Total pages in book: 113
Estimated words: 105825 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 529(@200wpm)___ 423(@250wpm)___ 353(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 105825 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 529(@200wpm)___ 423(@250wpm)___ 353(@300wpm)
I reached down and gently wrapped her slender hand in my big one. I gave it a little squeeze, then guided it to the handle. “Yeah you can,” I told her. I managed to keep my voice firm and level. Just a friend, a bodyguard, giving her a little reassurance. But seeing her so scared sent a tidal wave of protective need washing through me and I was about one second away from just sweeping her up in my arms. Goddamn it! This was just the first morning.
With great difficulty, I let go of her hand.
She took a deep breath…and opened the door.
I wasn’t ready for what lay on the other side. Long hallways were lined with glass-fronted offices. Men and women in suits hurried back and forth on floors so luxuriantly carpeted, you couldn't hear their footsteps. There were meeting rooms big enough for fifty people, break areas with bowls of fresh fruit, pastries, and fancy coffee. And that was just the executive floor. Below us were another six floors of architects, marketing, sales, finance, IT…
A small crowd of suits saw Lorna and pounced on her, demanding answers to a thousand questions. She was drawn away into a meeting and I was left on my own. So I did what I always did when I was stationed somewhere new: I walked around and tried to get the lay of the land.
But this was more alien than any foreign country I’d ever been to. I was in my usual jeans, boots and white shirt. Everyone else was in suits that cost more than I made in a month and their conversations were all in scales I could barely wrap my head around. Five thousand panes of glass were stuck on a ship in the Suez Canal. Twenty-two miles of cable needed to be ripped out and replaced in an office building. Two executives passed me talking about the latest estimates for the new airport in Mexico: 500…no, 520, no, with the new extension, it’s going to be 540. It took me a minute to realize they were talking in millions.
What the hell am I doing here? I wasn’t right for this job. Bodyguards needed to blend in but I felt like a big, dumb hick. Maybe Gabriel could have pulled it off: he’d been used to the high life, back when he was stealing oil paintings and robbing banks. But I was used to a military paycheck.
Then I passed a wall-mounted TV in a break area. Some reporter was standing outside the building, talking about Lorna: supposedly he’d spoken to sources on Wall Street and they were worried that Lorna was inexperienced, ill-equipped and might make decisions based on emotion, not good business sense. They were undermining her before she’d even had a chance, while making thinly-veiled digs about her being female. I wanted to put my fist through the screen.
My jaw tightened and I glowered at my reflection on the TV. So what if I felt out of place? Suck it up! She had it way worse.
As the day went on, I caught little glimpses of her. Sitting at the head of the table in a glass-walled meeting room, her forehead cradled in her hands as she tried to digest the information being thrown at her by twelve different people at once. Shyly shaking hands with the mayor as he grandstanded and peacocked before demanding she slashed costs on the hospital project. Standing between two big, male execs, her small voice drowned out as the two of them screamed at each other that a messed-up concrete order was the other one’s fault. She looked completely out of her depth. Of course she was: anyone but an experienced CEO would have been. But what knotted my stomach was that Lorna would think it was her fault.
We met up in the afternoon to go to her speech. We stepped into the elevator and as soon as the doors closed, Lorna slumped against the wall and closed her eyes. She looked ready to drop.
“Did you eat lunch?” I asked.
She shook her head.
I stepped closer before I could stop myself, that protective need taking over. “Did you stop at all?”
“I don’t have time to stop.” She sighed, eyes still closed. “My dad wasn’t going to retire for another ten years, maybe more. We didn’t have any kind of transition plan in place. Projects all over the world are waiting on decisions from him. Work’s stalled, we’re losing millions each day. So I have to make those decisions, but I don’t know people like he did. I know how to calculate structural loads, but I don’t know which glass manufacturer in China to trust, or whether a contractor in Delhi is ripping us off. And if I get this stuff wrong, we could lose even more money.”