Chapter Three
“I’m just saying, you should really take on board what the CEO suggested. He’s obviously heard about how good you are, he’s paying you a compliment,” James babbles in Lauren’s ear as she attempts to make herself coffee without getting side-tracked.
“Well don’t just say,” she scathes, shaking her head. “I’m not ferrying some guy around just ‘cause some other guy asked me to!”
“But they want top quality service! This could be a massive break for us, Lauren, if you step up and do this, they might be a long-term client!” he exclaims, grabbing her by the wrist and almost sending her coffee all over both of them.
“Why me, though? Other people can drive!” she bristles, swatting at him.
James won’t quit that easy, though. “Don’t you see what this is? It’s a trust exercise. If the most senior member of the company is willing to give them exactly what they want, then they’ll know we’re for real!”
“Aren’t we real enough already?” she scowls, hurrying towards her office in the hope of losing him. “I’ve got better things to do than pander to rich people.”
“Like watching the business go under?” James says, raising an eyebrow.
“Hey!” she snaps, wheeling around. “We’re not going under. It’s just a – rough patch. It’ll be fine!”
“We need the rich people, Lauren! Without them, we starve,” he sighs, full of melodrama. “You know that if we get repeat business from them, it could save the company.”
She huffs at him, turning away instead of succumbing. She can’t admit he’s right to his face, or his arrogance levels might cause him to implode. Not that that would necessarily be a terrible thing.
“Just think about it, okay?” he calls after her as she stomps down the corridor, coffee searing her hand as it sloshes over the edge of the cup.
For most of the day, she steadfastly does not think about it; she bustles around the edges of it, picking up three potential clients, two of which do not sound like assholes, and finally works out a solution to the stupid-Julia-holiday debacle. She can do just fine without Kingswood, she doesn’t need their business.
She has second thoughts when she inevitably returns to the profits. No matter how much she reasons that she doesn’t need to eat that badly, she can’t quite shake the thought that if she did this – this one, short, easy job that she used to do all the time for half the money with twice the willing – she may not have to stay late every evening anymore, she may not have to agonize over redundancies, she could buy as many cats as she wanted and be able to feed them and herself.
It's the email that swings it. Kingswood have decided to kindly notify her that the client in question is one Richard Shepherd, CEO of the equally belligerent LBP Corporations, who – ah. Who could possibly be landed as a national account. Who could not only help her feed her hypothetical cats but could put her hypothetical kids through college. That’s interesting.
She could do it. She could chauffeur them good and proper. She could chauffeur them better than they’ve ever been chauffeured before. It’d be just like old times; put on her nicest suit and her cleanest shoes, practice a smile in the mirror, talk if they talk, keep quiet if they don’t. It’d be easy – and God knows she could probably do it a damn sight better than some of her current employees. Especially Julia.
After wringing her hands together for what she deems an appropriate amount of time, she gives in and types out an email. This Shepherd guy better think himself lucky.
The more she thinks about it, though, the more bells start ringing in her head. Didn’t she know someone called Richard Shepherd? Didn’t she date someone called Richard Shepherd?
Her college career had been mostly successful; she’d come out with a reasonably useless yet suitably impressive politics degree and had avoided getting stuck in the continuous state of partying that some people had fallen victim to. She’d made a handful of best friends and a fistful of worst enemies, but most people fell somewhere in between. Richard had been one of them; he was nothing special, really, not the smartest nor the funniest nor the best-looking guy she’d ever dated, but they’d parted amicably and he’d disappeared into the ether to focus on his career. Oh. Oh.
Without a shred of shame, she types his name into Google and waits for her Wi-Fi to catch up with her mind – it can’t be him, surely, he was too quiet and geeky to become – whoa. It is him. Just about.
He’s lost the lanky hair and the acne, the ripped jeans and the Green Day shirt, and he’s staring at her from the computer screen with a too-white smile. A little more digging tells her he’s worth over $50 million. He used to ask her for lunch money.
It shouldn’t matter to her – he’s just some guy, who happens to have been lucky enough to be a success story. He’s probably got three divorces under his belt already and a kid in every state, he’ll probably end up lonely and depressed at the end of his life because he devoted everything to his career and left no room for his personal life. Yeah. This doesn’t make him better than her.
But she can’t help looking around her shabby office with its one small window, a slowly dying potted plant and a stain on the wall from that one time she launched her latte across the room and think what she’s done so wrong. Why can’t she be the one with the sharp suit and the smug expression? She’s probably worked double as hard as this prick; life just isn’t fair.
Then it dawns upon her. She’s going to have to drive this dude around. She’s going to have to smile like nothing’s wrong, like she’s not burning with envy, like she doesn’t hate listening to him prattle on about his shares and his penthouse. He’ll recognize her, surely, he will, and he’ll mentally taunt her for the whole journey. It’s going to be hell on earth.
She can’t back out, though, so she just minimizes his shit-eating grin and tries to put it out of her mind before she caves in on herself.
***
Friday comes a lot quicker than she would’ve liked.
She likes to think the weather is deliberately reflecting her mood when she opens the curtains to a dark and drizzly day. Serves him right, she thinks bitterly, even he can’t control the weather.
It pains her that she has to make such an effort for this guy; she’s ironed her best suit, tamed her hair into flowing curls and smothered her face in various pastes so as not to give away the fact that she has pores. After several minutes of swearing at her slightly wonky lipstick until her carefully placed dabs even it out, she gives herself a big smile and tells herself she looks presentable. She can still impress him by appearing somewhat well put-together, even if it means binding her dignity with her eyeliner.
She has a practice run on the drive to the office, telling fake Richard in the back seat that it’s so wonderful that you’ve done so well for yourself and isn’t it funny that I happen to be your driver. She hopes real life Richard is as good at keeping quiet as her imaginary Richard. Imaginary Richard politely tells her that this won’t be the case; as with all cocksure businessmen, he’ll probably spread his legs and his opinions, neither of which she has the slightest interest in. Imaginary Richard agrees.
Thankfully, she misses James when she drops into the office to dump some of last night’s paperwork, but she does get some good luck wishes that piss her right off. She wants to remind them that the only reason they’re doing their jobs is because she can do her job. She doesn’t need luck to ferry some jumped-up douche bag to his luxury suite.
As per her instructions, their finest category A car – a Jaguar XJL, no less – has been brought out of hiding and polished until Lauren can see her own stressed expression in the gleaming silver paintwork. The Satnav is pre-programmed, the mini-bar is stocked, and there’s a fresh bottle of water in the seat pocket in the event of Richard needing to cool his flaming ego.
She climbs swiftly into the driver’s seat, changing her heels for her well-worn driving flats, and decides she’s got this.
***
The airport is hell, as she knew it would be. It’s been so long since she’s done this, she has to resort to the Satnav’s snotty instructions to find her way. She tries to find solace in the fact that people stare at the Jag as she swoops past them; she plays at being rich for a while, imagining what it’d be like if this wasn’t a company car, if she was on the way to her very own penthouse with a swimming pool and a tennis court and all the accessories. But then she’ll see the chauffeur license sitting on the dashboard and fall back to reality.
Reality yells at her to get in the right damn lane, the traffic building up around her as she nears the arrivals level, burying her in a sea of cabs and minibuses. Someone’s honking behind her and it’s way too early in the morning for that kind of behavior but she tells herself to remain calm – she is a professional, after all, even if she forgets it occasionally.
By the time she’s finally parked, she feels considerably more ruffled, and takes a few moments to pointlessly fix her hair and check her phone, too, just in case the flight has been delayed. To her slight dismay, there’s nothing, so she switches back to her heels and climbs from the vehicle as smoothly as she can, grabbing the stupid tablet whose only purpose is to display Shepherd’s name. As if it isn’t plastered across enough billboards already.
She recalls another reason she stopped doing this particular job; when she finds herself mowed down by people towing suitcases larger than themselves. They’re everywhere, swarming like locusts, often wielding children and trolleys and God knows what else. She avoids them like the plague, holding her head high and trying not to slip on the highly polished floors; she squeezes through clumps of people until she’s right up at the barrier, she won’t have him docking a star on his review because he spent an extra thirty seconds of his precious time looking for her.
With tablet at the ready and gaze scanning the crowds, she waits.