3
By the end of her second week in the B2B Division, Lia had digested enough information to feel completely overwhelmed. There were two distinct branches within the division, one tasked with identifying new elite clients, either from within the existing customer pool or from outside the organization, and the other with nurturing and sustaining established relationships. Lia was part of the latter group.
She spent nine hours a day reading files and attempting to memorize as many facts as possible about the several hundred clients identified as “elite”. Unfortunately, the task was proving daunting. The names, faces and details all seemed to blend together. She leaned back in her chair in her small cubicle, wondering if she should take a break.
“Tell me you aren’t trying to memorize every file.”
Lia glanced up to see a petite woman in a smart pants suit who couldn’t have been more than five feet tall, with short brown hair, huge brown eyes and a friendly smile.
“Hi,” the woman said holding out her hand. “I’m Kay Thompson.”
Lia returned her handshake. “I’m Lia Merrick.” She knew instantly the other woman wasn’t a B2B. The B2B women only wore skirts and dresses. A week after Lia’s appointment with the personal shopper at Neiman Marcus she was issued a complete wardrobe consisting of business suits, skirts and both day and evening dresses. Lia considered her clothes a uniform.
“Do you want to go to lunch?” Kay asked. “I was a B2B. I can give you a few pointers that will hopefully keep you from pulling your hair out.”
“That would be great,” Lia said, instantly liking the other woman who was certainly being more helpful than any of the B2Bs. Most barely acknowledged Lia, and the ones who did weren’t offering advice, they were merely sizing her up.
“I just returned from vacation,” Kay said as they walked towards the elevators. “Otherwise, I would have saved you from what I’m guessing was an overwhelming week.”
“There is just so much to absorb,” Lia said, “and everyone is busy. I’m not sure who I’m supposed to talk to when I have a question.”
“Didn’t Stan assign you a mentor?” Kay pushed the down button for the elevator.
“Yes, Carmen Gonzalez.”
“Carmen!” Kay exclaimed before quickly covering her mouth, her eyes looking around. She didn’t speak again until they were alone in the elevator. “I’m sorry, but sometimes men are so stupid. Carmen is the last person who should be assigned that role.”
“I can’t argue with that.”
Carmen Gonzalez was one of the original B2Bs and, according to Stan, held a wealth of information on the workings of the division. Unfortunately, she didn’t appear interested in sharing this vast store of knowledge with Lia. And it wasn’t because she was busy with her own work. Lia figured she spent seventy-five percent of the day arguing on the phone with someone named Marcos, who Lia was ninety-nine percent sure wasn’t a client.
“Just forget about Carmen,” Kay said. “She’s worse than having no mentor.”
When they were seated across from each other in the cafeteria, Kay asked, “Have you been to any client functions yet?”
“No. Stan wanted me to orient myself with the client folders a bit more first.”
“Reading about all the clients is a waste of time,” Kay said. “The majority don’t attend the functions.” She leaned forward and took a sip of her Diet Coke. “When it’s time for you to attend, Stan will send you an email with a list of which clients are attending a particular function. That’s when you familiarize yourself with the client files.”
“That sounds more manageable.” Lia speared a piece of lettuce with her fork. “How long were you a B2B?”
“Not long. Probably less than three months, but Stan liked me, so he transferred me to his Strategic Marketing Division.”
“You didn’t like B2B?”
“I didn’t like it or dislike it,” Kay said. “I was still trying to figure everything out and then one day Stan called me into his office and said it wasn’t working out.”
“Why?”
Kay shrugged. “I have no idea. That’s how the B2B works: Stan brings people in and he either likes them or he doesn’t.” She lifted her hands. “And if he doesn’t, you hope he offers you another position.”
Lia felt a knot of apprehension in the pit of her stomach. “He did say the attrition rate in the first year is over fifty percent.”
“More like ninety percent. There is a reason the B2B girls who make it are so uppity.”
“That’s a lot of pressure,” Lia said, almost to herself.
“You’ll be fine.” Kay patted her hand. “I shouldn’t have said anything.”
“No, I’m glad you did.”
“Obviously Stan saw something in you he liked. And he probably gets better and better at identifying that ‘it’ quality. I was part of the original group.” Someone behind Lia caught Kay’s eye and she waved. “Claudia! Here’s someone who can definitely help you assimilate,” she said, returning her gaze to Lia.
“How was your vacation?” Claudia asked, stopping beside the table.
“Incredible! Have you met Lia Merrick?”
“No.” Her gaze shifted to Lia. “I’ve seen you around, but we haven’t officially been introduced. I’m Claudia.”
“Hi.” Lia smiled. She’d seen Claudia getting out of a Porsche that morning and figured she was doing well as a B2B. She was stunning, with silky black hair falling just past her chin, dark brown eyes, flawless skin and a voluptuous body which undoubtedly turned men’s heads wherever she went.
“Join us for a minute.” Kay scooted over to make room. “Lia’s trying to learn her way around and who better to answer her questions than you?” She turned to Lia. “Claudia’s been a B2B since the beginning and, unlike her friends, is willing to talk to underlings from other departments.”
Claudia rolled her eyes. “You’re not an underling.”
Kay smiled. “I came upon Lia earlier trying to absorb all the information in all the elite-client folders. I told her she was wasting her time.”
“I just don’t know what to expect,” Lia said. “I don’t want to be unprepared when I start attending the client functions.”
“Don’t worry about any of that.” Claudia met her eyes. “Stan wants you to mingle. That’s it. The clients will like you or they won’t. Just be yourself.”
“Told you.” Kay said.
“Okay.” Lia nodded, still unsure.
“I like meeting new people and partying, but if you don’t”—Claudia shrugged—“then it probably isn’t for you. Or maybe you’ll attend a few functions like Kay here,” she said, patting Kay’s forearm, “and meet the man of your dreams.”
Lia’s eyes swung to Kay. “You dated a client?”
“Dated?” Claudia laughed. “She married him.”
Lia was surprised. “So Stan doesn’t mind—I mean, he doesn’t care if we date clients?”
“Nope.” Claudia shook her head. “Are you going to finish that?” She eyed the remaining half of Kay’s sandwich.
“It’s all yours.” Kay slid her plate to Claudia. “Maybe if you opened your eyes and looked around a little, you’d meet the man of your dreams at one of the client receptions.”
“No way.” Claudia shook her head. “That is definitely not going to happen.”
“So you don’t date the clients?” Lia asked.
She looked down at her perfectly manicured nails. “I didn’t say that.”
“She doesn’t say much,” Kay said. “Claudia never shares the details of her private life.”
“Maybe because there’s nothing to share.” She continued to study her nails. “How about you, Lia? Is there anyone special in your life?”
“Just my daughter.”
“You have a daughter?” Claudia lifted her eyes. “You’re divorced?”
“It was final less than a month ago.”
“Hi, everyone.” A tall woman with striking green eyes and long blonde hair stopped beside their table. Her tailored dress clearly identified her as a B2B. Like Claudia and every other B2B, she was extremely attractive. Lia had never seen so many attractive women in an office setting and knew being beautiful was one of Stan’s B2B prerequisites.
“Kathleen, have you met Lia Merrick?” Kay asked.
“No.” Her gaze shifted to Lia. “Hi.”
“Hi.” Lia smiled politely.
“Kathleen only has three months on you,” Kay said. Her eyes swung back to Kathleen. “And guess who Stan assigned to be Lia’s mentor? You won’t believe it.”
“Who?” Kathleen tucked her hair behind her ears.
“Carmen.”
“Carmen?” Her mouth dropped open, her eyes swinging from Kay to Lia, then back to Kay. “You’re kidding.”
Kay shook her head. “No, I’m serious.”
“Oh my God. What could she possibly teach someone besides how to talk on the phone? That’s it,” she said in a low voice. “This proves what I’ve suspected since the day I arrived. They’re sleeping together. There’s no other explanation. I have never seen her do a lick of work, so obviously she’s doing him.”
Claudia rolled her eyes. “I don’t think so.”
“You don’t?” Kathleen shifted her gaze to Claudia.
“No. I don’t.”
“Then explain to us exactly what she’s doing, because when she’s here—which isn’t very often—she’s talking on the phone. And considering she’s speaking Spanish, my guess is she isn’t talking business.”
“I have too much of my own work to do to worry about what Carmen’s up to,” Claudia said. “In fact, if I don’t leave now I’m going to be late for a call.” She patted Kay on the back and gave Lia a smile before walking off.
Six dozen red roses and six weeks after the altercation in his office, Joseph, dressed casually in a tan cashmere sweater and black pants, climbed out of his black Mercedes in front of Kathy’s art gallery on King Street in Old Town, Alexandria.
Kathy looked up as he entered. “What do you want?” she asked coolly, stepping out from behind a desk in the corner of the gallery. She was alone in the shop and dressed casually in loose camel-colored silk pants and a black turtleneck, her blonde hair pulled back in a clasp at her nape.
“You,” he said, walking slowly towards her. “I want you.”
“Joseph,” she began, shaking her head. “I can’t. I—”
“I’m an asshole.” He moved his hands to the sides of her face, staring down into her green eyes. “I’m sorry I hurt you.” He lowered his head and kissed her softly on the lips. “Give me another chance.” He kissed her again. “I need you.” He kissed her again and she began responding, her body leaning forward into his. “I need you so much,” he said again before opening his mouth over hers, eliciting a moan from her as she wound her arms up around his neck.
“I hate you,” she whispered when he finally lifted his head, her tear-filled eyes meeting his.
“I love you,” he said. It was the first time he’d said those words to a woman.
Hours later they lay naked in her bed, their bodies entwined, a light sheet pulled over them. “Joseph?”
“Hmm?” His voice was deep with sleep.
“I want to talk.” She slipped out from beneath his arm and situated herself on the pillow beside his, their faces just inches apart as they lay facing each other. “Did you have a good time in San Francisco?” She had joined him on a business trip to San Francisco the week before his indiscretion with the weather woman.
“Of course.”
“Why didn’t you call me that week? We have this incredible five days together and then nothing.”
“I was working.”
“You couldn’t spare five seconds to send me a text? To ask how I am? To let me know you were thinking about me?”
“I don’t think you realize how much I work.”
“I think I do. You’re out of bed by four thirty every morning. Even the nights you have time for me, you don’t arrive until after nine. I think I know exactly how much you work.”
“Then I don’t understand what you’re asking.”
“I guess I’m asking if I came to your mind at all during those three days.”
“I’m sure you did. I have a dozen things on my mind at any given moment. I’m in the office before six and not out until after nine. And I’m working. Any distraction, any interruption just extends the day.”
“It takes two seconds to return a text. You have your phone with you all the time. You just ignored my texts.”
“No. I didn’t ignore them. I get a hundred texts a day. I can’t answer them all—I’d never get anything done if I did.”
“But I’m supposed to be your girlfriend. I’m not a business text.”
He ran his hand down her arm. “I understand and I’m going to do better. I’m not going to lose you again.”
“I feel like you only think about me when you want to have sex.”
“That’s not true.”
“You never call me unless you’re trying to coordinate a time to come over. We never talk just to talk,” she said. “If we talk it’s because you want to come over and have sex.”
He sighed. “That isn’t true.”
“Yes, it is.” She pushed herself up on her elbow. “Did you even think about me that night? I mean when you were taking off your clothes to be with another woman, did you—”
“Kathy, don’t.” He gripped her upper arm. “It was a mistake. I apologized. It’s not going to happen again. Now lay back down.”
“No. I need to talk about this.”
He rolled onto his back and flung an arm over his eyes. “It meant nothing to me.”
“Well, it meant something to me.” She pushed his arm away from his face so she could see his eyes. “Who was she?”
“No one.”
“I want to know. Just tell me.”
“No one. Look, Kathy,” he began as he sat up, “I’m not getting into this with you. I told you I was sorry.”
“Oh, and that’s enough? You think it’s over now because you said you’re sorry?”
“Obviously not.” He threw his legs over the edge of the bed.
“How many times did you make her come?”
“Oh, for God’s sake! I’m not doing this.” He crossed to a chair and picked up his pants.
“How do you think it makes me feel to know you were inside another woman? That you came inside another woman? Where are you going?”
“Home,” he said, roughly pulling up his pants. “I have apologized to you every way I know how, and you have a right to be pissed off. Hell,” he said, throwing up one of his hands, “no one could blame you if you never wanted to see me again, but I refuse to hang around and be punished for something I don’t have the power to change.” He shrugged into his shirt. “I never lied to you,” he continued. “Until today we never said anything about other people.” He picked up his socks from the floor and sat down on the chair. “You’re going to have to decide whether you can forgive me for this.”
“Don’t leave,” she said. “I don’t want you to leave.”
His hands stilled in the process of pulling on a sock. “Kathy?”
“It just hurts, knowing you were with someone else. How would you feel if you knew another man was with me?”
“Not good.” He crossed the room, lowering himself onto the edge of the bed beside her. “I’m sorry.” He touched the side of her face. “I wish it hadn’t happened and I promise you it will never happen again.” He kissed her lightly on her lips. “I love you.”
“Hi, sweetie,” Lia said after opening her front door. It was a Sunday in mid-October, and Taylor was returning from a weekend with Ned.
“Mommy!” Taylor hugged and kissed her before turning back to her father. “Can you stay and play with me for a little while?” She grabbed one of his hands. “Please?”
“Not today, Taylor. Daddy has to leave,” Lia said, having no desire to spend even an extra minute in his company.
“Yes. I have to go. Candice is home waiting for me.” He set down her overnight bag and kneeled down to give her a hug. “I love you, sweetie.”
Lia watched them, an emotion akin to hate simmering within. She looked forward to the day she could be in his presence without a reaction. As much as he deserved her wrath, she didn’t like harboring such negativity towards another person, especially one she once loved.
Unfortunately, he looked good. He seemed to look better every time she saw him. Standing just below six feet with a lean, athletic build, sandy-colored hair and a strong jaw, he’d always been good-looking, but now there was something different about him, which she decided must be his clothes. He dressed like he had money. Even his casual clothes looked expensive.
“When are you coming back?” Taylor continued to hug him.
“Soon.” He kissed the top of her head before standing up. His gaze shifted to Lia. “Could I talk to you for a second?”
“Taylor, you can go watch TV. I’m going to walk Daddy out.” She followed him out of her apartment and down the stairs, neither talking until he stopped beside his black BMW.
“I’d like to see more of Taylor. Two weekends a month isn’t enough.”
“Oh.” She didn’t know why, but she was surprised by the request. “Okay.”
“I could pick her up from your mom’s for dinner a couple nights a week. Tuesdays and Thursdays work for me.”
“Tuesdays and Thursdays are fine except next week. A week from Thursday is Halloween.”
“I know. I’d like to take her trick-or-treating.”
Lia shook her head. “I’m taking her trick-or-treating.”
“Where?” He swung his gaze around the apartment complex. “Here?”
“No. I’ll take her in my mom’s neighborhood.”
“Lia, let me take her. We live in a nice neighborhood and there’s a girl next door the same age that’s going to go with us. She wants me to take her. She told me.”
“Too bad.”
“Too bad’?”
“Yeah.” She met his eyes. “She’s going with me, Ned. If you’d like to come over and join us that’s fine, but I’m not missing out on Halloween with Taylor.”
“She’s my daughter too.”
“I know. And that’s why I invited you to join us, because God knows I have no desire to spend an evening with you.”
“You’re not being fair. You have her all the time.”
“That was your choice. It’s cold. I’m going inside.” She turned and walked towards her building.
Several hours later, stretched out on the couch with a glass of Baileys and crème, she was berating herself for the conversation with Ned. She didn’t want to play the role of bitter ex-wife. She didn’t even want him anymore, yet knowing he’d cast her aside for someone else still burned. Her husband, a man she once loved and adored, left her for another woman. He’d known both women, slept with both women and chosen Candice.
She took a sip of her drink and reminded herself she wasn’t supposed to be thinking about Ned. Her thoughts drifted to Zurtech. The task of processing what appeared those first few days as an insurmountable volume of information was no longer so intimidating. And she knew enough to ask intelligent questions of Kay and Claudia, who turned out to be valuable resources. She’d begun lunching with them regularly.
The receptions were somewhat baffling. Getting paid to drink alcohol and eat seemed an odd concept, but she supposed it was akin to making business deals on the golf course, with one small exception: As far as she could tell, no business was ever discussed at the receptions. The gatherings reminded her of the mixers she attended in college when she was a member of the Alpha Delta Phi. The B2B staff members were the sorority and the clients were the fraternity, only the participants were ten to thirty years older.
At nineteen, they were fun, but at twenty-eight and recently divorced, she found them depressing. Hanging out with what appeared to be mostly married men and stroking their already-inflated egos was neither rewarding nor challenging work, and she found it incomprehensible Claudia could actually enjoy herself at the get-togethers.
She picked up the television remote and began surfing through the channels. Over the past year, television had become her refuge from the loneliness of the late hours after Taylor was in bed, but at 9:45 p.m. on a Sunday, the options appeared slim.
“…now let’s move to your personal life,” Anderson Cooper was saying to his guest when Lia passed through CNN. She pushed the up-arrow key to return to the program, the man across from Anderson catching her eye. He was gorgeous, with wavy dark brown hair and large light brown eyes surrounded by black lashes so thick she could see them on the television. “The Washingtonian named you the most eligible bachelor in Washington. How does that make you feel?”
He smiled, revealing a set of perfectly straight white teeth and deep dimples in his cheeks. “Honored?” Lia put her hand over her heart, knowing if a man like him showed up at one of the receptions, it wouldn’t be so boring.
“You’re thirty-four years old and have never been married. Is that correct?”
He reached for the coffee mug on the desk and took a sip before responding. “That is correct.”
“Any plans to get married?”
“Not at the moment.” He leaned forward and set down the mug.
“You’re going to make me work for every detail, aren’t you?” Anderson asked.
He shrugged and the smile returned. “You’re lucky I’m answering any of these questions.”
“You’ve been dating Kathy Paige for quite a while.”
“Close to a year.”
“She’s a beautiful lady.”
“Yes, she is.”
“Any talk of marriage?”
He smiled again. “Didn’t I already answer that question?”
“No. I asked if you had any plans to get married. Now I’m asking if you’ve discussed marriage with Kathy.”
He moved a hand over his mouth and shook his head. “I’ve already answered that question. Let’s change the subject.”
Lia rolled onto her side, continuing to watch the interview, not actually listening to the words, but feeling almost mesmerized by his eyes and deep voice. Not one to partake in unattainable fantasies, she was surprised by her reaction to the man and later, when she awoke on the couch after dreaming she’d had sex with him, she knew she was in desperate need of a boyfriend.