Page 19 of Fierce-Zander

“Of course,” she said. “The space is beautiful. Miles did a great job decorating it and I’ve got an extra office if I ever wantto take on another staff. For now, it’s just sitting empty with storage.”

“Decorations,” Miles said. “I do love to decorate for holidays.”

“You’d get along wonderfully with my wife, Carolyn,” Garrett said. “All those years as an elementary school teacher and decorating is her jam, as she likes to say.”

“She’ll have to stop up then when it’s time for me to decorate for Halloween. One of my favorites,” Miles said.

“I’ll be sure to tell her,” Garrett said.

“Looks like you two have this conversation covered,” Regan said. “If you don’t need anything from me, I’ve got to make a call before my next appointment.”

“Nothing more,” Garrett said. “Good to see you again.”

She sat behind her desk and picked up her phone to call her brother. He’d texted her last night and asked her to call today at this time. He didn’t normally do that and she was a little concerned.

“Hi, Kellen. What’s wrong?” she asked the minute he answered.

Her brother laughed. “You know. I’m positive you don’t talk to your clients that way. Jumping to conclusions that there is something wrong rather than maybe they just want to have a chat.”

“My clients aren’t paying me to be social,” she said.

“Good point,” her brother said.

“Is this just a social call?” she asked. She almost hoped it was since she didn’t have much time and worried she couldn’t give her brother what he needed in the ten minutes before her next appointment.

“Kind of,” Kellen said. “I got a new job.”

“That’s great,” she said. “I didn’t know you were looking.”

He had some rough years early on. He didn’t handle the divorce of their parents so well and started to hang out with the wrong people in hopes of getting attention.

The wrong kind of attention.

Drinking. Doing some drugs. Failing school.

He finally got his act together in college, but it’d been hard work on everyone’s part.

Her parents were just kind of...robotic at times.

There wasn’t any other way she could describe it, and to this day she still knew her parents' divorce would shock her like it had back then. Even knowing what she did with her career and education.

She’d moved past it, but Kellen couldn’t. That might be where she got her first taste of putting other people’s insecurities above her own. Being the strong one for them helped give her strength too.

“I liked where I was, but I felt stuck there. It’s been five years and I’ve only been promoted once. I should be moving up to the next level by now.”

Her brother was some kind of Business Analyst. She knew he got a promotion a few years ago.

“Do you know why you weren’t getting promoted?” she asked.

Kellen laughed. “I don’t need you to fix me. I didn’t do anything wrong.”

“I didn’t say you did,” she rushed out to say.

He always got defensive too. It didn’t matter what approach she had with him either.

“Sorry,” Kellen said. “You didn’t. It’s just you always ask so many questions of people that it could get their backs up.”

She sighed. “Sorry. Nature of the job. It’s hard to shut my work mode off.”

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