Page 44 of Bully's Second Chance
She shook her head. “Don’t bother him. He works enough as it is.”
I nodded. “Suit yourself.”
I knew we had a lot to accomplish in order to get the Shanghai business I had taken on back up and running. The warehouses alone were an issue to tackle since most of them were either not up to code or breaking so many labor laws that it made my head spin. We’d have to refile a great deal of paperwork just to get shit moving so a product could come out the doors of their business, but before I did any of that, I had to find a translator who could help us not only decipher the paperwork but aid us in filling it in.
“No wonder my father only did the bare minimum with his international deals,” I murmured.
I eased myself down into my chair at my desk and peeked over at Lily. I expected her to have some sort of opinion, or maybe some advice, but she didn’t even look in my general direction. All she did was type away on her laptop.
“Lily.”
“Yes?” she asked, her fingers still flying across the keyboard.
“Lily, look at me.”
She drew in a deep breath before she stopped typing and cast me an apathetic glance over her shoulder. “Yes?”
I leaned back in my chair. “You know you aren’t required to stay here if you don’t want to, right?”
She blinked. “Are you saying you don’t want me here?”
I shook my head. “No. I’m simply saying that if you don’t want to be here—”
“Well, I do,” she said as her eyes went back to her laptop screen. And as she continued typing away like nothing had happened, I couldn’t help but smile.
“All right, then, so long as we’re on the same page,” I said.
She nodded. “We are. No worries.”
Our work morning was pretty silent. I finally got all of the files I needed from the guys across the pond, and as I looked through the information, I became more infuriated with the position I had been put in. I offered to take forty percent of their company in exchange for an endless supply of money to get them back up and running, and I figured the investment would be well worth it. But after poring through all of their documents, steam started coming out of my ears.
“What is it? What’s wrong?” Lily asked.
I slammed my laptop closed. “Just—everything. Everything is wrong with this project.”
She rolled her chair over to the side of my desk. “Talk to me about it. What’s going on?”
I chewed on the inside of my cheek. “I mean, I knew there was work to do. Their brand is outdated, and so is their name. I’ll have to re-trademark a company name for them, redo the logo, and then that’ll give birth to renovations in order to update their stores. But, their warehouses are a mess. They’re disobeying labor laws. Half of their buildings don’t even have air conditioning. It’s pathetic; it doesn’t look like they’ve updated these damned places one fucking bit since they were built. And now, I’m supposed to clean up what they were too lazy to do?”
“I’m so sorry, Jax.”
I scoffed. “Not to mention the people I’m going to have to lay off. China has some of the weirdest labor laws on the planet, and one of them is that you have to have a minimum product output to be able to reserve and claim the entirety of a warehouse like they’ve tried to do. But, they don’t have that, so not only do I have to lay off at least half of their staff until I can get product output up to where it needs to be, but we’ll have to startsharingwarehouse time with other companies until that happens.”
“Good Lord,” she murmured.
I closed my eyes. “It’s a fucking mess, and I can’t help but feel like I’ve been swindled into cleaning up some corrupt company’s self-imposed wounds.”
I felt her hand come down against my shoulder, and I relaxed immediately. I wasn’t sure what it was about her touch, but something about the warmth of her hand channeled itself directly to my lungs and forced me to take a breath.
Then, she stood, walked behind me, and started massaging my shoulders.
“Lily, I can’t. I’ve got so much—”
She dug harder into my shoulders, causing me to groan. “Five minutes. Give me five minutes, then you can get back at it.”
My eyes fluttered closed, and I lost myself in the rapturous strength of her fingers. I leaned against her touch, wanting to feel more of her as my legs spread and my back slouched in my chair. She worked her fingertips into the nape of my neck, causing my head to fall forward before she worked her hands into my hair. And as she massaged my scalp, I honestly thought I was going to fall asleep.
That was before her cell phone started ringing. “Hold on, I have to get that,” she said softly.
