Page 35 of Bren

“Awesome,” he responds before turning his attention to our daughter. “Hi, my Lexibel, you ready to spend some time with your dad and Granny today so Mummy can go earn the big bucks?” he croons. Lexi babbles back at him, making him chuckle and me swoon a little more at how easy he is with her. He picks her car seat up and turns towards the garage. I collect her diaper bag and the small cooler box from the footwell, telling Ellie, “I’ll be back soon, Ells.”

“No problem,” she waves me off, holding up her phone, “I’m going to read a bit while you do your thing.”

Shutting the back door of my vehicle, I follow Alec into the office where Bev already has Lexi out of her car seat.

“Morning, Bev,” I say as I walk in.

“Morning, baby girl,” Bev responds, walking over to me and wrapping an arm around my shoulders. “Thanks for letting me have Lexi today.”

“No problem,” I reply, poking Lexi gently in her belly, making her laugh. “You be good today for Daddy and Granny, young lady.”

Turning towards Alec, I hold out the cooler. “There’s enough milk in there for today, but if you need me to, I can come back earlier. I guess I’m going to have to think about weaning her if I’m back at work full-time now,” I say a little sadly.

“Hey,” Bev brushes my hair away from my face, “you don’t have to do anything you don’t want to. You do what you feel is best for the both of you. If you want to feed her until she’s older, you do that. We’ll all work around you.”

“I know,” I reply, “I’m luckier than most; she can stay with her family during the day. I mean, even the nursery is run by us with staff we specifically chose. A lot of women don’t get that choice.”

“Maybe so, baby,” Alec says as he closes the fridge where he’d been putting away Lexi’s bottles. Walking up to us, he wraps his arms around me and hugs me. “It’s one of the reasons we live like we do. Support and backup. You do what you think is best for you and Lexi. I’ll support you no matter what.”

Hugging him back, I lean my chin on his chest and look up at him. “Thank you,” I reply, before rolling up to my toes and kissing him quickly. Giving him one more squeeze, I leave the comfort of his arms and turn towards Bev, who’s watching us with warm, happy eyes.

“I have to go,” I tell her, kissing Lexi’s cheek. “I’ll see you all this afternoon. Have a good day,” I tell them as I leave with one last wave.

Opening my door, I get in, making Ellie jump and me laugh out loud, “Good book, Ells?”

“I gave up reading, I just wasn’t feeling it; I was texting with a friend.”

“Mmh, and is that friend tall, dark, handsome, and a little older than you?” I tease as I ease the car into the flow of traffic and head towards the factory.

Pink tinges Ellie’s cheeks as she tucks her phone back in her bag before she responds with, “Maybe.”

Not wanting to tease her too much, I leave her to her dreaming and drive us towards the factory where we spend the entire day. We arrive to chaos as one of the machines in the factory is down, the supervisor is on the phone with the engineers already, but it is going to put us back by a few hours. He didn’t seem to be having much luck with the company. I motion for him to hand me the phone, which he does with a look of relief on his face. It isn’t often I throw my weight around, but I’d spent a lot of money over the years with this company, and what most didn’t know was that I was a silent partner in the company, having bought into it when they were looking for a cash injection just over a year ago.

I listened to the person on the helpline waffle on until I had enough, “I’m going to stop you right there. Give me your name and your supervisor’s name because what you’ve just spieled off isn’t in the process, and I’d know because I helped write it. I’m not sure if you’re a new hire and haven’t been trained, or if you just don’t give a shit about your job. We have processes in place for emergency engineers to be on site within two hours, and I know we have enough because I hired most of them. It sounds like you can’t be bothered to fill out the forms and follow our process. Name, please.”

They waffle and splutter, but I eventually get the names I need. Putting the phone down, I call my partner. He doesn’t waste time in answering and is fuming when I tell him what’s happened, assuring me he’d take care of it and have someone at the factory within the hour.

Thanking him, I end the call and let the supervisor know. “Thank you, boss,” he says, sighing in relief. “I’m glad you were here.”

Patting him on the shoulder, I tell him, “Anything like this happens again, you let me know and I’ll deal with it. Now, is there anything else I need to know?”

When he shakes his head that no, there isn’t anything, I tell him, “Good,” before motioning for him to follow me. “Let’s do a quick walk-through, then show me the new packaging.”

We walk the floor, and I reconnect with my staff, wanting them to know I’m grateful for them having my back the last few weeks and thanking them for keeping things going. Most I’ve known for years as I’ve always tried to hire from within the village, but some are new hires, and I always like to keep an eye on them to ensure that they are fitting in. Deb had been keeping me updated, but I was anal enough to want my own finger on the pulse. When everything seemed to be fine and the engineer arrived, I left them to it and went to find Ellie.

She was where I expected her to be, and the fact that she was chewing out a supplier had me raising my eyebrows in surprise, but I left her to it knowing she’d come to me if she needed to.

Which she did not even twenty minutes later, slapping an invoice on my desk with a growl, “We need to find a new supplier for these oils. He’s a dick and he’s overcharging us. I checked our contract before I called, and he’s doubled our prices to what we agreed. Deb brought it to me after the accounts team picked up the discrepancy. I’ve authorised that they only pay him the old price, and I’ve pushed it onto the lawyers to deal with as he’s breached our terms of agreement, and I refuse to do business with a liar, so I’ve told them to break the contract.”

“Okay,” I agree as I look over the costings. It was going to be one of those days, I could just tell, where everything that could go wrong went wrong.

Ellie hustles back to her office when Deb lets her know the lawyers are on the phone. Opening up my laptop, I want to cry when I see the number of emails waiting for me, making me wonder why I ever decided that I wanted to own a business.

At four in the afternoon, the production manager calls to let me know they still had probably three hours’ work to get the order out and if I would authorise overtime.

I was happy to do it and gave him the go-ahead. Knowing I was going to get home late, I call Alec, and he answers straight away, “Hey, baby, you nearly done?”

Sighing, I rub the bridge of my nose, “No,” I groan tiredly. “Remind me again why I wanted to be my own boss.”

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