“Hi, Jon. I’m afraid you’re catching me off guard here.” She glared at Jen, who didn’t have the decency to look the least bit guilty.
“No problem if you’re not set up for me yet. I know I pitched this idea very suddenly, but the timing seemed right.”
“Just perfect,” Jen said. “Jon here consulted at Pitz and Lunder. You know, the law firm?”
Liv shook her head.
“Well, that place functions at a crazy pace. Jon consults on corporate organizational matters, such as admins and other things. It just so happened that right as we decided to replace your admin, Jon pitched this idea of evaluating the optimum use of resources. He starts out with one executive and then fans out. He’s going to do your evaluation pro bono even before we decide whether we want to engage him for tackling other parts of the organization.”
“I don’t even know what that means, Jen. Evaluate me how? Like an efficiency expert?”
“That’s an old-fashioned term,” the consultant said. “It’s more complicated than that, but I promise not to be intrusive. Forget I’m here.”
“You two will get along great. He’s going to be exactly what you need,” Jen said.
Liv flashed her friend another dirty look. Right. Some corporate-speak guy hanging around, distracting her with how cute he was and wasting her time by trying to discuss allocation or whatever. “I don’t need anything, Jen. So you can find some other guinea pig to”—she glanced sort of apologetically at the guy—“experiment on.”
“Nonsense,” Jen said briskly. “This is the perfect place for Jon to start his evaluation. You’ve got all this empty office space from the last bout of layoffs, and extra computers—he’s going to crunch some benefit numbers for me while he’s here, so you can set him up on Cecily’s computer and he can spend a few days looking at what she did, or didn’t do, for you. And then of course he can interview you and make recommendations.”
“An organization has to examine how it operates every once and a while, Miss Altman,” he added, “to keep everything running at top speed. Pitz and Lunder, for example, was a real sweatshop, but for all they were driving their people, they weren’t getting the proper returns. With just a few tweaks and behavioral modifications, I was able to change that.”
“I’m sure you were,” Jen assured him. “That’s why we’re placing you with our newest up and comer. Liv’s a rising star here.”
Jen’s usual shameless plug left Liv cold, seeing as how she was still kind of annoyed at her.
“I’ll be going now,” Jen said airily, giving Jon a little wave.
“I’ll walk you to the elevator.” Liv grasped her friend’s elbow, steering her out.
“No need. I know how busy you are and I wouldn’t—”
Liv hustled her friend out and shut the office door behind them. “This isn’t funny.”
“What?” she responded, all innocence, sauntering over to the elevators.
“A consultant? Please. I don’t need a consultant. Why pick on me? What are you really doing here? Trying to fix me up, maybe?”
“Get over yourself, hon. You have a lot to learn.”
“So you keep telling me. About what, though? That’s the question, isn’t it?”
Jen shook her head reprovingly. “Management and corporate theory can improve the status quo, Liv.”
“Even if I did believe that”—she pointed back to the closed office door—“are you trying to tell me you didn’t notice how cute that guy is?”
“Of course I noticed. I’m not dead from the neck down like you are these days. But I wasn’t trying to fix you up. Don’t be ridiculous. We’re not in seventh grade for God’s sake.”
Liv eyed her suspiciously. Those seventh grade fix ups had been disastrous. Adolescent boys paired with Liv always ended up pining after Jen. Adult boys, too, come to think of it.
“I merely thought that if you weren’t ever going to make time to date a real guy, you could at least have a reminder of what you’re missing.” Jen jabbed the button for the elevator and it uncharacteristically came right away.
She stepped in and smiled at Liv. “And it’s free. So go back in there and put that gorgeous guy to use.”
“I’m not even going to respond to that ridiculously easy double entendre,” Liv said irritably as the doors closed.
When she went back into her office, Jon was still standing there, waiting for instructions, maybe, or an invitation to sit down. He smiled at her tentatively. Yep, first impression still held. Absolutely adorable. An annoyingly predictable heat flushed her cheeks. Someday she was going to forget about tackling piracy on the Internet and do something really useful, like figure out how to save women from blushing when they were nervous.