Worst Week Ever (A Long Road to Love) (3 page)

Trent slipped into the back seat,
still holding Carrie in his arms. He jostled her a bit, but she just muttered
something about cash flow and resumed her sleep. Trent held his hand up to
David in a gesture of goodbye and thanks right before his driver zoomed them
away.

Closing his eyes, Trent enjoyed the
pleasure of Carrie’s body pressed against his.

His eyes popped open in horror.
Oh
God, David’s right. I am besotted.

What the hell was he thinking?

Statistically, his relationships never
lasted more than a month and they always ended badly. A billionaire who
couldn’t make a relationship last more than a month. How horrible did he have
to be to chase off women who had a billion reasons to stick it out?

 If he became involved with his most
valuable employee, in a month, she’d dump him and quit. Then his business would
collapse into chaos and he’d finally prove his father right. The old man
constantly claimed Trent was a worthless human being and the world’s worst
businessman. Once his father died, his prophecy proved true. No matter what
Trent did, the business fell deeper in debt.

And then Carrie arrived and single
handedly saved his company. She never gave up. If one solution failed, she’d
find another way to resolve the problem.

He smiled at his sleeping EA. If
anyone could make him into a better man, it would be her. Carrie could solve
any problem, had the patience of a saint, and the determination of a pitbull. Best
of all, she loved a challenge.

Still groggy
from sleep, Carrie sat up. She’d just had the craziest dreams about typhoons,
and being arrested at the airport. She focused on the silk damask curtains and
what looked to be a real crystal chandelier hanging from the vaulted dome
ceiling. An elegant Victorian style desk caught her eye from the left side of
the massive room.

Where am I?

A possible
answer came to her as she spotted the melted watch painting on the wall. It
looked like the Dali she had helped Trent insure last year. With all the fake
Dali’s on the market, she’d spent countless hours proving provenance to the
insurer’s satisfaction.

She threw back
the silk sheets, intending to move closer for a better look, but lost focus
when she realized she’d slept in her gray linen travel pantsuit, now wrinkled
beyond redemption.

Well the good
news was she escaped the typhoon, made it back to New Jersey, and evidently
didn’t get arrested for Trent’s one-way ticket fiasco. Bad news: Instead of
taking her to her home, Trent has taken her to his estate.

The door burst
open and Trent strode in, followed by a man dressed in a black suit, carrying a
tray of food. “Good, you’re finally awake. Saves me from having to throw cold
water on you.”

Trent sat on
her bed as he pointed to the desk. “Put her breakfast there.”

“On the one of
a kind, heirloom desk, which has been in your family since 1845?” his butler
asked.

“Yes.”

“No!” Carrie
yelled over him. “Let’s put it on the bed stand.” She pushed the Tiffany lamp
further back to make room.

“Thank you,
miss,” the butler said as he placed the silver tray on the stand and then
stepped back. “Will there be anything else?”

“No,” her
grumpy boss snapped. The moment the butler stepped into the hall, Trent slammed
the door closed and glared at Carrie. “Do not countermand my orders to the
staff. They’re impossible enough already.”

She chuckled.
“I’m sure they say the same about you.” The tantalizing aroma of her food caught
her attention. Unable to resist, she peeked beneath the silver lid.

Trent sat a
foot away from her on the bed and sniffed at her plate. “I told the cook she’d
be fired if you didn’t eat it.”

“If you
actually said that, you should go downstairs and apologize. You appear to have
a wonderful cook and should value her.”

He shrugged.
“She’s okay. Not as good as the last one though.”

Unwrapping her
fork from a swaddling of fine linen, Carrie dug into the egg-white omelet. Her
eyes rolled in ecstasy. “God, this is fabulous!”

“Really?” He
moved closer and stole her fork so he could try some.

She expected
him to smile at first taste. Instead, he became annoyed. “Come on! Your taste
buds can’t be
that
jaded.”

His eyes
narrowed. “It’s very good. Far better than the crap she feeds me.”

Carrie shook
her head and swiped the fork. If the cook prepared Trent mediocre meals, she
understood why. During her first six months at Lancaster Chairs, Trent had threatened
her with unemployment on a daily basis and she’d hated it. She nearly grew to
hate him, would have, except his remarks always lacked sincerity, as if he’d
learned them rote.

Once she’d
consumed a quarter of the omelet, she offered him the fork. He smiled and shook
his head. “You finish it. The cook will serve me my gruel later. Probably spit
in it for good measure.”

“Probably.
You did just threaten to fire her.” She held the fork out to him. “Let’s share
the rest.”

After a
moment’s hesitation, he took the utensil from her. “Are you saying I shouldn’t
fire people who don’t do a good job?”

 Carrie shook
her head and smiled. “You don’t fire people. You just threaten their jobs on a
daily basis. It only makes the good ones find new jobs and the bad ones spend
their time thinking of petty revenges.”

“Nonsense. You’re
the best I have, and you’ve never left.”

“True, but during
the first six months, I considered it frequently.”

His eyes
rounded and filled with pain as he set down the fork. “How frequently?”

Carrie hated
hurting his feelings, but Trent needed to hear the truth. “Every time you
threatened to fire me if I didn’t make your due date.”

“But those
deadlines were important.”

“I know. Which
is why I always tried my hardest to meet them. Threats of dismissal didn’t make
me work harder; it only made me want to quit.”

His gaze
wandered to the Dali painting and she suspected he’d stopped listening, but she
kept talking, on the off chance he might actually hear her.
Hope springs
eternal.

“When you
stopped threatening me with unemployment, I finally could enjoy my job.”

He refocused
on her. “I stopped because I knew you’d get your work done. Are you saying I
should just assume people will do their jobs? In my experience, that’s not a
good assumption to make. Most people are natural born slackers.” His face
softened. “You’re a rarity.”

Given Trent’s
current employees’ work ethics, Carrie could understand why he’d think the
world held nothing but slackers. She’d never seen such a negative, unhelpful
group as her fellow workers. His claim they’d become worse during her absence
stunned her. She couldn’t imagine how they could be less cooperative, but
during her time in Taiwan, they must’ve sunk to new lows if Trent felt
compelled to seek her out the moment she stepped off the plane.

“You’ve had a
hard month, I gather?”

He rubbed his
face with his hands. “You’ve no idea.”

Setting the
food aside, she patted him on his back.

“Maybe it’s
time for us to do some strategic firing. Hire new employees with good attitudes,
who hold no long-term resentments toward you. I’ll even do the preliminary
interviews and weed out all natural born slackers, if you want.”

“Yes, I want!”
He smiled as if she’d taken a great weight off his shoulders.

“But in
return, you must promise you won’t threaten to fire them every time you have a
tough deadline. You’ll need to treat the new employees as you do me. Then
they’ll not only stay on, but they’ll work their hardest.”

Trent’s
willingness to make major changes to his father’s business pleased her. He
hadn’t changed the topic or left the room—his usual response to conversations
he didn’t enjoy. Surely, this had to be a sign of progress. “Then, if I have to
leave on a trip, you’ll have plenty of competent, hardworking people to support
you.”

“Excellent!”
He popped up and paced the room with barely contained enthusiasm. “I’ll fire
the entire staff today and start over.”

“No!” She
jumped up and stopped his pacing by standing in his way.

He pulled up
and frowned. “Why not?”

“Because many
of those people actually know how to do their job and we need their knowledge
retained in the company. You’ve just pissed them off so they work on perpetual
slow mode. Let’s start by removing the dedicated, hardcore slackers.”

His frowned
disappeared and a grin took its place. “Let’s do it now.”

She loved that
her boss finally wished to address their staff issues, but she wished he
wouldn’t go from zero to hundred so quickly. “Trent, we have to follow
procedures. You can’t just fire people without warning.”

He threw his
hands up, clearly exasperated at her desire to go slow. “I’ve warned them a
thousand times.”

“Yes, but you
say it so indiscriminately no one believes you. We’ll call in a Human Resource
professional and follow his or her advice on how to do this so you don’t get
sued.”

He’d opened
his mouth, ready to object, but when he heard the word ‘sued’ he closed it. Upon
sitting on the bed, he sighed. “We’ll do it your way.”

She sat down beside
him. “Thank you.” She reached over and gripped his hand, appreciating his
willing to listen today.

He placed his
hand over hers. “How’d Taiwan go?”

“They insisted
their budget couldn’t be cut and I didn’t understand their business.” She
rolled her eyes.

“Why didn’t
you call me? I would have straightened them out.”

She chuckled
softly. “I used the threat of calling you and they finally listened to my
presentation on Just in Time manufacturing.”

“See? My bad
reputation helped. You would’ve failed without it.”

God, she
didn’t want him taking that away as the lesson learned. “Your prior
interactions are why I couldn’t get anyone to work with me. They don’t trust
you, and since I’m your Executive Assistant, they didn’t trust me either.”

He stared at
the Dali painting again. Not a good sign. Since he’d never released her hand,
she tried tightening her grip. He refocused on her with an intensity that
rather unnerved her.

Regaining
her composure, she extracted her hand and continued. “I had to prove myself a hundred
times over before they would even listen to me. In the end, they couldn’t
ignore the potential improvement to their margins and agreed use the Just In
Time strategy. They agreed to this change
in spite of
you not
because
of you.”

She rose from
the bed, swatted at the wrinkles in her jacket.
Couldn’t he have at least
taken off my jacket before putting me to bed?

He petted the
sleeve of her jacket, evidently finding the wrinkles annoying as well. “Where
are you going?”

He probably
feared she intended to go to work like this. “Home.”

“How will you
get there?”

She laughed
softly. Did he think just because he couldn’t manage without his driver, she
couldn’t get home on her own? “I’ll call a taxi.”

He tilted his
head to one side, his mouth forming a decided pout. “Do you even know where you
are?”

Nodding to the
the painting on the wall, she answered with a grin, “Since the insurance
company only covers the Dali if it resides at your Long Island estate, I had
better be there.”

Trent chuckled
at her response. “I love the way your brain works.” His focus then returned to
his efforts to pet her jacket’s wrinkles away. “I’ll have my driver take you
home. It would cost you a fortune to go by taxi, and I know how you hate to
waste money.”

“I would
appreciate the ride.” She looked around the room. “Where’s my luggage?”

“I had Mars
call about that. It seems to have wandered off. The airport promises to deliver
it to your house when they find it.”

Carrie sighed
and headed out the door with him following.

“On the way,
you can explain why we want Just in Time inventory.”

“You’re
planning to come with me on my drive home? You do realize the ride is two hours
in good traffic?”

He shrugged.

“Each way.”

His frown
suggested he hadn’t understood the true duration of his plan, but to her shock,
he shrugged again. “We have a lot to catch up on.”

* * * *

An hour into
the drive, Carrie had convinced Trent the change to JIT manufacturing coupled
with a strategic vendor partnership would increase their margins, decrease
inventory levels, and actually reduce component shortages. Then they moved onto
his nightmare month.

Leaning back
and staring up through the skylight, Trent sighed. “I just wanted a list of our
major customers by volume purchased. Neither sales nor systems could provide it.”
He paused and glared at her. “I even ransacked your desk, hoping you might have
the information.”

Carrie
grimaced. Before her trip, she’d tried to tell him where things were, but he
kept insisting he knew. “You should’ve called me. I do have it. It’s on my
shelf in a book called Customer Stats.” She paused and then addressed something
that had bothered her all week. “Why didn’t you call me?”

He glared at
her. “I tried. Your damn phone claimed to be out of service.”

She nodded. “I
discovered that when I arrived. But I called you right away and gave you the
number of the phone I purchased there.”

“You didn’t
call me,” he snapped. “You never once called me. Gone a whole month and not one
call.”

His accusation
outraged her. “I did too! But Liza, said you weren’t accepting calls and I
should email you, which I did five or six times a day. But evidently you
weren’t reading emails either.”

He leaned
forward and secured her hand, pulling her from her seat facing him to the
middle section next to him. “I wish Liza hadn’t walked out on me, because I
really want to fire her, maybe strangle her.”

Carrie turned
sideways in the seat and studied his expression, which hinted of guilt. “Then
you didn’t tell the temp you wouldn’t take my calls?”

“What does it
matter? Your phone wouldn’t work anyway.” His fingers rapped on his leg. “So
who gave you the sales information?”

She decided to
drop the phone issue and focus on matters that still required fixing, like
getting rid of the jerk in charge of systems. “When I first came to work for
you, I asked Bob Ott, the systems manager, but he said the system couldn’t
retrieve it. I insisted it could and thus began our current hate-hate
relationship.”

Trent snorted
and met her gaze. “I’ve got the same relationship going with the guy. So how’d
you get the data?”

She smiled. Maybe
he’d agree to fire the jerk. “The next time Bob didn’t come into work—which is
often, by the way—I bribed the only systems guy who
does
comes to work
with a treat to give me the latest system level password. Then I logged on,
constructed a temp report, and pulled the data myself. Each week I buy the new
password, which is why we have two years of sales data.

Trent remained
quiet as his left hand fingers tapped against the right. “So to obtain this
information you go around my systems guy who told me it didn’t exist, get a
password you shouldn’t have, and run the search yourself.”