6. Ivy
6
IVY
I n the history of Mondays, this had to be the Mondayest Monday of them all. It wasn’t bad enough I had a huge meeting scheduled for nine o’clock on the dot or that my stomach was in knots at the idea of Lucian being there with me, hovering, reminding me simply by breathing how good we were together under different circumstances.
My mother had to fall while insisting on getting out of bed on her own. She couldn’t bother waiting for one of the aides to assist her, God forbid. Now she was having x-rays taken, and I could only cross my fingers and pray she hadn’t broken anything.
“Please, keep me posted on her progress,” I urged the nurse who I’d called for an update before heading into work, where I might not be so easy to reach right away.
I had woken up to multiple messages from the nurses’ station asking me to call them back. Usually, they didn’t call so many times in a row, and if there wasn’t a problem, they would make a point of saying that so nobody freaked out.
When I realized they hadn’t, my blood pressure immediately skyrocketed, and I had been on the phone most of the morning by the time I rushed into the spacious lobby, praying I could pull it together in time for the meeting to start in a few minutes. Dammit, I wanted to be early today too.
There hadn’t been enough time to be careful with my hair and makeup as I’d wanted to. I looked professional but not well put together. My reflection in the elevator’s mirrored doors revealed a wide-eyed woman whose hair looked limp, whose normally fair skin was flushed like a tomato. I ran my fingers through my light blonde locks before searching for a clip in my bag, cursing the cruelty of fate. Today of all days.
For some reason, presenting a solid image meant everything today. Who was I kidding? I knew exactly why, and his name was Lucian Diamond. It was bad enough that I’d thought about him all weekend after he pinned me against the desk Friday night. He always found a way to throw me off with his little quips and reminders of how we first met. I couldn’t let him think it was that easy to knock me off balance, even if it totally was.
The list of things I wanted to do before the meeting started was running through my head as I quickstepped my way out of the elevator and down the hall. That list came to a stop when I approached the conference room and found it already full of people. I immediately recognized them as members of my team. Considering they were already chatting and reading something off the screen against the far wall, I could only conclude they started without me. Were we a team, after all?
Instead of going straight to my desk as I had planned, I opened the conference room door and did everything I could not to demand answers. “Hi,” I offered, looking around the room. “Did I miss something? I thought we were supposed to get together at nine.”
Lucian sat at the head of the table, every inch the imposing businessman in his charcoal suit and crisp white shirt. At any other time, I might have considered eating him up with a spoon, looking as delicious as he did.
This was not any other time. I would gladly have used that spoon to carve his eyeballs from his skull because the bastard had obviously sabotaged me. Was he that much of a bitch? Getting back at me for turning him down on Friday night?
“I’m so sorry. Did you not get the memo?” he asked. The son of a bitch had the nerve to tip his head to the side and frown like he was genuinely sorry, which something told me he wasn’t. Maybe it was the way he was trying not to grin while everybody else had their eyes on me. “We had to roll the meeting back half an hour thanks to a conflict with my schedule. Last-minute drama,” he added, shrugging like it was just one of those things and hadn’t deliberately changed the time without telling me.
Even though my insides were boiling, I couldn’t show it. And he knew that. “These things happen,” I said with a sigh as I rounded the table, coming to a stop beside Lucian’s chair. There was no empty chair for me. Another power play. That was all he had to go on.
Tricks and games.
“Here.” Brad, always a gentleman, got up and gave me his chair. I set it down next to Lucian’s at the head of the table while Brad grabbed a chair from the corner for himself. From the corner of my eye, I caught a glimpse of the way Lucian glared at him.
Did he know he was doing it? Did he know everybody could see?
“So,” I said with a smile, looking around the table. “What did I miss?”
Laney cleared her throat, and the guilty look she wore got me thinking she felt bad for the way things were going. Granted, it’s not like she could have made a difference by texting me. I wouldn’t have gotten here any sooner. No doubt she figured I’d gotten the same alert she had and knew about the change in schedule. “We were discussing various markets and where we should focus on strengthening our presence.”
“I see.” I grabbed a copy of the meeting agenda left on the table and skimmed it quickly. Somebody was a busy boy this weekend. As much as it irked me to know how important it was to him to make me look like an asshole, I did get a little rush of satisfaction when I imagined him burning the midnight oil, trying to make himself seem like a legitimate leader.
Looking away from the notes, I asked him, “And you managed to handle everything in my absence?”
The blank shock that passed over his face quickly vanished, replaced by something harder. “We proceeded with the meeting as planned.”
“But this must be the first meeting you’ve ever led,” I offered with the wide, insincere smile that so clearly set his teeth on edge. It was wrong of me to get such a charge from pissing him off, but it felt too good. So much so, I couldn’t stop, especially considering he tried to sabotage me this morning. “That’s a big deal. I remember the first meeting I ever had to take charge of.”
Before he could respond, I turned my attention to the rest of the room. “Thank you so much for your patience, and I’m sorry for the miscommunication. Let’s pick up where we left off. I would like to hear more about these underserved markets. I’ve already identified a couple on my own, and it would be nice to see what others have identified.”
“Let me bring you up to speed here. We already know that the Midwest and Southwest are the two we’re most interested in expanding deeper into, ideally through our digital platform.” Lucian tapped his pen against his copy of the agenda, quirking an eyebrow at me. “Do you approve?”
Games.
“Of course,” I insisted. If I kept smiling like this, my face would cramp up. “I was thinking along exactly those lines. I pieced together a short presentation, in fact.”
“I’m sure we would all love to see it. Maybe you can send it to us to view at our desks later on.” He made a big deal of checking his watch before grimacing. “I’m afraid we don’t have enough time to set things up now. This was only slated to be a forty-five-minute meeting, and there are still other items we need to address on the agenda.”
I was pretty sure I heard Laney sucking in a breath through her teeth. Good. I wasn’t the only one who saw straight through his bullshit. It was obvious he was doing everything he could to push me aside. “I would be happy to email it to the team,” I offered.
I was proud of myself for getting through this without punching him straight in the face. Why was he doing it? Was he so insecure? From where I was sitting, he had absolutely no reason to be. He was the crown prince, the only child of Connor Diamond. Fate had smiled on him before he was born. If I were anywhere near as lucky as him, I would’ve spent a good part of every day thanking my lucky stars instead of coming up with ways to squeeze everybody else out.
“I remember some of the ideas you were putting together back at Jones.” Laney was doing her best to help me pull things together, and I wished I knew how to feel about it. She was a good and supportive friend, but I didn’t need Lucian thinking I couldn’t fight my own battles. It wasn’t like I could come out and say that kind of thing in front of everybody, obviously, meaning I could only bite my tongue.
“Didn’t you already have a plan put together for the Midwest market?” Brad asked.
“Really?” Lucian dragged out the word, swiveling my way. “Maybe that’s something you should share with everybody too. I know I would love to hear about it. Unless it was something you were working on privately.”
More Games.
This was not a conversation we needed to have in front of the rest of the team. There were more than a few soft coughs, the sound of a few people shifting their weight in their chairs.
“These are only ideas I was working on before I had the pleasure of coming to work here.” And what a pleasure it had been so far. If I made it through the rest of this joke of a meeting without murdering him, I would deserve an award.
To think, I had such high hopes. I should’ve known better. Feeling sorry for myself wasn’t something I considered a habit, but I was starting to understand how some people made it their life’s mission. All I wanted to do by the time everybody started getting their things together was fold my arms on the table and bury my face in them.
Brad lingered on the other side of the room, looking at me rather than leaving with everybody else. I offered a brief smile and shook my head just enough for him to see and understand.
“Did you need something?” Lucian hadn’t gotten his things together, no surprise, and now, point-blank leveled Brad with a cold stare. It wasn’t enough for him to make me look like an asshole in front of everybody. He had to stick around so he could gloat in private. While I didn’t want to give him the satisfaction, I had more than a few things I needed to get off my chest.
Brad scowled but left the room, letting the door swing shut behind him. That was as long as it took for me to shove my chair back from the table with a grunt and jump to my feet. “What the hell was that about?” I whispered fiercely, aware of the people sitting only a few yards from where I stood.
The man had the art of looking innocent down pat. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Poison,” he had the nerve to say.
“Bullshit. You changed the time without telling me.” Pulling out my phone, I opened my calendar. “Look. No update, no reminder, nothing. You deliberately kept me out of it for thirty minutes, and for what? To prove you’re a big man?”
“I really don’t know what you’re talking about.” He closed his MacBook and even had the nerve to sigh as he stood. “I’m good at a lot of things, as you know, but I don’t consider myself a tech genius, so I have no idea why you didn’t get an alert about the new meeting time. I look forward to seeing your presentation or whatever it was you put together.” If he’d made air quotes around the word presentation, he couldn’t have been more condescending.
There wasn’t much I hated more than being patronized. Something about it made me see red and always had. My chest painfully tightened as I spat, “You can’t handle me being here. Just admit it already.”
He clenched his infuriatingly sharp jaw and narrowed his unfathomably dark eyes. Of all times for me to be this aware of how good he looked. “Yes, that’s right,” he muttered, scoffing. “Keep imagining I care that much about you.”
“It’s the truth. You can’t handle knowing somebody might know more than you do about anything. And what’s worse,” I added, even as my good sense told me to stop. “You can’t handle the idea of there being competition for your position. Welcome to the real world, buddy. That’s how it is for everybody.”
He had the nerve to lift his chin like he was proud. “I’m not everybody.”
“Thank God for that because I don’t know how the world would keep spinning if everybody was like you.” Boy, was this going off the rails. He had my blood up. I couldn’t let him get away with the things he was saying and doing. Somebody had to hold this brat accountable.
“I’m sure it wouldn’t be able to keep spinning without people like you.” Sneering, he shook his head. “Willing to do anything to get an edge on the competition, even if it means fucking the boss.”
At first, I didn’t understand what he meant. When he said boss , my mind immediately went to Connor, who I, of course, hadn’t slept with. Then I remembered being in Connor’s office last week and how suspicious Lucian had looked. Is that what he thinks happened before he came in?
It only took a second for my brain to catch up. He was talking about himself. He was accusing me of sleeping with him to get this job and keep it secure. Just when I thought he had scraped the bottom of the barrel, he found a way to go lower.
I didn’t know whether to laugh myself sick or cry over how pathetic he was. “You are unbelievable,” I said, shaking my head. “You honestly thought that’s what this was all about? Like I’m so damn desperate, I would sleep with you to keep my job secure? What is it like living in your head?”
“Sure, give me all the stupid bullshit you want,” he insisted. “Don’t act like you’re above that kind of thing. You would be the only person who refused to use what they had going for them.”
“That’s usually the case if the person in question has nothing else going for them but what they can do in bed.” I could not believe we were having this discussion right here in the office, no less. But at least I now had a clue where his animosity was coming from. Here I was, figuring it all had to do with stepping on his toes in front of his dad. But really, he felt used. Poor little thing. “I have a brain going for me too. Or do you think I fucked my way to where I was at Jones Media?”
I knew it was a mistake before his head snapped back. The last syllable was barely out of my mouth, and I knew I shouldn’t have said it. Not here, in the conference room, where we were supposed to at least pretend to be professional.
This is it. You just doomed yourself, your mom, and your whole future.
When his eyes went narrow, I realized I was in a cage with a tiger staring me down. I couldn’t exactly run screaming from the conference room, so there was nothing to do but stand straight and tall under his heavy stare. “Let’s get one thing straight, Poison,” he growled out. “We had fun, but that doesn’t give you the right to talk to me the way you do. I am your superior.”
“What you are is out of your mind. I actually feel sorry for you right now.” I finished getting my stuff together, shaking with rage. More than that. It was the bitter sense of being deliberately misunderstood. Underestimated. No matter what I said, he was going to believe exactly what he wanted because, in his head, that was the way things made sense.
Still, I couldn’t help setting him straight on something, turning toward him with my hand on the doorknob. “Let’s get one thing straight. You can’t live in New York without knowing the name Diamond. I recognized it during the wedding.”
“I knew it,” he gritted out.
“ But, ” I bit out. “You weren’t working here at that time, genius. The press release announcing your appointment as vice president didn’t come out for another week, remember? And the only reason I was paying attention to that was we had just heard the buyout was definitely going through. I didn’t know you had anything to do with it at the wedding, and I sure as hell didn’t know I’d end up holding the hand of a manchild three years younger than me while he got his feet wet in the real world.”
I was trembling but somehow managed to hold myself together as I lifted my chin and took in his slightly open mouth and wide eyes. He wasn’t expecting that. “Now that I’ve wasted more than enough time explaining myself to you,” I concluded as I pulled the door open. “I’m going to get some actual work done, and not because I want to make somebody else look bad. I actually care about the success of this division.”
I’d gotten the last word, which was a victory in and of itself. Why didn’t I feel victorious as I hurried to my desk, blinded by the tears I frantically tried to blink back? I ended up ducking into the ladies’ room, instead, hiding from the world in the stall at the far end of the row and crying with one hand clamped over my mouth to muffle the sound.
Everything I had worked for was slipping through my fingers, no matter how hard I tried to hold on. And there was nothing I could do but sit back and let it happen.
Was that true, though?
Once the first wave of emotion passed, I blew my nose and dabbed my eyes. What was I thinking? I wasn’t a victim. Okay, so I needed a moment to collect myself. There was no crime in that. Better to weep in a bathroom stall than unleash hell on somebody who was supposed to be my boss. Some little pissant with a trust fund who couldn’t for the life of him handle anybody knowing more than he did.
Still, there were ways for me to come out on top. All at once, I went from quietly weeping to smiling when I imagined how it would get under his skin. My body hummed with renewed energy by the time I left the stall to splash my face and freshen up my makeup.
It was almost a shame to find Lucian away from his desk when I reached mine. Maybe he did have another meeting, or maybe he knew better than to show his face after saying he did. Either way, it didn’t matter.
I sat at my desk, opened my MacBook, and typed out an email to the digital team.
To: Digital Team – All
CC: Connor Diamond
Re: Meeting Outcomes
Thank you all so much for such a successful first meeting. As we discussed, I have attached a rundown of the underserved markets where our influence could be asserted, along with plans for how to move forward. I would love to circle back on this as soon as possible, and I’m more than happy to answer any questions you might have.
Thank you again, everyone.
Kind Regards,
Ivy St. James
After attaching the file I was referring to, I made one last tweak. I cc’d Connor. Now, it looked like I had run the meeting and was following up with valuable information that I naturally wanted to share with the company’s CEO.
And Lucian would look like a nobody, someone who sat back and let the expert do all the talking.
He wanted to act like a nasty little shit? I could play that game too. At this rate, I had no choice. Not with Mom in such a bad condition, needing more care all the time.
Though I couldn’t tell myself I was doing it all for her. Not when a rush of pure satisfaction washed over me after I hit send on the email and imagined what Lucian’s reaction would be.