Crew

I had to leave the room after she took that call. It was the only thing I could do to stop myself from grabbing her phone and tossing it out a window.

I was so close, so fucking close to being inside her.

"Crew?" Ad's voice carries down the long hallway to my bedroom. I came in here to get dressed. I put on a pair of jeans and a gray T-shirt. If she's leaving at this time of night, I sure as hell am going with her. "Crew, I need to go."

I'm out of the bedroom like a shot. I jog down the corridor with unlaced shoes. "Wait. I'm coming with you."

She turns to look at me. Somehow she's been able to get into her scrubs, tuck her hair into a messy bun and pack up her stuff in record time.

"No," she says flatly. "I can get there on my own."

"I'll get a car to take us." I walk over to the table where I left my phone. I'll call Bill. He'll be here in less than ten minutes.

"I ordered an Uber." She waves her phone at me. "He's around the corner. I have to go now."

I don't want this. Her fingers are dancing all over the front of her neck which means she's already regretting what happened on my sofa. The nervous energy bouncing off of her is palpable. 

"Let me come with you so we can talk in the car," I offer because desperation is settling in my gut and I need it gone now. I won't let her walk out of her thinking she's made a mistake.

She bows her head to look at the phone's screen. "He's almost in front of the building."

"Ad." I take a step toward her. "We need to discuss what happened."

She slips her backpack over her shoulder. "We don't. It was a game. We were playing a game."

"Don't." I exhale in a rush. "Don't say it was just a game. You know that what happened was more than that."

Her intense blue eyes skim over my face. "I don't have time to talk about this."

She didn't completely shut me down. I take that as a win right now. "When can we talk?"

She inches backward toward the door. "Tomorrow?"

"When? What time?" With every measured step she takes, I match it with one of my own.

"I have to work."

"After work then?"

She nods. "I'll be done at five."

"I'll be outside the clinic at four-fifty-nine."

The frown that covers her lips eats at my heart. "I'll go now."

I ache to follow her out, but I don't. I stand in silence as she opens my apartment door and walks out alone.

***

I sit back in my chair and listen intently as the manager of our flagship store explains away the staffing issues that she has yet to get a handle on.

"Miriam," I interrupt, because excuses have no place in my office. The people who work for me know this. I don't have the time or the inclination to listen to the mundane details of why something unacceptable has happened. "Clearly, you're not manager material."

She blows out a rush of air. "I disagree, Crew."

Of course she does. This is the third time in as many months that she's been sitting across from me giving me some bullshit reason for why we're running through sales staff at warp speed. "Explain to me why you've had three sales associates quit this month."

"I was explaining that." It never fails to amuse me that just because a person is older than I am, that they believe that's an automatic pass. Miriam is fifty-five. She came highly recommended by her last employer, a competitor whose annual sales are less than a quarter of ours.

Taking her on based on her stats on paper was a no-brainer. She's proving that I need to rethink the hiring process. "You were making excuses; poor excuses."

"What do you want from me?" She slides forward a touch in her chair. She's not going on the offense. This is a defensive move all the way.

"An explanation."

"People quit their jobs all the time."  She rests her hands in her lap, a sign she's feeling somewhat confident that she'll be walking out of here with her job. I'm much less optimistic.

"Turnover has increased more than seventy-two percent since you took over the store." Statistics are my closest ally when I'm taking someone to task for their underperformance. "You're going to need to do better than trying to blame it on the fickle nature of your employees."

I'm getting to her. I sense it in the way she keeps looking at my closed office door. It's her escape route. She has no idea that I have to be out of here within the next three minutes in order to make it to where I need to be at five o'clock.

"I increased sales quotas, Crew. You had the bar set so low that virtually anyone could meet their monthly requirement. "

"You did what?"

She sighs heavily. "I gave them the choice to resign or be fired when they couldn’t make their number. Obviously, the majority of them made the right choice and resigned. The rest I had to let go. If you're not pushing those girls to work harder, you'll never see an increase in your bottom line."

"Did I miss the memo that gave you the authority to change those numbers?" I glare at her.

"I did it over at Emblem Cosmetics. No one there seemed to mind one bit."

"Then I'm sure they'll be glad to have you back on board." I stand and button my suit jacket. "You'll be given a month's severance, Miriam. Your last day officially ends in twenty minutes. Leave your keys with my assistant."

"I'm fired?" She huffs out a humorless laugh. "You're seriously firing me for trying to improve your sales numbers?"

"I'm firing you for chasing away some of the best sales associates we've had."

"Of course you'd think that." She stands and slams her hands on the top of my desk. "Every man in this business thinks with his dick first. I bet you've slept with most of the women who left. Is that what this is about?"

"I'm going to ignore that," I say calmly, although I'm anything but. I keep my hands off the women who work for me. That's a powder keg that I want no part of.               "Leave, Miriam."
"Fine." She pulls the store keys from the pocket of her black pants and drops them on my desk. "I'll go work for your father. He offered me a managerial position at one of his sales offices a month ago. I should have known then that he was the only Benton worth answering to."

"Godspeed, Miriam," I quip as she walks out of my office. "You're about to enter the lion's den."