Page 24 of A Ticking Time Boss

“With what?”

“Men. Just like I did before.”

I roll my eyes. “By suggesting Cake for one of my dates. You have to realize the men I go out with aren’t like you.”

“They’re men,” he says, “and I am one. How hard can it be?”

“Dating is nerve-wracking enough for me without having your bad advice in my head,” I say, smiling now too. “You’ve seen just how worked up I get.”

“You have no trouble telling me what you think,” he says. “You’re not nervous now.”

“Well, no. But you’re my boss, we’re working. It’s not like you’re serious about… me, you know? It’s not like that.”

“Right,” he says. “Because you and I would never go on a date.”

“Of course not,” I say. Is he joking? A frisson of nerves bursts through my stomach, there and gone. He has to be. He’s the CEO of the Globe, and he’s also… him, handsome as sin and charming and someone who dates models.

Carter raises his glass to mine. It’s ice water to ice water, nothing special, but the smile on his face says something else. “To friendship,” he says.

I touch my glass to his. “To friendship,” I say, and think that this must be the weirdest, most unexpected one I’ve ever had.

SEVEN

It’s rare for more than two of us to be at Acture Capital’s offices at a time, and considering which numbers released today, it’s my damn luck that two of my three business partners are in.

“The Globe is doing abysmally,” Victor says. “Worse than we anticipated.”

I’m not surprised he takes the pessimistic view. “So it’ll be a challenge,” I say. “We knew that going in.”

On the other side of the table, Tristan runs a hand over his jaw, skepticism in his voice. “I don’t know, Carter. This might be more than we can handle.”

“The Globe has had a tough six months. If they didn’t, we wouldn’t have gotten the company at such a steal.”

“If they tank,” Victor mutters, “we’ll be the ones who get robbed.”

I brace my hands against the table. “They won’t tank. We’ve cut the personnel costs by significant amounts already, overheads are shrinking, and two donors who said they were ready to back out have stayed their hand.”

“Because they can write it off on their taxes,” Tristan says dryly. “Not because they believe in the Globe.”

“Look, I’m not going to sugarcoat it. It’s in a bad place. Advertising prices are dropping at the same time as our subscribers are decreasing, but that’s temporary,” I repeat. “The newspaper is one of the most illustrious in the country.”

“Reputations won’t pay the bills,” Victor says. But he’s flipping through the paper with interest. “It has good bones, though. We could sell off the parts.”

“Not yet. Let me try to build something on those bones first.”

“Can’t hurt to try,” Tristan says. “We all knew the Globe would be amongst the hardest companies we ever tried to turn. It’ll be a damn feather in a cap if we do, though.”

“It’s not like we bought a profitable consulting firm that we just expanded,” I say. It’s a low punch, perhaps, but for the past years both Tristan and Victor have served separate terms as CEO of Exciteur Consulting. It’s now the world’s third-largest consulting firm. But it had already been the seventh when they began.

Tristan snorts. “Noted.”

“I’ll attend the Reporters’ Ball next weekend,” I say. “We all know there will be plenty of traditional donors there. I’ll schmooze, show them the new leadership. Might help us tide things over for a while.”

“Sounds like a good place to start,” Tristan says.

Victor crosses his arms across his chest. “Anthony would be on my side, were he here.”

“Perhaps, but he’s not,” I say. Our fourth partner has finally taken an overseas vacation with his fiancée Summer, and the two of them had gone completely off the grid for three weeks. I know exactly which one of the two had been responsible for that decision.

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