EIGHT
Leo knocked on the door and waited, jaw tight.
“Yes?” Carlisle Lockhart’s eager voice fell several notches when Leo stepped into the office. “Oh, it’s you. What do you need?”
You can quit treating me like someone who just shit in your cornflakes.But getting fired less than two months into this new job wasn’t on Leo’s vision board, so he bit back the sarcasm and said, “Press’ll be here soon. Any advice?”
Carlisle’s expression didn’t shift. “On what?”
What did he think Leo meant? “I’m introducing the community grant recipients today.”
His boss barely suppressed a yawn. “Oh that. I’m sure you can handle it.”
Leo was absolutely sure he could not. It wasn’t that talking to the media wasn’t a strong suit of his. It was that he was an absolute train wreck when it came to talking to the media. He tended to growl out monosyllabic answers and scowl in a way that scared off the timid ones and looked terrifying on camera, or so he’d been told the handful of times POR had been featured on the news. But he wasn’t about to give soft-handed Carlisle the satisfaction of admitting that. Still, this was his first public appearance as a foundation employee, and he wanted to get it right. He’d already had a meeting with Dale, a chipper guy from public relations, who’d prepped him for the kind of questions the press usually asked at these things. But he wanted to make sure he’d be delivering the proper messages on behalf of the foundation.
“Any specific talking points you think I should hit about the grants?”
“I’m sure I wouldn’t know. You own”—he vaguely waved in Leo’s direction—“all of this. You’ll figure it out.”
Naturally star-fucker Carlisle Lockhart thoughtnoneof this was important, “this” being helping the people who lived in his town. During their short time working together, the older man had made it clear that he found the community grant program to be at the bottom of his priority list, way behind dinners with celebrities and overseas jaunts to visit Big Dig’s projects in China and India and Mexico. Why would he give a shit about providing mental health treatment for the unhoused in Beaucoeur when he could jet off to Bangladesh to visit the new medical clinics built with foundation money?
The hell of it was, every overseas program Carlisle bragged about was also life-changing, and Leo was proud to be part of the Big Dig team that was making it happen. But he was even prouder to be helping his neighbors. It just would’ve been nice to have a little more support from his boss.
“Okay then. Thanks,” he muttered before retreating back to his office where he glowered at the note cards he was jotting important phrases onto as a safety net. Carlisle was right; he’d been the driving force behind these programs, and he’d be able to talk about them without tripping himself up. Probably.
“Ready?”
He looked up to see Dale the PR guy standing in the doorway to accompany him to the press conference. Leo swooped up his note cards and followed him out of the office suite.
“We’ll be in the smaller of the auditoriums today.” The upbeat man grinned at him as they stepped on the elevator to take them to the second floor. His thick-framed glasses slid down his nose as he consulted a list on his phone. “And all the recipients are there waiting.”
All the recipients. No one any more special than the others.
“Denise from theCourieris here, and we’ve got crews from the CBS and NBC affiliates and the local NPR station.” His grin widened as if that was supposed to be good news. Then he waved his phone under Leo’s nose. “Plus I’ll be recording for the Digham website.”
“Great.” Not great. But it was part of his job now, and hadn’t he mastered all kinds of new skills in his first year at POR? This was just another new one.
They reached the double doors of the amphitheater, and Leo hesitated before stepping through. He’d navigated the Amazon rainforest without a map after one of the POR volunteers used it as toilet paper. He could talk to a couple of local reporters.
He sucked a deep breath into his lungs and stepped through the door.
Right. A couple of local reporters—and Faith.
She was standing at the bottom of the tiered auditorium where he’d address the media, talking animatedly with someone he didn’t recognize. And as nervous as he was, he couldn’t help but notice that she looked… good. Comfortable. She was in dark jeans and a hot-pink blazer over a Beaucoeur BUILD T-shirt, and if he had to guess, he was seeing her in her normal work uniform. Not that damn tweed suit or those short-shorts that he’d been obsessing about for weeks.
This was the person she’d grown up to be: casual, laughing, gorgeous. And he was the idiot who’d thought he could fuck her out of his system.
“Ready?” Dale raised his brows expectantly over his glasses, gesturing at Leo to head to the front of the room.
“Of course.” Time to forget about the temporary insanity that had him following Faith out of the rooftop bar and dragging her into that closet.
Once they reached where the group was clustered, Dale introduced him to the TV reporters in the audience—polished, glossy, white-toothed—and the decidedly less polished and glossy woman from the Beaucoeur newspaper. Leo shook all their hands but was too focused on the remarks he’d need to give to smile or do more than grunt a hello.
Greeting his grant recipients went fractionally better. He was acquainted with Isaac and Luna Hamoud, who ran Beaucoeur’s new transitional housing facility, and he’d gone to school with the younger brother of Barrett Allen, the man in charge of the job retraining center. But he’d never met the woman who ran the fiber arts collective that provided jobs for those in the area who needed assistance.
“Char, this is Leo Morales,” Dale said to the tall woman with the brown-and-gray braid and the clearly hand-knit sweater. “Leo, this is Char McDougall.”
“Nice to meet you.” Char grabbed his hand and squeezed it enthusiastically. “Hmm. Good grip. I could make a knitter out of you.”
