Touch Me (You & Me 2)

“Just the man I need to see,” she said, pointing her index finger at him as she reached for a paper in her stack of files.

“Step into my office,” Ben teased, in a joking tone as he headed inside.

The sun was shining brightly through his floor to ceiling windows, highlighting the beauty of the city. The office was lively with positive energy as everyone prepared for the new designs, and Ben felt refreshed and excited for his date tonight with Katherine. Everything seemed to be going in the right direction, and he was happy.

“It seems the new designs are not going to be able to ship in time for the holidays,” Rachel announced as she stepped into his office, completely shattering his mood.

“What?” Ben spun around quickly.

His business depended on the fourth quarter sales every year, but there was no way they would be able to have their highest sales month of the year if they didn’t have new products ready for their loyal customers.

“I know, it’s bad. There’s a worker's strike that’s having significant impact our manufacturing capacity. We need to find an alternative warehouse or we’ll be selling last year’s holiday costumes,” Rachel chuckled, thinking of how unheard of her suggestion was. Ben never allowed his company to take the lazy route his competitors took.

What set his business aside was the creativity and commitment to improving. Every holiday season they made sure to switch their inventory up, always adding new designs. In the industry, he was known as wasteful because of his constant product turnover.

“Here’s what we’ll do,” Ben rubbed the stubble on his chin as he thought of a plan. “Call Jim and tell him to scrap the donation idea. He has so much inventory from last year that he can’t find a place to hold it. Tell him we want to see some designs to transform the product he has. That will be our new line,” Ben explained as Rachel frantically jotted down as much as she could, nodding along to let him know she was keeping up.

“Any idea for deadlines?” she asked, knowing how strict Ben was for goals to be met on his timeline.

“I want a meeting in two days, and the final designs ready by Friday,” he said.

Rachel’s head popped up from jotting the notes, her eyes bulging with disbelief. “This Friday?”

“He already has the product. There’s not too much he can do to alter the costumes anyway, so it shouldn’t take him longer than a few days to work out the kinks,” he shrugged.

Ben had always felt that Rachel was too nice to make it as an executive. She struggled with pushing employees to do what she wanted, but when it came to clients or defending Ben, she never hesitated, which was why he kept her in the role of his assistant, but with an executive’s salary. Rachel actually earned nearly as much as Ben, as far as their biweekly paychecks were concerned. It was his majority stock in the company that made him so wealthy.

“Okay. I’ll get this typed up and over to Jim now. He’ll need as much time as he can get,” Rachel said as she walked out of his office.

Alone with his thoughts, Ben tried to see things from every angle. He never wanted to be an unreasonable boss, but after the day he’d had, he knew what he was requesting wasn’t too much to ask. He was confident in his decision, and as he watched through the glass walls as his employees gradually filed out of the office, he realized it was about time to call it a day.

Glancing at his watch, he wondered what time he should pick Katherine up. They hadn’t made any arrangements as far as time or place, and as he thought more about it Ben realized he didn’t even know where he’d be picking Katherine up from. Grabbing his cell phone, he tapped a few buttons before bringing the phone to his ear.

“Hello?" Katherine answered, in her sweet voice.

“Hello, sweetheart. Are we still on for tonight?” Ben asked, perking up in his seat at the sound of her voice.

“Of course. I just finished with my hair so you’d better not be standing me up,” Katherine joked.

“I would never. What time do you want to go? He let her pick the time, not wanting to dictate every detail, like Tim had, though he hoped it would be soon.

“I’ll be ready in an hour. Does that work?” He could hear the smile in her question.

“Sure. I’ll pick you up at your place in an hour then.”

“Sounds perfect,” she said, practically singing her answer.

“See you in an hour, sweetheart,” Ben said, before ending the call.

On his way out of the office, Ben stopped at Rachel’s desk to get an update on her execution of the plan. Every night, she wrote him an email of how things went and what was still in progress, but he still liked to check in regularly.

“What did Jim think of my idea?” he asked.

“He was mad, because he said it was the same idea he was planning to propose to you,” Rachel revealed a large smile.

“Really?” Ben asked.

“Yeah, I was nervous to tell him because I thought he was going to flip at the deadline, but he said he anticipates having the designs done even sooner than you wanted.” Rachel said, excitedly.