Page 48 of It's Not PMS, It's You

Karma lay down, putting her head on top of her paws.

“I’m sorry,” Nick offered. “I just ran out to the truck to get a few things. I wasn’t even gone two minutes and she did this. I have no idea why.”

I took a few steps and surveyed the damage. “You ruined my rose garden.”

“No, no, no.” Nick stepped toward me. “They’re not ruined. You had some issues with these roses before Karma did this, if we’re being honest here. They were already in bad shape.”

“Excuse me? You tear my roses apart and then insult me and tell me that it didn’t matter because I don’t know how to take care of them?”

“Not at all. That came out wrong. Look, don’t worry about this. I’ll take care of it. You won’t even know it happened. I’m going to fix it.”

“No. You’ve done enough. I don’t have time to deal with this crap right now. Just leave it be.”

“Ruth, look, Brandon will be here any minute and we can just—”

I held up my hand. “Please. Just focus on what I paid you to do, can you do that for me? I’ll deal with this mess when I get home later.”

I turned and headed back inside the house, not waiting for Nick to answer.

This wasn’t how I envisioned the day starting out, but I wasn’t going to let it bend me out of shape. I had encountered far worse disasters in my career.

This was far from over, though.

Chapter Eleven

RUTH

I had waited ten years to sit in on a company board meeting and now that I had finally done it, I could sum it up in one word.

Boring.

The two hours spent there could have easily been reduced to thirty or forty minutes. Sure, we talked about pending agendas left over from the previous meeting. We even discussed how the organization was running. But most of the time the men talked about their latest sports outing out at Torrey Pines golf course, a new car they had heard about or bought, or how much money they made in the stock market this week.

Boring, boring, boring.

I wanted to talk more about business and how to help the company grow.

I had almost fallen asleep until Mason glanced over at me.

He was grinning, like he wanted to say something.

I decided to call him on it. “Yes?”

Mason shrugged. “I just wanted to apologize since we have been obviously dominating the conversation. Do you have any questions or is there anything you would like to discuss before we adjourn the meeting? I’m sure Gary wouldn’t mind.”

Gary shook his head. “Go for it.”

Mason smiled.

My bullshit meter was pegging in the red.

I wasn’t going to fall into his trap.

Lucky for him, I wasn’t in the mood to butt heads. “I’m good, thank you.”

“No, really.” He leaned forward on the table and folded his hands like he was eager to listen to what I had to say. “Feel free to talk about high heels or cupcakes or whatever floats your boat.”

A couple of the guys chuckled.