Chapter Text
With a voluptuous sigh, she glared at the stack of uninspired layouts before her, imagining she could actually smell the stench of their mediocrity. Grease pen tapping furious timpani against the plastic cover of the top layout, she inhaled sharply and roared, “Rochelle!”
She heard her assistant quickly scramble from her seat and hurry into her office, replete with notepad and concerned scowl. “Yes, Ms. Grant?”
“I need HR to send me the top three résumés they kept on file from the last time I hired an art director.”
The scowl deepened as Rochelle glanced cautiously over her shoulder before clarifying, “You-you want to fire Tom?”
“No. I want to defenestrate Tom, burn his desk and all his mediocre ‘art designs’ to ash, and then sow his office with salt so no more of his visually offensive design ideas ever try to take root within my company again.” She pushed her chair away from her desk as if physically repulsed by said designs and sighed, “But I will settle for firing him. Immediately, before he decides to do something truly insidious like start using stock Word templates for all our layouts.”
Shaking her head in quiet amusement, Rochelle patiently wrote out a far more sanitized version of Cat’s pronouncement. “I’ll let HR know immediately, Ms. Grant.”
As she rose from her chair and sauntered toward her office’s sidebar, she continued, “Tell them I want the résumés on my desk within the half hour.”
At the sight of Rochelle’s pronounced eye twitch, Cat rejoined, “All you’re asking them to do is attach three documents to an email and hit send. Call Taryn directly. She’ll know exactly what I need.”
Rochelle visibly sighed in relief, inspiring an eye roll of heroic proportions. “Honestly, I’m not asking for miracles.”
“Yes, Ms. Grant.”
She had nearly made it to the office door when Cat added, “I will make my decision before my next round of meetings today. I have a conference call with the London office early in the morning that I’ll do from home, so tell Taryn to have my choice here to meet me tomorrow at ten.”
Her assistant blanched at the statement. “Tomorrow? A-at ten? In the morning?”
Unfazed by her stammering, Cat poured herself a generous three fingers of Glenmorangie Signet. However, she did concede, “You’re right, I’ll need a little extra time to get Carter settled since Joseph has already announced he’s unable to be a parent the rest of this week.”
She felt her lip pulling up into the snarl her esthetician had already warned her was causing “divorce lines" around her mouth. “Make it ten-fifteen.”
She noted over the rim of her tumbler Rochelle's stunned stare and lack of any kind of movement. As she swallowed her healthy sip of scotch, she fluttered the fingers of her free hand toward her office door. “I plan on leaving at five today, so time is literally of the essence, Rochelle. Chop, chop.”
Startled into motion, Rochelle clutched her notepad while backing hurriedly in the direction of Cat's gesture. “O-of course, Ms. Grant.”
She nearly tripped over her own haste, muttering worriedly to herself as she hurried to her computer to email HR.
However unsettled Cat’s request had left her, Rochelle came through in perfect time, the requested files arriving in Cat’s inbox before she had even finished her drink. The CEO perused the files for several minutes, reacquainting herself with the other options she had passed on in favor of Tom.
“Fucking Talentless Tom,” she growled under her breath as she shoved his layouts even further away from her line of sight. After she scanned and quickly closed two of the files, she stared at the third document, irises shifting rapidly through the litany of skills, previous positions, and accolades she still remembered from the first time she’d reviewed the information.
Memory sufficiently refreshed, she saved the file to her drive and forwarded it back to Taryn before turning her attention over to the long afternoon of meetings she had before she could finally leave.
True to her word, she strode from her office at precisely five. As she passed her assistant's desk toward her elevator, she fluttered her fingers and declared, “Go home, Rochelle. You’ve done more than enough for one day. Just remember that I won’t be in until around nine-thirty and I will have Carter until Angelique can pick him up around noon.”
“Yes, Ms. Grant.” She began to save and close her files. “Please tell Carter I can’t wait to see him tomorrow morning.”
The CEO tapped the call button for her elevator, the rumor of gratitude ghosting her features. She knew all too well what many at even her own company thought of her bringing her son into the office. Even she hated doing it, though for far less offensive reasons. Carter deserved better than being the topic of employee discourse rating Cat's abilities as a mother.
During one of her less guarded moments around her assistant, she'd once muttered, “If Bill Gates brought his children into the office, he'd receive a papal decree for sainthood. Every time I bring Carter to the office, I’m prime suspect number one on Child Protective Services’ call list that day.”
Rochelle, however, was always enthusiastic about Carter’s visits and made a point of integrating him into her schedule, taking him with her on lunch or latte runs or as she collected layouts in the afternoon. Though she always claimed they were small gestures, Cat knew how special they made Carter feel.
Slipping on her sunglasses at the ping of the elevator doors opening, she merely sighed, “See you in the morning, Rochelle. Have a good evening.”