Chapter 3 Quinn
Quinn
Running late was one of the things I hated most in this world. If I wasn’t ten minutes early, then I was late.
I’d made a stop on the way to the office this morning because once a week I liked to treat myself to a fancy coffee. Caffeine was one of my main food groups and the fancy ones gave me a serious hit of dopamine.
But the coffee shop had been busy and they missed putting my order in, so after patiently waiting in line for ten minutes, I finally asked the barista about it.
She apologized and got to work on my drink.
But that had put me behind by fifteen minutes and I’d already left for work a little too late because I couldn’t stop hitting the snooze button this morning.
So now, here I was speed walking to the office while chugging my coffee. Not the best plan I’ll admit, but caffeine was necessary.
My phone beeped in my pocket and rather than wait the three minutes until I was in my office, I decided trying to juggle another thing in my hands was the way to go.
As I reached for my phone, my coffee holding arm rammed into someone’s chest. The cup got knocked to my left and splattered on the ground.
I dropped my shoulders and let out a sigh, looking at the nine-dollar puddle of my latte covering the sidewalk.
“Damn it.” I looked behind me at the man that I’d bumped into, but he had just kept walking. If he’d said an apology, I hadn’t heard it. At least I managed to avoid getting anything on myself.
I couldn’t decide if this was a good or bad omen for the rest of my day.
“Quinn!”
I closed my eyes and took a breath as my manager bellowed at me from his office. The whole company was on an internal messaging system but for some reason he preferred to yell at me, without even looking to see if I was at my desk.
The coffee had been the start of a shitty day and my boss yelling at me was something I should’ve expected given how things had been going. Plus, he was an egotistical prick.
I pushed away from my desk, James shooting me a sympathetic look. Managers and upper-level employees all had offices surrounding the bullpen on three walls, the rest of us lowly employees had desks in an open workspace.
There wasn’t any separation between you and the person next to you, which is how James and I had become friends.
He sat right next to me two years ago and our commiseration over work turned into after work drinks and occasionally seeing each other on the weekends and sending funny videos on social media.
I weaved my way past my coworkers to get to Richard’s open door.
Richard Walker had been with the company for ten years and had made his way up to a VP level role even though he only managed to get anything done because of people like me.
He took the credit for all our work, left most days before three, and took clients golfing at least once a week but never got any new business from any of the rounds he played.
I stepped into his office; he didn’t even look up from his cell phone.
He was forty-nine years old, greying blond hair that he combed to try and hide his bald spots.
It wasn’t working.
His blue shirt didn’t do much for his pale complexion, but he wore one every day tucked into his black pants. He tried to look expensive, but he wasn’t fooling anyone.
I didn’t know much about him aside from him having a wife and two kids, the man wasn’t one to share information with people he believed were beneath him, and in his eyes, I was definitely that.
“Mr. Walker?” I asked as I stood waiting for him to notice me. Even after three years he hadn’t asked to be called by his first name like most of the VPs at the company.
He was a dick.
He finally looked up at me. “Ah, Quinn.”
I gave him a tight smile and waited until he met my eyes.
Another thing Richard liked, to ogle women.
It was annoying but aside from looking too long he never said or did anything overt.
He was friends with one of the owners of the company and from what I’d heard, the one person who had ever commented on his wandering eye, was fired.
I was wearing a skirt that hit me mid-calf with a respectable slit on one side, a black blazer, black T-shirt tucked in and a pair of white runners, nothing crazy. Richard never cared, though.
I had left my red hair down and curled loosely and put minimal makeup on as always. We were a professional environment, but we were also in marketing, they expected a certain level of class to impress our clients. Which was fine with me, I loved getting dressed up.
“I need you to clear your schedule for today from eleven thirty until one thirty.”
I glanced at the clock on the wall to his right, it was already ten, he didn’t give me much notice. “I have the meeting with the new designers about the social media push for—”
“Move it to someone else,” Richard cut me off before I could finish. “Do you know who the Kane Group is?”
“One of our investors?”
Elevate had grown from the ground up and caught the interest of multiple investors early on. It was money well spent considering we were one of the top marketing firms in the country now. We worked with everything from chain businesses launching new locations to celebrities.
“Yes, well one of their board members, Warren, do you know him?” He didn’t wait for my answer. “He just called and his son is in town.” Something on his computer caught his attention and I lost him. I waited for a few moments while he was distracted.
“Okay…” I said when he kept on ignoring me.
He finally looked back at me, frowned and then his eyes lit up. It was like he forgot that I was there. Wonderful.
“You need to take him and a few of his business partners to lunch.”
I frowned at his serious expression. “I’m sorry. You want me to go to lunch with an investor?”
“It’s not an investor.” Annoyance was bleeding into his tone.
Like he thought I wasn’t listening. “It’s his son being pawned off on us.
I’ve got plans that I don’t want to change, he’s not worth my time.
You can smile and laugh, show him around the office and have a nice time on us.
Do you have another shirt?” he asked with a thoughtful expression on his face that made me want to barf.
I looked down at my modest T-shirt assuming he was asking for something with more cleavage. “Umm… no,” I said, trying to hide my disgust. Mostly because I didn’t want to get fired.
“Oh well…” He sighed with a disappointed shake of his head.
I kept a straight face even though I wanted to roll my eyes.
This was not the first time that I’d been tasked with something like this.
Although Richard had other females on the team, he always gave me the crap jobs and the things he decided that needed a ‘woman’s touch.
’ Like taking men out for lunch. Most of the time it was old men making inappropriate comments at me as I sat there watching the clock.
“Margret has already booked you a table at Ruby House and she will let you know when they arrive.” Richard smiled at me and winked. It made my skin crawl. “Make sure they have a good time.”
With no other information, I was dismissed with a wave of his hand. I made my way back to my desk, slumped in my chair and rubbed my temples.
“All good, West?” James asked as he leaned over the arm rest of his chair. He had started calling me by my last name his second day here, most of my coworkers did now.
“Just being used as eye candy again.” I sat up and moved my mouse to pull up my color-coded calendar.
I was overly organized. It scared some people, but I couldn’t think straight if everything wasn’t like this.
“Richard is a dick,” James huffed in my defense. He hated the guy as much as I did. I wasn’t sure anyone who reported to him actually liked him.
“He lives up to his name,” I muttered. “Any chance you can take my eleven o’clock?” At least if someone was going to take credit for my work, I was happy to let it be James. We weren’t competitive with each other, didn’t try and one-up each other like some people here did.
“Yeah, I can do it.”
I sent him the calendar invite along with the information he would need and dug back into my work. I was in the middle of drafting a client email to send to Richard for review when my office line started ringing.
I was surprised to see it was already eleven twenty-five, time had flown by and I was already an hour behind on my day.
Having this lunch was going to put me even more behind, I hadn’t planned on taking a lunch at all.
It looked like it was going to be another late night.
I sighed and ran a hand through my hair, giving myself a moment.
“Hello.” I pushed down the annoyance as I picked up the call. It wasn’t Margret’s fault that I was sacked with this lunch.
“Mr. Knight is here for you,” Margret said.
I’d totally forgotten to ask for names.
“How many am I having lunch with?”
Richard wouldn’t have likely remembered if I had asked him anyway. The executive assistant kept this office running.
“Yes, all three of them are ready for you,” she answered smoothly on the other end of the phone.
“You are a saint, I’ll make my way up.” This wasn’t the first time I’d been stuck with this, and she always had a sympathetic look as I walked out of the office with an old man looking at my ass.
I hung up and pushed back from my desk. Grabbing my purse from my drawer I decided to look on the bright side. At least I was going to get lunch on the company. It was a fancier place than I would eat on my own.
So what if I had to sit with privileged men who thought they owned the world?
At least since this one was someone’s son, he probably wouldn’t be as old as some of the other lunch companions I was forced to have.