Falling for the Boss (29 page)

Victoria
smiled.  “Thanks for coming over.”

They were silent for a few minutes.  Then Laci said what she’d been thinking all along.  “You
do
love him don’t you?”

Victoria
could only nod sadly.  If she said anything out loud, it would only start up the tears again. 

Laci’s eyes were determined as she thought about the situation.  She finally said,
“I think you should fight for him.  You should go to him and tell him to dump this Antonia woman and be with you.  You probably love him more and would be better for him anyway.”

“Oh, you’re wonderful,”
Victoria
said and hugged her little sister.  “I wish I could.  But I’m just not that brave.  Besides, that’s something he’s got to decide for himself.”

Laci stayed and talked for over an hour.  She finally got
Victoria
to stop crying and was even laughing at some of her more ridiculous ideas on how to
get back at
Thomas Attracelli. 
By the middle of the afternoon,
Victoria
sent her home so she could study more.  Unfortunately, as soon as she
left,
Victoria
broke down in tears again. 

By Saturday night, her eyes hurt so badly she could barely see.  She hadn’t eaten anything since
Thursday
and she looked awful.  She had to pull herself together.  She would not be beaten by a two timing man, no matter how charming and gorgeous he was. 

Victoria
t
ore off his college tee-shirt and threw it into the laundry basket.  Then, just to be spiteful, she pulled it out and stomped on it.  She wished it was his head, she thought as she picked it up again, feeling petty.  She put it back into the laundry basket and padded barefoot to the shower. 

The steaming spray helped her feel slightly more human.  It took some of the swelling out of her eyes and she felt better just being clean again. 
Toweling herself dry, she face
d
her image in the mirror. 
Victoria
debated the idea of going out and getting her hair done, but in the end, she just pulled it back into a pony tail, not ready yet to face the rest of the world.  She changed into a pair of jeans and a sweater, then made some coffee and toast. 

She sat down at her desk and turned on her computer
, not really sure what she planned on doing.  She pulled the report onto her desk and stared at the words, unsure of how to revise the report
. 

“Just start typing,” she told herself.  “You’re a creative person, something will come to you eventually.”

As soon as she started to work, t
he words seemed to fly out of her fingers as she typed.   She was coming up with the craziest idea to reorganize the accounting departments for
ATI
she could think of.  By
midnight
she was finished.  S
he looked back at her work and reviewed it
, smiling as she pictured Thomas’ expression when he read through the details
. 

When she was
adding
the cover page
, t
he thought struck her that, although she’d written her ideas out of spite, the plan really could work.  She re-read the words, taking out some of the sarcasm she’d put in to irritate him.  She picked up her pencil and paced her small apartment
, twirling it between her fingers distractedly
.  It really could work
, she thought
. 
With a few al
terations, this was a good idea!
  She was amazed at how good it really was.

She clicked on some internet links and, after about an hour, found what she was looking for.  She knew it!  It really would work! 

She was so excited, she went back to her report and re-read the whole thing, editing many of the paragraphs, reworking some of the data to better illustrate her point. 

It was
five o’clock
in the morning when she finished.  She turned off her computer and fell into bed, exhausted. 
For the first time in a week, she slept well and woke with no tears.

She slept until
noon
on Sunday.  Pulling herself out of bed, she ignored the thought that Thomas would be
at
his brother
’
s house having lunch. She didn’t want to know if Antonia would be there.  Instead, she pulled her report out from the middle of her desk and tweaked some of her points, working on it all day and into the night. 

By Monday morning, she was completely rested and ready to tackle a panther.  Or Thomas Attracelli
which could be worse
.  If she didn’t feel like her old self again, at least she didn’t look like death, she told herself as she walked into Margaret’s office at five minutes till nine the next morning.  “Good morning, Mar
g
aret.  Thomas said he wanted to see me a
nine o’clock
.  Is he in?” she asked. 

Margaret smiled and shook her head.  “He isn’t but he told me to expect you.
  He asked me to tell you to wait here until he arrived.
”

Victoria
gritted her teeth
but smiled a Margaret
.  “Well, how about if you call me when he
gets in?  I’ll be in my office.”  She was about to turn away when she remembered the report.  “You can give this to him, though.  This is what we were supposed to discuss at
nine o’clock
.”

Margaret’s smile faltered slightly.  “Don’t you want to wait for him?’

“Nope,”
Victoria
smiled more brightly, leaving a shocked Margaret to tell her ferocious boss that
Victoria
hadn’t waited for him
as instructed
. 

Victoria
walked down to her office and turned on the light.  It was a relatively small office but she didn’t mind.  It was really just a courtesy that she have an office at the ATI headquarters since they traveled so much. 

She looked down at her phone and realized she hadn’t even called Laci
after her Saturday afternoon discussion to let her know that she was okay
.  Or her parents.  She picked up the phone and dialed her sister’s number.  As expected, there wasn’t an answer.  She was in the last month of classes and things usually got a little crazy.  Laci was probably also interviewing since this was her last year of law school. 
T
he Bar exams were in about three months
b
ut knowing Laci, she was already studying for them. 

Victoria
left a message asking Laci to call her whenever she got in.  But even
Victoria
wasn’t exactly sure when the team would be taking off again.  Usually Thomas gave them instructions on Friday before they split up. 
Since she’d left so quickly after landing, she wasn’t sure what the plans were.  She’d assumed that if they were scheduled to leave, someone
would have called to tell her.  Thomas would have told her on Friday if they were leaving so she was reasonably sure that they would be here this week instead of traveling. 

At
nine thirty
, Bob poked his head into her office.  “Hey, Thomas called a meeting.
  We’re supposed to convene in the conference room immediately.
”

“Thanks,” she said.  “I’m ready.”

He eyed her up and down.  “Are you sure?”

“Absolutely.  Why shouldn’t I be?”

Bob shrugged his shoulders.  “I just work here,” he said and he disappeared from her doorway.

Victoria
plastered a bright smile on her face and followed Bob down the hallway to the conference room.  Mike was already sitting down
when she and Bob walked in and took their seats. 
Thomas walked in from the door that came from his office
moments later
.  She recognized her report as he slapped it against the table right before taking a seat.

“Here’s the schedule for the next three months,” he said, starting off the meeting without any greetings.  He passed some papers down the table, not even looking up as he spoke. 

“And we have an interesting proposition from the lady in our group,” he said and tossed two copies of her report to Mike and Bob who automatically picked up the report and started flipping through the pages. 

Victoria
pulled her own copy out of her portfolio and pretended to read it.  But inside, she was seething with fury. 

“If you notice on page twelve, she is asking….” And Thomas flipped through page after page, criticizing her idea, ripping it apart.  By page fifty, where he started in on her data she stood up, not willing to take his abuse anymore.

“You’re wrong.  This will work and you’re just being too stubborn to admit it!”

Out of the corner of her eye
, she noticed both Mike and Bob slide down a little in their seats.  She was sure no one had ever raised their voice to their esteemed leader but she was sick and tired of taking his
insults
and his
derogatory
remarks
about her work
. 

Thomas also stood up, putting his hands
down onto the conference table
and leaned forward.  “The numbers don’t add up and it is an idiotic idea anyway.”
  He glared at her from the opposite side of the table. 

“It will work and the numbers do add up.  If you’d just read the
whole
report instead of pulling out small parts of it to tear up, you’d realize that it might be a little aggressive, but it will work if you’d just give it a chance.”

“If you’d pulled in the
Atlanta
numbers, you’d see that the plan goes off by four percent.  How are you expecting to ac
count for that kind of variance?
”

“There are exceptions to the rule but even the
Atlanta
numbers would work.  It might take a little fine tuning but calculate in their gross contribution and the variance works in their favor!”

“No it doesn’t.  Take the taxes out of the scheme and you’re off again.  Put the net contribution back in and it throws the benefits package all out of whack.  And the European countries can’t back out the Euro in this w
ay with the new counting schema,
”
he yelled

“Yes,
they can
,” she yelled right back
. 
“
If the market reacts the way I think it will, the Euro will be back on track and in line
with the American dollar,
”
she
explained
, giving as well as she was getting from him
but her eyes were shooting darts across the table at his unreasonable attitude
. 

“And what if it doesn’t react the way you think it will?  You aren’t very reasonable in your reactions, why should the European Union?”

Victoria
gasped and stumbled back a step, her face showing her increased fury. 
“Are you implying that I don’t react rationally?”

“In my experience, I haven’t seen very rational reactions from you
recently
.”

“I think you both just need to get a room,” Mike muttered.

The comment drew Thomas’s glare to him and Mike shrunk a little more into his chair.  But since Bob was nodding himself, there wasn’t much Thomas could do. 

The silence in the conference room was deafening. 
Thomas and Victoria stood facing each other, fire shooting from their eyes while Bob and Mike looked from one to the other, wondering how they could break the tension and continue the meeting.