She showed up at my office fourteen minutes later.
I knew because I’d been checking my wrist watch. Not consciously—I was reviewing contracts, answering emails, being a functioning CEO—but my eyes had been tracking the time since I’d left her desk, calculating how long it would take for her pride to war with her professionalism and professionalism to win.
Fourteen minutes. Longer than I’d expected. She was getting better at resisting me.
She didn’t knock. Just pushed the door open and strode in with that particular walk she had when she was about to tell me exactly what she thought of me, and set the coffee cup down on my desk with a sharp click.
“I don’t want your coffee,” she said.
I looked at the cup. Then at her. The corners of my mouth curve upward.
“It’s getting cold,” I observed.
“Then you drink it.”
“I don’t like that blend.”
“Then why did you buy it?”
“I bought it for you.”
She stared at me, and I watched the frustration flicker across her face—that particular expression she got when she wanted to strangle me but couldn’t figure out how to do it without witnesses.
“There is no Hartwell piece,” she said.
“Isn’t there?”
“You made it up.”
“I had questions about your workflow. That’s not making something up.”
“You interrupted my conversation to ask about my workflow?”
“Was that a conversation?” I leaned back in my chair, enjoying myself far more than I should have. “It looked more like a tutorial. Is Ethan having trouble with his computer? I can have IT take a look.”
Her eyes narrowed. She knew exactly what I was doing. She just couldn’t call me on it without acknowledging that there was something to call me on, and her pride wouldn’t let her do that.
“Stay away from my desk,” she said.
“I was bringing you coffee. Boosting morale. It’s called leadership.”
“It’s called harassment.”
“It’s called caffeine, Pauline. Most people say thank you.”
She turned and walked out without another word, and I sat there grinning like an idiot at the cold coffee she’d left behind.
I made it a habit to walk through the newsroom after that.
Not every day—that would be obvious, and I was trying to be subtle, though subtlety had never been my strong suit. But often enough to learn the rhythms of the place. Who arrived early, who stayed late, who was actually working and who was just performing productivity for an audience.
Pauline was always working. Always.
I passed her desk Thursday afternoon, timing it to look coincidental, and caught the tail end of a conversation she washaving with Ethan. Again. The man was like a rash—persistent, irritating, impossible to get rid of.
“—Simon Tucker,” she was saying, and her voice had that particular quality it got when she was talking about something that mattered to her. Hungry. Intense. “If I could just get an interview with him, even fifteen minutes, I could crack this whole thing open. He’s the key to my big break, I know he is.”
“Tucker doesn’t do interviews,” Ethan said. “His PR team has turned down every request since the whole incident with his daughter.”
