Pink slips firmly in hand, Robin marched on, right past Evan Iverson’s door—at which point her heart did a little start when she saw him seated at his desk—and stuck her hand in Lucy’s cubicle to signal that she had, indeed, arrived, before disappearing into her own office. Tossing her briefcase aside, Robin went immediately to her wet bar and the pot of coffee Lucy had put on. French roast. Pedestrian, but potable.
In the midst of pouring a cup, Lucy came in with a “Yo.” Robin glanced over her shoulder at Lucy, who stood in the doorway of her office wearing a lime-green sweater and black pants. Her long red hair was piled on top of her head with a pencil stuck through to hold it. Robin paused to sip the nectar of gods before asking, “Hey, did you take Dad’s call?”
Lucy came farther into the room, adjusted her black-rimmed matchbox glasses. “I took the first one. He said he assumed you would manage to drag yourself in before noon, and if you did, you should call him immediately. At the ranch.”
The ranch? Oh great. When or why Aaron had made the trek to Texas, Robin couldn’t imagine, and frankly, didn’t even want to think about it.
“Mr. Herrera has called twice. Are you going to call him? You need to call him.”
Well, hello, she knew that. Robin took another sip of coffee. “Was that Evan I saw?” she asked, trying very hard to be nonchalant.
“Yep.”
“What’s he doing here?”
“Don’t know,” Lucy said with a shrug, and plopped down in one of two leather armchairs in front of Robin’s desk. “But he needs to talk to you before he goes back to Dallas. He asked if you had lunch plans.”
Oh frabjous day, her father and a former lover all in one Monday. “Ah . . . I don’t think so.”
Lucy looked suspiciously at Robin. “Why are you making that face?”
“What face?”
“That face.”
“There is no face.”
It was obvious Lucy believed there was a face. There were a lot of things the old girl knew about Robin, but her affair with Evan was not one of them. In his position as chief operating officer, Evan was her father’s most trusted man—his loyalty to the company was unquestionable and he was very good at what he did. His was a classic rags-to-riches story—he graduated from The University of Texas in Austin and started by selling freight carriers to businesses. That’s how he met Dad and came to LTI. From there, he worked his way up, making LTI extremely profitable and himself rich in the process—Robin had heard the golden boy’s story enough times from Dad to know.
It happened that Evan was also a very handsome man in addition to being smart, and Robin could not help the attraction she had developed during her four-year stint with her father in New York.
But it wasn’t until she had talked Dad into opening the Houston offices and had moved back to Texas that the affair had begun. At a corporate meeting in Dallas, she had flirted, Evan had taken the bait, and the rest was the ancient history of inconspicuous dating, which had gone on until Robin began to realize that good looks did not necessarily mean interesting.
When he began to hint around about their relationship taking a more serious and permanent bent, Robin had balked outright and had bowed out under the pretense of work. There probably could have been a little more finesse on her part, but still, it did not end too terribly badly, she supposed, given that Evan promised her— “for the sake of the company” —that he would not make it uncomfortable for her.
Unfortunately, she clearly made it uncomfortable for him without even trying. She didn’t mean to do it, but every time she saw him, he looked at her with cow eyes and would ask, in that quiet, we-have-a-secret voice, “How are you?”
That was exactly the reason why, in the midst of another failed relationship in London, Robin had promised herself to never, ever, dip her pen in the company ink again.
“HUL-LO-OH!” Lucy all but shouted.
“What?” Robin exclaimed, startled.
“You drifted into Robin-land,” Lucy said with a snort and popped up out of her chair. “I’ve got some stuff for you to sign. I’ll be back.” As Lucy went out, Robin picked up her phone and phoned Guillermo, the sales rep at the Rio Grande Valley freight yard.
“Hey, Miss Lear, how are you?” he asked cheerfully when she got him on the phone.
“Good. Listen, I had a call from Mr. Herrera yesterday from Valley Produce? He’s a little agitated. He says we are delivering spoiled product.”
“Yes ma’am, we are,” Guillermo said matter-of-factly. “It’s those refrigeration units we got on the trucks. They don’t work for crap, pardon my French, and it seems like every time one goes out, it’s his freight we got on there.”
“What refrigeration units?”
“The refrigeration units! With all due respect, Miss Lear, I told you about this before Christmas. See, the coils, they’re not working like they should. It’s a short in the—”
“Guillermo, I don’t remember anything about coils,” Robin said sternly.