Page 18 of Baby Bombshell for the Boss

“I’ve got your go-ahead to buy materials and hire painters?”

“Yeah. Absolutely. Go for it. Do you need the staff out of the office for the painting?”

“I’ll ask them to move their desks away from the walls, but I’m sure you don’t want to empty out your office for a whole day while the painters come in and do their thing.”

“Oh, no, it wouldn’t be a problem,” Elliot assured her. “My staff can easily work from home for the day. Let me know what day your painters are going to be in, and I’ll tell everyone they can stay at home.”

“Are you sure?” Ivy asked. “I know it’s important not to interrupt the flow of business while we get this project done.”

“This won’t be an interruption at all. And it will be fun for them to come back and see what the place looks like once it’s been fixed up. Please don’t worry about it.”

“All right,” Ivy said, smiling hesitantly. “I’ll tell you as soon as I have a date.”

* * *

“Are you attached to these cubicles?” Ivy asked.

It was painting day, so the office was empty apart from the two of them and the painters. Elliot and Ivy were eating lunch together at the conference room table. Now he turned to look over his shoulder at the cubicles. “What do you mean?” he asked.

“I think there are some more creative things we could do with the workspace, if you’re open to it,” she explained. “I mean, if keeping the cubicles is important to you then okay. I don’t know what the workplace culture here is like. But I’ve seen some really modern, exciting open-plan offices that don’t rely on old-fashioned cubicles. Is that something you’d be interested in exploring?”

“Maybe you can show me what you mean.”

“Sure.” She pulled something up on her laptop and turned it to face him. “What would you think about something like this?”

He took it in. The office space in the picture was filled with what looked like drafting tables — large, with enough room for four people to sit comfortably at each and have plenty of space to spread out. There were no walls between work stations, and the people in the picture were laughing, drinking coffee, and showing their work to one another. It looked like a group of friends over brunch, except that they were very clearly working — it was obvious that the paper on the table was full of numbers.

“That’s not bad,” he said slowly.

“I don’t know what you like for your office environment,” Ivy said. “It’s really up to you, obviously. But I think something like this tends to foster open collaboration and the sense that everyone is a team working for a common goal. And besides, it’s more fun to come in to work when you know you’re going to be socializing a little bit.”

“If you were in my shoes, would you worry that the socializing would stop the employees from getting their work done?”

“No, I wouldn’t,” she said simply. “I think if you have a team that cares so little about the work that they’re not going to get it done, putting up four-foot walls between them isn’t going to change that. Taking down the walls shows respect for their self-motivation, and it indicates that you trust them. If I were your employee, that would make me work harder for you. And if you have team members who genuinely struggle to focus in an environment like that, maybe you can move them into some of these offices, or they can be allowed to work from home more. There are plenty of options. But what do you think? That’s what really matters.”

“I think it’s a great idea,” he told her. “And I did tell you that I was willing to try whatever you thought was a good idea, so I say let’s go for it.”

She looked up at him. Her eyes were sparkling with excitement, and for a moment he remembered what had made him drop everything and leap into an adventure with her on the night they’d first met. For a moment, he really regretted that it could never be like that between them again. He was glad they were able to spend all this extra time together, but from now on things would always be professional, and there was something just a little bit sad about that.

“You’re giving me an awful lot of leeway here,” she said.

“Is that a bad thing?”

“It’s a surprising thing. I figured you’d keep me on a bit more of a leash, especially since you hadn’t seen any of my work when you hired me.”

Truthfully, he’d expected to do that himself. It just seemed so clear to him that she knew what she was doing that it was hard to want to micromanage her. “I’ve liked all your ideas,” he said simply. “Keep running them by me, but for now, I’m happy with what you’re doing, so I don’t see any need to hold you back.”

She grinned. “I’m glad that’s the way you feel about it. I promise, when we’re done here, you’re not even going to recognize this place.”

* * *

“A little to the left,” Ivy said. “There, that’s perfect.”

Elliot stepped back to look at the painting he’d just hung. It had been Ivy’s idea to get works from up-and-coming young New York artists, and they’d gone to the local art institutes to make their purchases. It had been a fun day out shopping together, something he had never expected to happen when he’d hired her for the remodel — he had assumed that the whole thing would happen behind his back, and that he would just come in one morning and see a whole new office. It was a pleasant surprise to have been as involved as he’d been, and he knew that every time he looked at these pictures, he would remember the day they had spent together. It would be a nice memory that he would be able to hold on to.

Ivy had offered to hang the art herself, but he’d insisted on helping with that part too. “After all, I helped pick them out,” he’d said, and she had conceded happily, saying that having his help would allow her to hang things higher on the wall, and that that would make the whole thing look a bit better.

All the paintings were in black and white, which Ivy said made the final look seem deliberate and tied it together, and now that Elliot saw everything up on the wall, he found he agreed with her. He stood beside her and turned in a slow circle, looking at all the walls of his space. He had to admit, it all looked much nicer than it had a week ago. It looked — well it looked as if it had been designed by a professional. Because it had, he supposed.

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