It could keep the pen. I hada new client, I didn’tneedthat pen. I’d be able to afford a newone when the check cleared.
THREE
MILES
JUST AS I reached out to knock onthe familiar mahogany door of my dad’s office, it opened with a sudden jerk thatmade me back up a step.
An equally familiar manemerged from the room, shoulders squared, scowling. He gave the generalimpression of a bear who’d just been woken up halfway through the winter.
Not that I’d woken a lot ofbears in my life, but I felt like I understood pretty well why that’d be a badidea. The look on John Bryant’s face told me everything I needed to know.
The moment he noticed me,the expression evaporated into a broad, too-cheerful smile that I knew wasfake. It was always fake.
For some reason, Johnthought I was stupid. Or at least, he thought I couldn’t tell he hated me just asmuch as he hated my dad. There was just no point in having a shouting match inmyoffice, becauseI didn’thave a whole lot of power here.
Emerson Medical had oncebeen Emerson & Bryant. As far as I knew, John’s family had sold acontrolling interest to my grandfather shortly after the company had becomepublicly traded so they could pursue other investments.
Coincidentally, I got theimpression those hadn’t worked out all that well.
“Miles,” John enthused,still grinning ridiculously at me. I forced a tiny smile, not actuallywantingto argue withhim. Like a lot of people, he looked at me and saw an easily-manipulated child,and I hated that.
Dad, at least, took meseriously. Which made me luckier than a lot of other people in my position.
“John.” I nodded a hello,not quite up to making myself seem any more thrilled to see him than I was. “ShouldI give him a minute to cool down?”
John burst into laughter, asthough that was the funniest joke he’d ever heard in his entire fifty-odd years.
He reached out and clapped ahand on my shoulder—my bad shoulder, of course, and I was never sure if he didthat on purpose or not, but he always managed to. I wasn’t sure he knewwhich shoulderwasthe bad one.
Not wincing as he squeezedfirmly took up all my concentration, and I barely tuned back in to hear himspeak in time.
“Just a friendlyconversation this time,” he lied. People didn’t walk away withthatlook on theirface after a friendly conversation. Besides, John was incapable of them, as faras I’dseen. There was always an undertone ranging from seething anger to calmmanipulation, no matter how charming or pleasant he seemed on the surface. “What’she dragging you up here for?”
“Not sure,” I lied inreturn. “You know how he is. You get a summons, you show up when he tells you.”
The truth couldn’t have beenfurther away. Ilikedgoing to see my dad. I liked working here with him,and I knew that someone else might have felt trapped, or like they were workingunder his shadow, but…
Personally? I felt like Ihad a lot to learn, and I was happy for Dad to be CEO for as long as he wantedso I had plenty of time to learn it. One day, I’d be in his shoes, and Iknew those shoes also came with graying hair and a weekly remedial massageappointment to fix the network of knots in his back.
Dad could hang onto thatparticular job. One day, I’d do it, and I’d treat it as seriously as he had,but I was really glad that day wasn’t today.
Maybe that was wrong. MaybeI should have been more ambitious, but all I’d ever wanted was to dogood. I’d be betterequipped to accomplish that if I learned more about how the company workedfirst.
“He oughta go easier on you,”John said, finally removing his huge, heavy hand. “You’re still a young man.You don’t need to be tied down with all this responsibility.”
The hairs on the back of myneck prickled. John always had a way of getting under my skin. I wasn’t tied down, andhe was just trying to convince me to half-ass a job I loved.
Two could play at that game,though.
“I’ll be in charge here oneday,” I said casually, sighing as though there was no greater burden a mancould bear. The corner of John’s lips twitched.
Good. One day, he’d learn that Iwas no more of a pushover than my dad was. In the meantime, I’d just have tokeep reminding him, even if it made my stomach knot up with worry over talkingback to a man who had such a strong aura of authority that few people everquestioned him.
“Seems like the least I cando is take all this seriously. There are a lot of people depending on us tosave their lives. I don’t mind the occasional summoning in pursuit of that. It’simportant work,” I added, making sure there’d be plenty of time for the stingof the first remark to sink in.
That was something I’d learned frommy dad. He was a master of saying something devastating like he was commentingon the weather, and one day I hoped to be as good at it as he was.
Petty, maybe, but it’d always been auseful skill for him in dealing with people just like John.
