Wanted by My Three Bosses novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: The Impossible Calendar

Hired on trial, Daphne solves Anson's double-booking test; Meredith hands her the badge and a warm tip.

The partners' floor was the forty-first, and it had no walls between the offices, only glass.

I rode up between three men who did not speak, and I watched the numbers climb over Anson's shoulder.

Gray leaned toward me and said quietly, "He's not angry at you."

"I didn't think he was."

"Good. You'd be the first to guess right."

The conference room had a table long enough to seat twenty, and the three of them sat on one side of it.

I stood at the other side, still holding my folder.

"You can sit," Josiah said.

"I'd rather stand. It's the same interview I started downstairs."

Gray put a hand over his mouth, and I was fairly sure it was to hide a grin.

Anson opened my résumé and read it in silence.

It took him less than a minute, and I counted the seconds, because I had nothing else to do with my hands.

"Ten months unemployed," he said.

"Yes."

"Four months at a coffee shop."

"Yes."

"Before that, six years at a logistics firm, ending in a layoff."

"The whole department, not just me. I wrote the transition plan for the people who stayed."

"Why?"

"Because someone had to. It seemed rude to leave it to a stranger."

Josiah wrote something on his tablet.

"Each of us gets one question," Gray said. "I'll go first. What's the worst thing a customer ever said to you at the coffee shop?"

"That my smile was a customer service lie."

"Was it?"

"Yes. But a very good one."

Gray laughed out loud, a real laugh, and slapped the table.

"My turn," Josiah said, and took his glasses off. "Why this company?"

I had rehearsed an answer for that one for fourteen years.

I did not use it.

"My mother kept your picture on our fridge," I said. "All three of you, from a magazine. She said that men who built something together instead of fighting over it were the only kind worth working for."

Nobody spoke.

"She died two years ago," I said. "This is her jacket."

Josiah put his glasses back on, slowly, and looked at the table.

"Anson," Gray said, quietly.

Anson closed my résumé.

"I don't have a question," he said. "I have a problem. Our biggest client wants a call at two. A second client's board wants one at two as well, and both say they will walk if they're moved. I can't be on both lines, and neither can Gray or Josiah. You have ten minutes at that desk. Solve it."

He pointed at an empty desk outside the glass.

I walked to it, sat, and picked up the phone.

There was a list of contacts, a calendar and a headset, and a sticky note in someone else's handwriting that said, in capitals, DO NOT TELL ANSON I CRIED.

I turned the note over so it was face down, and I started dialing.

I called the biggest client's office first.

I did not apologize and I did not invent anything.

I told his assistant that the partners were facing a conflict at two, that I would like to offer him Gray Mallender personally at two, and Anson Pryde at three, with the full agenda sent in advance.

His assistant said she would check with him.

I called the other board and offered Josiah at two, and Anson at a quarter to three.

They both said yes inside four minutes.

Neither of them had wanted to be moved.

They had wanted someone senior who knew their name, and nobody had asked.

I walked back to the conference room and said so.

Anson was looking at the clock on the wall.

"Seven minutes," he said.

"Did I go over?"

"No," he said. "Under."

He stood.

"You'll start today," he said. "On trial. Thirty days. If either of us thinks it isn't working, we'll say so to your face."

"All three of you," I said.

"All three of us."

"That's a yes?"

"It's a yes," Gray said, grinning. "Welcome to the worst job in Chicago."

A woman had appeared in the doorway, and she was holding a lanyard.

She was somewhere in her forties, with a neat blonde bob and pearl studs, and she was smiling warmly.

"Meredith Cowell," she said, and gave me her hand. "I'm the chief of staff. Ms. Birchall, I'm so sorry about this morning. I cannot tell you how sorry."

"You're the one who told the lobby to keep me waiting."

Her smile did not move.

"I was told the partners were tied up," she said. "I passed it along. I should have called you myself, and that's on me."

Anson's eyes went to her, then away.

"We'll talk later, Meredith," he said.

"Of course." She turned back to me, and her voice dropped. "Let me get you set up. Come."

She walked me to the desk in the glass, and set the badge on it.

"Mr. Pryde takes his coffee at ten past seven," she said. "Black, no sugar, never in a paper cup. Mr. Mallender will tell you he doesn't need anything and then eat your lunch. Mr. Wray forgets to eat."

"Thank you."

"And a word of advice, from someone who likes you already." She touched my sleeve. "Don't take anything personally in the first month. It's a hard floor."

"I won't."

"Good."

She left, smiling.

I sat at the desk.

It was set between the three glass offices, so every one of them could see it.

And it had three chairs pulled up to it, one beside the other, and they all faced me.

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