Rex EVIE MARCHED INTO my office like she belonged there, which at once bothered me and enchanted me. For the same reason: I didn’t hate that she was there. I should have hated her barging into my space, especially while Rebekah was in my office. Her incessant talking, her concern over Lochlan — all of it should have annoyed me. Lochlan didn’t like anyone. Why would he like her? Why would she even care if he lik ed her? He was horrible. She cared because she seemed to care about everything and everyone, which made no sense to me. And yet it was starting to. I’d never known anyone who cared about the people around her the way she did. I didn’t hate that, either. And I hadn’t hated our one, meaningless little kiss that shouldn’t be lingering in my mind like it was, threatening our whole situation. Seeing her again made it linger more, but she was not only my fake girlfriend. She was my employee.
So I k ept my face expressionless as she placed a cup of coffee on my desk and let me know she’d noticed exactly how I’d liked my morning caffeine. Of course she had. Where I hadn’t noticed hers at all. Because I did not care about everyone, and even when I did, it was not in the same way she did. I was not sweet and caring. I wasn’t right for someone like her. Yet as she turned to go out the door, I said, “Wait.” It was an impulse. The word was out of my mouth before I could think of what I was doing or why, but now it was too late. I had to think of something. She turned around, lips slightly parted, and I tried to banish the thought of kissing her the night before. My mind flipped through reasons I had asked her to stay, or whether I should backtrack and let her go without an explanation. What came out of my mouth was, “I... uh...” Good one, Rex. She tried to hide it, but she smiled at my response, like she thought it was cute. I did not want to come off as cute. I cleared my throat. “I need to address something with you.” “Oh? What is that?” She hovered near the door, all too ready to stay. What did that mean? I’d have to worry about that later. For that moment, I needed to figure out what I wanted to address with her, because I’d just said the first thing I could think of. Again. I could spin a presentation in a meeting without any effort at all. Why couldn’t I come up with one intelligent thing to say about why I’d asked her to wait? “You’re... uh...” I stammered. “I want to get to know a little more about you.” She beamed, and I nearly smacked my head against the desk. Why were those the words I’d said? Then I had a moment of clarity. Finally. I remembered Rebekah had put Evie’s resume on my desk. “For work. I’d like to get to know more about your work background.” She came toward my desk and sat down. Her skirt rose a little higher, revealing a knee peeking out at me. It was just a knee. Must ignore the knee. “We’ve never really discussed your work at Quinn.” “That’s really why you asked me to wait?” she asked, with a playful grin on her face. “But you asked me about my work background after the meeting last week, and you must have looked over my resume.”
Ke eping my face expressionless was getting harder. She was smiling so sweetly, almost flirtatiously. “I thought maybe you wanted to talk about that kiss.” She dropped her voice a few notes lower, probably trying to get a reaction from me, but she got none. At least none that were above the edge of my desk. I took her resume out of my inbox, where Rebekah had left it. “We agreed. Not at work.” She just k ept smiling at me. “You’re right. I’m sorry. What would you like to ask me?” She knew I didn’t have questions pr epared in advance. She was playing with me. This was embarrassing. I took a slow breath. I was the goddamn CEO. I didn’t get flustered. She was waiting for me to speak, but baiting me with her eyes, still hoping I’d bante r with her or flirt or who knows what. She looked playful. We couldn’t be playful. Not here. Probably not anywhere. “My sister was just in my office razzing me about dating my assistant,” I said. “We can’t do this here. This is going to explode beyond the three of us, if we’re not careful.” “Would that be so horrible? We’re supposed to be together. Why wouldn’t a couple act like a couple at work, too?” “I’m the CEO,” I said, picking up the folder on my desk and flipping it open again. I’d looked through this folder already, but I needed to do something with my hands. I needed not to look at her right then. “My father has placed me here to change this com pany for the better. If no one respects me because they think my ethics have been compromised, then that will not work.” “You know,” she said, “if you want to change this company, you might want to pay more attention to its people than to whatever you ke ep flipping through in that folder.” The playfulness had dropped out of her tone. She sounded all business again. “Why do you mean?” I asked. I saw something flicker in her eyes, something that looked like fear. That was interesting. “I’m not sure how honest I should be.” “Please, be honest.” “Even if it means saying something negative about this company?” “I’d like to make it a better place to work, so negative points might be more interesting to me than you expect.”
She shifted her weight, and her fingers twisted a piece of her skirt. “This company is filled with toxic managers. Lots of people leave or hop around between d epartments trying to get away from them.” “What do you mean by toxic?” I leaned forward, elbows on my desk. For a conversation that began as a way to get her to stay in my office, perhaps this would turn out useful. She hesitated. “Some of the management has been here for almost as long as I’ve been alive.” “Is that an issue?” “I think it is. It’s... there’s kind of a culture that formed among management.” “I’d say that’s normal.” “Maybe it is, but I’m not sure the culture I’m talking about is normal. There’s a group of seven managers, the three in the Tacoma building and four up here, who get together often. They’re friends.” “I don’t think managers being friends is a problem.” I had thought she might be useful in identifying issues within the company, but if her issues were that managers were friends, maybe not. “You asked me for my opinion,” she said. “You’re right. I apologize. Go on.” “My opinion is that those managers create a bad work culture by reinforcing each other. I’ve worked with three of them. People leave this company just to get away from them, and I’ll bet if you dug specifically into their performance, you’d see that a lot of what’s not working around here goes back to them.” This feedback was nebulous, but also intriguing. “Can you give me their names?” “I feel like a snitch,” she muttered. “But, yes, I will. Not in an email, though. Not with anything with my name on it. I’ll write them down for you.” I nodded and slid a not epad her way. She quickly wrote down seven names in compact, neat handwriting and then slid the pad back to me. “But it’s more than them. They are all middle managers. I know the three in the Tacoma building have been r eported to HR more than once. I know their bosses are aware of that. Nothing ever changes. So they might be the ones on the front lines causing issue s, but they aren’t the entire problem.”
I watched her face, wondering how seriously to take this and what exactly I could do about a company - wide culture issue. “How do you know the managers have been r eported to HR more than once? That shouldn’t be something you’d know about.” “Because I r eported all three of them for something or another, and I know my complaints went unheard.” “What did you r eport?” She shifted in her seat again. “Two of them, I r eported for creating a hostile work environment. They were bullying newer employees and power - tripping. One I r eported for sexual harassment. He tried to make a move on me after hours one day and mistakenly t hought I wouldn’t do anything about it.” A surge of anger went through me at the idea of a manager going after her. “And which one of these names made a move on you?” She pressed her lips together, obviously weighing how much to tell me. Then she said, “St ephen Jones.” I circled the name. I’d check up on him. Maybe I’d fire him. I doubted it would be too hard to find a reason, if he was sexually assaulting employees. Scratch that. I’d definitely fire him. She went on. “You might want to take a look at the managers in the financial d epartments. Not that I’m an expert on what they should do, but there seem to be a lot of client lunches with their friends from other companies rather than actual clients. I hate d that d epartment, though, so I was only there for about six months.” I wrote that down on a list. “Anything else?” “It’s tough to think back on and review all the managers I’ve ever had here in one go. I think if you want to know if this company has a people problem, it would help to get off this floor sometimes.” “What do you mean?” “Nothing on this floor feels or operates anything like the rest of the company. This is like a quiet, pristine paradise, while every other d epartment is...” She stopped herself, and I wondered what went through her mind. I was sure that she was choosing her words carefully, and that made sense. She normally seemed to let them flow with wild abandon, but I’d asked her about people who had had power over her work life. “Is what?” I asked. “Is not,” she said, plainly.
“That wasn’t what you were going to say.” “Yes, it is.” “No,” I said. “It’s not. Fess up. What were you going to say about every other d epartment?” She let out a huff of air. “What I was going to say is that up here is all quiet and marble and perfect. Every other d epartment is a hell of cubicles and passive - aggressive behavior. Everyone can hear everyone on the phone and smell everyone’s food in the microwave. And don’t get me wrong. I am delighted to be working in this quiet, marble paradise now, but if you want to know what this company is like, this isn’t really a good example.” I nodded. “That makes sense to me, and you’re right. I haven’t spent any time outside of this office.” She sat still, observing me. “Please put together a tour of this building as well as our Tacoma location for me. Educate me.” She blanched, nervous. “I will,” she said, and I could hear the forced confidence in her tone. “Set it up for next Wednesday, please. Clear your schedule that day as well. You can come with me.” Then I watched her as carefully as she watched me, gauging her reaction. I saw her swallow and a flush cre ep into her cheeks. She was nervous. I was, too, but I found that more than wanting to see what Quinn Financial looked like out of this ivory tower, I wanted an excuse to spend a day with her. “Ms. Day,” I said. “I’ve got a call scheduled shortly. Thank you for your time. I’ll send you some correspondence that I’d love for you to polish up and edit for me. I will admit I’m not great with commas.” She hopped out of her chair and moved toward the door. “I’ll ke ep an eye out for it, and I’ll get started setting up your tour.” She lingered as though she wanted to say something else, but then she slipped out the door.