After Happily Ever Afte- Astrid Ohletz Page 0,85

stepped in whenever an employee had messed up, a supplier couldn’t deliver, or something else had gone wrong.

But now her job no longer consisted of knocking heads together, and their tiny company had only two part-time employees, so what on earth was going on? Was Dee on the phone with someone?

Austen stepped closer.

Just as she contemplated knocking, the door was wrenched open, and Courtney, their administrative assistant, hurried past Austen without stopping. Her head was down and her shoulders up, like a turtle retreating into its shell.

What the…? Austen stared after her.

A loud thump against the wall drew her attention back to Dee’s office. Cautiously, Austen walked through the still-open door and stopped to pick up the stapler Dee must have hurled across the room. At least it hadn’t been the computer mouse she had given Dee for Christmas shortly after they had first met.

Dee was pacing back and forth in the small space behind her desk. The neat chignon she wore at work was coming undone as if she had run her hands through her hair repeatedly.

For a moment, Austen stopped, stapler in hand, completely mesmerized by Dee’s tall frame, her powerful movements, and the intensity radiating off her. Then she gave herself a mental kick. Stop ogling and find out why she’s having an Attila moment. She closed the door behind herself with an audible click to make her presence known.

Dee whirled around. When their gazes met, the fierce expression on her face softened for a moment.

“What’s going on?” Austen asked.

Dee snarled. “I’ll have to fire Courtney.”

The vehement words hit Austen like a sharp gust of wind, making her sway back for a second. Then she braced herself and dropped into the visitor chair. “First of all, if anything, we have to fire her.” She firmly set the stapler down on the desk. “We run this company together, don’t we?”

“Yeah, of course,” Dee said immediately. She eyed her desk chair and then reluctantly dropped into it so she was no longer towering over Austen. “When I tell you how badly she fucked up, you’ll want to fire her too.”

“What happened?”

Dee pinched the bridge of her nose as if a massive headache was forming. “She royally messed up the Kickstarter campaign for the parrot-friendly Christmas tree.”

“Wait! How can she have messed that up? That’s fully funded and practically done, isn’t it?”

“That’s what I thought too. But Courtney really has a special talent for messing things up.” Dee hurled a dark glare in the direction of Courtney’s tiny office. “I swear that woman can’t even focus long enough to click the right button on a website. Instead of editing the campaign to add the latest updates, she canceled it. Now all pledges are voided. Poof! All our funding is gone!”

For a moment, Austen couldn’t breathe, and a heavy weight seemed to squeeze all the air from her lungs. “G-gone? But…but…isn’t there a way to undo it or start a new campaign or…?”

“Do you really think anyone will give us money after that snafu?” Dee shook her head. “We lost our backers’ trust, and building it again or finding new backers will take too long. There’s no way we would be able to get it out in time for the holiday season.”

Damn. Austen slumped against the back of her chair. She had really looked forward to offering their customers a Christmas tree that was safe for their pets. It would have been a unique product that none of their competitors had thought of so far, and it would have put Feathered Friends on the map as a company that knew what bird owners wanted. She stared past Dee to the glittering band of the Willamette River right across the street. Finally, she inhaled and exhaled deeply. “Okay. So it happened. How can we move forward from here?”

“First thing we should do is fire Courtney,” Dee muttered. “Or maybe pull out every single one of her brightly painted finger- and toenails with a pair of pliers first and then fire her.”

The vivid description made Austen smile despite the seriousness of the situation. She reached across the desk and gently nudged her partner. “Come on. Everyone makes a mistake every now and then. Firing her probably isn’t the best way to deal with it—and neither is shouting at her.” She couldn’t keep the gentle rebuke from her tone. “All that’s going to do is make her even more nervous, and that’s not going to help her job performance.”

Dee leaned back and folded her