4 – AMBROSE
A knock sounds at my partially opened door as I’m nearing the end of a conference call. I look up and see Brynlee sticking her head around the door. Crooking a finger, I beckon her to enter and then hold up one finger to indicate that I’m winding up this call.
She sits on one of the wing chairs across from my desk, crossing one long leg over the other. She’s always been good with her poker face, but I can tell she’s seething about something.
In the last three weeks since she’s been working here, she’s made it her business to avoid me as much as possible, although our offices are next to each other. I’ve made it easy for that to happen since I’ve been traveling intermittently for almost two and a half weeks out of that time.
I’m accustomed to business travel as I’ve spent the last few years living out of my suitcase. However, I hoped this new role would afford me more time at home. More time to spend with my daughters and more time to focus on cleaning up my past with Brynlee.
When she has to have personal contact with me, it’s usually in front of other staff, and she maintains a professional poise and a polite and distant demeanor. She carefully references me as Mr. Charles, and I reciprocate with Ms. St. Clair.
I have no idea what has her up in arms right now, but whatever it is, it had to have pissed her off badly, especially for her to find herself in my office of her own accord and with no witnesses.
Narrowed nut-brown eyes flash my way, and those puckered lips and clenched jaw only make me remember what it feels like to have my cock buried in her throat. My eyes lower as I watch the rise and fall of her chest in anger. The swell of her breasts pushing up against the soft butter yellow of her satin blouse makes me recall nights when I laid my head on her breasts and she stroked my hair.
God, furious Brynlee is sexier than calm, cool, collected Bryn, and I want nothing more than to bend her ass over that chair and take her. My dick aches with unfulfilled need.
I swivel my chair away from her to focus on ending the call I’m on. It’s hard as hell to think about new projects and budgets when my brain is full of visions of filling Bryn’s plump ass with my rod, making my cock rigid.
“Sure. Having all that information gathered by the time we meet won't be a problem.”
I listen to the lawyers on the other end before replying, “I’ll see you next week.”
Ending the call, I swivel my chair around to face Bryn.
“How may I be of assistance to you?”
“Budget cuts, Ambrose?” she asks.
“Oh, we’re back to a first-name basis, Ms. St. Clair?”
“Get over yourself, Ambrose! What the fuck is this?” she snarls, throwing a folder onto my desk.
Although I recognize the red folder coded “Operation Jetsam,” I don’t show my recognition of it. I make a big show of scowling, opening the folder and reading through the materials. My finger slowly drags down the list of names on the third sheet and the numbers beside them.
“Quit bullshitting me, Ambrose!” she hisses. “You know exactly what’s in that folder. You’re the one who gave the order for it to happen and signed off on it. I want to know why I wasn’t consulted on this before it was given to Noble and Adriana to act on it? Why am I the one that has to hold the meeting telling a few hundred staff they’ll be laid off at Christmas?” she demands, referencing the CIO and the CHRO.
“I wasn’t aware that I had to consult with you on anything before giving orders,” I say, leaning back in my chair and crossing one ankle over my knee.
“I am the Chief Administrative Officer, and it is the expectation that we work in conjunction to accomplish the company's goals, creating strategic outlines to place us ahead of the competition and strengthen our bottom line. The key word in all of that, Mr. Charles, is conjunction. You weren’t an English major so I’ll enlighten you. In this instance, it means ‘together.’”
If this is the game that she wants to play, treating me like the enemy, I’m game. Only she’d better watch out because I doubt she’s aware of how vicious I can be, how determined I am to crush my opponent, or, in this instance, have my opponent underneath me.
I drop my foot to the floor and lean forward, clasping my fingers together on the desk. Furrowing my eyebrow, I reply, “That’s interesting, Ms. St. Clair. I recall several times over the last few weeks that we were supposed to work on items together. However, you proceeded without my assistance. As a matter of fact, you emailed or couriered information for me to sign. You’ve avoided phone calls and face-to-face meetings with excuses about other meetings as much as possible. So, let’s not discuss our understanding of working together.”
“Why are you being such an asshole about this?” she hisses.
“Why are you so up in arms about these budget cuts? Cuts that needed to happen and were going to happen whether I was in this role or not.”
“They’re not necessary.”
“In whose opinion?”
“Mine!”
“Doesn’t matter.”
Shaking her head, she says, “Ambrose! People are losing their jobs here. We don’t have to cut staff to make the budget. Hell, the company isn’t even sinking, and if we’re honest, looking at the bottom line, we both know there’s no need for budget cuts.”
“Which is why we’re making them now before we have to make them. This company has always been successful, Bryn, by staying ahead of the curve, and we’re not about to stop now.”
“We can make the twenty percent cuts without cutting staff, Ambrose,” she pleads.
“Where?”
“The premium materials we’re using. We don’t have to have—”
“The quality of materials our customers expect, ask for, and have come to rely on us for? Those cuts leverage us above other construction and design firms and keep us at the top of the game. Not following what we know works and is tried and true will have us on our asses in no time, Bryn!”
“What happened to creative destruction?”
“In the right areas. Stay in your lane,” I warn with a low rumble.
“You’re being thick-headed.”
“Call it what you want. You’re not seeing the endgame.”
“If you’re going to rule this company like a dictatorship, why do you need anyone else working for you? You may as well fire me, Adriana, Gabriel, Beth, and Noble while you’re at it. You don’t need anyone!”
“Contrary to what you’re saying, Ms. St. Clair, I have consulted with them. They gave their opinions, aligning with mine and the board’s opinions. If you’d kept our five-thirty meeting the Wednesday before last when I was in town, you would have been allowed to provide your input. Obviously, you had something more valuable to do with your time. I don’t see how your opinion should be considered after everyone else has agreed.”
“You’re being difficult, Ambrose! I told you I had a meeting at the start of the week and would leave the office at five-thirty. Why would you schedule something at that time?”
“Maybe I forgot,” I lie nonchalantly.
It was a last-minute emergency meeting called by the board of directors. The chair called me that morning and suggested the board wanted to meet to discuss finalizing the budget for the upcoming year. I’d tried to stall, knowing Brynlee would be closing on her home that afternoon, but Tina, our board chair, didn’t give a damn.
They didn’t see how we would make our goals for the next fiscal year on the track that we were on. They thought it best that we begin RIFS now rather than later. The staff that we were letting go were getting healthy severance packages.
Regardless of what she said, it didn’t matter her opinion on these budget cuts they were going through. Once the board spoke and the majority of the executive staff agreed, her vote didn’t count.
What I haven’t said to her and refuse to say because I don’t want to abandon the support I’ve given the other staff is that I don’t agree with the decision either. It’s a shitty time to let go of staff during the holidays, but I know they want to go into the new year without the baggage of excess salaries and with a clean budget.
I spent two days fighting and arguing with the board over those proposed cuts before we finally met with the executive team. I couldn’t believe the others sold out so easily, and while I may be the CEO, I don’t have the veto power to overthrow the board without two board members and two executive staff voting with me.
“You’re being an ass about this, Ambrose. If you can’t get past what happened between us, maybe we’ll have to have Adriana mediate, and if that doesn’t work, then we’ll need to bring it to the board’s attention.”
I stand up from my chair, pissed at her audacity to threaten me.
“Are you threatening me?”
She stands and mimics my position with her fingers gripping the edge of the other side of the desk from me.
“That’s not a threat, Ambrose. It’s a promise. I refuse to work in a hostile environment where you threaten me and wield your power over my head like some terrorist or dictator! I was hired to do a job because of my skills and expertise. You will not denigrate my role or my abilities to feed your pompous, egotistical display of power!”
“Do what you feel that you need to do, Bryn. I promise you...you won’t get far.”
She stands and narrows her eyes further at me, her nostrils slightly flaring. Our heavy breathing fills the room, giving an air of fallacy that we’d been making love. More like making war, though I’d give anything to do the former over the latter with her.
“If that’s what you think, then watch me. I want to save jobs and make this company profitable, Ambrose. Not feed your ego.”
I release the edge of the desk, crossing my arms over my chest. “Do what you feel is necessary.”
If I’m not mistaken, her eyes are wet. I don’t think I’ve ever seen Brynlee this angry, and I hate that it’s at my hands. It seems I’m always bringing these histrionics up in her.
***
“Hello, big brother,” Austin announces, barging into my office.
I watch as he closes the door and drops onto the couch opposite my desk. He props his legs over the armrest and lays his head opposite.
“Where have you been?” I grumble.
“Gracing my company with my presence. Where else?”
I lift my eyes from my computer again and snarl. “Is there something that I can help you with?”
He sits up and assesses me with a mischievous smirk. “Damn, they were right. Someone did piss in your soup.”
“No one’s pissed in my soup. It’s called working. And who the hell is gossiping about me?” I grumble.
Laughing, he says, “No one but the usual. Sandra and Lauren.”
Sandra Crowe, I inherited from John before his passing, and Lauren is the receptionist for the executive floor. I should fire them both.
“What are they saying?”
Shrugging, he presses his fingertips together and stares down at his shoes. “You know me...I’m not the type to gossip.”
I pull my fingers through my hair.
“You’re fucking impossible. Don’t you have work to do?”
“Well, since you insist,” he says, lying back on the couch again. “I heard that we have a new CAO and that she’s wickedly smart, fiercely funny, beautiful, and has a sexy body.”
“Sandra and Lauren said all that?”
Chuckling, he says, “Everything except about her body. I caught a glimpse of that myself. Why didn’t you tell me Brynlee was working for us now?”
A rush of protectiveness barrels through me like a kayak down a raging river.
“Didn’t know that I had to update you on all new staff.”
“When it’s someone from your past, you might.”
“Didn’t know that I needed to disclose that either. Did you mention to either of those loose lips Bryn and I used to date?”
“Nope. Figured I’d let them figure that can of worms out for themselves. I could tell, though, that they had no idea. It was never mentioned. What was mentioned was that the two of you keep butting heads, and everyone’s trying to figure out why. I put my fifty dollars in the pool.”
“What pool?” I rage.
“The one where there’s a bet going that you like her and that you’ll have her before the month is over, whereas some say that you can’t stand her, you’re threatened by her brains and wits, and she’ll be out on her ass by the end of the month. I wager she’ll have you crawling on your knees, begging her to take you back within a couple of months.”
“The fuck?” I belatedly pull my hands through my hair, realizing a headache is creeping on me.
“You asked. I delivered,” he says, shrugging his shoulders as he props his hands behind his head and wiggles his crossed feet at the ankles.
“Seriously, why did you come by here, Austin?”
“I haven’t seen my big brother or niece in weeks. You’ve been traveling a lot. Could it be that you’re trying to avoid her?”
“No one’s trying to avoid anyone. I just had a lot of business in Maine and Oregon. Don’t act like you’re not always used to me traveling.”
“Yeah, I am. I know you were looking forward to this new role where you wouldn’t travel as much. Delegation...you know, like your predecessor used to do.”
“I’d planned to be around more and help Bryn get acclimated only she seems to want nothing to do with me.”
“Damn, that’s harsh. Well, what did you expect? After all, you were her first love and cheated on her.”
“You and I both know it wasn’t like that,” I grumble.
“ We do, but does she?”
“She never allowed me to explain. Besides, I doubt that she’d believe me anyway.”
“It is a bit hard to believe,” Austin agrees.
I slant my gaze his way but remain quiet.
Austin sits up again. “Wait. Do you still have feelings for her?”
“No,” I lie too eagerly.
“Yes, you do,” he teases.
“No. I don’t. I just want to make amends, that’s all.”
“Yeah, tell that to someone else. You were crazy for that girl.”
“Key word is ‘were’.”
“Nah, you still are. I can tell how upset you’re getting just talking about her. Why don’t you tell her the truth?”
“She doesn’t want to hear it.”
“Not like she has a choice. She works for you now, boss man. Call a meeting and tell her the truth,” he says, standing up.
“Where are you going?”
“Like you said, I’ve got work to do. Just dropping by to see if it were true. Yeah, you’re love-struck, and I will win that pool. I was the only one betting for you, man,” Austin says, chuckling as he waltzes out of my office, closing the door behind him.