Page 3 of Snake
Half of the penthouse floor, the half overlooking the White River, was the MWGP executive suite, where large, windowed offices were a perk, even if they remained empty most of the time. The other half of the floor was a ‘bullpen’ situation, an arrangement of ‘work stations’ that could be claimed by anyone working in the office, bordered by a dozen closed-door offices available for meetings or work that needed to be done in some privacy.
Autumn now had one of those large, windowed offices in the executive suite but she, like most of her peers, was generally there only a couple days a week. Mondays started with an executive breakfast meeting, which usually ran almost to lunch; since she had to be in the office for that meeting, she generally stayed through the day. And Thursdays she led her own meeting in the bullpen suite, gathering all her direct reports together to keep track of their projects and discuss future plans (something like that could be done remotely, in Teams, except that the Isleys wanted them done in person). She hung around the office on that day as well. Otherwise, she worked from home or, much more likely, in the field. Real estate, whether you were selling a suburban rancher for $350,000 or building a forty-story corporate headquarters for $350,000,000, was not really an at-your-desk kind of job.
Which was ironic, considering the industry’s decades-long devotion to building offices few corporations had really needed to use since the birth of the digital era.
As Vice President of Commercial Development, Autumn generally kept those thoughts to herself with her colleagues. Her job was to make more commercial buildings, not make a case they weren’t necessary. However, when she needed to drag a wooly mammoth of a C-level exec into the modern era, she did not shrink from making her case, in clear, direct language, that the age of giant steel and concrete penises was over.
After coffee with Pom, since she was within fifteen minutes of the office and had the time before her next meeting, Autumn swung by. Chase spent a lot of time in the office—most of it spent wandering aimlessly about, seeking someone to be in awe of him—and he owed her a decision on her latest project proposal.
As she set her Coach satchel on her desk, she paused and looked around. The office was technically unnecessary, yes. However, it was hers, and she’d worked her ass off to get here. Her life had been nothing but work and her dads for years. Even her nightlife was mostly entangled with work; she was far more likely to be at a show or a pricey restaurant with a client than with an actual date. Between the demands of her job, her own expectations for a potential partner, and the legion of losers flooding dating apps, her dating life was a corpse. She hadn’t had sex in almost two years.
But she had this: mahogany furniture, leather chair, lush carpet, a beautiful view. It would do.
––––––––
~oOo~
––––––––
She spent about twenty minutes going through her email, mainly so she could enjoy her hard-won office for a bit, then went out and across the suite to Chase’s corner office. In the traditional model, his assistant sat guard at her desk outside his door.
“Hi, Ms. Rooney.”
“Hi, Lisa. Is he in?”
“He is.” She leaned in with a conspiratorial hunch. “And just between you and me, he’s bored. I keep hearing his putting toy thing.”
Autumn grinned. Her boss belonged in the 1960s. “I’m just gonna knock.”
With Lisa’s permission granted in a nod, Autumn went to the wide, beveled door and knocked, then ducked her head in. He was indeed playing with his putting toy thing.
Charlton Isley III was forty-five years old and had the good looks that only great wealth and a mother chosen for her ‘good breeding’ could create: thick, dark hair, going silver at the temples and stylishly shaped by a monthly $700 cut; broad shoulders and a flat stomach shaped by a fully equipped home gym and full-time personal trainer and nutritionist; a ruddy bronze complexion shaped by thirty-six holes every week the weather allowed and two weeks at Telluride every Christmas; perfect, blindingly whitened teeth and Lasiked blue eyes. His nose was getting a little veiny and ruddy, shaped by a weekly consumption of probably three or four bottles of obscenely expensive scotch, but otherwise, he was pretty much the alabaster pinnacle of handsome wealth and privilege, and the top of Indianapolis’s ‘Most Eligible Men’ list.
He hadn’t married yet and had no children, which vexed Charlton Isley II painfully, but Chase wanted no limits on his enjoyments, no siphons on his resources. He’d be one of those crumbling elderly magnates snagging a nubile twenty-something to spit out an heir at the last minute. For now, he was what happened when a Sigma Chi guy reached the corner penthouse office.
Autumn detested him. But she knew exactly how to manage him.
“Chase? Got a minute?”
He looked over his shoulder and grinned brightly. “Autumn! Always got a minute for you, beautiful. Come in!”
She came in, leaving the door ajar. “Working hard today, I see,” she observed with a smirk carefully calibrated to ride the line between flirtatious and snarky.
He chuckled and tapped his silvered temple with the hand still holding his ... putter? (she hated golf and strove to know nothing about it). “You know I do my best work like this. The brain needs room to think.” He swung around and headed to the credenza at the far side of the room. “Would you like a drink?”
“I like to wait until after lunch before I start boozing,” she answered, keeping her balance on that fine line that made her actual condemnation feel like play.
He checked his Panerai Luminor watch. “Oh, look at that. 10:50. Get us some coffee instead.”
Autumn kept her eyes on his, her smile in place, and said nothing. Nor did she go out for coffee.
“Actually ...” He went to his desk and picked up his phone. “Lisa, bring us some coffee ... please.”
That task appropriately handled, he returned his attention to Autumn. She could tell that he was starting to feel a little picked on, so she tossed him a treat. She asked, “How late in the season can you golf?” and sat before his desk as he launched into ten minutes on the trials and frustrations of loving golf in a part of the country where the weather was hostile to the activity a good chunk of the year.
They were halfway through their coffee before he finished his rant and said, “I know you didn’t come in here to talk about golf. What’s up, my sweet?”
She always let such offensive, totally inappropriate ‘endearments’ roll away unremarked and kept her focus on her goal. “Have you made a decision about my proposal?”
