Taming the Bad Girl by Emma Shortt Read Free Book Online

could just imagine his response if I tried.
    “You might need to lean in a little here,” he
continued.
    I did, holding my breath the entire time, all
the while frantic thoughts running through my mind. Surely he was bound to hear
the race of my heart, the shakes that were already beginning? My mouth was dry,
my legs trembling. I cursed the one percent, wishing I’d listened to the
ninety-nine.
    “Look here,” Giles said, pointing to the
spreadsheet. “I’ve balanced your expenditure by moving across another
thirty-five thousand.”
    I exhaled in shock. “Thirty-five….”
    “It’s that bad,” he confirmed. “I don’t know how
the hell you blew so much, Lucy.”
    Breathing out was a mistake. It meant I had to
breathe in again. Which meant I could smell his aftershave. It teased my nostrils and nudged a whole bunch of memories. He smelled like
citrus again. Clean and tangy and I shifted a little to the left, putting some
distance between us. Thinking instead about all the money I’d lost. It was far
more than I’d anticipated. The extravagant presentations, the bonuses I’d given
my staff. It all flashed through my head and I sighed. “If I get the account I
went for last week I should make about twenty,” I said. “And there are a few
others in the pipeline. The one’s I showed everyone in the team meeting.”
    “That won’t make a difference,” Giles said.
“You’ve still got wages and suppliers to pay. You’re going to have to go in the
red this year and increase your earnings next year.”
    “Right....”
    “So your team will be putting a lot of hours in
next financial year,” he continued. “Gabe doesn’t want any redundancies, so
everyone is going to have to put a bit more time in. You most
of all, Lucy. You are their boss after all and this is your fault.”
    “Yes.” It was easier to just agree with
him—mainly because he was right. Fact was I’d always had trouble with the math.
I was a creative person, not a finance type. How I’d ended up department head
was something that still shocked me. Whilst I could easily handle all of the
marketing activity I struggled daily with the HR and the money. Guilt squirmed
through me and though I loathed him, I sent Gabe a silent thank you. Other
bosses might well have insisted I fire a few people, and that would be my
fault. Those people jobless, not being able to pay their rent or feed their
families. I squirmed some more as I realized then that I wouldn’t be allowed to
go this far into the red a second year in a row. I was pretty damn sure Gabe’s
patience would not stretch that far.
    “I’m going to need some training,” I said, and
the words burnt. The honesty hurt—mainly because it was to Giles. But something
had to give and it couldn’t be me. I couldn’t afford to lose my job. I needed
the money—badly. Yet at the same time I couldn’t put other people’s jobs at
risk.
    “In what?” he asked.
    “Budget management.”
    “So you can’t handle that side of your job?”
Giles said and the edge to his words was way too satisfied for my liking. I
moved away from the desk, away from the citrus floating in the air, and faced
him with a good meter of wood between us.
    “I just need a little bit of help,” I insisted.
“Pam’s offered, but she’s so busy and I’d feel bad taking her free time,
assuming Gabe would even let her.”
    “You’d feel bad?” he asked, the tone of his
voice enough to tell me he doubted it.
    “Yes,” I grated through clenched teeth. “Pam’s
my friend.”
    “So she is.” He paused. “Who
then?”
    I shrugged, even as my heart continued to race.
Because this had to be a new low for me, having to ask for help from the man
who’d sent me into my tailspin. “I thought maybe one of your junior
accountants.”
    Silence pulsed between us for a few moments. I
counted the pens on his desk.
    “It might help if you actually looked at me when
you ask for help, Lucy,” Giles said softly. “Hasn’t