Page 8 of Santa Baby Maybe
“Yes. Now I know this is going to sound crazy, but you know who Christopher Radko is.”
Wes nodded slowly, but I shook my head.
“Who the hell is Christopher Radko?” I asked.
Joy rolled her eyes. “You know you work for a Christmas ornament company, right? Like, we’re not making widgets downstairs.”
I sneered. “Just tell me.”
“He makes, or used to make, high-dollar ornaments,” Wes explained. “He sold his company, but his originals, if you can find them, are pricey.”
I shook my head. “What’s pricey? No one is going to pay more than five dollars for a silly ornament.”
Joy snorted. “Radko ornaments sell for as high as sixty, seventy, even eighty dollars. He’s got signature ornaments that sell for over a thousand dollars.”
“That’s ridiculous,” I said.
“No,” Wes said, shaking his head. He stood and moved the end of the table. Then he picked up Joy’s ornament and studied it. “That’s art.”
Joy smiled.
“You think you can create them at this level?” Wes asked her.
She nodded. “It’s about the mold. That’s where the work is, and the hand painting. We’ve got a really talented team. If we could take our top people and have them dedicated exclusively to creating a high-end product, we could sell it at a significantly higher price point.”
“A high-end Kane Co. ornament line,” Wes mused.
“High end costs money. It costs time,” I argued. “If you build these pieces ofartand they don’t sell for what you’re charging, we could set ourselves back.”
“Look at this, W.B.” Wes said, handing the ornament to me. “People would pay money to hang that from their tree.”
I took the ornament and studied it. I had to admit it was beautiful. Bright. Shiny. It practically glowed from the inside and it made me want to keep looking at it. I glanced at Joy. I almost hated that she was this good.
“I’m going to need numbers. See how much it’s going to take to produce at this quality.”
She sighed. “I do know it’s a business, Mr. Darling. Cheryl, can you turn on the projector? I have a PowerPoint presentation that will walk you through the cost, production, quantity, and estimated profits.”
As Cheryl pulled down the screen and then went to plug in the projector, I walked over to Joy to give her back her ornament.
“PowerPoint,” I said quietly so only she would hear. “Impressive. I wouldn’t have thought anartistlike yourself would know your way around a computer.”
“Well, you’re an asshole who doesn’t know me, so that doesn’t surprise me,” she whispered back.
“Did you really tell Wes to fire me?”
For some reason it was important I knew that. Yes, it was true. We’d been battling for two months over the direction for the upcoming new line. I wanted more for less and she wanted better quality materials. If I said up, she said down, and vice versa. We were never on the same page.
And yet, we had been working toward the same goal. I’d kind of thought it made us a team. If a fairly hostile one.
“I might have been slightly angry over your suggestion that we could replace glass blowers with a machine,” she muttered. “Has it ever occurred to you to leave your high and mighty office and actually see what we do?”
“I leave my office,” I countered.
“For lunch. Which you eat alone so it doesn’t count. You need to see how the ornaments are created. Be a part of it, so that you’ll understand it better. Instead you stick to your office and yournumbers.And that’s it. All day long, just adding them up or subtracting them.”
“That hurt,” I muttered. And, surprisingly, it did. There was absolutely no reason it should. Not coming from someone I considered to be a flaky fruitcake, but somehow over the last two months this woman had managed to get under my skin.
I looked at her face and she was biting her plump lower lip. She didn’t like hurting my feelings. It went against her basic instinct for goodness. She was about to apologize, but I didn’t want to hear it. I held up my hand to stop her.
