Too Hot To Handle

She said as much to Annie on Monday morning after a frustrating, unproductive weekend. A worried look came over Annie’s face.

“Uh, I’ll tell them that, but it’ll be an empty threat.”

“How so?” She strongly felt the management company owed her a crew of muscled hunks, just for letting the windows go for such a long time.

“You can’t afford to move.”

She knew it, of course, but Annie’s expression told her there were other things she needed to know. In addition to supplementing Jeremy’s design work, Annie kept the Great Graphics! books.

“What’s our financial situation?”

“I don’t know how you’re going to meet the payroll next month.”

“That bad?” Sarah’s other frustrations fled as a sick feeling settled into the pit of her stomach. “Well, for starters, I won’t pay myself. I can manage for a while.”

Macon stuck his head through the doorway. “I can manage for…well, forever, I guess.”

“Oh, Macon,” Sarah said, “I pay you little enough as it is.”

“But you let me keep my consulting business. I’ve been making money working with computers since I was thirteen,” he told her, “and apparently not spending it.” He frowned, as if he were wondering what on earth other people did with their money. “Except on more computer equipment.”

“We can take it a month at a time,” Annie said, giving the printout of her spreadsheet a steel-eyed gaze. “If you two can forgo salaries next month, I’ll lean on the Zweig Company for the money they still owe us, and if that doesn’t do it, we can hit Ray and Jeremy up for the next month.” She gave Sarah an apologetic look. “Rachel and I are both living right on the edge as it is.”

“We will not ‘hit up’ anybody else,” Sarah said. “I’ve got to get out there and drum up more business.” She didn’t miss the sidelong glance that passed between Macon and Annie. They already had all the work they could do, but the jobs were small ones with a low-profit margin. She was in deep trouble, and at the moment, lacked the necessary backbone to get herself out of it.

IT SEEMED NOTHING SHORT of a miracle to learn that the window-washers had arrived at the office building. Sarah found it particularly annoying to pick up the telephone just as she was looking over the crew and find Alex on the other end of the line.

Rachel was a wonderful office manager and general factotum, but the announcement, “Guy on the phone wants to talk to you about some work,” was not the sort of briefing one needed before speaking with the enemy.

“Sarah. Hello.”

Sarah took a deep breath. He must have lied to Rachel, and she wasn’t going to let him get away with it.

“Alex.” Well done. She was as cool as a mint Lifesaver. “Did I pick up on the wrong line? Rachel said a potential client was calling.”

“That’s me. Alex Emerson, potential client.”

She blinked. “Oh. Well. What can I do for you?” Or to you, you scum on a picture postcard English pond.

“Actually, the reason I’ve been so persistent about dinner,” Alex said, “is that I have a project I want to talk to you about.”

He’d said the magic word. “A project?”

“Yes. My promotional materials. I don’t like the product I’m getting now. I’ve told the ad agency to contract the work to somebody different, but I’ve been asking around myself, too, and somebody mentioned your name. Said he’d been happy with your work.”

“Who?”

“Si Harper. The guy at Super Shuttle. That’s the new airline that runs shuttles from New York to…”

“I know Si. I know what Super Shuttle does.” She hoped he hadn’t heard her gasp. How had he found out she did Super Shuttle’s work?

“Carol, my person here, tells me I can take the company jet as far as the Midway Airport…”

She hadn’t been thinking. Of course he would have his own plane. No place on earth was too inconvenient for Alex to reach.

“…but I can’t land it in Cedar Rapids. The private strip is closed for construction. So I’ll take a taxi to O’Hare, get on a United shuttle to Cedar Rapids, then rent a car and drive up to Dubuque.”

When he mentioned O’Hare, Sarah felt tempted. As a hub of air travel for the continental United States, Chicago’s O’Hare was a wonderfully chancy airport. An electrical storm on either coast and O’Hare came to a standstill. If she had a thousand dollars for each person she knew personally who’d had to spend a night in that airport, she’d have the down payment for a two-bedroom apartment. She relished the image of Alex stretched out on waiting-room seats, only half-covered by a scratchy gray airline blanket, a thread of mozzarella from his dinner—a slice of cold pizza—hanging from the corner of his mouth.

That was the other thing Alex hated—the loss of his dignity.

But Alex would consume a slice of cold pizza in the same graceful way he did everything else, without drooling, and if he absolutely had to sleep, he’d do it sitting up. Without snoring. Besides, with her luck, he’d probably arrive in Dubuque without incident, only to find out she was a liar.

“I’ve cancelled the trip to Dubuque,” she admitted. A brainstorm struck. “I convinced the customer there was really no need for a face-to-face meeting. We can handle everything fine by phone and e-mail.” She warmed to her theme. “Just as I can handle your account, if you’re serious about needing to have some work done.”

In the brief silence that ensued she imagined she could hear Alex thinking. Instead, she heard, “Forget Dubuque, Carol,” and then, “Oh, I’m very serious. But the design firm our ad agency has been using has the same attitude you just described, and I’m more of a hands-on person.”

How well she knew that. His hands-on policy had awakened her to sensations she could never have dreamed of, to pure, hot, insistent…

“I was hoping your firm might take a more personal approach to your clients.”

“We do, of course,” Sarah said. “We want to be sensitive to our clients’ perceived needs and self-images.” She trailed off, distracted by an odd echo on the line.

“I have very strong feelings about my investors, the companies I invest in and everything that goes out under my name. I require periodic face-to-face discussions, whether I’m buying or selling. It means a lot of travel, but it’s worth it,” he said.

“I see.”

“I’d insist on an initial meeting at the very least.”

“What’s your print budget?” It was a rude question, but he was gaming her, dangling a carrot in front of her nose, and she needed to know how sweet that carrot was before she bit into it.

“A million and a quarter, give or take.”

With great difficulty Sarah kept herself from saying, “Dollars?”

Now she faced a new distraction. Jeremy crept into her doorway and mouthed, “Take it!” Ray moved up behind Jeremy, nodding vigorously. Annie thrust herself between them, giving Sarah a pleading expression complete with a Virgin-Mary-clasped-hands pose. There wasn’t room in the doorway for anyone else. Rachel had clearly left the line open and the speakerphone on, and the whole staff was begging her not to turn down a plum contract simply because she was too chicken to see Alex Emerson again.

They did work for peanuts. Their deal with her contained no definition of overtime and therefore no compensation for it. And still, cutting every corner, the firm was barely keeping its head out of the minestrone.

She owed them this contract. And to get it, she’d have to get it on Alex’s terms. The customer, damn him, was always right.

“I suppose one meeting would…”

Victory signals came at her from the doorway. She frowned.

“…get the basics worked out.”

A hand, either Macon’s or Rachel’s, shot through the doorway to wave a small American flag with a white hanky of peace tied to it.