“Yes.”
“So don’t you think that the best option here is for you to back off, let me make the decisions for my company, and take the free money I’m handing you?”
He didn’t even bother to answer that question. He just started packing his things up, slamming them around like a little kid who’d just had his favorite toy taken away. Once he was done, he stormed out of the office—followed more slowly and reasonably by the rest of the board.
I watched them file out, feeling a combination of elation at having won… and frustration at having had to fight the fight again. Because this wasn’t the first time we’d had this discussion. And I doubted that it would be the last.
Being a businesswoman in Silicon Valley was no joke, but add into it that I was a woman at the head of a major corporation, and you had a recipe for a twenty-four-seven headache.
I’d never received the respect I wanted. And I wasn’t sure I ever would.
That didn’t mean I was ever going to stop asking for it, though. I’d worked hard to get to where I was, and I was never going to stop expecting some recognition for that.
I was never going to stop expecting to stand on even footing with the men around me.
I allowed my shoulders to drop and some of the steel to leave my backbone now that the audience had left, and then dropped into a chair and heaved out a gigantic sigh just as Zoe, my assistant, came walking in, her always-present notebook clutched to her chest. She took one look at the retreating board members and then glanced at my face and seemed to come to all the right conclusions.
“Tough meeting?” she asked sweetly.
Zoe was always sweet. It was one of the reasons I’d hired her. I worked with too many sharks to want another one always at my side, sniping at me. It didn’t mean she wasn’t capable, though. Zoe was one of the only people I trusted to handle shit if I wasn’t around.
She was one of the only people who truly knew how hard I worked every day to maintain my status.
“Tough meeting,” I agreed.
She walked over, my keys already in her hand, and handed them to me.
“Take the afternoon off,” she said. “I’ve got the office under control, and almost everyone has gone home already, anyhow. No one wants to work on Friday night. Go find a place where you can breathe.”
I stared at her, wanting to refuse, wanting to tell her I had work left to do and that I really needed to stay here in case anything else came up… but then I realized how right she was. As usual.
At some point during the last hour, I’d forgotten to breathe. Hell, I didn’t know if I’d really taken a breath in the last five years, and suddenly I felt as if I’d been experiencing oxygen deprivation that entire time. Going someplace where I could just breathe sounded…
Pretty damn good.
“I think I’ll do that,” I said. “Thanks, Zo.”
Chapter 2
Alice
I went to a coffee shop first—though I seriously considered hitting a wine bar instead. I wasn’t positive that I needed more caffeine in my system. I wasn’t positive that I needed something that would hype me up even more, after the meeting I’d just gone through.
But coffee, much like red lipstick, had always been my comfort. The thing I went to when I was in trouble or needed some moral support. And that made this particular coffee shop—a small, locally owned business near my office—as close to a second home as I had.
I frequented this place anytime I’d had a bad day or just needed to get out of the office for one reason or another. I came here on my way home when I was leaving work early enough that I knew I’d go home and get right back into it. I hit the drive-through window on my way to work every morning.
So when I walked in that afternoon, I got the greeting of someone who spends far too much time at any specific coffee shop, bar, or restaurant.
“Alice!” the barista exclaimed. “It’s early for you to be here! Or late, I guess, depending on how you’re looking at things.”
I gave her a bit of a smile, trying not to think too hard about the reason for the timing. Thinking was for my next stop. This one was just for some comfort caffeine.
“Been a tough day, Sarah,” I replied. “I need some moral support.”
She nodded, her face completely serious, as if this was the most normal statement in the world when walking into a coffee shop. “The usual, then?”
“Better make it a double,” I replied, walking quickly toward the register to pay. As much as I had wanted—maybe even needed—the coffee shop and its ambience, this wasn’t my ultimate target. I wanted to get my drink and get out of here.
Before any of the people who knew to search for me here came looking, anxious to continue our earlier conversation.
The moment I pulled into the driveway at Heritage Rose Gardens, I knew Zoe had been absolutely right to send me out of the office and to a place where I could breathe. And I had been absolutely right to come here rather than sinking into one of the booths at the coffee shop.
The place wasn’t far from my office, and I could have walked if I’d wanted to, but I’d taken my convertible, needing the speed and the wind in my hair after that meeting. I’d also wanted the radio, the pounding of the music in my body, the way it shut out everything else. The way it got rid of the thoughts in my head and guaranteed that I didn’t have enough space to create more of them.
The rose garden was going to be even better for that, and as I pulled into the parking lot and parked, I let the tension start to drain out of my body. My shoulders came down a bit, my neck relaxed, and the muscles that had been so clenched in my stomach that it had felt like I might actually throw up began to unclench.
I even started to let myself smile.
Ahead of me, the rose garden was in full bloom, in riots of pinks, oranges, reds, yellows, purples, and whites, and the foliage stood out in every color of green imaginable. It was truly a feast for the eyes, and I turned the car off and let my eyes go hazy on the splashes of color, allowing them to soothe my soul and remind me that there was beauty in the world beyond the walls of my office.
Nature did that. It had always been the place I could come to let my brain stop thinking. Stop trying to locate problems and solve them, break things down into mathematical equations that I could use for other things. Stop trying to rule the world. In nature, I’d always found that you didn’t get to compete. You just had to live.
With that thought, I finished my coffee—which I’d downed at a dangerous speed, considering how hot it was—got out of my car, and started walking.
This was my happy place. The place I could always count on to bring me peace. I’d brought my daughter here when she was a baby, when we first moved to San Jose, and walked the paths with her in her stroller for hours on end, just drinking in the sights and smells of the place. Of course, that had been at a time when she actually wanted to spend that much time with me. These days, as a ten-year-old, she was far too cool for her mother, and preferred to spend time with her friends, more embarrassed about me than anything else.
I smirked at the thought and bent over to smell a particularly beautiful apricot-colored rose that smelled, surprisingly, of lemons.