25. charlee
TWENTY-FIVE
charlee
“Your father looks like he’s about to kill you,” Zoe said as we sat.
“Probably because he is about to kill me,” I whispered. Typically, I ran this meeting, my father attending only periodically. But he had some announcements to make, apparently, which left me off the hook.
He’d been about to grill me about Lucas when the current VP called him over. He wasn’t typically at these meetings, either, so I did wonder what was going on. I’d asked my father for the agenda yesterday, but he’d said, “I got this.” He told me not to worry about it, so I let it slide even though I had at least two items to address.
“Does it have anything to do with the fact that you’re wearing jeans?”
He was a stickler for a lot of things, but I was pretty sure me wearing jeans and the blazer I’d run to my office to grab weren’t high on his list. But seeing me get out of Lucas’s truck? That had been a stroke of bad luck, although Lucas was likely thrilled. The more I thought about it, the more upset I became at the idea of him “testing” me this way. He must be gloating right about now to have run into the one person he thought still had the power to pull us apart.
Which was ridiculous. I was a grown-ass woman.
“Sort of,” I whispered as everyone sat and settled in. There were probably twelve people around the table, all either managers or assistant managers of their respective properties. “I stayed at Lucas’s place last night.”
Zoe’s eyes bulged. “You did what? I thought he had a “no sex” stipulation to the whole warped deal you made with him.”
“He did.”
“So. . .”
“Details later. Suffice it is to say for now. . .” I exhaled hard. “Getting over him is going to be more difficult this time than last.”
“Getting over him?”
The meeting was going to start soon. “Yeah. I’ve been thinking about it, and you’re right. His whole proposal is. . . crap.”
“Agreed.”
“Plus, it already worked, so he should be happy,” I said, not bothering to keep the bitterness from my voice.
“What d’you mean?”
My father, sitting at the head of the table, looked exactly as he always had in this role. Polished. Prepared. Made to be a businessman and president of the largest resort property group on the Finger Lakes.
“I mean, my father was standing right there when Lucas dropped me off.”
“Oh boy.”
“Yeah. I woke up late and didn’t have time to go home.”
“Hence the jeans.”
“Precisely.”
“Good morning, folks,” my father said to the group. “How’s everyone doing on this fine Tuesday?”
I’d give him one thing—Dad knew how to work a crowd. He’d brought cinnamon donuts from Devine Coffee House, everyone’s favorite, with coffee and tea too. Murmurs of “good” and such made their way across the room as he jumped right into business.
“As you can see, I have a special guest here today for his big announcement. Cameron, you’ve got the stage.”
“Did you know he was going to announce Cameron’s leaving today?” Zoe asked.
“As a matter of fact, no. Dad didn’t give me an agenda. But when I saw him, I suspected.”
“Hmmm.”
“It’s been one hell of a run here at Lakeside Properties. I’ve worked with all of you in some capacity in my twenty-year stint here. But I’m not getting any younger, and neither are my grandchildren, so this is all she wrote for me. I’m sad to be leaving you”—he smiled—“but not sad to be leaving New York winters as I retire to Florida.”
A round of congratulations and some jealous “wish I was retiring to Florida with you” sentiments floated around the room.
“I’ll be with you all for one final winter before I say adios this spring,” Cameron finished.
“But we hope,” my father added, “to have his replacement in the next month or so.”
And then he looked at me.
Unabashedly. One hundred percent.
At. Me.
“If we’re lucky, our very own Charlee Donovan will take the reins as Lakeside’s next vice president.”
No, he did not.
I was going to kill him.
And judging by the death glares I got from at least two people probably hoping to step into Cameron’s role, there would be a lot of murder going around today.
I had to say something. Literally every person in the room was looking at me.
“Nothing definite yet,” I assured everyone. “We are mostly just really going to miss Cameron. He’s been like an uncle to me,” I said sincerely. “It won’t be the same without you around.”
Cameron had mediated for me and my dad more times than I could remember. Smoothed things over when I felt he was taking advantage of me. Stuck up for me so often that it was really only this morning, with Cameron’s announcement, that things seemed real.
“Thank you,” he mouthed more than said out loud. But Cameron’s expression changed as he watched me. Looking from me to my dad, he realized what had happened.
I’d been blindsided.
“In the meantime,” Cameron said, obviously deflecting once again. “We have some other announcements too. Lakeside Properties has decided to sell Ridge Point. Tom and Marsha have already been informed and both have accepted positions at other properties. . .”
Everyone’s attention turned to the topic of the resort we were selling. I tuned the rest out as I absentmindedly drew circles on a notepad that I never actually used. Why I took one to every meeting when I had my laptop, I’d never know. But it came in handy now as Zoe leaned over and wrote, “WTF?”
I answered, “Right?”
By the time the meeting was over, between getting myself worked up over Lucas and then my father’s bullshit, I was tapped.
“Charlee?” My father tried to pull me aside. I really didn’t want to argue right now.
“I have to get to another meeting.”
Following Zoe from the room, I thought for a second I’d be able to delay this particular confrontation.
“Charlee.”
Dammit.
Zoe turned back to me. I nodded for her to go ahead.
“I think it’s a bad idea to talk about this right now,” I stated as my father guided me toward the side of the lobby. As others filed out of the meeting room, some glanced our way, and neither of us wanted to make a scene.
But I was pissed.
Not happy.
Extremely irritated.
“You would have told me not to say anything,” he began.
“You think?”
He hated sarcasm. Said it was an unnecessary weapon, whatever that meant. “Listen,” he said, the beginnings of his own impatience starting to rear their head. “People are already starting to talk. If I didn’t put the idea out there, by the end of the month there would be more blood in the water than not.”
“You should have told me.”
“Maybe.”
Maybe. Which proved my point. He just didn’t get it. “Because you don’t trust me to make a decision.”
“Of course I do. Why do you think I’m asking you to be VP of the company, Charlee?”
That was a loaded question he didn’t really want me to answer. “Certainly not to make completely independent decisions,” I fired back, the kinder way to say what I was really thinking.
“Charlee. . .”
When he used that tone, it meant we were absolutely going to get into an argument. I was about to say as much when he suddenly seemed to remember something.
“Lucas Warner—”
“Oh no, from the frying pan into the fire.”
“I didn’t realize you two were dating.”
Time to prove Lucas wrong. Leaning into it—knowing we very well might not be by the end of the day once I called Lucas out on his bullshit plan, which I just couldn’t do—I went all in. “We are. Dating.”
For a second, I gloated. My father hardly reacted.
“He’s opening a tattoo parlor on Main Street,” he said, his tone neutral.
“He is.”
“Some people aren’t crazy about the idea.”
Time to really see what Dad was made of. I put out my wrist. “I think it’s pretty cool. An art form.”
He stared at it as if I were showing him that I’d contracted leprosy. “Is that a tattoo?”
In order to avoid all-out war, I did not answer sarcastically. “Lucas did it. He’s extremely talented.”
“Has your mother seen that yet?”
I pulled back my arm. “Dad, I’m not fifteen years old. I’m a grown woman, and no, Mom hasn’t seen it yet.”
“She hates tattoos,” he said.
I couldn’t help it. “Good thing it’s on my wrist and not hers.” If I was acting childish, it was because my father, especially when being all judge-y like this, tended to bring out the inner child in me.
“Charlee, please be careful with him. We don’t know anything about why he’s back.”
“Why he’s back? He lives here.”
“But hasn’t for ten years.”
Exasperated, I tried again. “Because he’s been in the military. Serving our country, Dad.”
“Which I get and am grateful for. But why come back now when he hardly ever visited? And he was in for ten years, which is an unusual term of service.”
Oh, here we go.
“I just don’t know if—”
I stopped him right there. “We aren’t going to do this again. I’m not a teenage girl who can be easily swayed.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” His voice was already low, so as not to be overheard. But that question was barely a whisper.
“You know what that means, Dad.”
“Hey, Marty, how’s it going?” My father waved to the manager of one of our newest properties. “Do you have a minute?”
Just like that, I was dismissed.
“We’ll talk about this later,” he said.
I managed not to respond with Can’t wait.
Instead, I made a beeline to my office. Closed the door behind me. Locked it. And sat behind my desk.
What in the actual hell was my life right now?
I’d thought I’d come such a long way since my first go-round with Lucas, but it seemed like he was probably right. My father had a thing against him, and there was nothing he should dislike since Dad knew nothing of Lucas’s dumb plan.
Everything else?
He was a man of honor who had served his country for ten years. An entrepreneur. A good guy, for all intents and purposes, despite a shitty childhood.
Then there was this job. One that would put me firmly on the path to financial freedom for life. I turned my wrist around, stared at the design there for I didn’t know how long.
And then put down the legal pad I’d been doodling on at the meeting. And started to draw. If someone had asked me to design a similar tattoo, what would it look like?
A design took shape, and for a little bit at least, my troubles seemed to fade away.