Page 2 of As a Last Resort

“Of course, sir. I wouldn’t miss an opportunity to learn from the best.” I gritted my teeth so hard I’m surprised they didn’t crack.

Robby flashed his pearly whites in my direction. I tried to wink at him, but he looked at me like I had a baby dragon protruding from my neck. For some reason, my wink didn’t land as seamlessly as his did.

Winking’s a lot easier in theory.

“See you at O’Keefe’s, Leigh?” he called on my way out.

“Absolutely.”

I shut my office door thirty seconds later with Ivy hot on my feet. “Absolutely not.”

“I don’t need to tell you that you’re going. Puggle will be there.”

One of Ivy’s oddly impressive talents was her plethora of canine nicknames for Robby. I couldn’t recall the last time she used his real first name behind a closed door. And yes, I was aware he would be there.

I also knew Glenn was going to be looking for me to check off the team player box. But Jack finally texted me back during the meeting and I felt like trying to see him to clear the air was the right thing to do.

She sat on the tiny couch in my office. “ Learn from the best. That was good, by the way.”

“Bile was literally crawling up my throat by the end of that sentence.”

“Could’ve fooled me.”

“I really can’t tonight though. I walked out on Jack last night at dinner and didn’t even say goodbye. He’s only responded to one of my texts since.”

“Check in with Jack after O’Keefe’s. Just one drink. You can show Glenn you can be just as personable and charming as his little Pugsworth.”

I sighed. “Jack broke up with me.” I turned my phone around so she could read the text that came in during the meeting.

JACK: Yes. I broke up with you.

And the fact you’re texting me this should confirm why.

“Yikes.”

“He’s upset that he was trying to break up with me and I wasn’t listening. I was distracted by Robby’s text, asking me to change the offer price last night.”

“So you left dinner…”

“To fix Robby’s enlightened stroke of genius, which was being bound at the printers,” I answered. “But when I got to the printers they had already finished and we needed to reprint the entire proposal.”

“All one hundred pages of it?”

“Apparently, it was just easier to print the entire file because the offer price was listed on quite a few of the pages. But then after it was bound, Robby asked if I’d just drop it off at the courier’s since they were still open so they’d get it first thing this morning.

It was right by my apartment anyway, so… ”

“Of course, you did.”

“And then I forgot to go back.”

“You forgot to go back.”

“Yes.” I knew it sounded horrible.

“To the restaurant where your boyfriend of six months was waiting for you.”

“Correct.”

She sat back and kicked up her feet on my Knoll tulip coffee table. The bright red bottoms of her heels screamed at me.

“I mean, here’s the thing though. Do you really like him? I mean like, rest-of-your-life like him?”

Besides having the uncanny ability to come up with the most creative pug-themed nicknames I’ve ever heard for Robby, Ivy was also never afraid to ask the hard questions.

I met her two years ago while interviewing candidates for an assistant.

As a Brown graduate near the top of her class, she was overqualified and sharper than any other candidate I considered.

When I asked her why she was applying for a job well below her experience level, she made me sign a nondisclosure.

Apparently, she had once written steamy romance novels under a pen name, and she was seeking a job as far removed from that as possible.

I was the only female lead on the acquisition data team when she applied. Actually, one of the few women at Goodrich Equity Partners, LLC, period. So by default, I was her best option.

“It’s not like I’m madly in love with him right this very second or anything. But doesn’t that kind of thing ebb and flow anyway?” I asked.

“The honeymoon period should ideally last more than a few months.”

“We have so much in common though. We both like to work. We both run. We both eat a lot of takeout. We can talk to each other about anything.”

“Except when you’re not listening.”

I sighed. “It’s convenient.”

She narrowed her perfectly lined brown almond-shaped eyes at me. “Every woman’s dream.”

“What? Convenient things can be good for you,” I argued, “like toilet paper.”

“That’s not convenient. It’s necessary.”

“Have you ever been in a situation without toilet paper? Pretty sure you’d figure it out.”

“Jack is not your toilet paper.”

“I feel like we’re losing the metaphor here.” I cradled my head in my hands.

“Look, all I’m saying is you need to show up at O’Keefe’s.”

“And I agree with you. But I don’t want to.”

“But you want it . Yes?” She raised her brow.

Ah. It.

The thing we do not speak of out loud. The promotion .

The other teams focused on new developments and were composed of male hotshots with deep pockets from the Ivy League schools.

And here was me, a small state school graduate from a tiny Florida beach town no one’s ever heard of.

I led the data acquisition team for mixed-use space projects that needed a bit of reengineering.

Got a city center or dated downtown that needs revitalization?

I’m your gal. While my family wasn’t six degrees away from the Kennedys, at the time I was hired there wasn’t anyone else who did what I did at GEP.

Glenn needed me. And that’s how I landed a spot on his sacred data team in the first place.

The promotion Ivy referred to was the next step to being a director at GEP.

It was a trial run taking on all the responsibilities and duties of a director without the official title.

If you’ve checked off all the necessary boxes by the end of the year, you’ve made director.

Which means you’re not filling days with research and spreadsheets anymore.

You’re the one finding and negotiating the deals and creating the big-picture ideas that could change the landscape of entire cities.

And that’s exactly what I wanted to be doing.

There was only one coveted spot. And here’s the catch—for once, it wasn’t Glenn’s sole decision.

GEP had gone public, and now there was a whole board he answered to.

Sure, he’d make his strong recommendation and give his supporting evidence skewed in favor of who he wanted, but all director roles were now voted on by the board.

After being nominated a few months ago, it was a game changer for me.

And the company. Glenn wouldn’t dare promote a woman to director, but apparently, his board had joined the twenty-first century and the nomination was pushed through.

And numbers don’t lie. Because of my track record, I was leading a team on one of the biggest revitalizations of the century for Oakstone Springs, North Carolina.

I was in charge of expanding the quaint little city everyone knew and loved, to a booming metropolis with nationally recognized music festivals, art galleries, and upscale co-op markets filled with local vendors.

The honest to God truth was I loved my job. I really did, but being passed over multiple times as lead for other projects was getting a little played out. This time it was statistically in my reach to get this promotion, but I couldn’t lay back and just wait for it to happen.

“One drink to show I’m charming and lovable and social,” I said, giving up. “Then I’m getting the hell out of there.”