Total pages in book: 146
Estimated words: 141951 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 710(@200wpm)___ 568(@250wpm)___ 473(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 141951 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 710(@200wpm)___ 568(@250wpm)___ 473(@300wpm)
“It’s not about you,” Lucas said, hoping he could make that one thing clear to Nola, so she didn’t take that one negative onward with her from this job. “When it comes to Ronald Dalton and the things he does to other people, it’s very rarely about what you do or don’t do. No matter what he says.”
Nola nodded, but the way she looked down hid the embarrassment and worry skittering across her pixie-like features. “Yeah, okay.”
No, it wasn’t okay.
“You’ve got family in Halifax, right?” Lucas asked.
Nola’s nervous rolling of her chair same to a sudden stop at the mention of her family. “My mom lives there—that’s where her family lives.”
“Yeah, we talked about it a couple of times.”
“And you remembered?”
He smiled. “That you seemed happier and worked better after a week-long vacation to visit your family? Of course.”
“What does my family in Halifax have anything to do with the chance I might lose my job?”
“A friend of mine,” Lucas explained, being careful how he chose his words, aware that the quiet office might have ears and eyes listening, “is coming into town in the next week or so. He’s got family here, but lives and works out of Halifax. He’s an artist. A bit eccentric, but—”
“What about him?”
Lucas chuckled.
Straight to the point.
That’s what he’d always liked about Nola.
“He called me yesterday to apologize for not being able to travel into the city for the memorial—apparently, he’s got a lot of things on his plate between his gallery here that he’s still in the process of moving. He mentioned needing an assistant who would need, and preferably enjoy, the travel. He’ll pay better than you get here, plus you have the bonus of the Halifax connection. I thought of you, and if you want, I can pass along your name.”
Sloane Alcott hadn’t specified a timeline on needing or finding an assistant to manage all the little things about the business side of his artistry, but that didn’t matter. The man cared more about finding someone who came highly recommended from someone else he trusted.
Lucas, for example.
Nola fit the bill.
“What about you?” Nola asked. “Won’t you need someone here, or—”
“I’m not sure I’m going to be here, either,” Lucas said. Letting that be his final word on the matter of his employment at the brewery, he tapped the edge of Nola’s desk on the way by and added, “Let me know before I’m gone today whether or not you’d like me to make that call to my friend, okay?”
“I got it, Lucas. Thanks.”
The long hallway with the row of offices on one side and the view of the bottling plant down below on the other welcomed every step from Lucas with a loud slap of his leather loafers against the tile. Not surprisingly, he found every door closed, as if the rest of the upstairs employees also had a reason to shut out the word beyond their private work spaces.
Including the office at the end.
Lucas considered knocking.
Until he noticed the newly etched R. Dalton on the frosted glass door.
“Welcome back, Dad,” Lucas greeted as he unceremoniously entered the office without warning.
All he received in response came in the form of a dull, “Did you see your new office?”
“No,” Lucas replied to the question Ronald had asked without even glancing away from the glowing screen of the desktop computer. “Not needed.”
“Mmhmm, well, you’ve certainly seen the storage room before, so.”
“No, it won’t be needed, Dad,” Lucas said, hearing the way Ronald tried to bait him with an underhanded comment, and refusing to give in. He stepped further into the office, already scanning the walls of awards and accolades for the ones he knew would be missing—his. His achievements, in the brewery or outside of it, had never mattered, after all.
Lucas didn’t expect that to change.
“Meaning, I won’t need it at all,” Lucas clarified once and for all.
That gained his father’s attention.
Ronald squinted, already annoyed, around the side of the monitor. “I beg your pardon?”
Why did that question feel like a challenge?
Because it is, he thought.
Lucas refused to give Ronald an inch. A quick survey of the space prompted him to ask the man sitting comfortably behind the old, familiar desk, “It almost looks like it used to, doesn’t it? Before it was mine.”
Ronald scoffed. “Lucas, it was never yours.”
Right.
Salt, meet wound.
Ronald rubbed it in hard.
“Lucky for you that I didn’t make too many changes that you couldn’t cover up with a painting, huh?” he asked Ronald.
The older mirror of himself, proud as could be with his arms folded over his chest, smiled coldly back at Lucas. “Does the fact that it never felt like yours say more about me, or you, son?”
More bait.
It dangled cruelly, waiting for Lucas to stoop down to his father’s level of passive-aggressive insults. Bringing others around him down, by varied means, was the only way Ronald could get a person to his low playing field. He couldn’t compete otherwise, and Ronald couldn’t have that—he needed to be better than everyone else.