Epilogue
Charlotte
Tip #30: Never feel guilty for turning your office walls into a shrine of adorable couple photos. It’s motivational decor.
I breezed into the finance department’s open office space, walking side by side with Isaac.
“Good morning, Boss!” Ravi intercepted us with his usual cheerful grin, holding out a cardboard tray of hot drinks. Today’s tie featured brightly colored jelly beans.
I took my hazelnut latte. “Hello, Ravi,” I said, still more than a little spooked by the title. “Thank you so much for the latte. Did your grandson’s fever break last night?”
“It did,” Ravi confirmed. “His mum is keeping him home for today, but I think the worst is over. Hello, Isaac!” Ravi winked mischievously at Isaac before offering him a black coffee.
“Thank you, Ravi,” Isaac said.
“Of course!” Ravi said. “We must keep our consultants cared for—especially since you’re teaching, Boss!”
“There you are, Charlotte,” Miguel called from where he waited outside of what once was Isaac’s office but was now mine. “Samuel wanted me to give you these documents to review—it’s the presentation he’s giving to the board this afternoon.” He strolled up to me, holding out a packet of papers. “Your minions offered to take them, but I’m not convinced they’re broken in quite yet.” He looked meaningfully at the two executive assistants I’d trained to replace me.
I laughed. “Scott and Jen are fantastic assistants. You can trust them in the future, but thanks for running the packet down here.” I took the papers from my coworker/longtime coconspirator.
“Of course. Hello, Isaac.” Miguel looked from me to Isaac.
Isaac sipped his black coffee. “Miguel.”
“You’re hanging around here again?” Miguel asked.
“Yep.”
Miguel grunted, then turned back to me. “Make sure you lose the accessory before coming to the board meeting.” He jerked his thumb at Isaac.
“Rude,” Isaac said.
“You’re the one sponging off the company as a paid-by-the-hour expensive consultant,” Miguel said.
In perhaps the most hilarious twist of irony, I’d been hired back at Warner Print… as the CFO.
I was only a suitable candidate because of all the arm twisting Isaac had done over our years together to get me to take extra credentials and degrees. Normally, as I had zero experience, I’d never get shunted to the top like this unless it was a serious case of nepotism, but a major motivator for the job offer from Warner Print—read: Samuel—was that Isaac agreed to come back as a consultant to teach me the ins and outs of the position and to ease my transition.
Isaac’s abrupt exit had caused a lot of turmoil in the office, so the board (and mostly Samuel) had been highly gratified to bring us back and stabilize the finance department.
“Thanks again, Miguel. I’ll see you at the board meeting?” I asked.
“You bet!” Miguel winked at me before he marched out the door, leaving me with my team.
Theo leaned back in his desk chair and propped his arms behind his head, making his biceps pop. “Hey, Boss, HR wanted me to update you that they’re on the last rounds of interviews for the new positions.”
While Isaac and I were still in Switzerland, the team had started putting together a list of all the positions we could add. Samuel (and HR, in this case) had been desperate to offer anything to lure me back. The team expansion was one of their efforts. (As was an abundance of gift baskets which they sent daily to my home for two weeks before I finally accepted the job.)
“Excellent,” I said. “Did they have a timeline for when they’d make any job offers?”
“Yep! They’ll reach out Thursday morning to the chosen candidates,” Theo reported.
Lola clapped her hands together in a praying gesture and closed her eyes. “Hallelujah, help is on the way!”
“I am also looking forward to a larger team,” chimed in Arisa as she slipped her chair out from her workstation and stood, joining Ravi, Isaac, and me. “But I must compliment you, sir, on your insistence on keeping standard operating procedures up to date. It will make all the onboarding ahead of us much easier.”
“Of course,” Isaac said. “It’s important to keep all data accurate and current. And I’ve told you before, Arisa, call me Isaac.”
Arisa looked pained. “I’m not sure I can do that, as it seems wrong to think of you as anything but a C-suite executive.”
“Yeah,” Theo agreed. “You’ll always be the Overlord to me—” He slapped his hand over his mouth and his eyeballs bulged as he gaped at Isaac in horror.
Ravi shook his head. “To think you held off until after he was gone.”
“I’m so sorry , sir.” Theo leaped out of his chair so fast he sent it careening across the office. “It was terribly unprofessional of me. I’m sorry. I’ll go report myself to HR now.”
“I’ve known since you first started using the nickname that you call me the Overlord,” Isaac dryly said. “You too, Lola.”
Lola held her hand to her heart. “Really? Did you overhear us?”
“No. But you forwarded me an email chain in which the two of you referred to me as the Ice Tyrant Overlord,” Isaac said.
Theo squinted at Isaac. “And you didn’t fire us?”
“My brother has called me much worse,” Isaac wryly said.
I watched the interaction, a warm glow growing in my chest and spreading through my body.
Quitting had been a fantastic choice for Isaac. Not only did he work normal hours now, but he was much more relaxed, the dark circles under his eyes from his forever-lack-of-sleep were gone, and he was more open.
Isaac tucked an arm around my waist, then kissed me on the cheek, grazing the corner of my lips. “Now that we’ve fraternized with the populace, shall we get started working, Charlotte?”
On second thought, maybe he was a little too open.
As one, every member of the team pointedly looked away from us, turning back to work.
“Lola, did you ever get those sales dates I asked for?” Ravi asked.
“I’m on it!” Lola said, busily ruffling papers.
“Arisa, what is that?” Theo pointed to a wooden contraption that almost looked like a mini saloon with wooden benches arranged in front of a plexiglass-covered counter.
“It’s a squirrel feeder,” Arisa said.
“You’re still on that?” Theo asked.
“Yes, and I will be until we find a suitable solution,” Arisa said.
I smiled as Isaac and I headed for my office.
“You know, if you act like this in front of Logan, he’s going to complain to HR,” I said.
Isaac scoffed. “As if they care.” He opened the office door for me, then stepped to the side so I could enter first.
The office— my office—had all the same furniture as when Isaac and I had worked together as CFO and executive assistant, but it had a very different vibe since I’d covered the walls in photographs.
The picture of Isaac and I kissing, with the famous Swiss mountain, the Matterhorn, towering behind us, had the most prominent placement on the wall, but I’d also hung up the canvas print Estelle had brought in my first day as CFO. The canvas was a picture of Isaac and I eating Chinese takeout during a late night at the office. We were adorably young, as it was from the few months we’d spent together in accounting before Isaac got his first management position and brought me with him.
Samuel had given me a print of Isaac and I dressed to the nines at Samuel and Natalie’s wedding, and the team had gifted me a framed photograph of Isaac and I that someone—Ravi, I’m pretty sure—had taken on one of the company-mandated bonding trips we’d gone on with the whole team. The snapshot was of me slung over Isaac’s back as he held me in a fireman-carry for a race. I was red-faced from the blood rushing to my head and laughing, while Isaac was smiling.
I smiled as I sat down at my desk, happy beyond words. “I need to go over this printout from Samuel, so you can make yourself comfortable. When I’m done, what are we going over today?”
Isaac sat on the edge of the desk and contemplatively tilted his head back. “I was actually going to make a business proposal today.”
“Oh really?”
“Yes.”
“What for?”
“It’s regarding the Warner Print company culture,” Isaac said.
“And what’s wrong with the company culture?” I asked, amused and curious to see where my boyfriend was going with this.
“Nothing,” Isaac said. “Except I think it could be improved regarding lowering the stress felt in the office.”
“And how do you propose doing that?”
“I was thinking Warner Print should move to four-day workweeks,” Isaac said. “That way employees can have three-day weekends to spend with their families, use for their hobbies, or go out on dates with their boyfriends.”
I laughed at Isaac’s obvious motivation, but in truth, his joke made me even happier.
Isaac really had changed—not just his priorities but his life—to show me just how much he loved me.
I’d never been happier.
“At risk of bringing Logan’s wrath down on us, I love you so much, Isaac.” I smiled up at him.
Isaac got off my desk so he could stand over my chair. Bracing his arms on the armrests, he leaned over me. “And I love you, Charlotte.”
This wasn’t just the life I’d dreamed of, it was the life I never thought I’d have.
This was love.