over working-your-way-up-the-ladder, hands-on experience—but it didn’t make it any easier to swallow.
Nor did his fancy suits and sleek European car and general air of swanky-well-groomed-well-bred-ness. The way he spoke, the way he dressed, even the car he drove seemed designed to let the world know he was that little bit better than everyone else.
Even if it was true, she didn’t need her face rubbed in it.
She also didn’t need to sit at her desk brooding over him. A few hours from now, the office would be buzzing with people who all wanted a piece of her busy schedule. In the meantime, she had a full in-tray to work her way through. More than enough to keep her mind off her pesky colleague.
* * *
ZACH TRIED TO concentrate on the spreadsheet on his computer screen. He was developing a new store-brand power-tool range with one of Makers’s big suppliers, and the information in front of him was important. Unfortunately, all he could think about was Audrey Mathews in her navy suit and new shoes.
She’d beaten him in. If he’d taken the time to think about it, he might have guessed she would do her homework on Whitman, that she’d note the man’s six-thirty start time, and that she’d be here early to impress the man, the same as him. As a general rule, though, he tried not to think about Audrey too much. Not only because he preferred to run his own race. There was something disturbingly distracting about her shiny brown hair and warm golden-brown eyes. Then there was the way she looked in her neat little suits. He shook his head and refocused on his computer. There were too many offerings in the cordless battery range at the budget end of the market. It was crazy to waste shelf space on what was essentially the same product with some minor tweaks.
Maybe he was being paranoid, but he got the distinct impression that he wasn’t Audrey’s favorite person. Which was fine. He’d allocated himself two years at Makers to win a promotion to category manager. He didn’t have time for distractions.
There were ten buyers in the merchandising department, but he’d worked out early on that Audrey was the only competition he needed to worry about. She was one of a handful of female executives, but she never played the gender card to get what she wanted. She was thorough, smart, calm in a crisis and determined. She also had a long history with the company and was well respected. In short, a serious contender for the next category manager opening.
Pity he was going to be the one who got it.
Registering that he was once again thinking about Audrey, he swung away from his computer. Coffee was clearly needed to jump-start his brain. He’d had to forgo his usual morning run to get in early, so caffeine would have to act as a substitute for fresh air and endorphins.
As luck would have it, he had to pass Audrey’s office on the way to the small staff room situated between the marketing and merchandising departments. Her dark head was bent over her desk as she wrote something on a notepad. He wasn’t sure he approved of her new hairstyle. It was too severe for her round face. Made her look like a repressed librarian or school principal.
Still, there was something to be said for repressed librarians. All that pent-up passion...
As if she’d sensed his errant thoughts, Audrey glanced up from her work. She was wearing a pair of dark-framed, rectangular reading glasses, and her gaze met his briefly over the top of the frames, accentuating the schoolmarmish vibe.
She wasn’t schoolmarmish, though. He’d seen her at the office Christmas party, laughing and dancing and enjoying herself. She was fun, when she let her hair down. Fun and more than a little sexy.
Okay, definitely time for coffee.
He made a point of keeping his gaze dead ahead on the return journey and lost himself in his work once he was at his desk. Over the next two hours, the office slowly came to life as the rest of the staff trickled in. He looked up a couple of times as people called out greetings to him, but otherwise he was undisturbed, and he managed to finalize his notes to the supplier.
As nine drew closer, a familiar tension settled into the back of his neck. He waited until nine-thirty before picking up the phone. It was a Monday, after all, and he always checked in with Vera on Mondays.
“Hi, Zach,” she said when she picked up.
“Vera. How are things? Did your daughter have her baby yet?”
“She’s due next week. Although from the size of her I’m beginning to think she’s having twins.” Vera laughed, years of smoking giving the sound a husky roughness.
“This’ll be your third grandchild, right?”
“You’ve got a sharp memory.”
He did. For lots of things, good and bad.
“How’s Mum doing?” he finally asked.
Might as well cut to the chase, since neither Vera nor he was under the illusion that he was calling to talk about the imminent arrival of her grandchild.
“All quiet on the western front at the moment. There might be a new boyfriend on the scene. It’s hard to tell sometimes.”
He pinched the bridge of his nose. A new boyfriend. Great. His mother had disastrous taste in men.
“But otherwise everything is good?”
“As far as I can tell.”
“Thanks, Vera. I appreciate it.” Next time he visited his mother, he’d drop by next door, too, and give Vera a box of the Scottish shortbreads she loved and some passes for the movies. She refused to take anything more from him, even though he’d done his best to convince her otherwise over the years.
“You look after yourself, sweetheart,” she said warmly, then he was listening to the dial tone.
He couldn’t stop his mind from racing ahead to what the future would almost inevitably hold if what Vera had said was true. None of it was good. If his mother had a new boyfriend and he ran true to type, there would be hospital visits in the near future. Police visits, too. Then the inevitable binge as his mother drowned her sorrows post-breakup.
Acid burned in his belly. He’d been looking out for his mother one way or another for more than twenty years, and the cycle of ups and downs was always the same. Never-ending. Relentless. And it was always going to be that way, until the day she died.
Suddenly he felt infinitely weary. As though gravity had doubled, dragging him down. He stared at his desk blotter, lost in a world of worry.
The ping of an email arriving cut through his thoughts. His gaze shifted to the screen.
There was work to do—there was always work to do. Reaching for his keyboard, he pushed his troubles aside and concentrated on the matter at hand.
* * *
THE NEW SHOES had been a mistake. By the time midmorning rolled around, Audrey’s feet were throbbing so much she wanted to sob with every step she took. Every time she was safely behind her desk she toed them off, which only made squeezing her now-swollen feet back into the shoes every time she needed to leave her office even more painful.
A lesson learned. Next time she bought new shoes, she would run a marathon in them before she so much as considered wearing them to work.
