All That He Loves (Volume 2 The Billionaires Seduction) (24 page)

“How’d you get this Shaw guy to sign up for this?!”

“I didn’t. Somebody else made a call on your behalf.”

His words hit me like a bucket of ice water.

“…and yet, he won’t call
me
,” I said bitterly.

“He’s still thinking of you. Almost constantly, I might add. The game’s not over, Lily – in fact, it’s barely begun – so you better start playing, girl. And the surest way to shoot yourself in the foot is to spurn his advances, no matter how roundabout they might be.”

“He’s only trying to pay off the debt he thinks he owes me.”

“No, he’s trying to pay off the debt he most CERTAINLY owes you. And you should let him obsess over it. LET him check up on you, let him find out how you’re doing, let him want you to succeed. The fact that you’re constantly on his mind is a good thing. When the enemy can’t stop thinking about you, that’s a huge advantage on your part.”

“What, he’s the enemy now?”

“Love and war, darling, love and war. Read the dossier and call me with any questions. Ciao.”

And that was how I found myself sitting in the offices of Scott Shaw, CEO of Telenexin Inc.

The company took up most of a small office complex in Burbank, a neighborhood in the Valley just north of Los Angeles. The campus had several four-story buildings and lots of grassy spots between them, with plenty of restaurants within walking distance.

Scott was a good-looking guy, brown hair, brown eyes, easy smile, with a few days’ worth of scruffy facial hair. A pair of fashionable, black-rimmed glasses made him look even smarter than he already was. He was relaxed in a long-sleeve white shirt, a pair of expensive jeans, and beaten-up loafers. He looked more like a magazine editor or cool college professor than the CEO of a burgeoning telecom company.

Which made me question my decision to go out and spend a thousand dollars on a business suit that morning, but, oh well. At least I looked fabulous.

I’d read the papers Sebastian had sent over, so I knew quite a bit about his company.

What I didn’t know was why I was there.

“We’re having the normal growing pains of any mid-size company,” he explained with a self-deprecating smile.

“I’m not sure a company valued at one billion dollars is exactly mid-size.”

He laughed. “Considering that Google and Facebook are buying startups with twenty people for half a billion or more, yeah, I’d still consider us a mid-size company.”

“So what can I do for you?”

“Well, our overall growth has been plateauing lately. That in itself wouldn’t be so bad, but it’s way too early. I wasn’t anticipating this for another five or six years. Morale hasn’t been all that great lately, either, and I’ve been struggling to figure out how to make it better. There are other problems, but overall there’s this kind of…
malaise
in the company. We’ve tried to do some things, I’ve even had some other consultants in, but… eh,” he said, communicating his overall dissatisfaction. “Connor explained your business model and I thought it was intriguing.”

I hoped my face didn’t betray the pang I felt when I heard Connor’s name.

“He spoke very highly of you. In fact, he told me I would be a fool if I didn’t nab you on your way up, while you were still cheap.”

It’s funny, the $10,000 price tag Scott and I had discussed earlier didn’t seem cheap to me at all.

In fact, I was mentally preparing to return it after this was all over and I’d failed spectacularly.

And then, of course, he would tell Connor all about it.

I smiled as best I could without looking sick. “Well… that was very kind of him. So… what would you like me to do?”

He shrugged. “Whatever it is that you do. Where do you normally start?”

That was a really good question, considering I’d never done this before.

“With your lowest-ranking people,” I answered as confidently as I could.

“Like, my lowest-level managers…?”

“Like, the mailroom guys.”

He raised his eyebrows. “Okay… how long will the interviews be?”

Another great question. “Um… typically ten minutes apiece, maybe fifteen.”

“Okay.”

“How many people are at this location?”

“About 500.”

Great.

“But a lot of those are upper level people. Lots of managers, lots of directors, lots of VPs. We have more at other sites, but this is the home office.”

“How many
non-
managers, would you say?”

“About 300.”

Greeeeaaaaaat.

“Okay… I doubt I’ll have to interview all of them, but I should probably get started as soon as possible.”

“How about tomorrow?”

Oh God.

“Fantastic,” I lied, my smile quivering.

“I’ll have my managers contact you and figure out when you can drop by the various departments.”

“Great,” I said, my teeth clenched together, and handed him one of the fancy business cards Sebastian had sent over that morning – complete with an incredible website and professional email address some magic elf had set up overnight.

“And when do you think I could get a report?” he asked.

I hesitated. “Um… next week?”

“Wow, okay,” he said, sounding impressed. So my timetable was either unbelievably ambitious or incredibly stupid. Or both.

“And can you do a presentation to all the heads of the departments?” he added.

Oh God oh God public speaking OH GOD

“Of course.”

“Fantastic.” He got up from his desk, shook my hand, and smiled. “Thanks, Ms. Ross.”

“Thank
you,
” I said, and left as quickly as I could so I could go throw up in the nearest bathroom.

I didn’t, actually. Throw up.

Even though I really, really wanted to.

But I didn’t think it would be a good idea for them to find their new $10,000 consultant puking in their bathroom stalls.

By 5:00 PM, I’d gotten over three dozen emails from various managers talking about availability.

Eff my life.

The only good thing was that most of the managers were wary of me, and most had wanted to schedule their interviews for later in the week, probably so they could get the gossip on me. I’m sure most (if not all) of them considered me a threat. Like the advance scout for the Hatchet Man.

Anh helped me cram, just like the olden days in college when I was woefully unprepared for tests.

“Okay, what questions are you going to ask them?”

“What’s the top three problems they see in the business on a day-to-day basis… what they would change if they could…”

I put my forehead down on our IKEA kitchen table. I was
way
past the hand-flapping panic stage, and well into the ‘total collapse and defeated resignation’ phase.

“Oh God, this is going to be a disaster…”

Anh smacked my arm with a sheaf of papers. “Stop being defeatist. Come on, you can do this.”

“No I can’t…”

“Connor set this up for you, so obviously he thinks you can. And even if he
is
a jerk, I have to tell you, none of
my
exes ever gave me a going-away present like this.”

At the mention of Connor’s name, my heart grew heavy and I felt like crawling into bed and disappearing for three days. “I can’t…”

“You have to. For ME.”

I looked up at her quizzically. “Why for you?”

“Because you’re going to hire me away for megabucks as soon as you can,” she informed me. “I want to quit Exerton, like,
yesterday
.”

“Really?”

“YES. I hate those buttholes. You’re my ticket out, Lily.”

“Way to take the pressure off.”

“Suck it up. Now,
what
questions were you going to ask before you decided to throw your little pity parade?”

I got there early the next morning and met the managers of the two departments I would be interviewing that day: operations and customer service. Neither of the two balding, overweight, middle-aged men was particularly glad to meet me. They also kept eyeing me up and down, which I took to mean that they recognized me – but at least they were polite enough not to say anything.

Instead, they just leered at me discreetly.

They stuck me in an empty office with nothing but a desk and a couple of chairs and sent their people in to see me one at a time.

The first interview did not go well. The mailroom guy was like, “I dunno. I dunno. I dunno.”

His only suggestion was that they should let the employees keep beer in the fridge, because “sometimes you just need a cold one to take the edge off, y’know?”

I actually agreed with him, but I didn’t think I could present that to upper management.

The second interview didn’t go much better.

Nor did the third one.

Either people were a lot stupider than I thought, or I really sucked at this.

The fourth went better. I got some good ideas on cutting down waste in the mailroom, but it was penny ante stuff.

I remembered what Connor had said to me, though: that I would spend a lot of time looking for people with good ideas.

That would be half your work, separating the wheat from the chaff.

And then I remembered what Anh had said to me:

Suck it up.

So I did. For the next seven hours, with a thirty-minute break for lunch.

My next-to-last interview of the day started off promising. Keisha was the unofficial head of a branch of customer service that dealt with fulfilling orders for telecom equipment – meaning she did a manager’s work, but only got regular pay for it. She seemed really intelligent when she walked in and we said our ‘hellos,’ and she was sharply dressed – but once we started the interview, she became guarded and closed-off, volunteering as little information as possible.

But there was something there under the surface struggling to get out, I knew it. I saw the spark in her eyes clear as day when I asked, “What are the three biggest problems you see on a day-to-day basis?”

I knew she probably could have given me an excellent list at least two dozen items long.

She reminded me of
me
, back when I worked for Herr Klaus.

But the spark died away, and she gave me a politically correct answer filled with BS and business-speak. One that couldn’t come back to bite her in the ass if I really
was
The Enemy.

I actually ran over the normal interview time with her, trying to pin her down on something,
anything
… but she was too slippery and noncommittal. I finally gave up, thanked her, and sent her on her way.

And put my forehead down on the desk.

Why oh WHY did I ever leave that fucking penthouse?
I asked myself.

Because you couldn’t stay with somebody who would rather avoid you than tell you he loved you,
I reminded myself.

But the penthouse was looking more and more attractive by the second.

Suck it up,
I told myself, and went to the door to call in the last interviewee of the day.

The day ended, and I had accomplished a whole lot o’ nothin’.

I packed up my things, said goodbye to the managers, and walked dejectedly out to the parking deck.

And then everything unexpectedly turned around.

Keisha was going down to employee parking the same time I was. We just happened to be the only ones in the elevator.

“Hey,” she said.

I smiled back wearily. “Hey.”

“Long day?”

“Yeah. I
so
need a drink.”

She laughed. “I heard that.”

We got out at the same level. I was about to tell her goodbye when she asked, almost shyly, “Could I ask you something?”

My stomach knotted up, but I couldn’t really say ‘no,’ could I?

“Sure.”

“…are you that woman in those pictures on TV?”

Crap.

I thought about saying ‘no,’ but why bother? I’d been introducing myself as Lily Ross all day, and I hadn’t gone out of my way to drastically alter my appearance. People were already whispering about me behind my back, I was sure of it.

I sighed and nodded. “Yep. That’s me.”

I expected laughter or some sort of joke, but instead she just kind of stared at me the way a kid might at a movie star.

“You dated that billionaire?”

Again, I thought about not answering – maybe giving her a curt ‘I don’t talk about my personal life’ and walking away – but it was common knowledge. And I’d already outed myself. Why stop now?

“Yeah.”

She put a hand on my arm. “What was it like?” she whispered, as though she thought I held the Secret of Life.

Fond memories and a wave of sadness hit me all at once. “It was great… until it ended.”

She pulled her hand back and seemed to realize maybe she had overstepped. “I’m sorry. That’s personal, I shouldn’t have asked you that.”

As soon as she said that, a little voice whispered in my ear:

You can use this.

I felt bad about being manipulative, but on the other hand, there might have been a dozen reasons why she hadn’t opened up to me before. Maybe she was afraid of her boss finding out and didn’t want him to retaliate. Maybe she was afraid of losing her job if she rocked the boat. Maybe she thought I might replace her.

But if
I
opened up to her first…

“I don’t mind. Um… I was serious about needing that drink… you want to join me? Is there a place around here?”

I saw the spark in her eyes – the same one as I’d seen earlier in the interview, the one that had died away under office politics and a sense of self-preservation.

But this time it stayed strong and alive.

“Oh, I know just the place,” she grinned. “Go get your car and you can follow me on over.”

Keisha was fully loosened up by the time the second margarita arrived.

“Girl, he wasn’t a dog, was he?” she asked. “‘Cause in my experience, men are dogs. And I’m bettin’ the richer they are, the bigger the dog.”