Page 63 of Erik's Salvation
This was bad. Really bad. Not only had she made below-average sales for the last few months, but the homeowners she’d managed to list had been pulling their properties one by one.
She pressed her palms to her eyes, begging the tears to stay away. Shewould notcry. So her biggest client to date, the one whose sale could pay all her bills with a single commission, had pulled out. More would come.
“Hey.” Taylor stood in the doorway, worry glazing her eyes. “Are you okay?”
Nope. She was drowning in a sea of bills with no way to pay them. “Angelo Bonetti is taking his property to another agent.”
She cringed. “God, that’s a big loss. I’m sorry.”
“So am I.” Fall-into-a-fetal-position-and-scream kind of sorry.
“I had a client pull a property a few months ago. It hurt. Especially because it was right as Elliot’s father stopped paying child support, then up and disappeared.”
Her heart went out to the other woman. Taylor was supporting her ten-year-old son on her own.
James appeared in the doorway beside Taylor. “You women talking about me and my good looks?”
Hannah rolled her eyes. “You wish.”
He smirked, then his expression changed to one of concern. “Hey, Brigid said you left the fundraiser early with your neighbor last weekend. Everything okay?”
“Yeah. Things are really good, actually.”
Taylor got an excited glimmer in her eyes, as one side of James’s mouth tilted up. “That’s good. I’m happy for you.” He pushed off the doorframe. “Well, I’m going to Black Bean to grab a coffee and some lunch. You guys wanna come?”
Taylor shook her head. “Trying to save money by bringing lunch.”
“Sure.” Hannah checked the time. It was almost noon…why not? It wasn’t as if she had anything else to do…like sell an expensive house.
Black Bean was close to the office, so the walk there and back didn’t take long. But when she re-entered her office, she stopped at the sight of her boss standing in the room.
“Reuben.”
He turned from where he was looking at a framed photo on her shelf. It was of her, Brigid, and Henry. Reuben wasn’t smiling, and that made her belly fill with dread. “Hannah. I was wondering if we could have a talk.”
The dread spiraled into something else. Something that felt a lot like panic.
She swallowed, trying to force it down. “Yes. Of course.”
She moved behind her desk and pushed the coffee cup to the side, suddenly hating that she’d gone out to lunch at all. She shouldn’t. She was entitled to a lunch break. But when work performance was low, she wanted her boss to think she was a workaholic who never took a break.
Reuben lowered into the chair opposite her desk, and when he sighed and looked at his hands, she knew it was bad. That’s what people did when they prepared you for bad news, right? They sighed and looked anywhere but at you.
“Hannah, we need to talk about your sales these last few months.”
She opened her mouth, but before she could get a word in, he continued.
“James’s and Taylor’s sales haven’t been great either, but recently, they’ve improved. And I just got word that you lost the Bonetti property.”
How the heck had he heard about that already? Had Angelo called him too?
She swallowed. “That’s true. The combination of the competing company opening recently and hesitant buyers hasn’t been working in my favor. But I’ve got some good leads on the houses Iamselling.”
He nodded and looked at her so closely she wanted to squirm. She felt like she was sixteen again and sitting in the principal’s office, being lectured. But this was worse…this was her livelihood. Her health insurance.
“I’m going to be frank with you, Hannah.”
Shit.
