Chapter One
“Noooooo! No. No. No.”
Emily clicked back to the start to watch the video again, her mouth open in a silent scream, her eyebrows slammed together. A second later the face of her boss appeared and he repeated his message. “Hi Em. I don’t want to alarm you but the directors had a meeting last night and we’ve decided to press ahead with some radical changes,” he paused as he looked into his phone camera. “Immediate changes. At ten o’clock this morning I’m sending a consultant to your branch to work directly with you. We know the strain everyone has been under since the,” he coughed, “recent disruption, and we want to fix it for you. Our consultant has years of experience in our industry. He’s been the managing director for a very large firm and you and he are going to find us some stellar new staff and make considered decisions about our current ones. I know you’re set to travel a bit over the next few months and I’m sure once he’s settled, that won’t be impacted too much. I’ve sent you the minutes of the meeting in a separate email and you’ll see you’ve been empowered to make the high level hiring decisions for the next six weeks. We trust you Em, and we’re looking forward to great results.” He glanced behind his phone and nodded. “Oh. Here’s Cooper Jackson, who you’ll be working with, by the way.”
The camera turned around and a handsome man with surfer-blonde hair grinned at her. “Hi Emily!” he said brightly, followed by a little wave. She groaned again at the sight of that smile.
The camera quickly turned back to her manager, Ed, who continued speaking as he said with his own smile, “We wanted to make sure you didn’t just let anyone in the building. One of those incidents this year is enough already, don’t you think?” He chuckled to himself and Emily rolled her eyes.
It’s not my fault you had an idiot manager here who let the competition into our warehouse!
“Read your email and shoot me back anything I need to know. Thanks Emily, we couldn’t have managed these last months without your fabulous work. We’re so lucky to have you.” He gave a little smile and then his eyes shifted to the screen until he found the stop button. His face froze on her monitor as Emily sat back in her chair.
“Oh Jesus Christ, no!” She was going to have to work side by side with Cooper Jackson. The same Cooper Jackson she’d broken up with nine months ago, after just a few dates. The one she’d hoped never to see again after the way he’d behaved. “What are they bloody thinking?” she said aloud, glancing at her office door to make sure no one could hear. “Ha! Who’s going to hear me? We hardly have any staff!”
Simpsons Stationery was lucky to still be in business. A national stationer with a huge client list of franchised stores, they’d recently had to let three important staff members go. The operations manager, the head of accounting and the sales manager had all been terminated on the same day when the board of directors confirmed they’d been involved in price fixing and creating preferential contracts with some suppliers. It wasn’t enough that the company now faced a lengthy legal battle to defend itself against the regulator; Emily Pennington had been the one to quietly inform the board of the problem when she’d been handed the proof.
Doing your job well and upholding your own morals were easy when you didn’t think about the consequences. What she hadn’t known was how the other staff would react when they found out she’d been the one to tell. The last three months had been difficult. The remaining staff had been forced to work long hours to keep the business afloat. Several had resigned and replacing them was now a priority. Those left behind were suspicious of her motives.
Without a site manager, much of the day to day running had fallen on Emily’s shoulders. As the most senior manager, she now fielded dozens of interruptions each day, asking about everything from getting sign off to order more toilet paper, to changing courier companies, or hiring casual workers in the warehouse. A consultant to come in and help was a great idea. That person being Cooper Jackson was not!
She glanced at the clock and a horrified expression crossed her face. Quarter to ten! He’ll be here any minute!
Why, oh why did I escort the firemen through the site this morning? Why didn’t I check my email first thing?
It wouldn’t have mattered if she had, he’d have still been on his way.
I might have had time to flee the country!
That thought had hardly registered, when her phone rang. She pushed the speaker button, dread tickling her ribs, “Hello?”
“Emily, there’s a Mr Jackson here to see you.” She closed her eyes, slid her chair back and put her forehead on the desk. “Emily?” Sasha’s voice wafted out of the phone.
“Yes, I’m here. Can you please sign him in and bring him up to my office?”
***
Cooper’s face was exactly how she remembered it.
His chiselled jaw was clean shaven. His blue eyes sparkled and his trademark grin split his face as he shook her hand. Sasha glanced at Emily, said nothing and slipped out of the door—but not before a backward glance at Cooper’s bum. Emily pointed to the chair across from her desk and he settled himself before meeting her eye and smiling again. “I bet you’re surprised to see me.”
“Not really. Ed did send the video after all.”
He doesn’t need to know I found out ten minutes ago!
“You know what I mean, Emily. I was surprised to see your name on the staff list.”
“Well, it’s been a while—”
“Nine months.”
“I wasn’t counting.”
“I might have been.”
“Enough!” she raised her hand and frowned at him. “This is never going to work. It’s a huge conflict of interest for you to be making decisions about this branch. About me. We need to tell Ed why it’s an issue and make other arrangements. He’ll have to get someone else to assist you and I’ll stay right out of your way.”
“Where’s the fun in that?” his cheeky grin surprised her. Anyone else would have agreed and taken immediate steps to sort this situation out. Cooper just relaxed back into his seat and pulled a pen from his shirt pocket. “Chill Emily. I already told Ed we dated a few times. I assured him it wouldn’t be a problem for me and he said he was going to email you to check you were okay with it. Didn’t he do that?”
She bit her lip and glared at him. He’d taken the wind out of her sails, and her upcoming rant about transparency in the workplace, with his easy answer. If she’d had more than two seconds free this morning she might have read the email that both Ed and, now Cooper, had referred to. Her honesty got the better of her, “I haven’t had time to look at the rest of my emails yet. The firemen were here for a site inspection when I arrived, and since we have no health and safety manager, I had to take care of that. Then I signed cheques for accounting, did the final proofs on some logo artwork, watched Ed’s video and now here you are.” She continued to glare at him as he took out a writing pad.
“Sounds fun. That’s exactly why I’m here, isn’t it? This whole office is overworked and we need to take care of that as our first priority. I’ll need an office to work from, preferably close to yours, please.” She groaned inwardly as his words sank in. “I have a vast array of reports and paperwork that Ed has provided me and I’ve been studying those most of the night. What I don’t have is first hand accounts of what is happening here. What safeguards failed and led to the current situation. I want to put your mind at rest Emily. I’m not here for a shake-up. I’m here to help you put the wheels back on this bus and make sure it gets going smoothly again. Preferably with all of the current passengers.”
“Nice analogy. I’d suggest you don’t let the other staff hear you calling them passengers. Especially those ones I’ll have to shoo out of the office at nine o’clock tonight.”
“I didn’t mean they were cruising along.” He scribbled words on his page and frowned at his pen. “Are you going to be this defensive the whole time I’m here? Three months is a long time to hate me every day.”
“Three months? You’re here for three months?”
“Yep. Enough time to get a full complement of staff into place and then analyse what can be improved.” He looked up at her stricken face. “It’s not going to be a problem is it?” His lips twitched, like he wanted to grin at her again, but didn’t dare.
Damn right, you shouldn’t grin at me. I badly want to kill you right now.
The silence stretched between them as she considered her answer.
Was there going to be a problem? Could she see him every day at work for three months and not end up dreading coming in every day? Would he stay out of her way or would he be underfoot asking questions about everything she and the other staff did? She was the human resources manager for the company, surely that meant he wouldn’t be required to supervise her as she hired new staff. If he could take some of the load off her shoulders she could get back to what she was meant to be doing.
“There’ll be no problem Cooper as long as we remain businesslike at all times. I don’t expect a whisper of our history to get to anyone in this office. Is that understood?”
“Sure. Of course I’d never mention it.”
“Right. I’ll let Ed know what we’ve talked about and we’ll go from there. Come with me—there’s an office across the hall that’s empty.” She swept past him, not checking to see if he followed. She flicked the light on and removed some boxes stacked on the table. “This office was empty long before we fired our entire management team. When we rehire, you won’t have to move out.”
“Great. I’ll get settled and then can you and I go over the staff list please? I want to know who is who and how you think they’re performing.”
“Oh great. Like they’re not wary of me enough already. Let’s make the first task to have them hating you, too.”
He laughed, a sound she hadn’t expected. Her manner was cold toward him and he wasn’t reacting to it at all. His ready smile hadn’t faltered since he’d arrived and she wondered what it would take to get him ruffled.
Scratch that. I do not wonder anything about Cooper Jackson. Not ever.
***
The bang of her office door across the hall telegraphed everything to him it was supposed to. She was pissed to be stuck working with him and nothing he could do would change that.
That’s where she was wrong, though. Three months working closely with him was guaranteed to remind her of the fun they’d had together. Maybe it had only been for a few weeks, but he’d thought they’d had a good thing going. He’d tied up any casual loose ends he had lying around and was happy he’d finally found someone to get serious with.
Two weeks later she’d stopped returning his calls.
No warning. Just silence. He’d worried something had happened to her, until he’d seen her having lunch with some friends. That’s when it dawned on him she was ignoring him on purpose. To test his theory he sent her a text and watched carefully as she picked up her phone, read the message, then shook the phone above her head like she was shaking pancake mixture. When she’d thrown it back into her bag without replying he’d known they were done.
He just didn’t know why.
Enter Ed Simpson all these months later. His enquiry to see if Cooper was available for a corporate rescue had been mildly interesting. After he’d signed on and had been provided with all the company reports he’d been ecstatic to discover Emily Pennington listed on the payroll as the human resources manager. He’d spent an hour over breakfast trying to work out a plan to get her to go out with him again. He’d assured Ed nothing like that would happen, though, so he’d have to settle for softening her up during his time here. Three months working with her would give him a chance to work out what he’d done to upset her. From the calculated smirk he’d seen on her face, she thought she could palm him off on the other staff, but he’d work out a plan to spend most of his time with her, chipping away at her resolve.
In three months, if he played this right, she’d be unable to resist him.