Ro. Take my word for it: she’s still a huge big deal. And if she backs us, we’ll also be a huge big deal. No layoffs. Capital for future projects.”
Although Romeo didn’t look nearly as excited as Teddy felt, he asked a pertinent question. “Okay. But why do you need us? Money’s Imani’s gig.”
Teddy had become so caught up in the whole idea of Joyce Alexander, he’d forgotten that Lauren needed something from them. He cocked his head and waited.
But Lauren didn’t answer right away. She sat in her tall-back chair and straightened the laptop on the desk. She adjusted a stone or two on the sculpture and then sat back, looking as if she desperately wished she had something more to fidget with. She cleared her throat. “Well. Joyce hasn’t made up her mind yet. I need to make a really convincing pitch. And that means you two need to get your shit together.”
All the Joyce Alexander giddiness fled Teddy like helium escaping from a popped balloon, and he wasn’t cheered up by Romeo’s expression, which resembled that of a man who’d accidentally swallowed a bug. “We’re trying,” Teddy ventured.
Lauren nodded. “I know. But ticktock, guys. I head to Seattle in three days, and I need an answer before then. Tell me how we’re going to make this work.”
Chapter Three
They were meeting in Romeo’s office, which made sense due to the privacy and his bank of monitors. But it was also unfair—a home game advantage that made Teddy scowl. He decided to tilt the scales a bit more in his favor by bringing supplies. As he schlepped everything from his cubicle, however, it occurred to him that he might be overcompensating. Not only did he have his laptop—sporting a skin in a retro 70s color palette—and the rainbow mug from Target, but also a ballpoint pen with a purple barrel and floating gold foil, a memo pad with a coordinating purple cover, and a stainless water bottle. Teddy planned to stay well hydrated during their meeting, and he’d certainly add a dash of color to Romeo’s bland space. But it was a lot of stuff to carry.
Luckily, the door to Romeo’s office stood ajar. As Teddy pushed his way inside, Romeo grunted from behind his desk and, without looking up from his screen, asked, “You planning a hostile takeover?”
“Maybe.” Teddy took longer than strictly necessary to arrange his belongings. The room felt chilly, and now he wished he’d brought a cardigan too. Maybe he should insist on running home to fetch one before they began.
But Romeo appeared perfectly comfortable in his white shirt and black suit, as if he were a moderately stylish federal agent. Jeez, what if he was acting undercover? What if the FBI secretly suspected Lauren of using Reddyflora as a front to launder cartel money, and Romeo’s insistence on making the vase either ugly or expensive was part of his way of gathering evidence? Teddy spent a moment trying to imagine what evidence Agent Blue might believe he possessed. When he couldn’t come up with anything, he decided that perhaps Romeo was not working undercover after all.
Too bad. He’d make a dashing law enforcement officer, with his tight jawline and—The pen slipped from Teddy’s fingers and rolled under the desk, forcing him to crawl inelegantly to retrieve it. When he squiggled back out, dignity in tatters, Romeo was staring at him.
“What?” Teddy demanded.
Romeo gave himself a brief shake. “This Alexander lady...she’s really a big deal, huh?”
“I guess not to everybody. I doubt she’s been shortlisted for a Nobel Prize. But in some circles? Yeah. A big deal.”
“Oh.”
“Look. I really don’t want to blow this, okay? I want our products to be a success.” And Teddy most definitely didn’t want to end up back in one of the jobs he’d had before.
There was nothing wrong with working retail, and he’d enjoyed some of the customer interactions, but he’d been employed at places offering few occasions for creativity. Sometimes he had recurring nightmares that he’d had to return to slaving away at a discount clothing store—the kind with endless racks of identical T-shirts and jeans—and that Gregory showed up as Teddy was trying to wrangle an enormous pile of discarded items in the dressing room. In the dream, Gregory laughed and took photos of Teddy to turn into memes.
Romeo was scratching his lip. “Can we approach the problem logically?”
“Instead of emotionally, you mean? I know Reddyflora is a business, and Imani’s numbers are about as objective