Olly
Keaton swallowed hard. I hadn’t seen anyone look this nervous since the day of the championship final when Rory Adler was asked to piss in a cup.
“Yes,” he said. He raised his chin. Defiant. As if he thought I was going to have a problem with it.
“Don’t fuck Ace,” I said.
He blinked. “Sorry?”
“Workplace romances are banned.” I paused. “And Ace is a louse. He won’t call you back.”
Keaton looked like he didn’t know whether he wanted to laugh or cry. “How do you know that?”
“Several lost secretaries,” I said. I shook my head in memory. I’d stopped letting Ace have his own secretary years ago. He was too much of a lawsuit risk.
Keaton laughed. He looked relieved but also something else. A little disappointed? That didn’t make sense to me.
Unless… he wanted to think Ace and I had fucked in the past?
People were strange.
Keaton Dunbar seemed to be even stranger.
“I wasn’t planning on dating Ace,” he said. That wasn’t quite my point. “But, warning taken. I won’t let him charm his way into my affections. That’s a promise.”
I nodded.
I looked back into my empty office. I should have gone back to work. I hesitated instead.
It was quiet in there. Empty. Just how I liked it.
But now…
It had a certain absence to it.
And there was a large empty space to the right side of the door.
“I’ve lost a lot of secretaries,” I said out loud.
I looked back in the silence to see Keaton watching me. “Oh?” he said. He seemed not to know what to do with the information.
“Maybe it’s time for a different approach.” I hesitated only a moment longer before moving to his desk. I leaned over and pressed a button on his phone. Quick dial. It rang twice and connected.
“You’ve reached the Harvey Agency, this is Fernando Quijada.”
“Fernando,” I replied. “I need you and two others to my office.”
“Yes, sir.” He hung up. I appreciated the direct and quick response to my orders. Far more valuable than any small talk.
“Stand up and collect your things,” I told Keaton. At the instantly stricken look on his face, I realized my mistake. “You’re not getting fired. Come inside.”
He followed me after a short moment. He was clutching a few items against his chest. A coat and a leather satchel with his coffee. He didn’t have much here yet. Good. So much less to move.
It took only a minute longer for Fernando to arrive.
I quickly began to direct them while Keaton watched on.
Within moments I had them in motion. I took the end of the desk with one of our former quarterbacks at the other end.
Fernando supported the middle. The other agent he’d brought carried the chair.
We moved the whole set-up fully inside my office. Computer and all. The others scrambled for plugs and cables. Once the chair was down I gestured for Keaton to sit back in it.
“Right,” I said. “The new policy for this office is: knock on the door before you enter. Keaton answers and lets you in. Or he doesn’t. Understood?”
The three agents in front of me nodded eagerly.
“Spread the word,” I told them. They correctly understood this as my dismissal and left promptly. The doors swung closed behind them.
I looked back at my handiwork. Keaton installed at his desk inside my office. I put my hands on my hips. Yes. This would do very nicely.
Now I could keep an eye on him at all times. No temptations from Ace. No gossip distracting me from my work in the corridor. And maybe I could keep a secretary for longer than a month.
Those were the only reasons.
I didn’t need any others.
Not even the desire to look at this strange man’s face whenever I wanted to.
“Right,” Keaton said. His tone was stunned.
“We can work closer this way,” I pointed out.
“Of course,” he said. He seemed to recover well. “So, is there anything you need me to do right now? I could organize some files, or send out some emails for you, or book some travel if you have something coming up, or…”
His phone rang.
“You can start with that,” I said. I began to make my way over to my desk.
“Hello, you’ve reached the Harvey Agency. Oliver Harvey’s desk. How may I direct your call?” Keaton answered. I smiled to myself. He was already answering the phones correctly. I’d had a few secretaries who took weeks to learn.
“Yes…? I see. Oh. Right, well – aha. I’ll just see if he’s available for you.”
I sat back in my chair and watched Keaton put the call on hold. He looked up. “It’s someone from West Morson Resort and Spa. They want to talk about the Ridley Angus sponsorship deal.”
I frowned. “Why?”
Keaton seemed to falter. “I didn’t exactly ask them why,” he said. “They just said they were really excited to talk about getting the contract signed. That’s… hasn’t it already been signed?”
“No. That was the deal Ace was supposed to turn down.” I tapped my pen against my desk for a second.
Something wasn’t right here. Ace was usually reliable.
That was how he got away with his off-kilter behavior.
He had never once failed to follow through on an order.
Something like this was too important for a slip-up. “Distract them.”
Keaton nodded. He lifted up the receiver again.
“Hello? Oh, good, you’re still there,” he said.
“Yes, absolutely, I’ll be putting you through in a moment.
It turns out that Mr. Harvey is actually still in another meeting.
It was supposed to be over by now, but you know how these things are – someone always talks too much.
And there are extra things on the agenda you didn’t expect.
And in the end, it could all have been an email, am I right? ”
I tuned out his voice as I dialed my own phone.
I kept my voice low so that I wouldn’t be overheard in the background of Keaton’s call.
I turned away to face the windows to shield my voice further.
There was already one unexpected downside of having him close by.
But one upside: we wouldn’t have been able to conspire like this if he was outside.
“Are you mad at me?” Ace asked the second he answered the phone.
“That depends. Did you call West Morson Resort last night?”
“Yeah, just like you asked me to. I told them we weren’t going ahead with the contract and gave them some shit about their lawyer, just like you said,” he replied. “They were a bit pissed off, but they got the message. Why?”
I flicked my pen end to end across my hand. Back and forth. Back and forth. Thinking.
“You spoke to the right person?”
“I called the number that came with the contract,” he said. “They answered the phone right. They said they were the person who dealt with it. As far as I know, it was all above board. Why? What’s going on? Are they saying I spoke to the wrong person or something?”
Something wasn’t right here.
I put the phone down on Ace without further explanation. I didn’t yet have one to give. I nodded across the office to Keaton. He seemed to be deep into a discussion of summer vacation options with the caller.
“Oh, good news – Mr. Harvey’s meeting just finished. I’ll transfer you now… Oh, yes, thank you, you too. Alright, then.” He concentrated as he pushed two buttons. The light on my own handset started to flash. I pressed the green button.
“Hello, this is Oliver Harvey,” I said.
“Ah, Mr. Harvey!” the caller replied. “So happy to speak with you. This is Leo Couvon from West Morson Resort and Spa. We’re thrilled that Ridley Angus is going to be partnering with us.
I’d like to get the ball rolling on the first commercial as soon as we’ve signed that contract, so if you could let me know when we’re likely to expect it… ?”
“Hold on,” I said. “Did you speak with Ace Park last night?”
“Yes!” Leo trilled. He sounded like he was getting the deal of his life. Not at all like someone trying to trick us. “I couldn’t believe it when he called. The whole office here was jumping for joy, let me tell you. There’s going to be some champagne for us after Mr. Angus visits!”
I frowned. This was getting stranger by the minute. “I don’t know what you’re trying to pull,” I said. “But we did not agree to your sponsorship. We spotted the trick your lawyers put into the wording.”
“What?” Leo sounded like he needed air. “But… that’s… that’s impossible!”
“I can assure you it is not. Maybe you need to ask some hard questions of your legal team.”
“No – I… it’s impossible because you were the ones who sent the contract to us!”
I waited a second for that to make sense. It didn’t. “What?”
“We were so thrilled to think that a star like Mr. Angus might have recognized us and asked personally for us to partner with him,” Leo went on.
“I was very happy to let your side handle everything, Mr. Harvey. I promise you. We only had our lawyers look over the copy you sent. We didn’t touch a word of it. ”
It began to dawn on me that West Morson weren’t trying to pull a trick on us.
Someone had pulled a trick on us both.
“I’m going to need to get back to you,” I told him. I hung up the phone while he was still uttering platitudes about not knowing how this misunderstanding had arisen.
“What’s going on?” Keaton asked right away. I could see he was perceptive. Even with only one side of the call, he knew something was up.
“Someone set us up,” I said. “Call Ace. Now.”
Keaton’s fingers pattered across the buttons on his desk phone. He looked up at the smallest motion of my hand. He hesitated.
“I need you to set up a call with Caleb Coleman for me,” I said. “After Ace arrives. Maybe an hour from now. Send an email to his secretary. You should have the information in your files.”
His eyes were round as saucers. “Caleb Coleman from the Coleman Group?”
“Set it up,” I repeated. I gestured to the phone. “Ace first.”
He nodded quickly and dialed.
I didn’t have time to answer his questions. The questions everyone inevitably had. The head of the Harvey Agency calling the head of the Coleman Group sounded like a scandal. Any press outlet out there would turn it into one.
But I needed Coleman’s help if we were going to get out of this with a shred of dignity intact.
Someone made the West Morson Resort think we wanted to work with them. Tricked both me and Ace. Turned us inside out in knots. We could have been trapped if we’d signed the contract. Now we were trapped because we’d already signed with someone else.
If we wanted to get out of this without a lawsuit…
I needed all the resources at my disposal.
I looked up at Keaton. Watched him end the call with Ace and spin to his monitor. He frowned slightly and caught his lower lip in his teeth as he searched for the contact information. His fingers rattled over the keyboard to send the email. The glow of the monitor gave a faint light to his face.
I leaned back in my chair. The calm before the storm. From here I could take in my office. The throne room of my castle. Filled with my possessions.
And Keaton Dunbar looked right in his element amongst them.
But somewhere outside the castle walls was a dragon who wanted to burn all of it to the ground.