Chapter Three
D arren looked like he might either throw up or explode, one or the other.
“What’s the emergency?” Alli asked. Maybe he was sick. And if he was sick, maybe he needed an account covered. Given that he was the boss, his clients were big-hitters. This could be her chance.
“What’s the emergency?” he stuttered. He glared at her.
“What?”
“Jesus. You. You’re the emergency, Alli.”
“Me?” She took a second to take this in. “What have I done?”
She saw his jaw tense. “Did you or did you not just call Jim Halen’s son a glorified secretary?”
“Obviously not,” she said, relaxing a little. “That would be pretty stupid, wouldn’t it? I mean, come on, Dar, you’ve known me for a while now, since when have I been that…” Oh shit.
“Al.”
“That was his son?” Anger bubbled up inside her. “How the hell was I supposed to know that? He introduced himself as Jamie. He smelled like a Parisian hooker. And you said that Halen was sending some underling to get the presentation. There’s no way in hell that I’m responsible for this.”
“Really?” Darren said, still pale. “Really? No way in hell, Al? Because from where I’m standing, if you’d have just treated the man with some simple respect, regardless of whether he was an underling or not, then this wouldn’t be happening.”
“This? What is this exactly?” She put her hands on her hips.
“This,” he said, pointing toward the conference room. The blinds were all closed and she couldn’t see inside. “You know who’s in there?”
The anger was still bubbling but starting to be replaced with something else. Something cold and sticky. “Who’s in there?”
“My boss and his boss and Jim Halen, that’s who.” Darren clenched his teeth.
“Shit.”
“That about covers it.”
She took a breath. “I can fix this.” She could. She could talk her way out of this. An apology, obviously. Probably she could have been a little nicer. She’d made a mistake though, and mistakes were forgivable, surely?
“No,” Darren said. “You are absolutely not fixing this. In fact, you are not to open your mouth unless I give you the nod, do you understand?”
“But—”
“But nothing.” He pressed the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger. “Al, you’re the best in my department and you know it. I don’t want to lose you. The way this is going, this is looking very much like a fire-able incident, do you understand that?”
Her legs started to wobble. Fire-able? “I made a mistake,” she said.
“You lost your temper. Again. With the son of a very important client.” Darren held up both his hands, palms outward. “Just let me do what I can to mitigate this. You’ll come in with me, but you’ll sit there and stay quiet until I tell you not to.”
“I—”
“I will fire you myself if you so much as utter a syllable without my permission.”
She clamped her mouth shut.
“Better,” Darren said. He looked her up and down, obviously finding her presentable. “Right, let’s get in there then.” He took her arm and stopped her for a second. “Listen, I’ll do what I can, but no promises.”
Her mouth went dry and her stomach flip-flopped. She wasn’t sure how it had all come to this. How had she gone from a normal day to suddenly having the threat of losing everything over her head? It seemed like such an over-reaction.
Darren let go of her arm and she followed him into the room.
IT HELPED IF she looked at the table. It helped if she tried to block out what was being said. But then, she’d always had good hearing, and Darren wasn’t exactly keeping his voice low.
“Ms. Williams has proven results,” he was saying now.
“There’s no room for a loose cannon,” said Hawkins, Darren’s boss and a man that Alli rarely saw.
“Ms. Williams has been putting a lot of work in and a lot of hours in,” said Darren.
“And now she’s having a mental breakdown?” asked Hawkins.
Alli looked up at this, ready to jump down his throat, but she caught Darren’s eye and saw that he was about to grasp what he saw as a lifebelt. She cleared her throat. Screw this, no one was about to throw her under the mental health bus, she wasn’t going to stand for this, she—
“Perhaps we could ask Ms. Williams to wait outside for a few moments?” Darren said.
Hawkins grunted, but Alli stayed where she was. Darren kicked her under the table. “Al, if you wouldn’t mind?”
She very much did mind. She minded so much that she thought she might burst with it. But she looked at his face and then she looked at Hawkins’ face and Halen’s face and, god help her, Colman’s impassive face, and she froze.
“We’ll call for you when we’re ready for you,” drawled Colman. A partner. The man who controlled everything. Well, half of everything.
Ali found herself standing up and walking out and closing the door and collapsing into one of the waiting chairs outside.
This couldn’t be happening. Not over a mistake. She’d be the first to admit that she’d lost it a little. Okay, she could probably be a bit more patient. But how was she to know who the damn man was? It wasn’t like she wasn’t polite to his father.
He’d been asking stupid questions and she had a limited amount of time.
Still though, she couldn’t lose it all over this, over something so small that it practically wasn’t anything at all.
Apart from anything else, what the hell would she do all day? She tried to imagine a day without an office to go to and couldn’t.
Of course, there were weekends. But she mostly worked. Or did laundry. Ordered her shopping in. That was pretty much it.
How was she supposed to fill hours and hours without going to work?
Her stomach felt acidic again and her mouth tasted bad and the more she thought about things, the more angry she got. This was all a stupid mistake and now Darren was in there calling her a hysterical woman and pretending like she had mental health problems and…
And then the door was opening and the men were walking out. Colman and Hawkins didn’t look at her. Halen gave her a sympathetic glance. Darren waited for them to leave and then slumped into the chair beside her.
“You can thank me by taking on my shittiest client,” he said.
“What?”
“I’m kidding. Sort of.”
“Thank you?” she said, seething. “Thank you for what, exactly?”
“For keeping you your job,” he said, staring at her as though she’d gone mad. “Not that it was easy, and not that there aren’t strings attached.”
She kept her voice low and level. “Strings? What sort of strings, exactly?”
“Anger management,” he said with a sniff. “Still, could be worse, you— ”
“Anger management?” she spat. “So just to be clear, not only have you gone in there and lied about my mental health status, you’ve also agreed to send me to some sort of course or something without my permission?”
“Do you actually want your job?”
A flicker of acid in her stomach again. “Of course I do.”
“And I didn’t lie, Al.”
“You didn’t lie? About me being hysterical and whatever else you told them?”
Darren turned to her. “I didn’t tell them that you were hysterical. I told them that you were stressed and working too hard and that you had anger problems that hopefully could be sorted out with a bit of help.”
“Anger problems?” She sat up straighter in her chair, unable to believe just what she was hearing. “Anger problems?”
Darren shook his head. “Al, you’ve had five assistants in the last year. They keep quitting because you keep losing your temper with them. The mail guys are afraid to come into your office, and I removed you from the mandatory mentoring program because you turned interns into quivering wrecks. I get that you’re a hard worker and that you have certain opinions, and that you want things done a certain way. I agree that you get results. But I also think that you’ve got a temper, and it’s starting to get out of control.”
Ali opened her mouth and then closed it, then opened it again. “I can’t fight against that, can I?” she said, feeling pressure building up in her chest. “Anything I say makes it look like I have an anger problem, even if I don’t.”
Darren laid a hand on her leg. “Listen, this isn’t a bad thing. You’re keeping your job, you’re keeping your clients. All you have to do is go to some wellness retreat for a couple of weeks and get them to sign you off as having completed an anger management course. It’ll be nice. A bit of rest.”
“Nice? Nice?” She almost choked on the words.
“Fine,” Darren said, pulling his phone out of his pocket. “It won’t be nice. But you will be doing it because that’s what the company says you have to do to keep the job that you say you want.”
He started typing and Ali leaned over his shoulder. “What the hell are you doing?”
“Booking you in,” he said, hitting a random search result from the page he’d brought up. “Here you go, this one will do. Two weeks, certified, the office will pay for it.”
Before she could stop him, he was keying in her information and all she could do was watch, furious, as he signed her up for something that she neither wanted nor needed.
“I won’t go,” she hissed.
Darren shrugged. “Then you’ll need to pack up your desk today, please.”
She glared at him and he simply looked back, phone in hand. “Well, I won’t like it.”
He sighed. “No one’s asking you to, Al. Just go and get it done, please, so that we can all go back to work.”
She wanted to punch him but managed to restrain herself. See? She could control herself. She didn’t need anger management in the slightest.