He held his hand up with his palm out like he was a school crossing guard and I was a wayward student.
The worse part was that I actually stopped talking.
He looked at Frank. “What. Am. I. Doing. Here?”
“Now, Ark, we’ve talked about this. We need someone to act as a liaison between what you’re doing in Hope’s Point and what we’re doing here. Also Olivia, coming from the EPA, is specially trained to make sure we’re minimizing any impact on the environment from our operations. Figured you two would be in agreement on that.”
Noah, because referring to him asArkfelt a little silly, turned his gaze to me and looked me up and down. Not in a sexually assessing way, more like he was taking in my mettle.
I straightened my shoulders and pushed my chin out telling myself he didn’t scare me.
Only a little bit anyway.
“Yes, well, I should state for the record that I’m quite a fan of your work. And in studying it closely, I have these ideas that I think might—”
“Ideas?” he said. “You have ideas about my work?”
“Yes.”
He looked away from me to where Frank was sitting at the head of the table. “Frank,” he growled.
“Now, Ark, hear her out.”
“Yes, Mr. Aikens…” I said, attempting to gain his attention.
“My dad goes byMr. Aikens. People call me Ark.”
I cleared my throat. “Very well, Noah—”
“Ark,” he barked at me.
“Ark is not a name, it’s a boat. If you don’t want me to call you by your last name, then I will use your first…Noah.”
He snarled at me as he slowly stood, his palms flat on the table as he forward. I had another crazy urge to crawl on to the table, get up in his face just to see what he would do.
He turned toward Frank. “Oh, now I get it. She’s sassy. And you think I’ll respect that. I don’t.”
“Ark, be reasonable,” Frank said, trying to placate him.
I stood my ground even as he inched farther across the table.
“Listen, lady, maybe you don’t know who I am,” he growled. “But I’m the engineer who built Dyson’s North Shore operation, both land and sea. Up there I am king. What I don’t need is some suit wearing, corporate type, with her double engineering degree to start sticking her nose in my operation with herideas.” He turned to Frank. “I don’t need a damn babysitter.”
“I’m not going to tell you what to do,” I charged, pulling his attention to me again. I didn’t like the way he kept looking to Frank. I didn’t like it when he wasn’t focused on me, period. “I’m only going to make suggestions to improve efficiencies. Both from a cost perspective and an environmental one.”
“Insinuating that I don’t have the most efficient process already?” he shouted. “No, Frank.”
“Sorry, Ark. You’re a stubborn sonofabitch. But so am I. We need Olivia to do what you won’t do, which is to play nice with management, and she does have some creative ideas we think you should take a look at.”
He snorted at the wordmanagement.
“Fine. You wanted us to meet. We’ve met.” He pointed at me then. “You have ideas. Put them in a report. Send them to me. I’ll make sure I give them the consideration they deserve. Now are we done here? Some of us have oil to pull out of the earth.”
“We’re done,” Frank said.
Then, just like he’d blown in, he blew out. Frank and two of his senior managers in the room looked at each other then at me.
“Well,” Frank said, nodding, “that went better than expected.”
