Page 21 of The Grump I Loathe
Sweet summer child. “Well, don’t worry about that. If he has any disappointed looks to throw around, I’ll make sure he aims them at me. So…M&M?” I offered again, holding out the bag.
He gave me a tentative smile and accepted a handful of chocolate.
For the next hour, we snacked and plotted out how to turn the alien baddies into alien besties. By lunch, I was out of chocolate and starving.Leigh came to grab us, eyebrow arching as she took in the mind map on our board. “Impressive. Also, team lunch for your first day.”
I grabbed my phone. “Ooo, where are we going?”
She looked confused. “To the cafeteria.”
“Ah, come on. We can do better than that. There’s a go-kart track nearby. The pizza is the bomb and probably cheaper than anything in this fancy building.”
“I don’t know,” Leigh said, biting her lip.
“Um, I do, because the coffee I grabbed after my interview almost cost me my first-born child.”
Noah snorted.
“No, I mean,” Leigh gestured across the floor, “Connor’s probably not going to like the entire team leaving for lunch.”
I was getting sick of hearing that. What else didn’t Connor like? The sun? Oxygen? The gravity holding him to the ground? “I’ll ask him.”
Leigh shook her head. “I’m not sure that’s a good idea.”
“I’ve already impressed him with my epic business attire. What could go wrong?” I adjusted my suit as I marched over to breach the castle walls and get permission for a team excursion.
Inside the glass office, Connor scowled on the phone. That was the kind of face I made when I had to call my insurance company, but it seemed to be his default. If he was wearing that scowl while wearing full armor with maybe a dragon behind him, it would look pretty badass—but in the office setting, it just made him look grumpy. I knocked on the door, waving to get his attention.
Connor’s eyes flicked in my direction. I held my finger up. “I just need one minute!”
He turned his chair away.Okay, rude. I glanced over my shoulder where Leigh and Noah waited. Leigh shrugged, but I wasn’t so easily deterred. I jogged into the nearest cubicle and borrowed a marker and a piece of paper and wrote,Taking the team go-karting for lunch. I jogged back, hammering on the glass and holding the paper up. Connor glanced at the note, then did a double take. I shot him a thumbs-up.
That got him out of his chair. He flung his door open. “Not in the middle of a workday.”
“What, you want us to have lunch in the middle of the night? It’s kind of built in to happen in the middle of the day.”
“Go-karting isn’t just lunch. It’s going to bleed over into the afternoon, wasting valuable time.” He huffed like a bull. “And there was no team outing approved for today.”
“Good thing you have the ability to approve things,” I said, clapping him on the shoulder. The look he gave me could have lasered a hole in my forehead.
“My answer is no,” he said firmly.
I caught the door with my foot before he could close it. “Listen, the whole point of a team lunch to welcome the newbie is to give us a chance to connect. There’s no better way to meld a team than by having fun together. And you need us to meld as quickly as possible if you want this game out on schedule.”
I looked down at my non-existent watch. “It’s already the end of March, boss. October isn’t that far away.”
His nostrils flared.
“I mean it. Look at the progress I’ve already made with Noah. This morning the guy would barely make eye contact with me. Now we’re besties, and we’re practically finished replotting the openingsequence.”
His jaw twitched. I couldn’t tell if he was considering my words or contemplating setting me on fire. I was pretty sure it was the latter and I couldn’t resist pushing him, which was sort of unlike me, but me all the same.
“If you prove you can do more than scowl,” I teased, “I’ll even let you tag along.”
Connor did not smile, but his eyes drifted over my shoulder to where Noah stood. “If I agree to this, I expect you to deliver the first draft of the reworked opening by end of day. Not whatever that scribbled mess is on the board. I want a detailed script.”
So he’d actually been keeping tabs on our meeting? I’d imagined him skulking away in his tower, out of touch with what happened in the real world. But okay, maybe he’d earned a tiny percent of respect from me as a boss. Like, five percent. “Deal.”
He smirked like he suspected I’d fail, and I revised that five percent down to three.
