“I’l keep that in mind.”
Diane flipped the page of the report, and Joss, who had long ago decided that running a barely surviving company was nothing compared to raising a four-year-old boy, said,
“I real y appreciate you coming in.”
“Oh, please. If I didn’t get out of the house sometimes, I’d go nuts.”
Joss looked at Peter, slashing his saber like a miniature Zorro. “Yeah, I can see where a trip like this would be pretty relaxing.”
Rogan’s admin stuck her head in the doorway. “Mr.
Reynolds wil be ready for you in five minutes.”
If only I’l be ready for him, Joss thought. She gave Di a look.
“I’m close. I’l have the number by the time we’re up there.”
Di tucked the report under her arm and stood, her fingers stil running furiously over the calculator. Peter trailed behind, protecting the rear from pirates and Sith lords. If Joss couldn’t make payrol , she’d have to lay people off. Di had been the first to go six months earlier, raising her hand to save the jobs of others. Now Joss used her only when she could afford to.
They reached the elevator, and Joss pointed to the UP
button so Peter would know which one to press.
Joss prayed Rogan would be amenable. He’d been looking only to buy her father’s company, Brand Industries, and the name of her mother’s—Brand O’Mal ey, the most famous name in maps—for use on his GPS devices, but he was a good guy and he’d understood Joss’s desire to keep her thirty-two-person business, her only inheritance from her mother, afloat and under her control.
Since her mother’s death not long after Joss’s eighth birthday, Joss felt like her life had been laid out strictly to ensure that she’d be able to assume control of the firm when she turned eighteen. She’d interned here every summer in high school. Then, despite having been interested in literature, she’d pursued a dual major in business and geography in col ege while she worked ful time, learning the ropes from the very able managers. At age twenty, even before she’d graduated, she’d accepted in practice what she’d already had in theory—the top executive role, and for the past three years, as the sales of paper maps dropped, she’s been doing everything she could to keep these fine, hardworking people—and herself
—employed.
The elevator arrived and they got on. Joss lifted Peter to the rows of buttons. “Eighteen,” she said, and pointed to the correct one. Peter poked it and then leaped to the floor in front of the mirrored wal s, pointing the saber at his image with a sneer. His mother, lost in her calculations, pressed her clipboard against Joss’s back to make a notation.
“So, how are you going to effect this miraculous largesse?” Di asked.
“The loan, you mean?”
“Yes.”
“Rogan owes me a favor.”
“A fifty-thousand-dol ar favor?” Di said.
“The number’s fifty thousand?”
“The number’s at least fifty thousand. I’m stil checking.”
“Crap.”
“Crap,” Peter repeated happily.
“Oops.” Joss shot Di an apologetic look.
Ann, the institutional sales manager, got on on fifteen.
She looked a little pale, not a surprise, Joss thought, given that her six-year-old son had just been put on dialysis. Ann waved and said to Joss, “Say, I understand congratulations are in order. The wedding’s next week, isn’t it?”
Joss gazed down at the diamond sparkling languidly on Joss gazed down at the diamond sparkling languidly on her finger, so large as to almost be worthy of being a pirate’s treasure itself. “Yep. No point in waiting. When it’s right, it’s right.”
“Yes, and you’l need to hurry with your office,” Di said.
“The caterer needs time to set up the tables.”
Ann’s brows shot up, and Joss waved away her worry.
“I’m not having my reception in your office. Di thinks that just because I’m getting married in the Founders’ Room upstairs, it’s an al -business wedding.”
“It’s the conference room for the Sales department,” Di said curtly.
“It’s a gorgeous space.”
“Wel , in any case, I’m sure it wil be beautiful,” Ann said as she exited on sixteen. “Congratulations.”
“Now, should we al wear business suits to the ceremony,” Di asked, “or is that just you?”
Joss sighed. “It’s not a business suit. It’s a skirt.”
Di gave her a look.
“Okay, a business skirt—but it’s Chanel!”
Di just didn’t understand. Simple and straightforward was how Joss wanted things. Businesslike.
Peter asked Joss, “Wil I get to see your wedding?
Mommy says I can only come if I
