Page 36 of A Ticking Time Boss

His smile is small and crooked. “Nice to meet you, Audrey.”

I extend my hand. “You too, Carter.”

He takes it in his. It’s so much warmer than I expected. His fingers curl a moment longer around mine, long and firm, before he lets it go.

“We’re here,” he says. “Thanks for tonight.”

NINE

I rub a hand over my eyes. Despite the sleep I’d gotten last night, better than I had in weeks, I’m bone tired. The Globe’s poor financials are an antidote to any kind of rest.

A man would have to be mad or inspired to take this project on. I’d been inspired when I bought it, but increasingly I’m wondering if I fall in the other category instead. All I need is a hat and I could host myself some tea parties.

Wesley’s quiet opposite my desk. He probably knows what’s coming, and I know it too, but I have to say it.

“Are you seriously telling me,” I say, “that the Deckson ads account for eight percent of our profit margin on the paper?”

“Unfortunately so,” he says. “One of the previous board members was close with the Deckson family. Things escalated from there, I suppose.”

“I’m sure that was well and good thirty years ago, but the company is a PR nightmare today. We can’t have their name plastered across our pages.”

Wesley takes off his glasses and rubs them clean on his shirt with meticulous swipes. “It would undermine confidence in our reporting.”

“The Investigative team is working on a deep exposé on their industry and the production methods. Undermine? We’d lose any credibility we have left, running that piece on the front cover and having a Deckson ad on the next page.”

“You’re right,” Wesley says.

I stare at the man. He’s been nothing but helpful once I got here, quick to engage with my suggestions and even quicker to implement them. But this exposé had been in the works for over a year. He’d been editor-in-chief all that time.

Had he never seen the clash?

“We can sell the ad space to other retailers,” he says. “I’ll have our sales department draft a list of possible candidates during the day.”

I run a hand through my hair. The Globe shouldn’t be this reliant on ads. It’s stifling the company’s originality, credibility, and most of all, it’s losing trust with the very people we want to reach.

“Do that,” I agree, even if I hate the necessity. “Investigative will have a part to play in this whole thing, you know. If we’re to draw new subscribers to the Globe, we want to keep our reporting relevant. Break new stories.”

“I’m with you on that, sir,” Wesley says.

He leaves my office soon after, and I relish the closed door. No one to impress or charm, just me and my thoughts. This fucking media company is like a minefield. I make one department redundant only to discover some of the employees in it were actually pulling a load on the side for another. The man I thought was competent enough to head a new department is poached by another newspaper with higher pay, and the bastard doesn’t even confront me about it—or HR—to ask for a commensurate raise in pay first.

The internal structure of this newspaper is a disaster.

But I can’t blame my mood entirely on the Globe, try as I may. There’s a single, tiny little reason why I can’t.

It’s the text I got last night. I haven’t responded to it yet, and it’s lying on my phone, innocent and unanswered.

Audrey: I survived the date!! It went so well. I think I’ve nailed the art of small talk now. We’re going on another one tonight. I’m supposed to pick the place. I want to suggest the movies, but does that have other implications for a man?

Her date went well. As a friend, I should be happy about that. Hadn’t I been the one to make the damn suggestion about helping her with dates if she helped me with the company? So far we’d done neither of those things. It would be cool by me if we kept it like that.

Of course this guy wants a second date. Any man who wasn’t an idiot could see the catch she is. Honest to a fault, beautifully optimistic without being naive, and true in a way I’ve rarely met. There’s no artifice to her.

She’s quick to laugh and quick to stand up for her beliefs.

Audrey might give me flack for being a charmer, but mine is all bluff. Her kind of appeal runs deeper.

The idea of her having trouble dating is ridiculous. I’d understood that the second I met her. It’s in her head, the nerves, the expectations, the build-up.

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