Chapter Six - Mac
By the time I get back up to the seventh floor, I’ve forgotten all about the meeting.
The glares coming from my executive team through the glass walls of the executive conference room remind me quick enough. Shit.
I straighten my tie as I walk through the doors and slide them closed behind me. “OK, where were we?” I scan their faces. They’re all looking at me like I’m a pariah. Even Sowards, who didn’t seem to like Ellie much before her meltdown.
“Is Ellie OK?” Jennifer, the Communications Director, asks.
“Um…” Shit. “I’m sure she is.” I give Jennifer a weak smile. “I’m sure whatever is bothering Ellie will pass and she’ll be fine. Look,” I say, hating the fact that I’m the one who has to do this. Hating that Heath is off in China so I am forced to deal with the company. “Obviously all these changes are happening for a reason. We’re restructuring, but not because we’re having capital issues or unexpected profit reports.”
There’s an audible sigh from all eight of my top team.
“But because…” God, I’m so bad at this. “Because we’re selling.”
Dead silence for a count of three. Then everyone is talking at once.
“Parceling it off by division?” Jennifer asks.
“Where is the organization chart for that?” Sowards asks. His tone towards me is more like the tone he had with Ellie earlier. Impatient.
“Will we still have jobs?” Clarisse asks.
“Who is courting this sale?”
“Does your father know about this?”
That’s my favorite. Yeah, no. I think I’ll sell off a multi-billion-dollar business without approval.
“That’s all I have to say today, so if you’ll excuse me, I have work to do. We’ll talk more as information comes in.”
I walk out the doors and turn left towards my wing of the seventh floor. Of course, it won’t hide me for long. All eight of the people in that room have offices up here too. But I’ve done what I came to do.
“Good morning, Mr. Stonewall,” a cheerful woman with long black hair and a cream-colored dress calls out as I approach the outer office. “I’m Stephanie,” she says with a smile. “And if you need anything while you’re here, just let me know.”
“Where is the new office for Ellie Hatcher? I was told my father promoted her and she was to move her office up to the seventh floor immediately.”
“Oh, yes,” Stephanie says. “We only had one spare. Well,” she corrects. “We didn’t have any spare offices, but Heath’s office had an annex, which inventory has resupplied with something that should work temporarily. Until Ellie can order something to ‘make her happy’.” Stephanie’s fingers do little air quotes around that last part. I must look puzzled because she adds, “Your father’s instructions. He wants her pampered for once. Again, his exact words.”
“Hmm. My father has a sweet spot for Ellie Hatcher?” Why? She’s clearly crazy.
“Oh, he loves her to death. Everyone does.” Stephanie laughs. “She is so sweet. She and Heath were close too.”
“Then why is her office still in the aviation maintenance hangar? In fact, why the hell is she working down there to begin with?”
“Um, well,” Stephanie says, perplexed. “Logistics. The guests fly in, she greets them, escorts them to their appropriate studios, and then brings them back to their plane.”
“She’s getting paid an executive salary?” I ask. “To match her executive status?”
“Well, um, I have no idea,” Stephanie says. “I’m not privy to salaries. But your father was always generous to his employees. And Ellie was brought in while she was still in college. I think your fathers were friends, right?”
It’s my turn to be perplexed. “Were they?” Jesus Christ, how did I allow myself to get so removed from the family business?
“They were,” Stephanie says with a smile. “And IT is still down in the maintenance hangar too. That was the first building completed after the Atrium eight years ago. People just settle in, you know? I’m sure if Ellie wanted a new office she’d have gotten one. But I don’t think she’s that kind of employee, Mr. Stonewall.”
“You don’t think she wants this office?”
“Oh, I’m sure she’ll be thrilled when she sees it. But she’s not the type of girl to demand things. Not things like an office with a view, anyway.”
I ponder this for a moment. “Does it have a view?”
Stephanie smiles. “A very nice view. And it will be ready this afternoon. Would you like me to invite her up and show her around?”
“No,” I say, absently looking down through the courtyard to the waterfall as it spills out over the sixth floor. “I’ll handle Ellie Hatcher. Thanks, Stephanie. If you need me I’ll be in my office.”
I walk to the door with my name on it, still trying to wrap my head around my new life as the CEO of Stonewall Entertainment. Thank God my office is not made of glass like everything else around here. And my desk is not a picnic table, for fuck’s sake.
I open the door, step in, and close it behind me.
The window is magnificent. Floor to ceiling. But at least it’s got a view of the hills and not of the city. I can’t even take a city view right now. I get enough of that from the penthouse I will call home while I’m here.
The rolling hills are bright green and dotted with cows. That makes me smile. The Tech Center is huge and growing bigger every day. But it was an afterthought. The downtown area was far too crowded to support the sprawling campuses of the many tech companies that now call the city home. Our campus alone is more than a hundred and fifty acres. You can’t get that in a city. You have to create it on the edge of something.
My father’s words spill over into my thoughts. This campus is his dream actualized and now I’m walking away. It’s not the ideal end, is it?
My phone buzzes in my pants, but when I reach in to get it, I remember that I have two phones now. Mine and Heath’s. It’s Heath’s phone that is buzzing. It’s always Heath’s phone.
I don’t even bother unlocking the home screen to read it. I can’t imagine it’s anything important. Just one of the many, many girls on his daily schedule of inappropriate business.
Instead I sit at my large glass desk and bring the oversized computer monitor to life, then do a search for all women at Stonewall named Ellie.
I get no hits. Which is weird, since I know damn well we have at least two of them.
Maybe Ellie is short for something. I try Eloise, because it was my grandmother’s name and pops into my head immediately, and my Ellie’s face pops up.
Eloise Hatcher is a graduate of some private Catholic college in the Midwest I’ve never heard of. She has a perfect smile and a short bob haircut in this photo, a lot shorter than it is now. And she’s wearing a pale pink sweater with a pearl button at her throat.
Jesus, can that girl be any more sweet? What exactly was her relationship with Heath? Were they dating?
It makes me sort of sick to picture her with Heath.
We have exactly one Eloise. So who is this other Ellie? The dirty one? The one who practically offered to suck my dick in the stairs just moments after Eloise Hatcher got up off her knees?
Ellen. There are seventeen Ellens. But Ellen Abraham is the only one with red hair, fuck-me eyes, and tits pitched up so high on her chest, her cleavage is showing in her employee profile picture.
Ellen Abraham is in the employee outreach department and runs the internal communications network, reporting directly to Jennifer Sanders from the meeting I just left.
She is not my type at all.
Neither is Eloise Hatcher. But while Ellen Abraham likes to wear her personality like a coat, Eloise Hatcher likes to hide hers. She has no hobbies listed. Ellen’s employee page reads like a dating site profile.
Eloise has two sentences to describe herself. I enjoy helping people. And dogs.
I actually laugh out loud. Because sheepdogs. She has been sending Heath pictures of sheepdogs. Who owns a sheepdog these days? Most women want little designer puppies. Things that fit in purses. Living accessories.
Eloise wants a farm dog.
I shake my head. She’s captured my attention for sure. And even though I mistook her for Ellen, and even though it was Ellen’s dirty messages to Heath that sparked that interest, the pearl button at her throat is the reason I’m still thinking about her now. That crazy outburst in the conference room was way over the top, but not in the way Ellen’s cleavage showing in her employee photo is. And that trip down the slide, holy shit. I think I will laugh about that for years. Her skirt all bunched up at her hips. Her shoes coming down the slide ahead of her. The hands and knees.
Fuck.
And then I realize how long it’s been since I got a kick out of something.
My phone beeps and I pick it up. “Yes,” I say.
“Mr. Stonewall?” Stephanie asks on the phone. “Mr. Lewis is here to see you.”
“Thanks, send him in.” I hang up the phone and close out of the employee profile program, then stand, button my suit coat, and walk to the door just as Stephanie opens it and Lewis walks through.
Time to get back to the business of dismantling my father’s company, I guess.
Ridiculous girls with pearl-button sweaters and outrageous outbursts will have to wait.