"Why are you mad? I mean, I know why you’re mad." Carter looked around then pulled her into a breakout room for small group meetings off of the hallway.
"Look, I know I embarrassed you and lied—"
"I’m not mad," she said. "You paid me. That was what we agreed upon."
"Okay, so are we friends?"
"Sure, whatever," she said to him.
He leaned in and kissed her.
"I missed you," he murmured.
It thrilled her to hear him say that.
You're just tired,she scolded herself.There's no way Carter feels anything remotely serious toward you.
"You don’t even know me," she told him as he looked at her intently.
"No, but you know me, better than anyone else does, even my family, it feels like. You make me feel like a real person."
"We can’t do this Carter," she said. "You know I don’t sleep with customers."
He smirked. "But you did. Maybe it wasn’t that great, but I'll bring my A game next time!"
She smiled in spite of herself.
"Let’s be friends," he said, resting his hands on her waist, "and potentially with benefits?"
"Potentially not," she said, pushing him away, and opened the door.
"Carter Holbrook!" someone said.
She slipped away to the bathroom while Carter’s attention was diverted.
After several more presentations and the distribution of their login information and access cards, Monique took them on a tour of the tower.
It was a tall, thin building with the various amenities stacked on top of each other.
"Instead of a central service core," Monique explained, "the bathrooms and circulation are to the side. This lets the building take advantage of natural daylight on three sides for one large floor plan with unobstructed views." Allie was impressed with the tower. Just like the Holbrook estate, the Holbrook Enterprises headquarters was well decorated and gave off the impression of understated wealth.
"The gym is on these two floors," Monique said, leading them to a glass wall that looked out over a sea of exercise machines. "There’s state-of-the-art equipment, nice locker rooms, and a pool. We like our employees to be fit and healthy. Please make use of the facility."
Allie followed along as Monique led them through several of the office floors.
"The company owns the entire building but leases some floor space to companies they're contracted with heavily so that they can have more interaction. We’re big on cross-disciplinary work and collaboration here."
Allie wasn't sure she wanted to work in an open floor plan. She thought they might be too noisy and distracting.
"Remember," Monique said as she left them with their teams where they would be working, "you all will be doing special projects together in teams of three to four, so start thinking about your topics."
Then Monique left, and it was just her, Liz, and Carter standing next to Hector, the director of the risk management division.
"Great to see you folks here," said Hector. "We are hardly ever assigned interns. They all want to be in the more exciting roles like sales or product development. But risk management can be interesting too."
They followed Hector around the quiet floor as he gave them the tour. "The break room is here. There's a kitchenette with a microwave and fridge. We also have water and snacks, so help yourselves."
Carter picked out an apple and crunched it noisily while they followed Hector around the empty floor.
