Page 8 of By the Letter

As I approached, Mike Dietrich, GoldMed’s CFO, emerged, halting me in my tracks. I pressed myself into the nearby alcove, allowing him to pass without having to make polite small talk—something I’d gleaned he disliked as much as I did. Mike was all business and numbers. People weren’t his thing. He only dealt with us because he was required to. I would have explained he didn’t have to engage in niceties with me, but I thought it was easier for both of us to simply hide away until he passed.

When I came out of the shadows, Roman was standing in the doorway of the conference room, staring straight at me, a bold line carved between his brows and a disapproving scowl pulling at his mouth.

Sucking in a deep breath, I started toward him. If I hadn’t needed my phone, I would have abandoned it rather than go near him, but I had no choice.

“Excuse me.” I went to tuck my hair behind my ear then remembered it was pulled back in a bun, as it always was at work. Instead, I smoothed my hand over the side and checked my earring was still in place. “I seem to have left my phone behind.”

“I noticed.” He unfolded his arms, revealing my phone clutched in his massive mitt. “You were in such a rush to get away from everyone you forgot it.”

I shook my head. “I wasn’t rushing to get away from everyone. It’s that—”

“You ducked into the shadows, so you didn’t have to speak to Mike. What kind of environment do you think that behavior fosters, Mrs. Goldman—when the CEO won’t even wave hello to her CFO as she passes him?”

“It isn’t that, and please, call me Shira.”

I’d never been Mrs. Goldman. Officially, yes, but only because Frank had wanted me to have the protection his last name offered. The name had felt like a piece of ill-fitting clothing, never settling on me like it should have. If not for GoldMed, I would have gone back to my maiden name, just as my mother had when she left my father. I’d always thought Shira Saltzman had a ring to it.

Roman shook his head and heaved a sigh. “I can’t figure you out.”

I swallowed hard, wishing he’d give me my phone so I could go. “I understand.”

“Do you? From what I’ve seen, you give maybe three or four people the time of day, and everyone else might as well not exist. A lot of work needs to be done to pull GoldMed out of the hole it’s in, and I don’t know if you see that.”

I forced myself to meet his gaze. He had his chin tipped down, giving me his full attention. It was weighty. Filled with judgment and something more…something that felt a lot like ire. This man really didn’t like me. Frank might’ve dug the hole GoldMed was in, but where Roman was concerned, I was fully responsible for the one I was in. The thing was, I couldn’t figure out how to claw myself out.

“Of course I see it.” I straightened, hoping to appear more confident than I was. “More than anyone else.”

He chuffed, his eyes rolling to the side. They were brown, chocolaty. I’d seen how warm they could be when he was laughing with others, joking with Terry, greeting Rita, the floor’s receptionist, but I’d never once gotten that. Roman had come to GoldMed with an opinion of me, and I’d only helped cement it with each passing day.

“Considering you won’t even have a conversation with your CFO, I doubt that,” he stated.

“Mike and I speak often. We both find it more efficient to email and text through the interoffi—”

“Efficiency is important to you, isn’t it? You and your efficient calendar.” He refolded his arms, tucking my phone underneath again. “Do you know, after my father died, Frank wrote me several letters over the years?”

A knot sprung from my belly to my throat, making it impossible to reply with words. Of course I knew. I was well-acquainted with those letters.

I simply nodded, and Roman went on. “There was a time I was floundering, and Frank offered me advice on the direction I took my life and business. One of the many things he told me to never forget was the human element behind the bottom line. The thing is, human connection isn’t always efficient, but it can lead to exponential growth. If the people who work for you feel connected to the person in charge of them, they will do a better job to please them. From what I’ve seen, Shira, you don’t have that.”

Roman had been in this office for two weeks and thought he knew the entire picture. In truth, he’d come in with a preconceived notion about what he would find and had let that color everything he’d observed. He didn’t see my friendly chats with Mike through interoffice texting. He hadn’t been in theroom during my weekly lunches with Annabelle from HR. And he definitely didn’t know when Gabriela from marketing had come to work with a poorly covered black eye. I’d held her hand while she filed a police report against her boyfriend and had hired a bulldog lawyer to keep her safe.

None of those things meant I was perfect. I was drowning in my position and absolutely miserable. But my promise to Frank superseded my discomfort. I would see our agreement through by the letter until it became impossible.

“I’m sorry you feel that way,” I replied, my tongue too tangled to say anything in my own defense. “If there’s nothing else, I’d like my phone back, please.”

With a deep sigh, Roman scanned me as if he were trying to see inside me. If only he could see the panic his intrusive studying initiated in my limbic system, but I knew from experience I looked cool as a cucumber. My eyes hardened, and my expression vanished. Like a deer caught in headlights, my brain had decided on the path of least resistance—allowing the oncoming traffic to plow into me. Fight or flight wasn’t an option for me. I was a frozen little cube of ice.

And all Roman could see was the ice.

With a look of derision, he unfolded his arms and held out my phone. Before I could bring my arm up to take it from him, he brought it back into him, clutching it against his chest. “Did Frank ever mean anything to you? Anything at all?”

With that blindingly awful question, the tethers of my panic snapped, sending a rush of blood and heat to my cheeks. I stepped close enough to snatch my phone from him and skittered back out of his reach.

“What a horrific thing to ask me,” I whispered.

For once, my body did what I needed it to do. I fled from the scene of the crime in a hurry. Roman uttered my name followed by a curse, but I didn’t turn back or stop until I made it to myoffice. There, I leaned against my door, swallowing back the bile rising in my throat and nausea swirling in my gut.

I’d thought Roman Wells would be the savior GoldMed desperately needed, and maybe he would be. At this point, he was our only hope of coming back from the brink of disaster. But after that conversation, my eyes were open. In the process of saving GoldMed, Roman might willingly destroy me.

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