomorrow.”
I made myself count to five before saying, in a very controlled voice, “Thanks, Dad. I appreciate the offer, but I’m fine. I don’t need Scott’s help.”
My dad grunted, and I wasn’t sure if it was directed at me or the television.
“Honey?” my mom called to me, saving me from more of this frustration. “I can use you now.”
I jumped off the couch like it was an ejector seat and took my wine into the kitchen to help my mom.
“You did good,” she said, as she pointed at the refrigerator. “Get the salad dressings out.”
“Thanks.”
I helped set the table and the three of us sat down. My parents are a little old-fashioned—well, actually, it’s my mother—and Sunday dinner has always been a thing for us. Ever since I can remember, we’ve been together on Sunday afternoon, eaten a late lunch/early dinner together, and just had some family time. As Scott and I got older and started to develop our own lives and relationships, we drifted away from Sunday dinner. But over the past six or eight months, I’ve been doing my best to show up. It makes my mom ridiculously happy, so it’s worth it.
“Somebody finally moved into that empty office next door,” I told my dad as I forked a slice of chicken breast onto my plate. I could feel Leo under the table, lying across my foot.
“Yeah? About damn time.” Dad made a crater in his mashed potatoes and filled it with gravy. “What kind of company?”
“Marketing and graphic design.”
“Big? That’s a pretty roomy office.”
“Five or six people, it seems,” I said, trying to count up Alicia and her staff in my head. “They’re nice enough. Kind of noisy, though.”
Dad grunted as he chewed. “You got too used to having that space empty.”
“I so did,” I agreed with a chuckle. I gave them the rundown of the less-than-ideal issues we’d hit over the past week, starting with the parking and ending with Leo being a traitor. Strangely, I felt more and more petty the longer the list grew.
“Leo can’t help it if everybody loves him,” my mother said, and I felt him leave my foot at the mention of his name, almost certainly moving over to my mother’s feet instead. “It’s not his fault.”
“I know,” I said, and told them how Alicia had borrowed him on several occasions.
“Just be a good neighbor, Lacey. It doesn’t take any work.” My mom was pretty easily the kindest, sweetest person I’d ever known—which was mostly awesome, but once in a while frustrating because she always, always sees the good in people first. That means she can get her heart hurt quite easily. I’ve spent much of my life making sure she stays insulated from the awful parts of humanity if I can help it.
“I know, Mom. I’m doing my best.”
* * *
Thank God my cold only held on for a week and change. By Thursday of the following week, I was feeling infinitely better, with only a bit of residual stuffiness in my head. As long as I stayed hydrated, the headaches left me alone.
Until I headed to the waiting area to get my next client and found my path almost completely blocked by a stack of boxes as tall as me. No—three stacks, I realized, as I sidled past them so I could see Mrs. Harrington sitting in a chair, a manila folder on her lap, waiting patiently for me.
“Mary, what the hell is all this?” I whispered.
Mary was typing away on her keyboard, glanced up, then returned to her screen as she spoke. “Those are for next door. There’s nobody there right now, so they told UPS to leave them here when their door is locked.”
I poked the inside of my cheek with my tongue. “So now we get to run an obstacle course in our office until they decide to come back and get their stuff?” I muttered, my tone still low, so as to keep Mrs. Harrington from hearing. “Terrific.” When Mary didn’t respond, I looked her way and noticed the plate on her desk. “Where’d you get the pizza?”
“Alicia brought it over earlier,” she said absently.
“Mm-hmm.” I had to admit it was kind of brilliant. Just Wright Marketing & Graphic Design was bribing my secretary with food. Constantly and consistently. And she was letting them. “Would you please stick a Post-it on their door and ask them to come get their boxes as soon as they return?”
“Will do.” Mary’s voice was cheerful, and I shook my head and tried to hide my grin.
“Mrs. Harrington?” My client looked up at me and I smiled. She was a favorite of mine, in her third year as a widow but always smiling. She told me after her husband had passed that she couldn’t bring herself to be too sad because that would overshadow the fifty amazing years she’d had with him. She chose to stay as positive as she could instead. I admired that, even as I was sure, if it were me, I’d probably still be in bed, under the covers, avoiding the world and letting my grief drown me. She was much stronger than I, and I gave her a little wave. “Come on back.”
I saw several more clients throughout the afternoon, and it wasn’t hard to tell when somebody at Just Wright had returned. The sudden loud music told me it was probably Brandon, Master of Grump, as I’d nicknamed him. Only in my own head, of course.
Good, I thought, despite being assaulted by the music yet again. At least the damn boxes will be gone.
Imagine my surprise when I headed out to make myself a cup of coffee at around seven, and all three stacks of boxes still filled up my waiting room. Mary had gone home about an hour earlier, but I’d been with somebody, so hadn’t had a chance to say anything other than good-bye. I sighed as I entered the hallway and walked down to Just Wright, Leo on my heels. The door was open, but I knocked on the frame.
Nobody heard me over the music, of course, and, remembering my mom’s admonition to “be a good neighbor,” I took a deep breath and tried to smile as I walked in.
The whole staff was sitting around the card table by the whiteboa
rd, laughing and joking, this time with little clear plastic cups instead of smoothies. Each cup filled with something pale and bubbly.
“Lacey!” Alicia said happily as she saw me, and my mission in marching over here—the boxes still in my office—dimmed a bit. I couldn’t decide if she was that good at shifting my focus or if I was just that easy. “We landed a huge account today. Celebrate with us.” Leo immediately ran to her and hopped up into her lap before anybody could tell he was going to, which made her giggle with delight. Yes, she actually giggled. “Did you come up here to congratulate me?” she asked my dog, who responded by bathing her face in kisses—kisses she freely accepted which, I had to grudgingly admit, earned her points, as people who avoided dogs or love from dogs immediately raised my suspicions. Alicia looked up at me, her blue eyes sparkling with happiness. “Seriously. Have some champagne.” She gestured to the bottle sitting on the table as the guys chatted among themselves.
“Yeah, join us,” Gisele said and poured some of the lovely, bubbly liquid into a cup for me, handing it over before I could protest further.
I half-heartedly held it up and muttered a “congratulations” before taking a big gulp. Too big, but I didn’t want to stay. I couldn’t. I had more work to do.
And the boxes. The boxes!
But the champagne was delicious, the cool feel of it sliding down my throat kind of wonderful.
“Sit,” Alicia said, her hand running up and down Leo’s back as she indicated an empty chair with her chin. “You sound much better.”
“I am.” It was really nice of her to notice, and I let myself get distracted for a second or two by those blue eyes before declining the invitation to join them. “I really can’t. I’ve got another client due in soon.” I cleared my throat. “Listen, did Mary leave you a note on the door?”
Alicia furrowed her brow in thought. “A note?”
“Yeah, when you guys were all gone.”
“Oh, I only just got here about an hour ago.” She looked around the table. “Who was back first?” When the staff paid her no attention, she increased her volume. “Guys.” They stopped talking and met her gaze. “Who was back first?”
“I was,” Brandon, Master of Grump, said.
“Was there a note on the door?”
Brandon sipped his champagne, seemed to make a show out of thinking really hard. “There might have been…”
Alicia sighed, but good-naturedly, and returned her focus to me. “What did the note say? Do you need something?”
“I do, actually. There are about fifteen large boxes of yours that UPS delivered to my office because yours was locked.” I paused, glancing around at them in the hopes I wouldn’t need to say another word. No luck. “Soooo…I need somebody to get them out of my reception area so there’s room for my, you know, clients.” I glanced at Brandon. “Did you not see the note?” I kept my tone as light as I could, cocked my head as I waited for him to answer.
He looked at Alicia and she raised an eyebrow at him. He sighed then, and said, “Yeah, I saw it. Sorry.”
Alicia turned her gaze back to me, she said, “I apologize. Is it okay if we get them first thing in the morning?”
Deciding to pick my battles…and a bit blinded by that smile of Alicia’s, I agreed. Alicia’s gratitude seemed genuine, though, so that made it a bit more bearable. A very tiny bit. I thanked her and turned to go, calling Leo to follow me.
He didn’t.
When I turned around, he was looking right at me, completely content on Alicia’s lap. She had rolled both lips in and was biting down on them to hide her smile, but I saw it and gave a good-natured roll of my eyes.
It took my having to literally walk around the table and physically pick Leo up out of Alicia’s lap to get him to leave with me.
At least the traitor had good taste.
* * *
It was Friday, and we’d passed the mid-March mark on the calendar. That meant one more month and my crazy work schedule would ease up in a massive way. You’d think I’d be used to this, to tax season. I’d been involved in some way since I was a teenager helping my dad, so I’d seen at least fifteen tax seasons. Maybe more. It was funny how the same pattern emerged each year. I could map it out at this point and found it almost comforting.
The holidays would pass, and the new year would begin. The phone calls and appointments would start to trickle in, and I’d get this fun sense of excitement for my job, a renewed vigor of sorts. Not that the rest of the year didn’t have its bright spots, but this was a different kind of excitement, like preparing for a marathon. By mid to late February, I started to get the tiniest bit tired, especially when clients began calling in a panic because they didn’t think they had all the paperwork they needed to file. Then March shows up and by then, I’m more than a tiny bit tired. I’m bone-weary. But I push through to the beginning of April, when I’m sporadically entertaining the idea of throwing myself off a building just so I can get some sleep.
On April 15, I tend to work right up until midnight (I’ve been known to go to three in the morning if I’ve got something on the West Coast to deal with). And it’s all downhill after that.
Oh, there’s still a lot of work after that all-important date. Lots of people have extensions. But the mad rush is over, and I usually take the first weekend after April 15 to completely disconnect from work. I sleep, watch movies, read a book, eat a cheeseburger, do everything I haven’t been able to do for the previous three months. It’s like getting out of prison.
So, passing the middle of March was a good thing, because it meant I was that much closer to the end of the season when I could breathe again. I narrowly avoided getting T-boned by Nascar Kyle, parked six spaces away from what I now referred to as my old parking spot, and tsked as I found the security door ajar yet again. I refused to let it sour my mood, however. My Past the Middle of March Happy, I called it, and did my best to hold on to it as I kicked the piece of wood away, closed the door tightly before Leo and I headed up the stairs.
The Happy stayed grasped in my fingers until I got to my reception area.
My reception area full of boxes.
Still.
And then I dropped the Past the Middle of March Happy right there on the floor where it shattered into a million tiny pieces.
“Son of a bitch,” I muttered, before realizing that my first appointment was seated in a chair to my left. I threw Mr. Kennedy a grimace of apology, handed Leo off to Mary, and marched down the hall, still wearing my coat and still carrying my messenger bag.
The music was on, but at a bearable volume, which surprised me. The red door was closed, so I knocked on the glass, then let myself in without waiting for permission.
As always, the atmosphere inside Just Wright was cheerful. Happy and colorful and fun, but I had to put up my force field because I didn’t want to be distracted away from my mission this time. I saw Alicia out of the corner of my eye as she looked up at me, but it became clear right away that she was talking on her earpiece. That was probably a good thing, and I moved right over to Brandon’s desk. He added to my annoyance by keeping his eyes on his computer screen and not acknowledging me at all, even though there was no way he didn’t see me standing right in front of him. A beat went by. Two. I heard Gisele call from the back corner.
“Brandon.” She said it quietly, but with a firmness that told me she totally got that he was being a jerk.
Brandon sighed. Loudly. Then he hit one last key on his keyboard. Loudly. And then he looked up at me. “Hey.”
I poked the inside of my cheek with my tongue while I counted to five in my head before I said, “Hey. There are still a large number of boxes in my reception area. Could you come get them please?”
He gave a nod, then turned back to his monitor. “Just give me a sec.”
“Now.” My tone got his attention and when his eyes snapped to mine, I pasted on a half-smile and added, “Please.” I didn’t understand the rudeness, the unprofessionalism. I really
didn’t. And I’d had enough. “What is your problem with me? Did I do something to you? Piss you off in some way I know nothing about?”
He seemed completely shocked that I’d called him out. He opened his mouth to speak, closed it again. When he finally spoke, he didn’t look at me and his voice was very soft. “Just…be careful. Around her. Please.” And before I could ask him what the hell he was talking about, he headed out the door.
I could feel Alicia’s gaze on me even as she continued with her phone call, and I sent a glance her way, but I didn’t think she’d heard my conversation with the Master of Grump. I followed Brandon out the door and watched as he silently hauled the boxes away, not uttering another word.
I felt better once the boxes were gone, though I also felt a little weird, both about Brandon’s cryptic words and about having stomped in there like I’d been ripped off somehow. I shrugged both off for now. I’d learned long ago that being a female small business owner meant nobody was going to stand up for me but me, and if I wanted something—or wanted something done—I had to go get it or do it myself or be a hard-ass about getting it taken care of for me. I didn’t enjoy being that person, but it’s what I had to do to be a success. I imagined Alicia Wright knew that as well.
The rest of the day went pretty quickly, probably because I had back-to-back appointments for the entire afternoon. Mary stayed until after six. Given she’d come in at seven that morning, I finally kicked her out. Leo and I were planning on a long night.
I was contemplating what I wanted to order from ChopStix when I heard the gentle rap on the outer door. I’d begun keeping that closed at night and the door to my office open so I had a clear line of sight from my desk to the main door. I watched as it pushed open and Alicia Wright entered, a bottle and two clear plastic cups in one hand and a large white bag in her teeth. She pushed the door closed with her free hand and smiled at me as she took the bag out of her mouth and approached.
Right Here, Right Now Page 5
