She nodded. “You hired me when I was in the last year of my first degree.”
“Well, time’s flown, so you must’ve been having fun, right?”
“I have enjoyed my time here, sir.”
His eyebrows shot up, then slashed down. “Sir? So I gather this isn’t a conversation about how you also feel like your bonus could have been higher.”
“No.” Someone had done that? Whoever it was, she admired their audacity. “I wanted to speak to you about another matter.”
“I hope it isn’t that you feel ripped off because I didn’t ask you to manage the Montgomery account.”
She shook her head, although it had pained her to see that account go to Lionel.
“Well, then, what is it? Lionel said he didn’t know why you’d bypassed him and insisted on coming straight to me. You’re lucky my four o’clock cancelled.”
Lucky, or blessed, as Jordan had said when he’d learned there’d been an unexpected cancellation that allowed her to see Dean today.“Sounds like God’s timing to me,”he’d said.
“Well?” Dean demanded impatiently.
She lifted her chin but couldn’t fix Dean with the same kind of flinty stare that worked so well on Lionel and Dallas. “I wanted to offer you the courtesy of giving you my resignation face-to-face.”
“Yourwhat?” he bellowed.
She kept her features fixed in a look she hoped passed as pleasant.
“Dean, I’ve been very grateful for the years I’ve worked here. But I feel like the season has come to an end, and I’m needing to invest my time elsewhere.”
He swore. “Who are you working for? Apple? Atlassian?”
“I’ll be working for Woodhouse-Knightley.” The company name she and Jordan had devised all those years ago in high school. The joint last names of the fictional heroine EJ had been named for, and Emma’s hero.
Dean’s eyebrows pushed together. “I haven’t heard of them. Who are they? American?”
“It’s an app development company,” she said carefully. For all Dean’s focus on business, business, business and insistence on being up to date with the latest in the tech world, niche industries like dating apps weren’t likely to be on his radar. And she was hoping his lack of knowledge about dating apps would mean he would let this go rather than refuse to accept her resignation.
Sure enough he looked perplexed. “Why would someone like you want to work for a company nobody has heard of?”
That was a compliment, she supposed. “I need a change, and like I said, I’m very grateful for all you’ve done—”
“I get it. You’re grateful for the opportunity, yada yada yada.”
This was going well.
“I can’t help but feel a little gobsmacked. This was out of the blue.”
“It’s something I’ve been thinking about for a while.”
“Wait. Are you saying you’re already working there?”
This wassonot going well. “It’s actually an app I’ve been working on for the past ten years, even before I started working here.”
His eyes widened. “And you never told me? Has this ever been a conflict of interest?”
“Never.”
As she went on to describe exactly what her dating app did, his face melded from concern to disbelief to something approaching derision. “Are you serious? You’re telling me that you’re a professional matchmaker.”
“Yes.”
