“You’ll meet him.” Xander looks at me knowingly. “You’ll see what she means.”
“Oh?”
“You’re one of us now.” Cora looks me up and down and then smiles. “Don’t get me wrong; the job’s not bad. It’s not good, but it’s not bad.”
“Well, uh, I guess I’m glad to be here. And glad to be meeting you all.”
“So, tell us about you, Katherine Jenkins.” Xander almost cackles in glee. “I want to know all about how you wound up here at Heathcliff Enterprises.”
As they all stare at me, I know without a doubt that there is no way in hell I’m telling them the truth. These three would not be impressed if I told them that Jack himself had gotten me the job. They’d think I was some sort of mole and be standoffish to me—I can already sense it.
Even though they are all odd, there is something good in all of them. Some inner essence that makes me think we’ll get along. We are definitely an odd group of people, but I want to help make these forgotten nobodies somebodies. I want them to feel seen because I know what it is like to be invisible.
Chapter Eight
Jack
Katherine Jenkins has been working for me for two weeks, and I’ve had zero contact with her. It feels surreal knowing she’s in my office building, working on files related to my business, and yet we haven’t spoken or seen each other.
“So I was wondering if you would like me to arrange a dinner for you and Willamina Tacoma,” my assistant says as she pops her head into my office.
I look up at her with a frown. “Sorry, what?”
“You take Willamina on a date once a month, and you haven’t asked me to schedule it yet this month, so I was wondering if you would like me to schedule something for next week.” She gives me a questioning look, as if I were too slow to question her. To be fair, she has scheduled many of my dates, but I hadn’t thought about any of those women in a couple of weeks. I didn’t even want to think about why that might have been. “We’re coming to the end of the month now, Mr. Heathcliff.”
“No, I think I’m okay.” I shake my head. I can’t even remember what Willamina looks like. “Thank you, though.”
“What about Jasmine then?” She continues and opens a notebook in her hand. “Or Kenya, Lucia, Tracy, Jan?—”
“I don’t need you to book any dates for me right now.” I stop her before she reads off the name of every woman I’ve even glanced at. She looks peeved at my tone, but I don’t care. “I will let you know if I need your help in that department. Right now, I need you to concentrate on assembling the files for the Mercurial meeting in a couple of hours.”
“Yes, sir,” she says stiffly, as if she’s greatly offended by my words. “I just wanted to make sure I was on top of it because a lot of the restaurants you like to go to are very popular, and it’s hard to get reservations, so I like to do that in advance.”
“I appreciate how diligent and hardworking you are, Patricia, but I don’t need your help. By the way, how’s the new girl coming along?”
“Which new girl, sir?” She looks at me with a frown, and I wonder if she’s being deliberately incompetent. “We’ve had ten new employees start in the last couple of weeks—six of whom are women.”
“The special hire in the marketing department.” I stare at her. “The one I specifically hired, and you emailed.”
“Oh, you mean Ms. Jenkins?”
“Yes, Katherine Jenkins. How is she doing?”
“I gather she’s doing fine. It’s not like they have any important projects in that specific department,” she says, shrugging.
“What do you mean they don’t have any important projects?” What on earth is she talking about?
“Well, they’re working on the PowerPoint presentations for the conference coming up, so you know... they’re not working on anything big.”
“Sorry, what are you talking about?”
“You told me she had no experience in marketing, correct?”
“Yes, that’s what I said.”
“So I put her on the, uh . . .” She pauses. “I put her on the beginning marketing team,” she says quickly. “She’s new, and they are working on some hotel projects now.”
“Hmm.” I give Patricia a blistering stare. “The entire purpose of her taking this job was to learn about marketing for hotels.”
