Brad helped her to the couch. Before sitting next to her, he got a bottle of water out of the mini fridge and opened it for her. The cold water shocked her dry mouth.
She knew Phillip had picked up the desk phone to call someone, but she didn’t know who and couldn’t make out what he said through the roaring in her ears. She looked up at Brad. “I don’t know if I can work in a place where I’m such a source of gossip again. I barely survived the last time. It was only because it was Dixon that I even stayed.”
He cupped her cheek with his warm hand and wiped at a tear with his thumb. “I can’t stand the thought of someone hurting you this way, but the idea that you would stop whatever is happening between us because of catty women gossiping doesn’t resonate well with me, either.” His touch was gentle, his words soft, but his eyes stormed with emotion. Fury, concern, care. “It should bother you that they think so low of you.”
Phillip walked toward them. “I have HR coming to my office. You want in?”
“No. Do whatever you can.” He didn’t break eye contact with Valerie while he spoke.
“What are you going to do?” Valerie demanded, pushing away from Brad and standing.
“That’s what I’m going to find out.” He put a hand on the door handle.
Brad speculated, “Chances are good that there’s absolutely nothing we can do outside of a first written warning and some mandatory retraining on our company policies. But they’ll know they overstepped, regardless.”
Phillip said, “Doesn’t apply to the intern. There are dozens of interns waiting in the wings. She can go back to school with a letter to the dean for all I care.”
“Uncle Phillip,” Valerie said on a sigh, but Brad held up a hand.
“Let him protect you.” He put both hands on her shoulders. “Be thankful I’m not going with him. If I did, I might have to take some retraining under the supervision of HR.”
She leaned forward and put her forehead on his chest. His arms came around her and she felt so very safe. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath through her nose, feeling better, less panicky, more in control. Finally, she gripped the collar of his suit jacket and lifted her head. He looked down at her, his eyes less stormy, calmer too. Without a word, he cupped her cheeks with both hands and lowered his mouth. When he hesitated, she tightened her grip and pulled him to her as she raised up on her toes to meet his mouth.
For weeks she had wondered what kissing Brad would feel like, but nothing she imagined even came close. The second their lips met the remaining traces of the panic attack slipped away.
His lips felt warm, soft, and as she took a deep breath through her nose, the smell of his aftershave filled her senses. She placed a hand on his cheek, feeling the smooth skin under her palm, and he pulled her even closer, deepening the kiss as she wrapped an arm around his neck and stood on her toes. She felt like she could just stay like this forever, letting Brad consume her every thought, her head spinning, her heart pounding, her toes curling. She felt his hand on the back of her head, gripping her hair and holding her steady as he kissed her and kissed her.
She didn’t know who ended the kiss. It just gradually became gentler, until he lifted his mouth and brushed it over her cheeks, her eyes, her forehead, then wrapped his arms around her again. How long they stood there, she didn’t know. But she listened against his thick chest as his heartbeat slowed from fast and furious to steady and normal.
Finally, she stepped back and broke the contact with him. She ran her hands down the sides of her dress and looked at him. He slipped his hands into his pockets and stared at her without speaking.
“Well,” she said on a breath, “I think that’s way better than it would have been in the grocery store.”
He chuckled softly and smiled. “You’re probably wrong. I think it would have been amazing anywhere.”
“I guess we’ll never know.” She crossed the office and put a hand on the door handle. “Thanks for bringing me back from the panic vortex.”
“Well, as long as I’m useful.”
Laughing, light, walking on air, she floated from his office and went back to work.
Brad took a deep breathand steeled himself to go into the meeting. They had already had one HR issue today. He did not look forward to the coming confrontation. Jon looked at him with a raised eyebrow. “Ready?”
“As ever, I guess,” he said under his breath, and opened the conference room door.
Mitch Conway sat at the head of the conference table. A video of backhoes digging up dirt played on the screen behind him. Six men sat around the table, copies of a scheduling report in front of them.
When Brad and Jon entered, everyone looked up, surprised. Mitch scowled and said, “Can I help you, gentlemen?”
Brad stood at the end of the table, facing Mitch. Jon sat down to his right. “I have been going over the schedule and the jobsite meeting minutes, Mitch, and I’m afraid that I can’t see how you’re so far behind.”
He’d preloaded the computer and overrode the presentation Mitch had begun with his own. A chart appeared showing the original schedule and the current progress. “I see no weather concerns, no equipment concerns, and no true site issues. What I see is a water treatment facility outside of Lexington, Kentucky, that required the initial plumbing work for the building to be started by April first, and we’re still looking at pictures of site work equipment. I’d like you to explain.”
Mitch stood and faced Brad across the table. He’d worked for Dixon Contracting for seventeen years and had challenged Brad from the moment he started taking over for his father. Someone overheard him saying that the “boys” hadn’t earned his respect yet. Brad had let it go until now, because historically, Mitch knew his job as a project manager and did it well. But with this Kentucky job, something obviously had happened.
A source on the site informed Brad that Mitch would show up on the site maybe three days a week, Tuesday through Thursday, and never made an appearance on a Friday or a Monday. It turned out he had been spending four-day weekends in casinos in Indiana just across the Kentucky River. Initial inquiries with the jobsite computers and a dig into Mitch’s finances revealed some serious financial stress coupled with what Brad discovered were some heavy gambling debts.
Brad suspected that Mitch had cut a shady deal with the site work contractor, which allowed the contractor to overbill Dixon Contracting for extra time and resources needed on a site that didn’t require extra time or resources. It caused Brad to order a full audit on all Mitch’s jobs going back ten years, and he started to see a trend.
