Page 47 of Not Quite Perfect

Cass poked at the dry lettuce on her plate. “You could always come work for me. I’m pretty sure I could get the CEO to up my hiring budget.” She prodded Theo playfully with her shoulder and he smirked.

This wasn’t the first time Cass had tried to recruit me. It wasn’t that I was opposed to working in a corporate environment, but I honestly didn’t know what I could bring to the table. There was a huge difference between covering elections and writing about security technology. “I appreciate the offer, but I still don’t see how I’d be a good fit.”

She snorted. “Please. You write coherently. That puts you leaps and bounds in front of the guy I’ve got doing the job now.”

“Bill?” Theo asked.

Cass screwed up her face. “Am I still not allowed to fire him?”

My brother’s lips thinned into a hard line and he shook his head. “Unfortunately, no.”

“What’s up with Bill?” I asked, chugging down the last of my iced coffee.

Theo leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms over his chest. “He’s our largest investor’s brother-in-law, and it’s been made clear to me that our funding is predicated on his continued employment. It turns out we’re the third company this guy has been foisted on in the past five years.”

I winced. “Ouch.”

“You can say that again,” Cass agreed. “His writing ispainful. I’m pretty sure he uses the thesaurus more than the dictionary.” She shoved a forkful of food into her mouth and we all fell silent.

While they were busy finishing their lunches, I was busy wondering if it was time to throw in the towel on my dreams of becoming the next Woodward or Bernstein.

“Out of curiosity, what would the job entail?” I asked a few minutes later. While Cass had often said she’d love it if I went to work for her, we’d never discussed the specifics of the position. We hadn’t needed to; I’d been gainfully employed.

She sat up straight in her seat and leaned forward, her whole demeanor changing. Cass was one of the sweetest people I’d ever met, but when it came time to talk business she was a shark. While my brother might have been winning awards left and right for being a hot shot young CEO, it was Cass who’d done the leg work to get him nominated. As the Chief Marketing Officer for their company, she worked tirelessly to make both himandthe organization look good.

“First of all, you’d report directly to me.”

That was a good start. As a reporter, I’d always had an editor I worked for and with, but I’d never had the typical boss-slash-employee relationship you found in most office environments. “And—hypothetically speaking—what would I be working on?”

Cass’s lips spread, revealing pearly white teeth, but it wasn’t the warm smile I’d grown accustomed to all the years I’d known her. It wasn’t exactly predatory, but there was something hard and scheming about it. Almost as if we were in the midst of a difficult contract negotiation and she had me by the balls and knew—euphemistically speaking, of course.

I’d heard about this side of her, but I’d never experienced it first hand. A couple of years ago, Theo and I had gotten blitzed on his homemade eggnog, and he’d waxed poetic about what a sight to behold she was in the boardroom. And by “waxed poetic” I mean he’d talked my ear off about how that hidden side of her really turned his crank. Now, I understood what he’d meant when he’d said she operated with a “take no prisoners” attitude. This was a friendly conversation about a possible job, but I got the distinct impression she was treating it as she would any other high-stakes negotiation.

“Hypothetically speaking, I have budget to hire an executive communications assistant who’d work under me making this one—” she cocked her thumb at my brother “—look good.”

“I already look good,” Theo joked, and she shot him a conspiratorial grin.

“Yeah, because I work my ass off doing it,” she agreed before turning back to me. “Outbound marketing is a full-time job, and we’ve established I can’t trust Bill to do the internal comms side of things. Since you know your brother better than anyone, I’d like to hire you to write his newsletters, create his presentations, and craft his speeches.”

That sounded easy enough, except for one small detail. “That all sounds great, but you’re forgetting I don’t know shit about what your company does. How am I supposed to do that if I don’t have the faintest notion how any of it actually works?”

Theo laughed and shook his head like I’d said something funny. “And you think we did when we started?”

“Well, yeah.”

“You’re cute—” Cass tittered, “—but no. Even now, I meet with the head of engineering once a month so he can break it all down for me in layman’s terms. If you come work for me, you’ll sit in on those meetings, but I’ll also expect you to read up on the technology and the industry in your own time.”

My own time? What was that? I hadn’t had ‘my own time’ for as long as I could remember. As it was, it was a minor miracle I’d managed to carve out time for David and my book club in my busy schedule. But if I wasn’t constantly chasing down stories or pitching ideas to an editor that he’d never go for, I might actuallyhavefree time. Still, I wasn’t entirely convinced. “I don’t know.”

“Come on, it’ll be fun!” she exclaimed, Sweet Cass coming back into the fray. “Think of all the working lunches we can have that we can expense when I’m in town.”

Theo rolled his eyes and I glanced down at Cass’s plate of lettuce. I’d known her for more than a decade, and the only time I’d ever seen her eat anything other than a salad was when Theo had brought her home for the holidays. Even then, she’d eaten like a bird. I’d once asked him what that was all about, but he’d simply shrugged and muttered something about her being on a stupid fucking diet.

“I appreciate the offer, really. Can I think about it for a couple of days?”

“Of course,” Cass replied, pushing her half-eaten meal to the side and patting her flat stomach. “Want to run across the street with me before I have to go back to the office? There’s a purse I’ve been dying to get that’s on sale, and I want to pick it up before I head back to California.”

Theo’s face fell, but he quickly recovered. Pushing back his chair, he dropped his napkin onto the table. “And that’s my cue,” he said, pulling out a wad of cash.

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