Page 1 of The Work Wife

Chapter 1

Trying not to wince, Jamie Witmer walked into the employee lounge and found everyone from Blain & Douglas Design gathered around a cake. At her arrival a chorus of “Congratulations, Jamie!” erupted from her overenthusiastic co-workers.

The only thing keeping her from running back to her office was the cake. God, she loved cake.

“Thanks for giving me a warning,” she muttered to her design team partner.

“I know how much you love surprises.” Weston Archer had worked with her the last five years. They’d learned a lot about each other over that time. “Look. There’s cake,” he pointed out, knowing how much she loved cake.

It was impossible to spend eight to ten hours a day with someone and not know them on a personal level. Sometimes even more than an actual spouse. Or so she assumed. Neither she nor Wes had a spouse, so she didn’t know for sure.

“Five years with the company.” Rob Blain patted her shoulder in a fatherly way, despite him being only six years older than her. “Your hard work means a lot to us.”

“Your paycheck means a lot to me,” she joked, making the whole group laugh.

Rob had hired her after her first job out of college in an architecture firm turned out to be more about making coffee than about creating anything. He’d told her he appreciated her vision.

At the time, she wasn’t exactly sure what her vision had been other than being able to afford her own place in Boston so she could ditch her two roommates. She’d realized that goal in four months and set her sights on the next thing she’d wanted.

Blain & Douglas Design paired employees into teams. One architect with one structural engineer. The teams were rated based on a number of criteria, including how much revenue the team brought in, how many jobs they were able to complete in a year, and the most creative design as chosen by Rob Blain, CEO.

The incentive program was designed to encourage friendly rivalries among the teams and get everyone to try harder. However, Jamie was what Wes called obsessive. She liked to think of it as a healthy level of competitiveness.

A year later, with Weston as her partner, they became Design Team Two. And that is where they’d stayed ever since, thanks to Duane Larkson and Neil Hooper—the current Team One.

Wes and she had been close a few times, but it was a frustrating cycle. They didn’t get the bigger clients because they weren’t the top team, and they couldn’t become the top team unless they got a bigger client.

She hated being in second place more than anything. Except maybe winter in Boston.

After gorging on cake and wading through more congratulations, she made her way back to the office she shared with her partner. It was large enough to accommodate their two desks, which faced one another, as well as a worktable and a drafting table. The giant whiteboard that took up an entire wall was generally covered with hieroglyphs and doodles that only made sense to them.

They had a window, though on blah January days like today, she almost wished they didn’t.

“It’s snowing again.” Weston pointed at the flake-speckled window. The horrid sound of tiny pellets of ice hitting glass made her shiver. It wasn’t just snow, it was sleet. Even worse. “I’ll drive you home if you want.”

Weston knew more than just her dislike of surprises or love of cake. He also knew she’d grown up in Virginia Beach, and therefore was too warm-blooded to appreciate Boston’s snow and cold weather.

“At least it will put a clean coating on top of the four inches of gray sludge already out there.”

“That’s the spirit.” He laughed. “Did you get your day off?”

“Yes.” She waved the festive-looking voucher in the air. A free day off work to celebrate her milestone with the company. An even better incentive than the cake.

Blain & Douglas was an innovative company. They had a lot of perks other companies didn’t have. Though she wasn’t able to utilize all of them.

She couldn’t bring her pet to work, since her apartment didn’t allow pets. She wasn’t in a position to use the adoption reimbursement plan at this point. And since she wasn’t married she hadn’t been invited to attend the event at the couples-only resort to schmooze a huge new client.

Lance and Holly McCafferty owned Atlantic Global Transports, one of the biggest importers in the world, and they wanted to move their corporate headquarters into a new, state-of-the-art building in Boston.

And Jamie desperately wanted to design it.

Unfortunately, three years ago the couple nearly got divorced because Lance was spending too much time in their China office and not enough time at home. Since they had worked through their issues, they now went everywhere together.

Jamie’s boss thought a couples’ retreat would be a great way to bring them into the fold. It was a good angle, but one Jamie had yet to figure out how to get invited to.

She tapped her voucher against her temple as she tried again to come up with a way to get in on the event.

“You’ll get another voucher for a day off once he announces the rankings next week.” Weston rolled out a blueprint on the worktable.