“So, you can imagine how important it is that we are nice to him and give him anything that he wants.”
Sarah assured her boss that she was doing that.
“But I mean, it seems silly to not save some money before we go-”
Greg cut her off and told her that she didn’t need to worry her ‘pretty little head’ about it. Sarah was enraged by the man and his word choice. She didn’t like being spoken to like that, and she wanted to quit when the words came out of his mouth.
“Just worry about Harold. He is a handful and so far, you are doing a good job. Why worry about adding more things to the mix?”
“I thought I was here to try and make it better?”
Greg shrugged. “There is nothing that you can do to save us, so why try?”
Sarah didn’t know what to say to that. She collected her things and made sure that she was out the office for the evening before she could get emotional. Sarah wasn’t going to miss the job all that much, but she’d never been talked to and dismissed in such a way.
***
It took a couple more weeks for Sarah to give up like her boss had. She had come to the business with all of these great ideas of what she was going to do to make it better. She had studied industry charts, and she was convinced that she would be able to make a difference. She wasn’t, though. Sarah had been tied to do anything, and it had been one of the most frustrating times of her life. She tried her best to make sure that she gave her notice, but she was ready to get out of there. She was disillusioned to it ever being a place that she would like to be.
Sarah wasn’t going to let it bother her, though. She had left better jobs and found another one right away. She was convinced that all she had to do was bide her time, and she would get exactly what she wanted. She was totally convinced of it. All she had to do was find the place.
After a week or so of looking and not finding that diamond in the rough, Sarah took a similar position in another company. It wasn’t the same as the one she had been working in. There were lots of people that would listen to her, but she wasn’t very happy there. Sarah still thought back to her time in Topanga, when things had been fun and exciting at Rockets Incorporated. She yearned for that place, but her mother was starting to improve a little bit, and Sarah was convinced that it wouldn’t happen if they were anywhere else. So, that meant that she had to stay, they all did, When she went to work for Tulips, it was made clear to her that the diamond didn’t exist, and she was just going to have to put her head down and do her job. She didn’t like it, there was no challenge, but it was the best that she could find in Seattle, and she was resigned to her fate.
Chapter 6
Harold
After about the third day of getting someone who told him that Sarah wasn’t there, Harold wanted to talk to her boss. Harold didn’t know the high-pitched man that answered the phone, but he knew that he didn’t want to hear from him. He wanted to know what was going on. Sarah was the best part of the business, and he was not happy that she was not there to represent them.
Greg got on the phone and said that she was no longer with the company. That came as a shock to Harold, and he wanted to know why.
“Well, you know how people are. It’s hard to find any one decent.”
“She seemed like a good worker. Don’t you think that you are not giving her the real benefit of her work? I have seen her in action, have talked to her for weeks now. I can’t see her not being good at her job.”
“She was alright with the job. She just didn’t know when to quit and stay in her lane, you know? She was trying to do everyone else’s job and that was the problem.”
Harold didn’t know what to say. He didn’t like those negative comments about Sarah and even though the man he was talking to knew her better than he did, that didn’t mean that he was going to listen to anything that was being said. It wasn’t in his best interest to do so.
He got off the phone rather quickly after that. He wanted more information about her and where she had gone. It was hard for him to just imagine that they were never going to talk anymore. She was the highlight of his day, many days. Now, he wasn’t interested in updates about the business. He wasn’t interested in anything, except finding out where she was and figuring out how he could keep her in his life. Harold secretly had been dying to meet her. He didn’t know how it would all turn out, but he didn’t see this happening. He wasn’t ready to give up on her, even if he didn’t fully grasp what it was that he wanted out of her to begin with.
***
Seattle was a big city and for a man that had unlimited resources, it shouldn’t have been too hard to find Sarah. She hadn’t left much information for him to gather and even though he was going to soon own the business that she had previously worked for, they would not release any of their human resource records until the deal was final. He’d thought about pulling out of the deal for several reasons, but now he was going to be buying it, just so that Harold could get the information that he needed about Sarah. It shouldn’t have been too hard, not really. It was only millions of dollars, that’s all.
Harold bought the company a few months later. There were some negotiation hiccups, and Harold didn’t know why they wanted more at the last minute, like they had some new leverage, but they hadn’t, and Harold had fought back. He wanted the information about Sarah, but he wasn’t willing to let someone take advantage of him in business because of it. Money was no big deal, but he was not willing to give up his reputation. His ego just couldn’t let him do it.
Because of that, Harold didn’t get his hands on Sarah’s information for almost three months, and it took a private detective another two months to figure out where she worked. He knew where she lived, but Harold just couldn’t show up at her house, saying that he missed talking to her. Instead, he had to find a way to meet her ‘by chance’, no matter how elaborate it had to be. Harold knew that his pride, once again, wouldn’t let anything else happen, especially if it showed his true emotions.
It was easy to figure out a meeting spot, once he found out a little bit about Sarah’s new job. She was managing some of their accounts, and she was supposed to be some kind of efficiency contractor. Harold didn’t know what exactly it was that she did there, but he knew that she was going to be sent for a large seminar taking place in a month. Harold wanted something sooner, but unless he wanted to wait outside her work to ‘bump’ into her, possibly looking like a creep, he was going to have to do something else. So, he decided that he was just going to wait. Sarah was worth it, he thought. His friend Steven’s words were echoing in his ears, making him wonder if what he said was true. What if she was ugly? Would that change his desire to want to talk to her and have her work for him?
Harold didn’t know the answer to that. What he did know though, was he was ready to meet her. He’d thought about her for almost five months since they talked last. Harold figured that he could wait another month or so. He was a patient man, or at least he was learning when he had to be.
Chapter 7
Sarah
It was another seminar, and Sarah was not in the mood for it. She knew that she had to go. She was working for Tulip Enterprises, and it was part of her job. She didn’t have to go for the speeches. She wasn’t there to learn anything, not from the speakers, anyway. She was there to be a bit of a spy and get some information for the online selling platform. They wanted to know what was going on with their competition, and they thought that sending Sarah in was the best way to do it. She was beautiful, conspicuous, and no one was going to question anything when it came to her.
