Sandcastle Beach (Matchmaker Bay #3) - Jenny Holiday Page 0,125
an IQ of 150 and was known for valuing honesty and transparency. For being hard but fair. For not suffering fools.
So she tried again with that in mind. “Your company’s slogan is interesting. Most accounting firms would say something vague and kind of interchangeable about service and integrity. Yours is ‘Toronto’s Accountants.’” He nodded, and she took it as permission to continue. “I read in an interview that you don’t have national or international ambitions for the company.”
“Right. When my partner and I started the firm, we made a distinct choice not to try to chase the Big Four, but we also aren’t a small mom-and-pop shop. Most of our clients are well-to-do individuals or medium-size businesses headquartered here. We thought it would be a sweet spot, and that turned out to be true.”
“And you do a lot of local charity work,” she said. “Your mission statement references the generation of wealth coming with an obligation to funnel some of that wealth back into the city.”
“Someone’s done her homework.” The respect in his tone thrilled her, probably disproportionately. The last thing she needed was to get herself into a position where she was seeking approval from a man. She’d done that with dear old Dad. Done it and was done with it. Elise and her $717 were on their own now. As scary as it was sometimes, she wouldn’t have it any other way. She wished she could have her independence and maintain a relationship with her parents, but that was a game she couldn’t win. Not unless she was content to contort herself into the mold her parents had cast for her the day she was born: old-money North Toronto socialite. Just like her mom. God forbid she should actually want a career of her own.
Anyway, the fact that Jay’s praise delighted her so much wasn’t about that. It was that she was getting somewhere with him. So she pressed on. “I have done my homework. And the results make me wonder why the physical space of your business looks like every other accounting firm in the world. Like every other dental office, even. Sitting out here, you could just as well be waiting to get your molars drilled in Yellowknife as get your taxes done in Toronto.” He winced at the dental office comparison, so she decided to wrap things up and deliver her prescription in a nutshell. “What I would do with this space is make it match your corporate values.”
He looked at her for a long time, his face impossible to read—those laugh lines had disappeared along with his smile. There was some of that edge again, in his demeanor this time rather than in his voice, but there just the same.
And stupidly compelling just the same.
Just when she was starting to sweat, to fear she’d gone too far on the whole honesty front, he grinned. “And I presume you have some ideas about how to do that?”
“Absolutely.”
Elise Maxwell looked exactly like her picture—namely, almost supernaturally pretty. Jay let his eyes roam as she settled into the guest chair at his desk and unzipped a leather portfolio. She had honey-blond hair, sparkling hazel eyes, and a heart-shaped mouth that almost looked like a cartoon. He might even call it millennial pink. He glanced at his shirt for comparative purposes. Nope, her lips were darker.
The picture on her website had been a full-body one of her dressed in a crazy floral-print minidress but with plain black tights and flat shoes. Today she wore a dark-green-and-black-striped tunic over skinny black pants and black patent-leather heels. Elise Maxwell managed to convey fun and creativity, but with just the right dose of reined-in professionalism.
So did her plans for his lobby, judging by the pile of sketches and images she was arranging on the desk between them. Not that that mattered, because he’d decided to hire her before he’d even seen them—right after her devastating little monologue about how the waiting area looked like a dental office. Still, he had to let her talk him through her vision. Hell, he wanted her to talk him through her vision. And here he’d thought he’d drawn the short straw when his partner, Kent, had stuck him with the job of overseeing the lobby redesign.
He ordered himself to pay attention to her work instead of to her. Ogle the designs, not the designer. Not that it mattered. She was too young for him.
“So one idea is to embrace the Toronto part of your mission,”