Please don't bite her. Sophie would be devastated, and Damaris would have to arrange an accident for the pony.
Well, not really. But her daughter had spent all morning talking about meeting Oreo, and it would kill Damaris to see her sweet kiddo disappointed.
Oreo delicately lifted the carrot from her daughter's palm, and Sophie's face blossomed with a huge smile. "He's got really soft lips!"
The pony crunched the carrot and allowed Sophie to stroke his broad muzzle and rounded nose.
"I think he likes you," Dane informed her. "Do you want Matt to show you how to saddle him?"
Sophie looked at her mother with anxious pleading.
"Go, have fun," Damaris assured. "And don't forget to thank Mr. Swanson and Matt."
She watched as Dane and Matt led the pony in the direction of the barn, Sophie trotting eagerly at Matt's side and peppering him with questions.
Dimitri touched her elbow. "C'mon, I'll walk you over to Ash's house. He and Steffi—she's his marketing director—are waiting for you there.
* * *
Ash Swanson's front door was unlocked, which gave born-and-bred New Yorker Damaris a bit of a start.
Not locking doors felt wrong, even though her rational mind knew that there was no reason to do it here, miles from the nearest town and in the middle of a huge ranch.
Dimitri didn't bother knocking, just turned the knob and ushered Damaris inside.
She found herself standing in a small tiled mudroom. A row of coat hooks along one wall held a selection of rain slickers, parkas, cowboy hats…and a full set of firefighter's gear.
"Hey, Ash!" Dimitri called.
"Hey!" a male voice replied from the back of the house.
Two dogs came charging into the mudroom.
Their nails clicking on the kitchen tiles, they skidded to a halt in front of Dimitri and Damaris.
She took a startled step backwards, not sure if the dogs were friendly, and felt Dimitri's hand rest reassuringly at the small of her back.
One dog was big and black and looked like a pit bull-Labrador mix. He sat at Damaris's feet and gazed expectantly up at her with whiskey-colored eyes.
The other dog appeared to be some kind of border collie or shepherd mix, with a lean build, a narrow muzzle, and shaggy white fur spotted with black and brown patches. He sniffed at Dimitri's jeans-clad leg, tail wagging, then did the same to the hem of Damaris's dress.
A tall man with an athletic build and shoulders that looked just as wide as Dane's appeared in the doorway that led from the mudroom to the rest of the house. "Hi, I'm Ash Swanson."
He had a boyish smile and warm hazel eyes above a short, neatly trimmed beard. There was a strong family resemblance to his older brother Dane.
Ash extended his hand, and Damaris shook it. His grip was firm, his palm warm and dry.
"Hi," she replied. "I'm Damaris Markidis. Thanks for taking the time to interview me today."
She studied him, trying to get a clue to his personality. His dark brown hair was on the shaggy side, and he was dressed in worn jeans and a faded oversized Wonder Woman T-shirt.
It would be easy to dismiss him as an easygoing gamer bro, but you didn't get to be the founder of a successful company unless you had brains and good business sense. Damaris guessed that deeper waters flowed beneath Ash's cheerful surface.
"We're always looking for solid candidates, and your resume was intriguing," he said, and she wasn't sure how to interpret that.
"Intriguing" as in well-qualified, or "What the hell was Dimitri thinking when he forwarded that resume to me?"
Damaris felt the flutters of apprehension inside her stomach kick up a notch.
"And this is Thunder," Ash said, bending to rub the shepherd mix's head. "He's pretty friendly."
As if to prove his master's point, Thunder's tail thumped energetically against the mudroom's tile floor.
"Hi, I'm Steffi Tristan," said a woman from behind Ash.
To Damaris's relief, the other woman was dressed just as casually as she was, in comfortably worn jeans and a peasant-style blouse. She had a wide smile and large grayish-blue eyes set under dramatic brows, with fawn-brown hair in a trendy short style right out of a high-end salon.
"And the other beast is mine," Steffi continued. "Meet Royce, counter-surfer supreme." Royce looked over at Steffi, his jaws parted in a doggy grin. "Do you have dogs, Damaris?"
"No," Damaris said, bending to rub Royce's ears. He gazed soulfully up at her and nudged her hand with his nose when she stopped petting him. She added wistfully, "My landlord doesn't allow pets."
None of the group homes where she'd grown up had allowed pets either.
"Come on in," Ash said cheerfully. "I've got a pot of coffee going, or I can plug in a kettle for tea."
"I like coffee," Damaris said. She'd had at least four cups already today, but her hands weren't shaking, so she figured another cup couldn't hurt.
"And that sounds like my cue to bow out," Dimitri told Damaris.
The reassuring hand on the small of her back slipped around to her waist, and he gave her a quick hug. "Good luck. I'll meet you back at Elle's house afterwards."
"Sounds like a plan," Damaris said as Dimitri turned to leave.
She found herself already missing his comforting touch as she followed Steffi and Ash further into the house.
From the outside, the house looked unremarkable. Inside, though, it looked recently renovated.
The mudroom opened onto a big, open-plan dining area and a huge kitchen with professional-grade appliances, stone countertops, and a huge granite-topped island with a sink. Six bar stools were lined up on the side of the island nearest to the living room.
Beyond the kitchen-dining area was a big living room with a high, vaulted ceiling.
Thick wooden beams overhead complemented the rustic wood mantel of a huge stone fireplace.
It was the kind of house Damaris had always dreamed of living in and knew she could never afford, anywhere within commuting distance of New York City.
Ash and Steffi and Damaris settled themselves at equidistant points on the huge sectional sofa in Ash's living room. As she took her seat, Damaris admired the strikingly beautiful coffee table made from the trunk of a tree sawn lengthwise and polished to a high gloss, topped with a thick glass slab.
"So, I see that you've been running a human resources consulting business for the past four years, but you don't have any high-tech experience?" Steffi asked while Ash opened cupboards in the kitchen and clattered mugs.
She frowned down at her tablet, which currently displayed Damaris's resume.
Damaris's heart sank at the question, though she had known it would probably come up.
Crap. They're never going to hire me.
"No," she said, trying to appear calm and confident. "But people are people, right? And I'm pretty sure that high tech businesses hire and fire employees just like nightclubs do."
"I never thought of it that way." Steffi looked up and smiled, and Damaris knew she'd scored with her answer. "And you could definitely bring a fresh perspective to the company."
Ash walked over from the kitchen, carrying a tray holding a coffee pot, creamer, sugar bowl, and three mugs. He put the tray down on the table and filled the mugs.
"Tell me a little bit about yourself," he invited as Damaris doctored her coffee with a generous splash of cream and a little sugar. "Are you a native New Yorker?"
"Born and bred," she answered. "Before this, Chicago was the furthest west I'd ever been."
Tony had sent her there on a special assignment. It had taken her three weeks to figure out how to stage the perfect accident for her target. She'd finally discovered that he was deadly allergic to shellfish…and extremely careless about keeping an EpiPen close at hand.
"What do you think of Bearpaw Ridge?" he asked.
"The scenery is spectacular, and people are really friendly," Damaris answered, cautiously. "I've been enjoying my vacation here so
far."
"Do you think you might be able to live here?"
Damaris considered her answer very carefully. On the one hand, living in a town this small would be a huge change from New York City. On the other hand…Tony would be a long way away.
"I think my daughter would love it if she could spend time around horses every day," Damaris said. "I won't lie—it would be a big adjustment for me, but this seems like a really nice place, and I've been thinking that it's time to change gears in my life and my career."
Ash seemed pleased with her answer. He took a deep swig of his coffee and leaned back against the sofa cushions, looking relaxed.
Steffi said, "Can you tell us how you'd handle a dispute between two employees? For example, what would you do if Tara came to you and claimed that Jason has been sabotaging her work?"
"I'd start by investigating what's really going on," Damaris said and felt her confidence returning. "Something similar happened at one of my client's clubs. Two of the exotic dancers, Jasmine and Tammi, got into a fight, and the bouncers had to break it up. Each of the women claimed that the other woman had stolen her tips from the dressing room they shared."
"So what did you do?" Steffi asked.
"I sat them down separately and talked to them. You see, tips are how the dancers make their money. They only get paid minimum wage for their shift, so they rely on their tips to pay the rent, groceries, childcare…you get the picture. When I realized that they'd both had their money stolen during the same shift, I figured there was a third party involved."
Damaris glanced at her interviewers to see how she was doing. Ash looked alert and interested, and Steffi looked like she was hanging on Damaris's every word.
"So anyhow, I thought about who else had access to the dressing room, and I'd heard a lot of complaints about one of the floor managers, a sleazy guy named Nick, going in and out of the dressing room. It was something that the girls hated but he thought he was entitled to do. We all thought that he was just trying to get an eyeful. Turns out, he was the one stealing the tips."
"So you fired him?" Ash asks.
"Don't I wish," Damaris responded with a sigh.
Then she realized that she couldn't tell the rest of this story—how Nick had begun to harass her after Tony had reported the thefts to Mr. Leonetti and Leonetti had publicly chewed Nick out…but let him keep his job at Topaz by Tony.
It wasn't too long after that when Nick had escalated to threatening Sophie if Damaris didn't sleep with him. And Damaris knew that she wouldn't get any help from Tony or Mr. Leonetti, not if they had allowed Nick to keep working at the club after that, not while the best dancers were quitting in droves because of Nick's creepy behavior.
She thought fast. "He was, uh, the big boss's nephew," which was true enough, "so the best we could do was tell his uncle about what was going on. Before anything else happened, though, Nick died in a car crash."
There. She'd managed to wrap up her story with giving away too many incriminating details. Or so she hoped. She was running on no sleep and too much caffeine, and it was affecting her judgment.
Ash raised his dark brows. "I promise you," he said solemnly, "that if you become Grizzly Creek Games' HR director, I'd have your back and let you fire someone like Nick."
"And I would really appreciate that," Damaris replied. "One of the most challenging things about being a consultant is the part where I'm responsible for managing a club's human resources but I don't have any real authority to implement changes."
"Speaking of challenges," Steffi said. "What was the biggest challenge you ever faced, and how did you face it?"
Too bad I can't talk about my special assignments. Luckily, Steffi's question was a pretty standard one for interviews, and Damaris had mentally prepared for it.
"When I was seventeen, I found out I was pregnant."
Damaris knew that she was taking a risk by telling this story, but she knew that she had to convince Ash and Steffi that she was someone who could adapt to the new role at their company, even if she didn't have a high-tech background.
"That's really young," Steffi said neutrally.
Damaris nodded. "I won't lie—I was a few months away from graduation and scared to death about what I was going to do without any parents or family to help me out."
"What about the baby's father? He didn't help you?" Ash asked.
He thumped his mug down on the coffee table and leaned forward. All traces of the laid-back gamer dude vanished, and he suddenly looked intense. And angry.
Damaris blinked and shook her head.
"I think he was as scared as I was." It had taken her years to work past her betrayal and anger to realize that Noel had been just as young and immature as she'd been.
"Difference was, he got to run away from the situation," Damaris continued. "I had to deal with it, because I didn't have any choice. So anyhow, I realized that I had to do something with my life if I wanted to keep my baby and make sure that she had a better life than I did."
"How?" Steffi asked, looking concerned. "You were in an impossible situation."
"Except that I got lucky," Damaris said quietly. She felt a stab of guilt for her decision to cut her ties to Dan and James, but once she'd taken care of Nick, she couldn't bear to face the two best people she'd ever known. "I'd been placed in a great foster home. Dan and Jim actually cared about the kids they fostered, unlike my previous foster families, who were doing it strictly for the money. They pushed me to keep going with my plans to attend City College and get my business degree, and they babysat Sophie while I was in class or working at my part-time job."
Damaris looked Ash squarely in the eye. "My daughter Sophie is the best thing that ever happened to me. She was the wake-up call I needed to get my act together and make sure that my baby would have a better life than I had. I was willing to do whatever it took to ensure that I succeeded. It wasn't easy, but we're in a pretty good place right now. Except…" Damaris bit her lip. She'd rehearsed this next bit but wasn't sure she could carry it off convincingly. "It's time for me to move to the next step in my career, and the adult entertainment industry isn't where I want to be, especially now that Sophie is getting older. I did some research on your company, and I think we could be good for each other. And I'd be proud to tell people that I worked for Grizzly Creek Games. I could actually tell Sophie about my job and the people I worked with."
Ash sat back on the sofa.
"I'm impressed by how much you've accomplished while raising a child on your own," he said, looking thoughtful.
Steffi nodded. "I'm not sure I'd be able to handle being a single mom while running my own company."
Damaris let out a silent sigh of relief at their comments. Maybe I still have a real chance at this job after all!
Steffi glanced down at her tablet. "So have you ever had to fire anyone? If so, how did you handle it?"
The interview lasted another forty-five minutes, and Damaris felt increasingly confident as she answered one question after another.
Sure, her answers all involved anecdotes about the clubs' dancers, bartenders, waitresses, and bouncers, but people were people, right? And all companies had issues with employees, whether they stripped for a living or hunched over a computer keyboard all day.
Finally, the experience-related questions trickled to a halt. Damaris had a few questions of her own, mostly about how things worked with most of the Grizzly Creek Games staff telecommuting and how much autonomy she'd have as an HR director.
Steffi filled her in on the company's generous benefits package, which included a platinum-level health care plan, profit sharing, 401(k) matching, educational reimbursements, and scholarships for employees' dependents.
When Steffi had finished speaking, she and Ash exchanged a long look. Damaris saw Steffi give a slight nod as she put her tablet facedown on her lap.
"I have to admit that I had my doubts about your qualifications when Mitya proposed you as a candidate," Ash began. "But I'm really
impressed."
Then came the question that Damaris had been fearing as soon as she realized that she wanted this job for real and not just as an excuse to spend time researching Dimitri's weaknesses.
"Can you provide any references?"
Over the course of her long, sleepless night, she had realized that having Tony as her client had screwed her in more ways than just forcing her to take his special assignments.
With a sinking heart, Damaris said, "I'm sorry, but I can't really ask any of my current clients to provide me with a reference. The downside of working in the adult entertainment industry is that most of my clients are pretty unsavory guys. I got them when I was just starting out, and I've since found out that they're not the kind of guys you can just drop without unpleasant fallout." She shook her head. "I want out, but they've got me trapped."
If you only knew the truth!
"I’m sorry if I wasted your time, Mr. Swanson." She reached for her purse and prepared to stand.
"Ash," he corrected her. "And let me ask you this: Do you want this job?"
Damaris nodded.
"Believe me, I understand," he said, his expression turning grim. "I've got Anastasia and Mikael Medved as my parents-in-law. Dealing with them can be, um, challenging, and they're not holding my paycheck hostage. Plus, I have an adorable son to use as leverage with his grandparents."
If only it was just my paycheck being held hostage! Damaris thought.
Never mind. Her dream of escaping her current life had been just that—a dream. She'd known from the beginning that it was too easy. Her life had never worked like that. She'd had to work and fight for everything she'd ever gotten.
"I'd love to be your HR director," she told him. A spasm of pain at the lost opportunity closed her throat. She had to struggle to say the next words. "And I think I could do a great job for you."
Ash grinned at her. "I think so, too. Everything I've heard so far tells me that you'd have no problem handling our rather unique set of employees. At least I've never seen any of my developers or marketing folks actually try to hurt each other. Flame wars over email and Skype is as violent as it gets."
His words warmed her. At the same time, they stung with the reminder of what could never be hers.
Blaze (Bearpaw Ridge Firefighters Book 8) Page 8
