Worst Week Ever (A Long Road to Love) Read Online Free PDF Page A

He refocused on her with an intensity that
rather unnerved her.
    Regaining
her composure, she extracted her hand and continued. “I had to prove myself a hundred
times over before they would even listen to me. In the end, they couldn’t
ignore the potential improvement to their margins and agreed use the Just In
Time strategy. They agreed to this change in spite of you not because of you.”
    She rose from
the bed, swatted at the wrinkles in her jacket. Couldn’t he have at least
taken off my jacket before putting me to bed?
    He petted the
sleeve of her jacket, evidently finding the wrinkles annoying as well. “Where
are you going?”
    He probably
feared she intended to go to work like this. “Home.”
    “How will you
get there?”
    She laughed
softly. Did he think just because he couldn’t manage without his driver, she
couldn’t get home on her own? “I’ll call a taxi.”
    He tilted his
head to one side, his mouth forming a decided pout. “Do you even know where you
are?”
    Nodding to the
the painting on the wall, she answered with a grin, “Since the insurance
company only covers the Dali if it resides at your Long Island estate, I had
better be there.”
    Trent chuckled
at her response. “I love the way your brain works.” His focus then returned to
his efforts to pet her jacket’s wrinkles away. “I’ll have my driver take you
home. It would cost you a fortune to go by taxi, and I know how you hate to
waste money.”
    “I would
appreciate the ride.” She looked around the room. “Where’s my luggage?”
    “I had Mars
call about that. It seems to have wandered off. The airport promises to deliver
it to your house when they find it.”
    Carrie sighed
and headed out the door with him following.
    “On the way,
you can explain why we want Just in Time inventory.”
    “You’re
planning to come with me on my drive home? You do realize the ride is two hours
in good traffic?”
    He shrugged.
    “Each way.”
    His frown
suggested he hadn’t understood the true duration of his plan, but to her shock,
he shrugged again. “We have a lot to catch up on.”
    * * * *
    An hour into
the drive, Carrie had convinced Trent the change to JIT manufacturing coupled
with a strategic vendor partnership would increase their margins, decrease
inventory levels, and actually reduce component shortages. Then they moved onto
his nightmare month.
    Leaning back
and staring up through the skylight, Trent sighed. “I just wanted a list of our
major customers by volume purchased. Neither sales nor systems could provide it.”
He paused and glared at her. “I even ransacked your desk, hoping you might have
the information.”
    Carrie
grimaced. Before her trip, she’d tried to tell him where things were, but he
kept insisting he knew. “You should’ve called me. I do have it. It’s on my
shelf in a book called Customer Stats.” She paused and then addressed something
that had bothered her all week. “Why didn’t you call me?”
    He glared at
her. “I tried. Your damn phone claimed to be out of service.”
    She nodded. “I
discovered that when I arrived. But I called you right away and gave you the
number of the phone I purchased there.”
    “You didn’t
call me,” he snapped. “You never once called me. Gone a whole month and not one
call.”
    His accusation
outraged her. “I did too! But Liza, said you weren’t accepting calls and I
should email you, which I did five or six times a day. But evidently you
weren’t reading emails either.”
    He leaned
forward and secured her hand, pulling her from her seat facing him to the
middle section next to him. “I wish Liza hadn’t walked out on me, because I
really want to fire her, maybe strangle her.”
    Carrie turned
sideways in the seat and studied his expression, which hinted of guilt. “Then
you didn’t tell the temp you wouldn’t take my calls?”
    “What does it
matter? Your phone wouldn’t work anyway.” His fingers rapped on his leg. “So
who gave you