"Sloan, I'm going to tell you this once, and once only," I said carefully forming my words. "If you want to get off, I'm happy to oblige, but anything beyond that, and I'm not playing the game."
"Why not? Afraid?" she taunted. "Are you afraid that you'll find something you can't live without out and screw up your plans to escape?"
"No, you've got it all wrong," I said as I let a smile slowly spread across my lips. "But then I'm pretty sure you already knew that."
"Listen, Jack," she said. "If we're going to make this work, then we need to fuel the rumor that we're a couple. It'll make us an unbeatable pair, and it'll keep the hounds at bay, if you know what I mean."
"I know exactly what you mean," I said pulling her dress down with one hand before I let go of her wrists. "It's just that I don't want to play that game, Sloan. I don't like where it leads."
"You mean you don't like me," she pouted as she smoothed her dress and watched me stuff my swollen shaft back into my pants and zip them up.
"I like you fine," I said, shaking my head. "I just don't want to go down a road that leads to me letting you in and then getting kicked to the curb."
"So, that's it," she grinned. "You're still mad because I broke your teenage heart!"
"I'm not mad, Sloan," I said looking away. I wasn't mad. I had been hurt, and I didn't want to repeat that experience knowing full well where it was likely to end up. "I just don't want to do this the way you want to. So, the deal is that I'll get you off any time you want, but you don't get to touch me. Got it?"
"How could a girl turn that deal down?" she laughed as she pulled a compact out of her purse and checked her hair before smearing on a fresh layer of lipstick. "I'm in!"
"Good, then we've got a deal," I said holding my hand out. Sloan took one look at it and clasped it tightly.
"For now," she smiled. "It'll do for now."
I shook my head and moved back to the computer, knowing that working with Sloan was going to be a constant challenge.
*
Once Sloan and I had hashed out our individual duties, she left to pursue some new leads. My job would be focused on marketing our services and drumming up new business via the online offerings. Sloan would do it the old-fashioned way, by visiting clients and forming personal relationships with them. I knew that if she walked into any office on the planet, there would be no way she would walk out without a modicum of business. It crossed my mind to ask her how she accomplished this, but then I quickly decided that I didn't really want to know.
Let the magic stay magic, I thought to myself.
I walked out to the outer office to speak with Norma, but she was nowhere to be found. Since the phones weren't ringing, I shrugged and headed down to the warehouse.
The Baby Steps warehouse was attached to the executive offices, and despite the fact that it had turned a profit every year for the past twenty years, my father had never once invested a dime in renovating the place.
The offices looked like a throwback to a 1970s television set with the popcorn ceilings and the metal desks covered in faux wood paneling. There was even avocado carpeting in some of the offices, though most of it had been pulled up and replaced with linoleum. I shook my head as I looked into office after office and found the same worn set up
in each of them.
"At least the computers are somewhat new," I muttered as I walked down a fluorescent-lit hallway, feeling vaguely like I was in some kind of low-budget horror flick. The lights buzzed and flickered until, at the end of the hall, one of them simply cut out and died. I swore under my breath, "We have got to fix this shit!"
"Jack?" Leah said as she stuck her head out of her office and gave me a quizzical look. "What are you doing down here?"
"I finished up with Sloan and I wanted to talk with you about some of the changes we're thinking about implementing," I said as I looked into her eyes. The differences between Leah and Sloan were as vast as they could be. If Sloan was a thoroughbred racehorse—tall, lean, well kept—then Leah was the wild pony. Leah wasn't fashionable or expensively groomed, but her wildness was alluring.
"I see," she said as she turned and headed back into her office. I smiled as I followed her. There was something about the way that she wasn't intimidated by me, or my position, that made her even more attractive. She sat down and motioned for me to take a seat in one of the cracked, vinyl-coated chairs at her desk. "So, what's the plan?"
"We want to renovate the warehouse so that we can offer a wider range of products," I began.
"Wait, what? We already offer customers over twenty thousand products!" Leah exclaimed. "How many more do you think we can offer?"
"One hundred thousand," I said plainly.
"You have got to be kidding me," she said as her eyes grew wide. I could see her trying to imagine how we would fit the additional eighty thousand products into the warehouse, and I knew that it was mind-boggling.
"We're going to overhaul the warehouse and create room for them," I said as I pulled a rough sketch I'd done for Sloan out of my suit pocket and smoothed it out on the desk. "We're going to expand upward and create a multi-tiered deck where we now have empty space. We'll create a system of lifts and stairs that allow workers to quickly access the products, and a conveyer system that will allow the packages to be carried to the packaging area once the workers have loaded the order into the appropriate box."
"So, we're going to become exploiters," Leah said. "We're going to drive our employees to do more for less. Your father resisted this, Jack. He hated the way big companies drove their workers into the grave by upping production until it became impossible for anyone to actually meet the quotas. This is not how Baby Steps operates."