Worst Week Ever (A Long Road to Love) (35 page)

Ididnotfiryu111111ipromotefy0uimsendingyoutoschoooltoleanyournewjobtrent

Clearly, Trent
had not bothered with the shift or space key. Or punctuation. She studied the
letters. She easily made sense of the first part, which said ‘I did not’. But
the next part went a bit garbled. Her heart quickened as she failed to think of
any words other than ‘fire you’ that would make sense here. The number ones
were probably his attempt at exclamation points. Tears of relief came to her
eyes.

He hadn’t
fired her. The reason she didn’t know what she’d done was simple: she hadn’t
done anything. She still had her job.

She squealed
with happiness as she attempted to decipher the next portion. She got the ‘I
promote’ but then it de-evolved into a garbled mess. She skipped over the
clueless letters to the next part, which seemed to say ‘I’m sending you to school
to learn your new job.’

Discovering
the ‘f’ resided next to ‘d’, she now understood. He hadn’t fired her. He wanted
to promote her, and instead of making her sink or swim as he’d done when he
first hired her, this time she’d receive training.

She laughed
with pure joy. Until she heard a car pull up outside. Her thoughts went
immediately to the Russian mafia, and this time when she called 911, no one
would come to investigate the crazy lady who dialed wolf.

Crawling to
the window, she peeked out from the bottom of the bay window ledge and glimpsed
an ominous black limo parked behind her car. Carrie dropped to the floor,
certain the mafia would drive something like that.

Still on her
hands and knees, she headed back to the kitchen and rounded the corner to go
down the stairs. She stopped only when she realized going down the steep steps
on her hands and knees would inevitably result in her rolling down like a
bowling ball.

As Carrie
stood up, the phone rang. Startled, she screamed and scrambled down into the
basement. Upon a frantic search for a hiding place, she squeezed into a tiny
corner cabinet.

Pounding
thundered on the door. A minute later, someone tested the metal basement doors
that opened to the backyard.

She stared up
at the cobwebbed top of the small cabinet she hid in and prayed to God.

Please let
me have locked it. Please. Please. Please. I regret wishing I was dead earlier
today. Now I have my job back, I absolutely don’t want to die. Please, I’m not
saying you owe me for this horrible week, but I’m due something good. Just let
me live!”

She sighed
with relief when the intruder stopped pulling on the basement door. God heard
her. They’ll go away now and all will be well.

Then the
boards creaked from someone walking in her living room. She trembled in fear.
Don’t
come down to the basement. Don’t come down.

A soft groan
escaped her when she heard thumps on the basement steps.
I’m going to die!

“She’s not
here.”

“I’m telling
you, I heard her scream.”

“Well, then
she doesn’t want to talk to you and she’s hiding.”

“Why would she
hide? I sent her an email telling her I hadn’t fired her.”

“And you think
that makes it all okay?”

Finally, the
voices and words worked their way through the fog of fear surrounding her. “Trent?”
she called out.

“Carrie? Where
are you?”

“Hiding from
the Russian mafia.”

The door to
the cabinet opened and her boss knelt down on the other side. He gently tugged
her from her tiny hiding spot.

“They would’ve
never looked for you there. No one should be able to fit in such a miniscule
space.”

He gathered
her in his arms and hugged her, then picked her up so her feet dangled above
the ground. “Did you get my email?”

He pressed her
face into the crook of his neck, muffling her response. “Yes.”

“Sam, go back
outside and study the plants in Carrie’s garden so you don’t mistake them for
weeds ever again.”

“The garden
didn’t look a thing like it does now,” Sam grumbled and stomped up the basement
steps.

Trent carried
her upstairs, and wandered about her first floor. “Where do you sleep?”

“Upstairs?”

He sighed in
exasperation. “For a little house this place sure has a lot of steps.”

“You don’t
have to carry me. I have legs.”

“I’ll verify
your legs in one moment.” Trent stopped at the landing of the second floor.
“Left or right?”

“Left.” Relief
overwhelmed her. The mafia hadn’t come and, even better, Trent had. Still, she
could barely make sense of her life.

He laid her
down in the center of her bed and joined her.

Petting her clean
hair, he studied her with concern. “I’m sorry you thought I’d fired you. I sent
you an email. Did you read it?” He beamed with pride as he asked his question.

She smiled and
nodded.

His look of
adoration sent tingles of delight down her spine. Then he saddened. “Sorry
about Coco being such a bitch.” He sighed. “I gather from your comment about
betrayal I didn’t shield you well enough.”

Not wanting to
ruin this lovely moment, she remained mute.

He sighed and
dipped his head. “About five years ago, my father decided I should grow up and
become a real man, so he arranged my marriage to Coco Tyler.”

Carrie’s eyes
rounded in horror. “You’re married? To her?”

“No! I hadn’t
known the viper an hour before I knew I’d rather be dead than married to that she-devil.
She’s like my father with breasts. However, no one else could see the woman I
saw. Everybody kept calling me a lucky bastard.”

Carrie saw
nothing charming about the woman.

He pressed his
forehead to hers. “You saw the real Coco, but most people don’t. I’m pretty
sure all the potential employees we interviewed today thought her the nicest
woman they’d ever met.” He paused. “They probably wouldn’t care for what she
thought of them after they left.”

“Did you like
them?” Getting good employees remained the key objective.

“Honestly, I
would’ve hired them all on the spot.”

“What
positions did they come for?”

He shrugged.

She laughed
softly, now understanding how she’d gotten the job two years ago. His desperate
need for better employees meant he’d hire anyone who actually wanted to work,
qualifications be damned.

“Did you hire
anybody?”

He sighed.
“No, Coco wouldn’t let me. She goes on about a process and if I don’t comply,
she’ll walk.”

“Would that be
such a bad thing?” Carrie asked.

“You should’ve
seen these people. They impressed me. With them, we could become the best
furniture manufacturer in the world.”

“In your
email, you said I was promoted…”

He rolled to
his back and pulled her onto his chest. “We’ll get to that, but I need to
finish my story about Coco and me.”

She grimaced.
“You really don’t have to. It’s better if I don’t dislike her more than I do
now.”

“Doesn’t
matter. She can’t fire you and she’s just temporary. Once we have our new
staff, I give you my solemn word she’s gone.”

Instead of
making her feel better, his words cultivated a field of worry within her.

“Exactly what
am I promoted to?”

“It’s just
temporary,” he promised.

“And what is
it?”

“You are our
Change Specialist.”

She'd never
heard of the position. Before she could object, he pressed his fingers to her
lips. “I googled it.”

Trent
learned a new skill?

He smiled.
“Yes, I googled and did very well. I had over a million responses.”

Patting his
silk shirt, she asked, “So what is it?”

His brow
furrowed. “I’m not clear on that. However, I found a training facility on the West
Coast, which promises after their two-week course, you’ll have all the skills
needed to do your job.”

She’d research
it later, but right now she needed to make sure Trent hadn’t sent her further
into debt.

“When is this
training?”

“Starts
Monday.”

“Trent! I’ve
told you—”

“Your cards
are maxed out and you have no money. I’ve nearly put you in bankruptcy,” he
said.

His response
confused her. “I never told you the last part?”

“But I have,
haven’t I?”

She answered with
the shrug he always used when he didn’t want to admit the truth.

He wrapped his
arms around her and pulled her tight to his chest. “David said I nearly got
myself and you into trouble with the FBI today. He told me to tell you to send
the money back to avoid serious tax consequences. I assured him you already
had. My banker said you probably incurred a fee as well.”

She nodded.

He released
her and ran his hand through his perfect hair. “Great! So not only did I
not
help, but I actually worsened your situation.”

She patted his
cheek. “You meant well.”

He captured
her hand and pressed his lips to it. “I always mean to do good, but things only
work out when you’re with me.”

She lifted her
head and stared at him in disbelief then pulled away her hand, since she didn’t
deserve his fine compliment. “I haven’t kept you out of trouble this week. In
fact, I’ve been the cause of most of your trouble.

He smiled.
“It’s been one horrible week, I’ll grant you. However, no one but you could
have gotten me through it.” His focus went to her skylight. “Interesting. Does
it leak?”

She softly
laughed. “Not yet.”

Gathering her
into his arms, he sighed with happiness. “I’m glad we got this misunderstanding
cleared up.”

She agreed on
so many levels. She got to keep her job, her best friend, and the man she
loved. “Me, too.”

“Let’s make a
pact. We’ll always talk an issue out before we play the betrayal card.”

“Deal.”

Smiling, he
reached into his shirt pocket and extracted a credit card. “This is the first
Lancaster credit card in existence. According to the man I spoke to today, my most
valuable employee can submit expense reports as often as she wants. Then all I
have to do is electronically approve them and it’s forwarded to accounting
where they'll pay the credit card company direct from a Lancaster account.”

“You mean I
don’t have to pay the provider and get reimbursed?”

“That’s
correct. In the situation that you buy something not allowed on your expenses,
you’ll have to reimburse Lancaster, but I promise to be very patient.”

He handed over
the card. “And it has unlimited credit.”

Carrie stared
at her new car in amazement. It symbolized how much Trent had changed. A month
ago he’d refused to even consider a company card and now, on the worst week
ever, he manage to locate a vender and get her a card all on his own. And her
name was even spelled correctly. “How did you do this?”

“Without you?”

She grimaced,
knowing he hated when people treated him like an idiot. “I didn’t mean…”

Trent chuckled
and stroked her cheek. “David put me in touch with the guy, after yelling at me
for hiring a FBI agent to commit a crime.”

Given his
lawyer had taught Trent never to talk to police, asking the FBI to break the
law must have outraged Mr. Sedita a great deal. “Why
did
you do that?”

Trent sighed
and pulled her into a tight spooning. “Five years ago, when I lost faith in my
personal accountant, I hired the guy as an investigator and he not only figured
out how the fellow ripped me off, but helped the FBI put the cretin in jail.
Turned out his work impressed them enough they hired him as an agent.”

“And he failed
to mention his change of profession when you called him?”

“Yeah. In
retrospect, he gave me a major hint when he repeated my request while making a
big deal that what I wanted done was illegal. At the time, I thought him a
drama queen, trying to justify his price. Now, I realize he was taping the
conversation so I couldn’t claim I didn’t know it was illegal later.” He leaned
in and nuzzled her neck. “Thank God, you didn’t sign that document.” He paused.
“Why didn’t you sign it? You tend to do whatever cops tell you.”

She turned and
faced him. “Because when I explained your good intentions when you sent me the
money, and what a wonderful person you were, Agent Troy got angry and demanded
I sign a page of print so tiny that I couldn’t read it. So I declared the need of
the toilet, grabbed a phone and a magnifying glass then locked myself in the
bathroom while I called your lawyer.”

Trent frowned.
“How’d you get David’s number?”

“I remembered
it.”

His eyes
sparkled as he caressed her face. “You’re amazing in so many ways. You are
vital, not just for my company, but for me. You’ve changed me, Carrie.”

She smiled,
enjoying this conversation immensely. “How so?”

“I’ve learned
to thank people and appreciate their efforts. Also, that fixing a problem is
often easier and certainly more effective than yelling at those responsible.
But most importantly, I’ve learned neither myself nor my company can survive
without you. If I had my way, you’d never leave my sight.”

Trent tilted
her face up to his. “However, your happiness comes before mine, so on Monday,
you go to San Fran to become the world’s best Change Specialist. The second we
hire a finance manager I will make his or her top priority the reimbursement of
your expense report, which we will wire directly into your account and call you
the moment it’s done.”

She rewarded
him with a loving smile.

He pulled her
close to him. “I’ve been forcing myself to wait until we got our new employees
to do this, but now I’m thinking the waiting has caused our recent
misunderstandings.”

Her brow
furrowed. “I’m not following.”