Wrapped Around Her Finger ✓

19. Coffee Spill

Paxton

"Janet could you ask Ryan to come to my office please?"

"OK, calling him now Mr. Hayle."

Ryan shows up a couple minutes later and plops himself down in the chair in front of my desk. He eyes me for a moment before he laughs. "Jesus, you look worse than the last time I saw you in your office."

"Good morning to you too," I frown.

"Just being honest man," he shrugs casually, "you look stressed as hell. Don't relieve yourself with Elizabeth again this time though."

I narrow my eyes at him before groaning in defeat. I might as well explain, he's eventually going to find out anyways. "There's this girl...but she's a student teacher for Abby's class. It's probably risky if we get caught, so she ended up giving me blue balls, twice. I agreed I'd wait till we figure out a more stable plan," I admit.

"Wow, she really must be some girl if she can tie down Paxton Hayle like this," he chuckles.

"Anyways,"  I say, quickly trying to change the subject, "I asked you here to offer you the position of VP marketing."

Ryan has been working under me as marketing manager for years now. He's the only person at this company I trust to take over my old position.

"Oh wow," he mutters and runs his hand through his blonde hair, "I don't know what to say."

"Say yes you idiot," I laugh.

"Of course I will," he beams, "so what do I do?"

I look through my schedule on my laptop. "I just need you to fill some paperwork, and do some training. I have half an hour before my next meeting, we can start now."

Someone knocks on the door and opens it before I can tell them to come in. Elizabeth comes in, wearing a red low-cut blouse and a short black skirt. She looks surprised to see Ryan, and they give each other an awkward look. They both deny it but I'm almost certain the two of them hooked up multiple times in our early twenties.

"Ryan," she greets in a fake sweet voice.

"Elizabeth," he responds in a monotonous voice.

"Is there something you need Elizabeth?" I ask her.

She nods. "Yeah, it's about the Keller waterfront property."

"What about it?"

"Oh I withdrew our offer yesterday."

I almost choke on my coffee. "You what?!" I exclaim before turning to Ryan, "sorry Ryan, let's talk another time."

"Yeah of course," he shoots me a sympathetic look before quickly leaving the room.

I drag my hand down my face and gesture towards the chair. Elizabeth sits down.

"Elizabeth...why?"

"That plot definitely isn't worth the amount of money we were offering, like what, 9 million?" she rolls her eyes.

"We own the high-rise apartment directly behind that plot. We bought that one in the first place because of the ocean view, and we were buying Keller's property so we could build a small commercial property there," I try to explain calmly, "we were competing against Brooke Realty, who wanted to build their own high-rise there."

She raises an eyebrow. "I don't understand."

"Brooke Realty now has the highest bid on the plot. They're going to build a high-rise apartment directly in front of ours that blocks the ocean-view of our high-rise," I'm struggling to not raise my voice at her, "People won't want to rent our apartments there anymore."