He pivoted on his heel and returned to the dining room to find Ben staring out the window as he sipped his coffee.
Nathan joined him. “Ed is coming, so you have no excuse for avoiding my company.”
Ben turned away from the blaze of lights. “You’re just recruiting reinforcements.”
“Damn right I am.”
CHAPTER 20
“A job at Trainor Electronics?” Chloe practically dropped her cell phone onto her turkey sandwich. She had just started her thirty-minute lunch break when Judith’s call came through. Suspicion sank its claws into her. “What kind of job?”
“It’s in marketing, an area you love.” Judith read off the description. “You’d start off in a junior capacity, but there’s a lot of upside. And listen to the salary.” When Judith mentioned the number, Chloe was too stunned to speak, so Judith continued. “I don’t want to put any undue pressure on you, but this would solve a lot of your financial problems and put a great signing bonus in my pocket. Not to mention it’s a tech company, which is a field you like to work in.”
“Who would I be reporting to?”
“The vice president of marketing . . . um . . . Phillippe Riviere. Roberta says he asked for you specifically, so you must know him.”
“I met him the day Nath—Mr. Trainor got sick. For about three minutes.”
“Well, you impressed the hell out of him in those three minutes.”
Chloe pleated a corner of the paper from her sandwich as she debated how much to share with Judith.
“Why are you not jumping for joy?” her friend asked. “It seems like a no-brainer to me. Especially since we don’t know yet if you got the position you interviewed for yesterday.”
Chloe sighed. “I didn’t want to tell you this because I didn’t think it mattered anymore, but I’m dating Nathan Trainor.”
Judith’s silence was deafening. Finally, she spoke. “Sweetie, I don’t know what to say. I think you’d be crazy to turn down this job. You’ll have to make the decision about whether it’s kosher to date your boss’s boss.”
“I’m afraid Nathan might have arranged the offer.”
“I’m not going to speculate on what his reasons might be. I don’t know the situation well enough.”
“I think he feels sorry for me and Grandmillie.”
“That’s a better spin than I would have put on it.” Chloe could hear Judith beating a tattoo on the desk with her fingernails. “I’m going to risk pissing you off, but you claim to value my cynicism. Once you accept the position, it’s going to be difficult for Trainor to fire you without cause. There’s no probation period; I checked because it changes my contract with them. You’re a full-fledged employee right off the bat.”
“Okay,” Chloe said when Judith stopped.
“So if you break up, you’ll still have a great job with a fantastic salary and benefits.”
Chloe felt the tension clutching at her shoulders ease. “So you think it’s all right for me to work there and date Nathan?”
Judith took a deep breath. “I think you won’t be dating Nathan as long as you’ll be working at his company.”
“Oh.” Considering Chloe kept telling herself her relationship with Nathan was short-term, she felt a surprising stab of pain at Judith’s prediction. “I see.”
“I’m being realistic, sweetie.”
Chloe tried for flippancy to prove she was a realist too. “That’s what I love about you.” However, she wanted to hear what Nathan had to say about the job offer. “Let me just sleep on it. I’ll call you tomorrow.”
Chloe disconnected and slumped back into her chair before swiveling around to stare out the window of the conference room.
Was it absurdly conceited to think that Nathan had created a position just for her? He couldn’t possibly care about her enough to foist his girlfriend on one of his vice presidents, could he? An annoying little voice in her brain piped up that Trainor Electronics was big enough so one extra employee wasn’t going to affect the bottom line, which meant it might be a job custom-tailored for her.
No, it was more plausible that Nathan had heard about the opening and mentioned her name to Phil Riviere. That was a grand enough gesture when she thought about it with more humility. A recommendation from the CEO would be hard to ignore.
Either way, she faced a serious dilemma: Should she break her own personal code of ethics and work for a man she was dating? No, dating was too mild a word. Should she work for a man she was having wild, passionate sex with?