Chapter 14
FOURTEEN
HARRISON
Maybe Aaron was right about firing this woman after all…
I walked into headquarters the following morning with Andrea still on my mind, with the taste of her lips still leaving me wanting more.
I’d spent the past couple of hours mentally revisiting our kiss in the cafe—hating that I had to stop before things went any further. And now I was behind on tasks because of her.
Shit.
“Morning.” I greeted the guard at the door.
“Welcome back, Mr. Cross,” he said. “Did you have a good night’s sleep?”
“You know better than to ask me that, Eric. I haven’t slept in all the years you’ve been at my companies.”
“I’m holding out hope that it’ll change one day.”
“Don’t bet on it.” I stood next to him. “Tell me what you’ve been hearing from the employees.”
“They hate you.”
That’s obvious. “Anything useful?”
“Marketing department is working on a joint resignation letter,” he said. “They’re going to post it in The New York Times at the end of the month.”
So, they think…
“The lower-level employees are icing out Miss Stone,” he continued, “and they’re planning to submit a bunch of complaints to HR ahead of her official re-interview with you.”
“Why would they do something like that?”
“I’ll keep listening.” He shrugged. “The executives seem to still like her, though. She still slips away to help them with things whenever she can.”
“So she’s been finding ways to steal time from me by doing other things…”
“No.” He shot me a look. “She’s being helpful, sir.”
“I see… Based on everything you’ve heard, would letting her go in a couple of weeks be a terrible idea?”
He didn’t answer.
“Eric?”
“It would be an utterly terrible idea, sir,” he said. “The employees’ conflicted feelings aside, they all still revere her very much. She’s still their boss—for some odd reason, in their eyes.”
“The boss more so than me?”
He said nothing again.
“Fine, then,” I said. “Keep listening.”
I went inside and took the elevator down to Human Resources. Since no one was due to be there for a few hours, I pulled the files for the employees I was due to interview today.
Taking them up to my office, I laid them out on my desk and pulled out Andrea’s file for the umpteenth time.
Unlike her coworkers, her file had enough pages to fill a book, and she never scored less than “10/10” during performance reviews. And recently, no matter who I interviewed, whenever I asked, “Who do you consider to be the best employee here?” Andrea’s name was always said.
Every. Single. Time.
What do they know that I don’t?