Chapter 1
Chapter 1
- 3 MONTHS LATER -
“CASSIE!”
I looked up at my boss, mortified I’d been caught so obviously daydreaming, not only in front of him but the entire sales team. A bit of quick thinking was required. Stat!
“Sorry, Richard, my mind was on”—I glanced down at the file on the table in front of me—“the Nettco account.” I gave him my best professional-serious-sales-representative look, hoping he’d buy it.
Richard peered at me across the table through narrowed eyes. “Is there an issue with the customer, Cassie?”
“Ah, yes. And no,” I bumbled. What?! “What I mean is in some ways yes, and in other ways . . . no.” I smiled at him. Perhaps my smile was so dazzling he would ignore my frankly ridiculous answer? My right eye began to twitch.
Will Jordan, the company’s most successful sales rep, and possibly the most annoying man on the face of the earth, sniggered under his breath beside me. I shot him a don’t-mess-with-me stare, something I was forced to do with annoying regularity around him.
Richard slid his fingers down his notes until he found what he was looking for. “Ah, here we go. Nettco Electricity. Expected revenue of three hundred thousand per annum. You’ve said here the likelihood of success is ninety-nine percent.” He looked up again. “That’s confident in anyone’s books. If there’s a problem, we need to know about it, Cassie.”
I swallowed as my cheeks heated up. “It’s nothing I can’t handle, Richard.”
Can’t we just move on?
“Good, good. This is shaping up to be a tough quarter, and when you estimate success at almost one hundred percent, you set a certain expectation. Will?”
“Yes, Richard?” Will asked, smiling like the smarmy suck-up he was.
“Can you go through the deal with Cassie, see if you can add any value?”
Will’s grin was broad. “Absolutely, Richard. You can count on me.”
I closed my eyes. That was all I needed. Will Suck-Up Jordan helping me fix a fake problem with one of my accounts.
Turning to me, he added, “It will be my pleasure to help you with this problem, Cassie.”
My eyes almost popped out of their sockets, I rolled them so much. I pursed my lips as I looked at Will’s smug face. “Thank you so much,” I managed through gritted teeth. Wonderful . I had to spend more time with Will Jordan. And all because I had been caught daydreaming about what will most likely be the biggest date of my entire life tonight.
Talk about the punishment not fitting the crime.
Truth be told, I was a bit of a star at work. I’d been at AGD for four years and had worked my way up through the ranks to the heady heights of Senior Account Director through hard slog. Although I didn’t quite have Will’s sterling success rate, I didn’t trail too far behind. Richard telling Will to help me on an account in front of everyone felt like a slap in the face with a wet fish—not that I knew what that felt like, but I bet it would be pretty unpleasant. And smelly. Definitely smelly.
“That’s settled then,” Richard said, collecting his files. “Thanks, everyone. Now get out there and bring in those sales! The clock is ticking on the financial year.”
As the team filed out of the stuffy meeting room back to their respective desks, I felt a hand on my arm.
“I bet I know what you were really thinking about,” Marissa said under her breath, grinning at me. “And it had absolutely nothing to do with Nettco Electricity.”
A smile spread across my face as a group of construction workers fired up in my belly. “I can hardly believe I’m going out with him tonight.”
Marissa smiled back at me. “Cassie, I’m so happy for you. I have a really good feeling about this guy.”
“Me, too. I think he’s the one.”
She raised her eyebrows. “Well, after all the research and vetting you’ve done, he’d better be.”
I had met Parker Hamilton, my One Last First Date, almost five weeks ago. He was a good friend of Ryan, Marissa’s older brother, and he had to be as close to flawless as any guy could be. With his sandy blond hair, sea-green eyes, and square jaw, he was good-looking enough to make many a woman swoon. Plus, he was smart, he was sweet, and he was a doctor. You heard me: a doctor . All in all, he was easily Mr. Great-On-Paper—and I had high hopes he’d be Mr. Great-Everywhere-Else, too.
I mean, I was taking this whole One Last First Date thing very seriously. He had to be the right man for me. No question.
Since we’d met at Marissa’s apartment, I had found out absolutely everything I could about him. Ryan must have thought I was some kind of super-stalker, I asked him so many questions: from Parker’s shoe size to his family and everything that fell between. Which was a lot of stuff.
I got a little borderline obsessive over it all, I have to admit. Perhaps to the point of mental imbalance? Who can say? What I can say is Parker Hamilton passed with flying colors. And he needed to; tonight was The Big One. There were no second chances.
Parker and I had been texting, emailing, Facebooking, Tweeting . . . yeah, you get the general picture. But no actual date. Yet. He’d been asking me out since the day we met, and I had come up with excuse after excuse as to why I couldn’t go. My best work to date had been that my dog had had puppies, my dog’s puppies were sick, my dog’s puppies were better but now needed ’round the clock walking to help them regain their strength.
The fact I didn’t have a dog, let alone one with health-challenged offspring, was totally beside the point.
And, for me, this was so much more than the pact we had made on the beach back in summer. Since I was eleven years old, I’d had The Plan: get my career where I wanted it, married by twenty-eight, followed by baby number one (a boy called Christopher) by age thirty, baby number two (a girl called Charlotte, Lottie for short) by age thirty-two. That way, I’d be fifty when the youngest left school and would have my beautiful grandchildren (names to be determined) by my mid-sixties when I was still able to enjoy them and not laid up in some old people’s home on a respirator or something.
Problem being, at twenty-seven, I was at risk of falling behind schedule. And for an organized girl with a plan like me, that could spell potential disaster.
There was a lot riding on tonight.
We walked through the meeting room door, out into the corridor.
“One Last First Date,” Marissa said, as though echoing my thoughts.
I sucked in a breath of air. “I know. This is it, right?”
She grinned. “Sure is. You’re the first of us three to actually do this. Nervous?”
I shrugged. “A little.” A lot!
“You’ll be fine. He’s been more closely vetted by you than even the CIA could manage. If he had any skeletons in his closet, you’d have them jangling on a string by now.”
Paige slunk up to us. “Are you talking about what I think you’re talking about?” Her voice was quiet, conspiratorial, as she leaned in.
“Sure are,” Marissa confirmed. “Cassie got busted in our meeting for daydreaming about him.”
“I don’t blame you.” Paige crossed her arms, shaking her head. “Tonight is a really big deal. Huge. Bigger than huge.”
Those construction workers got out the jackhammers. “Not helping the nerves, Paige.”
She waved her hand at me. “Oh, you’ll be fine. This is meant to be. I just know it. What are you wearing?”
“Well, it’s dinner, so I thought that blue cocktail dress I wore to Marissa’s birthday bash last month. You know, the one with the full skirt?”
Paige clapped her hands together with glee. “Oh, gorgeous!”
“Great choice,” Marissa confirmed, always more sedate. “It sets the right tone: ‘this is a date, I’m serious about you.’ You need to look sexy but not cheap, classy but not boring. Striking the right balance is imperative.”
I bit my lip. Can one dress do all that ?
Oblivious to my nerves, Marissa continued, “It’s important you give him the right signals from the get-go. No friend zoning, no easy lay. Serious, long-term relationship for the rest of your lives.”
Just as I’m about to defend myself as never having been “easy” in my life, thank you very much, smart-aleck Will Jordan poked his uninvited nose into our little group.
“Is this a political meeting?” he questioned, taking in our trio, talking quietly amongst ourselves. “Are you going to become revolutionaries and overthrow the current regime?”
“Oh, ha ha!” I replied, my voice dripping with sarcasm. “We’re just . . . talking.”
“That’s a shame. I quite like the idea of being a revolutionary,” he sniffed, running his fingers through his wavy dark hair.
I scoffed. “I bet you fancy yourself as a Che Guevara type or something.”
Will looked off into the distance, a whimsical look on his face. “Yeah. I like that idea.”
I shook my head, rolling my eyes at my friends. Marissa smirked back at me as Paige blushed every shade of red known to humanity, which was what she did every time Will was around. Although, why she liked him was totally beyond me. Sure, he was good-looking in that obvious handsome kind of way, and half of the women at AGD thought he was the cat’s pajamas. But he was too confident, too much of a ladies’ man for my liking.
“So, if you’re not plotting to overturn AGD’s management, are you talking about this hot date Cassie’s going on tonight?” Will asked as though he was one of the girls.
I glared first at Marissa, and then at Paige. They were the only two who knew about my date tonight with Parker, so it had to be one of them who’d blabbed to Will. I noticed Paige began to fidget, avoiding eye contact with me. I raised my eyebrows at her in accusation.
Denial was the best approach. “No, Will. As a matter of fact, we were talking about work, if you have to know.” I turned to my friends. “Thank you for your input, Marissa. Paige, I’ll see you later.” When I roast you , I wanted to add.
Paige smiled weakly at me as my friends peeled off, leaving me alone in the corridor with Will.
“Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a job to get on with,” I said brusquely.
“Well, that makes a change today. Not sure you were quite ‘in the room,’ as they say, just now.” He had a cheeky grin on his face.
I wanted to slap it right off. “Very funny.”
“I thought we could talk about that account you’re having trouble with. Nettco Electricity, right?”
Dammit! “Ah, yes. But it’s fine, really. Thanks anyway.” I began to walk away.
“I’ve got a couple of minutes.” He walked over toward the empty conference room door and swung it open. “Take a seat. I’ll grab my laptop, and then I’m all yours.”
Great . That’s all I needed, the company’s best sales rep helping me solve a fake problem on my account. How do you get yourself into these scrapes, Cassie Dunhill?
I made myself comfortable in the conference room, doing some quick thinking. There may not have actually been a problem with Nettco, but it was true I hadn’t signed the deal with them yet. They kept asking for revision upon revision for the telecommunications solutions I’d presented to them, which kept delaying things. Although I would be the last person at the company to admit it, maybe I could do with some help.
He returned with his laptop and sat down next to me, a little closer than I preferred. I pushed my seat away a couple of inches. Not quite far enough, but it would do.
He raised his eyebrows at me, a look of amusement on his face. “Comfortable?”
“Yes, thank you.” I didn’t smile. I knew I was about to get a lecture from Mr. Top Salesman, and I wasn’t looking forward to it.
“So, tell me all about the issue.” He leaned back in his chair, watching me with interest.
I took him through what I had done to date, trying to ensure I sounded professional and in control of the situation. Which, of course, I was.
“Have you considered ‘The Sheldon’?” he asked once I’d finished.
I laughed. “No. What’s a Sheldon?”
“Not a Sheldon, ‘ The Sheldon.’ It’s a solution I came up with for one of my customers with similar needs to Nettco. It combined the connectivity they needed with the data, voice, and web presence they wanted. Here.” He opened his laptop and typed something in. Turning it around, he showed me a screen with all the key components of “The Sheldon.” He talked me through each element, the pricing, and how it all fitted together.
I didn’t like to admit it, but it looked good.
“Why did you call it that? I mean, it’s not exactly a technology name, is it?”
He shrugged. “I’m kind of a Big Bang fan. I’ve got ‘The Leonard’ and ‘The Raj,’ too, plus, I’m working on ‘The Howard’ with one of my customers right now.”
“Nerd.” I loved The Big Bang Theory , but I wasn’t going to tell Will Jordan that.
He laughed. “Sure, if you say so. Name-calling aside, do you think it could work for your customer?”
I looked through the solution elements and realized it could. In fact, “The Sheldon” may have just been the perfect fit for Nettco.
“I can’t make any promises, but I’ll present it to them at our next meeting.”
“Great!” His grin stretched from ear to ear.
Although it physically hurt me, I muttered, “Thanks.”
“Don’t mention it. Glad I could help, Dunny.”
I narrowed my eyes at him. I hated that nickname with a passion. Dunny, short for Dunhill, my last name. It could be considered cute if it wasn’t for the fact “dunny” is Australian slang for toilet, a fact I was absolutely certain Will Jordan was aware of.
“Tell me something. Why do guys feel the need to hand out nicknames to everyone? Girls don’t do it. I’m going to lunch today with Marissa and Paige. And guess what? I call them Marissa and Paige. It’s really quite straight forward.”
He chuckled. “Yeah, and pretty boring.”
“It’s not boring. It’s the way it should be. Men go out together and call each other Bucko and Mac and . . . Spotty Dick.”
“Spotty Dick?” He chuckled. “Isn’t that an English dessert? Definitely something no guy would want, that’s for sure.”
I brushed his comment away with my hand. “You know what I mean. Silly, stupid names.”
“They’re not stupid.” He shrugged. “It’s a guy thing, I guess.”
“I’m not a guy, in case you haven’t noticed. Believe me, I’d much rather be called Cassie or even Cassandra rather than ‘Dunny.’”
He raised his eyebrows at me. “Cassandra, huh? I bet you’re only called that when you’re really naughty.”
He was so immature. “Just call me Cassie.”
“Sure, Dunny. I mean, Cassie .” He grinned. Not satisfied with insulting me by naming me after a toilet, he added, “I bet this new guy you’re going on a date with has a nickname.”
I crossed my arms. “I bet he doesn’t.”
“Care to make it interesting?”
“All right. Five bucks says I’m right.”
“Ten.”
I glared at him. “Twenty.”
He extended his hand, and we shook on it. “How will I know if you’re telling me the truth? I mean, he could have a nickname and you could pretend he doesn’t.’”
I smirked. “You’ll just have to trust me.”
He looked at me for a long moment. “Actually, I know exactly when you’re lying.”
“No, you don’t.”
“Oh, yeah. It’s your eye. It twitches. Around about here.” He pointed to a spot under my right eye. “It’s cute.”
My hand went straight to my face. I pulled it away quickly, embarrassed. “No, it doesn’t.” Even my tone was lame, unconvincing.
His phone rang. He glanced at the screen. “Excuse me, Cassie . I have to take this.”
“Sure.” I stood up, ready to leave.
“Hey, babe. Where are you? Oh, you’re in Milan?” He put his hand over the receiver. “It’s my girlfriend, Samantha. She’s a model. I thought she was in Tokyo.”
I nodded at him. How very not interesting.
“No, this is a great time. How are you, babe?”
I pushed my way through the conference door and closed it firmly behind me. The last thing I wanted to hear was Will Jordan getting all smoochie on the phone with his international supermodel girlfriend.
I had a job to do. And a One Last First Date to prepare for.