Page 6 of Sensual Games

“It isn’t condescension if I’m basing my guess off of reality. Both of you have best friends whose kids just got married last month, and they’re going to have a baby. Everybody else is with their significant others now too. Of course, you would start thinking about me.”

“You’re twenty-five, Lucian.”

“So it says on my driver’s license,” I muttered, taking a bite of a sandwich piled thick with salty salmon.

He groaned, then added, “It’s time to start thinking about the life you’re going to build.”

I lifted an eyebrow. Again, with the hypocrisy. “What were you doing when you were twenty-five? Because last I checked, you’re knocking on sixty now, meaning you had more than your share of fun between twenty-five and when you and Mom settled down together.”

“I see. Now you decide what to follow in your father’s footsteps. But only in this respect, right?”

I was not interested in getting into it, especially not at this hour of the morning. “Anyway, it’s not as much fun to go out by myself with everyone busy all the time…”

“That can only be a good thing,” he insisted.

I had to settle for chewing my bagel harder than necessary, gnashing my teeth, swallowing back my true thoughts as I choked down a mouthful of food. “Your father means well.” One of Mom’s favorite lines. It was only knowing how much it upset her when we fought that kept me from telling him what I thought about his well-intended advice.

I needed to change the subject fast, and only one topic came to mind. “So, tell me. How long is that girl going to shadow me?”

“Ivy? She isn’t shadowing you,” he scoffed, shaking his head as he wiped his mouth. “I swear, son, you come up with the strangest ideas.”

“And you are much too comfortable gaslighting me,” I countered. “If she’s not shadowing me, what is she here for?”

“You’ve been steaming over this for two days, haven’t you?” He could have at least tried not to seem so pleased at the idea, the old prick. “You have no experience. She is here to help you gain that experience.”

“I thought experience was earned over time. Am I missing something?”

“We don’t necessarily have that time. We’re looking to expand our digital division, and if you’re going to spearhead it, you need to hit the ground running. This is no time to doggy paddle and flail your way around.”

I had never failed at anything in my life. What I didn’t know, I figured out. The word‘can’t’didn’t exist. So even though I couldn’t have given a wet shit about the company, Dad’s legacy, or any of it, I wasn’t about to step down if only to prove him wrong about me.

He finished his coffee and set the cup aside with a sigh. “I admit, we haven’t had the chance to do much talking about the game plan when it comes to incorporating the new employees into our current framework.”

I waved a hand, scoffing. “Why would you want to do that? I’m only your son and a new vice president. Why would you clue me in?”

He narrowed his eyes. “Let’s put the hurt feelings aside, shall we? The idea here is to get a sense of how everyone is working together, whether they can be an asset to the company.”

There had to be something truly wrong with me since my polluted stream of consciousness immediately connected the word asset to the word ‘ass,’ which brought Ivy’s rather perfect ass to mind. I had no business thinking about her.

“Who said anything about hurt feelings?” I asked, annoyed with myself for letting her distract me again.

“Then, once we’re clear on who can best serve us, we trim the fat. Identify redundancies, thank the people we don’t need for their service, and we move on stronger than ever. That is the general idea.” Narrowing his eyes, he asked, “Are you satisfied? Or is there something you think you could do better?”

It was as if I hadn’t spoken. Not that I needed an answer. My input was never relevant. “So anybody who thinks their job here is set in stone needs to think again,” I concluded.

“That is the long and short of it, yes.”

“Do they know that?” I asked.

He smirked, chuckling. “And set off a war with people clawing at each other to keep their job? No doubt they know they have to prove themselves. That’s enough.”

This, I could live with. For the first time in days, hope sparked in my head. “Is Ivy one of the potential redundancies? Since she’s only supposed to usher me into my position.”

His forehead creased in a familiar scowl. Great. I had pushed too hard and overplayed my hand. I should’ve known better, but something about her took everything I knew and threw it out the window. She stood in my way, and that was a problem.

“You have a real hard-on for this girl, don’t you?” he asked.

What a choice of words. I certainly had a hard-on for her when we first met. “Did you expect me to be happy? You gave me this position, then assigned someone to… what? Micromanage me? Or is this flat-out babysitting?”

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