“Delivering the coffee they made us this morning,” Jonah said dryly. “And stop calling it the dark side. I’ve told you about that before.”
Carl snorted softly. “Yeah, and I told you they shun daylight and eat bats for breakfast. You said the moniker was fair game after that.”
“Was I drunk?”
“A little. It was at the management Christmas party last year.”
“Christ. You’re holding me to something I said a year ago at that horrible club you dragged me to?”
“Only because it’s true. They’re all weirdos over there. Even the new guy.”
“What new guy?”
“The one with the cheekbones and the resting bitch face. Apparently he’s a—”
“All right, all right.” If Jonah wasn’t caffeinated enough to deal with actual conversations with Sacha, he certainly wasn’t ready to deal with second-hand gossip from the break room. It was a place Jonah usually avoided, given that he expected half the bitching to be about him. “We have the Fairside meeting at ten. I’ve finished the pitch. Are you ready to present it?”
“You’re not doing it?”
Jonah shook his head. As tempting as it was to spearhead every pitch himself, especially the big ones, he’d learned long ago that micromanaging his company didn’t work, for him, his staff, or the firm’s bottom line. He’d nurtured his teams to be competent—more than that, the best in their field. He paid them well, and as such had to trust them to do their jobs.
Besides, Jonah didn’t have time to attend the Fairside meeting. He had a far more boring engagement to endure with his financial operations manager.Kill me now. Jonah hadn’t been joking when he’d told Sacha he preferred the artistic aspects of his job to the point where he’d rather work for someone else, and it was never more apparent to him when he had to spend time in the clutches of the money men. Was there anything more dull?
Jonah couldn’t think of much.
With Carl in tow, he decamped to his office and opened up the pitch he’d vomited out last night with half a mind on the enigmatic Russian on the opposite couch. A lifetime seemed to have passed since Jonah had last looked at it. He barely remembered pulling it together, and the words on the screen seemed to belong to someone else.
“Wow. This is good,” Carl said.
“Is it? I was a little distracted when I put it together. I wasn’t expecting to have to write it myself.”
“Yeah. I’m sorry about that. I honestly thought the guys could handle it. They did so well with the Nestlé pitch.”
“Don’t apologise. It’s important that you can come to me if something isn’t working so we can fix it. Much better than showing up to the meeting with the nonsense we had on the table yesterday.” Jonah spoke absently, reading through the powerful presentation he’d neglected to proofread last night. Or had it been the early hours of the morning? Christ, he couldn’t remember. Sacha Ivanov was amazing in bed, but he was playing havoc with Jonah’s cognitive function.
Luckily, Jonah was a clean writer. His words made sense, even if he didn’t much remember typing them. If Carl was on form, the pitch was in the bag.
They went through it together, sipping on the spiced coffee Sacha had made, and eating the festive pastries. They were loaded with dried fruit and apple and unlike anything Jonah had ever eaten before. He ate two and licked icing sugar from his fingers while Carl added notes to the presentation. By nine-thirty, they were ready. Jonah transferred the pitch to the company cloud and left the office for the financial meeting elsewhere.
It was a nice day—cold, but bright. He forewent his usual black cab ride and walked across Waterloo Bridge. The fresh air cleared his mind of the haze his late night with Sacha had left him with. He was still in no mood for number-crunching, but all the sunshine in the world wouldn’t change that.
Enjoying the sharp breeze in his face, he let his mind drift back to Sacha and the quiet few hours they’d spent working side by side before Jonah had all but dragged Sacha away from his laptop. Sacha’s work was a mystery to him, but it had been clear to see he was as committed to his job as Jonah. Perhaps more. Outside of looming pitches, Jonah rarely had a problem switching off at night, a state of mind that after manymanymistakes, he’d battled hard to win. Sacha Ivanov had the air of a man without that luxury, and Jonah wondered why. Was Blutecc that important to him? Or was he awash with the bad habits Jonah had fought hard to quit?
Either way—
Jonah’s phone rang. He fumbled in his coat pocket and fished it out in time to miss the call from Carl’s extension at the office. “Dammit.”
He called straight back, but no one answered, and reception didn’t pick up either. After a few tries, the calls stopped connecting. Jonah called Carl’s personal phone. Automated voicemail kicked in.
Puzzled, Jonah resumed his walk across the bridge and checked his messages. There were three from Carl, all sent in the twenty minutes Jonah had been gone from the office, and escalating in panic with each one.
Carl:where did you save the pitch and the notes? I can’t find them in the usual folder.
Carl:Seriously. Where are they? The Fairside team just arrived and I need to go in. Did you save it on your laptop instead of the cloud? Is there another copy on your desktop?
Carl:JONAH. Call me as soon as you’re out of that blackspot by the bridge. I need the pitch and my notes or we’re going to crash and burn.
Alarmed, Jonah checked his call records. There were none in the last half hour, save the unanswered calls he’d placed of his own. But the walk across the bridge had taken him through an area well known for having no data coverage or call signal, and by the time he’d stepped out of it, the office lines had stopped connecting too.What a shit show.