Page 130 of Lowdown Dirty (Down and Dirty)

“You’re going to fail, then. You don’t understand that community. You don’t understand the people who are looking to buy there.”

“Well, tell me about them.” He made an indiscreet glance at his watch.

She ground her teeth. “Well, you’re making it very clear that we don’t have time to get down to the nitty-gritty details, but you should know that I do details better than anyone else. I pay attention to things that are going to be problems and I fix them before they are.” She pulled the report she’d carefully compiled from her case and slid it across his desk. “That’s some of the feedback Carine gathered from people who’ve visited the office in Shora and ended up not committing to purchasing a lot. The ones who didn’t have a problem with the community strictures had problems with the outdoor living areas attached to their homes. The ones who didn’t have a problem with that had issues with the floor plans and how they didn’t necessarily make sense for what their families needed. They always said things like, ‘I’d commit to this one if…’ and there’d be some change that would only take me a day to draft. I need to be able to promise them those things.”

“We don’t do that.”

“Just in case you didn’t hear me”—likely due to hishead-in-assproblem—“Ineedto be able to do that. And if youdon’twant me to do that, find yourself a Neil or an Oscar or a Lee who will. They’re fine with just coasting on the status quo without doing any customer service, but I’m not. I design homes for people, not investors. Get out of my way and let me do it.”

“Or…”

She ground her teeth harder to suppress her scoff. He was really going to push back and try to make her back down by using that passive aggressive managerial bullshit. He didn’t think she’d use her own ultimatum, but if she had to, she would.

She wasn’t going to keep attaching her name to projects she was ashamed to discuss. Her potential was so much greater, but it was being squashed. She was being used as a workhorse, which was fine for some people. Kevin thrived in that role and didn’t expect special treatment inside it. The dickheads in her office, though…they wanted to do the bare minimum and get special perks, too. She was beyond sick of it.

“Or,” she said, zipping up her case, “you’ll find that you’ll need to put someone else in Shora. I’ve always finished what I’ve started or tried to before I got transferred to the next site, but no developer or architecture firm owner in his or her right mind would deny me at the very least an interview. There’s a firm in San Francisco that’s been recruiting me pretty heavily for five years.” A woman-owned company that Valerie wassointrigued by, but hadn’t wanted to entertain because she wasn’t ready to abandon her little bit of family on the east coast. “I wouldn’t only have a job, but a career there. I didn’t get into architecture just because it was ajob. It was what I wanted to do, and I wanted to do my best at it like most people who make things for a living.”

She grabbed her purse from the floor and stood.

“So. I don’t have an office here, just a cubicle I’m never in because I’m always on site somewhere having no life of my own, but that’s okay. I can work anywhere. I’ll be in my cubicle for the rest of today and part of tomorrow and then I have to go back to Shora and let a lady know whether she should resign herself to having the perfect lot and a not-so-perfect stick-built house. Let me know whatyoursupervisor thinks about that proposal on your desk, so I can act accordingly.” She smiled at him, nodded, and said, “I’ll send Neil in for you next.”

“Thanks,” Ted said through unmoving lips. His face was so red, Valerie wondered if she should get a pin or something to deflate him gently before he exploded violently.

But really, she didn’t care. She left and gestured for Neil to go on in as she exited the office. He stood there three feet from the doorway twirling his coffee stirrer in his mug as if he couldn’t entertain himself in any other way except to eavesdrop.

She finally did allow herself the eye roll she’d been holding back. Then she made her way to the elevator, endured the lecherous wink-wink from a certain CFO as she waited, and said a prayer for serenity as she walked through the cubicle maze on the third floor.

Plopping down at her empty desk, she pulled out her personal phone and scrolled through the call log while her computer booted up. She hitDialwhen she found the number she needed.

“Hi, Cindy. This is Valerie Lawson. I’m an in-house architect with Lipton. Ms. Thomas has been trying to get in touch with me. Could you please put me through to her or to her voicemail box if she’s not available?”

This is it.

Valerie typed in her computer password and stared, unseeing, at the Lipton logo on the desktop background as the machine finished loading software.

The line rang three times on the other end, and Valerie plotted out the voicemail message in her mind.

“Ms. Lawson! What a surprise!”

Valerie sat up, shocked and unprepared. “Um, hi, Ms. Thomas. I wanted to talk to you about the message you left.”

“Are you ready for a change?”

“I think I am. I…” She took a deep breath and let it out. “I am. I can’t work like this anymore.”

Orlivelike it. Valerie pinched the bridge of her nose and took a deep breath to quell the tingles in her sinuses. She wasn’t going to cry, even if it was all so overwhelming. Severing ties. A potential move.

Tim.

San Francisco was going to be too far a commute, even for him. There’d be no way around it. If she took that job—assuming it was offered—they’d be over.

She wasn’t ready, but what choice did she have?

___

Tim looked up from the flight tracker app on his phone to find Heidi leaning on his desk and squinting at him. “What?” He put his gaze right back on that red dot. Valerie was halfway between San Francisco and Norfolk and he was going to meet that plane when it landed. She didn’t know that, though. She didn’t even know thatheknew where she was. Tim hated having to squeeze his network around its collective neck to get information, but when it came to Valerie, he’d do desperate things. Carine had given him a half-assed answer, so he’d gotten a bit more information from Frank, and—oddly—the most from Kevin, who was awaiting her return for completely different reason than his father. He wanted to know what was happening in the development of Shora. Tim just wanted to take her home.

And keep her there.

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