by Parker, Ali
“Fulton had to go to Seattle for business. He asked me to come with him and I agreed.” I sucked my lip between my teeth, biting down as I waited for her response.
“You’re in Seattle? With a stranger?”
“He’s not a stranger.” I understood that he was to them, but he wasn’t to me. “I’ve gotten to know him, and I’ll be safe with him. I promise.”
Olive released a heavy sigh, staying quiet for a few minutes. I knew she was pacing like crazy, trying to rein in the urge to lecture me on responsibility. “I can’t believe this, but it sounds like you’re already there.”
“I’m already here.” Before we’d left Fulton’s place in Florida, I’d briefly considered calling Olive. I hadn’t done it because I knew she’d try—and maybe succeed—in talking me out of it when I really wanted to spend the time with him. “I’ll be fine with him, Mom. I’ll call the second I get a bad vibe, okay?”
“Okay.” She sighed again. “Don’t get used to jetting off to random places with this guy, okay? It’s only temporary. You don’t want a relationship and he doesn’t even live in the same state that we do. Enjoy the time you have there with him, but just don’t get attached, Val. Please. I don’t want to see your heart get broken.”
I scoffed at her comment, reassuring her before we hung up that I most definitely wasn’t getting attached. After we got off the phone, though, I realized she was right. Her comment brought me crashing back to reality.
I didn’t have the kind of life where I flew in private planes, rode in limousines, or lived in fancy hotels. I was just me. Just Valerie. And sooner or later, I was going to have to go back to her.
Whoever I thought I might have been becoming earlier, whatever changes I had thought were happening inside, and however gooey I’d gotten over Fulton’s kiss, Olive was right: it was all only temporary.
Chapter 17
Fulton
“Thank God you’re here.” The Seattle branch manager was waiting for me in his office. He stood up when I entered, coming to the door to shake my hand. “You’ve got to get a handle on this situation. It’s gotten way out of hand.”
“Let’s see what we’re working with.” I shook the hand he offered, following him back to his desk. I’d known Stuart Boden for years, but I’d never seen him looking out of sorts. Although to be fair, he’d also never had to deal with anything like this before. None of us had.
His suit was rumpled and his gray hair was sticking up in different directions, as if he’d been running his hands through it for days. His brown eyes were red-rimmed and tired, surrounded by more lines than I remembered him having.
He had prepared for me before I’d arrived, immediately locating a thick folder on his desk and sliding it over to me when I took a seat in one of his tub chairs. “What am I looking at?”
I picked up the file, opening it and scanning the contents of the pages while he explained. “Articles that have appeared in the news over the last few weeks, customer records, and employee concerns that have been raised.”
“Okay.” I turned another page, keeping my eyes on the newspaper article he’d printed out. “Talk me through what all of these are saying. I’ll read it all, but we need to start formulating a plan immediately. We can always fine-tune it later, but I want the broad strokes worked out before close of business today.”
“Sure thing.” Stuart must have made a duplicate folder, because the next thing I knew, he was peering over to see what page I was on before grabbing another file for himself. “As you can see, we’ve been catching a lot of heat about the robbery. I mentioned it to you earlier, but I don’t know why—or even if we’re being singled out by the media—and not branches in other locations.”
“Okay. They’re worried about our security?” I looked up briefly, frowning. “Have you told them about the system upgrades we’ve already done and all of the initiatives we’re working on?”
“I’ve tried, but they don’t listen.” Frustration dripped from his tone and lit his eyes with angry fire. “They just don’t give me the chance to defend us. On top of that, customers and employees are leaving. Customers by the droves, employees are trickling out. I don’t know how to keep them. There seems to be a general panic at the moment and everything I say adds gas to the flames.”
Setting the file down, I took a deep breath and quieted my mind. “How many customers are we talking about?”
“Just over sixty.”
“How many is that? Sixty-one? Sixty-two? I need you to be exact here. Every customer we have matters.”
Stuart sighed, paging through his folder. It was clear he didn’t have the answer on hand. Since he’d woken me up and begged me to come here, I’d have thought he’d have been prepared with all of these answers. I hadn’t expected a file and to have to figure it all out for myself.
I was fine figuring it out for myself, but everything he was saying indicated that this was urgent. Also, he’d literally pulled me out of bed to get here. If he wanted me to be able to act immediately, he either should have prepared himself enough to walk me through it or he should have forwarded the information to me.
“How many, Stuart?” I crossed my arms, my chin lifting. “And while you’re at it, how many employees?”
“Almost ten employees, sir.” He was still paging, apparently unsure about even where to look for the information I needed.
“So more than sixty and almost ten, those are your answers?” I bit back the reprimand sitting on the tip of my tongue. “Fine. We’re wasting time, I’ll find the exact numbers later. Call a press conference. In the meantime, call an emergency meeting with all the employees. I want to address them immediately.”
“Immediately” apparently meant an hour in Seattle time. I sat with Stuart while we waited for everyone to assemble, going through figures and researching some of the reporters who were giving us the most heat.
“They’re ready for you, sir.” Stuart’s secretary was a brunette named Marissa. She was sweet, but she looked like someone had scared the shit out of her today.
“Thank you. We’ll be right out.” I stood up from Stuart’s desk, motioning to the empty coffee cup sitting next to my file. “And thank you for getting me some coffee. I desperately needed it.”
“Anytime, sir.” She managed a small, nervous smile before hurrying out of the office. Stuart and I followed her to the main break room in the back.
There were several staff members who formed part of the skeleton team holding down the fort out front, but everyone else was present. They’d even called in those people who had the day off.
“Thank you for taking time out of your day to let me speak to you.” I smiled at the gathered employees, wanting them to see me as a person and not some corporate warrior. “For those of you who haven’t met me, my name is Fulton Yates and I’m here today to talk to you about some fears and concerns that you’ve raised to your manager regarding the recent robberies in Florida.”
The tension in the room was palpable, but the longer I talked and explained, the more relaxed people became. Some had even taken a seat and others were smiling back at me.
“I hope that this has set you more at ease. I plan on sharing this information with the public at a press conference later today, but I wanted to talk to you all first. We’re all on the same team, and I want you to feel safe and secure on our team. I also want you to be able to answer customers’ questions and to put them at ease if they’re concerned.”
“What are we supposed to tell them?” one man near the front called out. He was beefy and had his arms crossed, scowling throughout my entire speech. He was one of the only people I’d noticed who hadn’t relaxed. “We can’t lie to them. We were robbed in Florida. It’s a fact.”
“Yes, it is. I’m sorry, I’d like to know your name before I respond to your question. I like to know who I’m talking to.” I made sure to keep my tone friendly and open. These people weren’t my enemies. I just had to make them see that too.
“R
obert,” the man replied curtly. “Robert Bateman.”
“Okay, thank you for your question. You’re right. It is a fact that we were robbed in Florida, but it’s also a fact that it was thanks to our actions that the crew that had been terrorizing Tampa was caught. The police were in our branch for a reason that day. It’s also a fact that all the money was returned and that we’ve done a full security upgrade since then.”
I took another deep breath, speaking at an even and measured pace. “I would never ask you to lie to our customers, but none of what I’ve just told you is a lie. If they express their concerns to you, talk to them about why they have them and reassure them about all of this.”
The difficult questions didn’t stop after that, but by the time we adjourned the meeting, the atmosphere was considerably lighter than it had been when I arrived. Several people stopped to talk to me, while others only wanted to say hi.
When Stuart and I made it back to his office, it was almost time for me to repeat the same song and dance to the press late in the afternoon. Since I planned on going to the hotel right after the press conference, I needed to have a word with Stuart before we left for it.
“Stuart, how long have you been with the company?” I turned toward him once his door was shut behind us. He froze in his spot, looking like a deer caught in headlights.
“What?”
“I asked how long you’ve been with the company.”
“Almost five years, sir.” His voice was tight, but firm. “Why?”
“I understand that these are extenuating circumstances involved, but you should have been able to handle the morale among your employees.”
The alpha asshole inside me was seething about having been called here largely because this man had apparently failed to set even his employees’ minds at ease in the slightest. The media was one thing, but the internal situation was another.
“You’re their manager for a reason,” I continued and crossed my arms. “I shouldn’t need to hold your hand every time things get tough.”
Stuart paled, stammering his way through an apology. After making it clear to him that what had happened was unacceptable, it was time for the press conference.
I got back to the hotel shortly before sunset, more than ready to spend the evening with Valerie. At the press conference, I had learned that the so-called media onslaught by the reporters in Seattle had mostly been caused by Stuart’s silence whenever questions were asked.
Having now remedied the situation myself, I was certain that the consequences of the robbery had been smoothed over. It hadn’t even been that hard.
Loosening my tie when I entered the hotel room, I breathed out a sigh and was happy that the day was behind me. Now, tonight, I could give all my attention to the girl who had come here with me.
“Valerie?”
“In here.” She called out from the direction of one of the bedrooms. I was hoping she would break her rule and sleep in a bed with me while we were here, but I’d gotten a suite with two bedrooms out of respect for the fact that she might not want to.
She was sitting on the bed when I walked in, a glass of wine in her hand. Cross-legged and facing the window, she seemed enchanted by the view outside. It was a pretty spectacular sunset, but it was nothing compared to her.
She looked fucking amazing just sitting there, bathed in a warm glow filtering in through the windows. My mouth went dry at the sight of her. Clearing my throat to give me something to do for the second I needed to compose myself, I walked over and sat down on the edge of the bed.
“Hey.”
She turned to face me, one of her legs dangling off the bed. “Hey. How did it go?”
“Fine.” I smiled, fighting to resist the urge to take her into my arms. “I don’t want to bore you with work stuff, but I do have a suggestion for what we could do tonight.”
“What?” Her hazel eyes were on mine, excitement already creeping into them.
“How would you like to go see some art?” There were some fantastic galleries in town, many of which stayed open after hours.
Valerie’s lips curled into a radiant smile as she nodded enthusiastically. “I would love to.”
Chapter 18
Valerie
“Pioneer Square is the center of Seattle’s art scene,” Fulton explained, our fingers loosely twined together as we walked into the first gallery. “They even host an art walk on the first Thursday of every month.”
“What’s an art walk?” I’d never heard of it, but it sounded awesome.
“It’s an event where you can debut, celebrate, and share art with the greater public. It started in nineteen eighty-one when a group of visionary Pioneer Square art dealers printed the first walking maps and painted footprints on the sidewalks outside their galleries. They encouraged patrons of the arts to come tour each of the galleries in the spirit of having a community event. It evolved from there into what it is today.”
“You really do have a degree in this stuff, don’t you?” I was impressed that he could recall the history that easily even after years of being in a different industry. “Or did you look it up on your way back to the hotel?”
He chuckled at my joking question. “I might have brushed up on the exact year that it was started, but the rest is from memory.”
“I’ll still award you a point for remembering everything you did. Oh, and you get another point for being honest about looking up the date.”
He stopped walking, turning to face me with an amused gleam in his eyes. “Wait, you’re awarding me points? Since when? What for and what am I up to?”
I laughed, shaking my head at the eagerness of his rapid-fire questions. “I just told you, you’ve got two points so far.”
“That’s not fair.” He mock-pouted. “I can think of at least ten things I’ve done that have deserved points.”
“Fine, you can have twelve points.” I smiled, inclining my head toward the painting we’d stopped in front of. “Now, are you going to keep obsessing about random points, or are you going to tell me about this?”
Fulton released a heavy sigh, puffing his cheeks before he let it go. It was a show of exasperated disappointment, but his eyes were laughing. “If I have to.”
As soon as he started talking, he forgot all about the act he’d been putting on and lost himself in telling me about the art. There was a staggering amount to see in the one square mile that was Pioneer Square. It was amazing, and it was sparking that interest and inspiration deep inside me like nothing else managed to do.
Olive’s words about how temporary my time with Fulton would be were still sticking to the back of my mind, but I was trying not to focus on them. While I was here in Seattle with him, being exposed to galleries and museums I hadn’t even known existed, I wasn’t going to waste any time thinking about the inevitable.
In between the stops, Fulton told me about the area and the square itself. “It has been a haven for the artistic community in the city since nineteen sixty.”
“Another date you looked up?” I teased him. The truth was that I didn’t really care if he had or not, he was a walking talking well of information on just about any place we went into.
Passion was laced into every word, practically coming off him so palpably that I could almost smell it. Seeing and hearing him like this was incredible, even if he’d looked it all up just before he brought me there.
What I was interested in was the passion, the way his blue eyes were bright and alive. That meant more to me than the facts he was imparting. Those were interesting and the art was amazing, but Fulton’s passion was what would remain with me after we left this place.
“I didn’t have to look that one up.” He grinned and lifted his finger to tap his temple. “That one was still up here. I must have been paying attention in at least one of the art history classes I sat through.”
“Art history classes? I thought you had a degree in fine arts.”
“Art history was part of our syllabus, even th
ough we weren’t pursuing a degree in it,” he replied. I liked how easy it was to talk to him, to ask him questions that I ordinarily might have thought would make me look stupid for not just knowing the answers.
Fulton never made me feel like that, though. He never made me feel inferior to him, which was something to be said for a guy who had as much right to be arrogant as he did. He was gorgeous, beyond rich, super successful, and highly educated.
In my experience, guys like that were never as down to earth as he was. It made me appreciate the quality even more in him. “What kind of work could you do if you had a degree in art history?”
“Oh, there’s a ton of stuff.” He waved his hand around the gallery we were standing in. “You could be a curator somewhere like this, go into conservation and restoration, law enforcement, and a whole slew of others. Why?”
“I’m just trying to learn more about this world, you know. I think it’s interesting to find out what careers there are in art. I’m not saying I’ll pursue any of them. I’m just finding out the options.”
“That’s a smart move.” There was a hint of pride in his eyes when he smiled at me. “I like that you’re keeping your mind and your options open. It means you’re actually taking this seriously, which I think is awesome because I think you’d really enjoy it.”
“And also, then you wouldn’t be the only art nerd between us?” I nudged his ribs playfully with my elbow.
Fulton’s smile widened. “I have no problem being the only art nerd between us. It gives me the chance to relive my glory days when this was all I could talk about.”
“Do you ever wonder what your life might have looked like right now if you’d pursued a career in the arts instead of in finance?” I couldn’t imagine finding something that ignited such a passion in me and then walking away from it.
