BWWM Interracial Romance 1: Professional Relations (2 page)

Bradley waylaid Regina as she made her way back to her office. “I want to talk to you,” he said, his voice tense and his bright blue eyes filled with an intense emotion that Regina couldn’t quite identify.

“Fine, let’s go into my office,” Regina said. She couldn’t help but feel a small amount of pride at the fact that she had her very own office; she could decorate it as she liked, she could retreat to the quiet space when she was overwhelmed. Bradley waited for Regina to close the door behind them and turned to face her.

“I know you’re new here, but it’s rude to talk down one of your colleagues,” Bradley told her, leaning against a spare chair and pinning her down with his gaze. Regina started, her heart beating faster in her chest.

“Really? Because you seemed pretty content to do that to me,” she said defensively. “All I was interested in is getting this project done and salvaging our reputation with the client.”

Bradley rolled his eyes. “Please! You’re transparent. You want to get into Talitha’s good graces and that’s fine. But some of us have been here a long time, and it won’t do you any good to throw us under the bus.”

Regina’s eyes widened at the suggestion. “I’m not throwing anyone under the bus! What are you even talking about? Talitha agreed with me that we needed to shift personnel around. If you didn’t want to share personnel, all you had to do was say so.”

Bradley rolled his eyes again, and Regina felt a sudden sharp anger at his attitude. “Right, because when YOU come up with ‘Tell him that paying customers are more important,’ I can totally respond to that without sounding like a total idiot.”

Regina sighed, feeling her palms becoming clammy, her body overtaken with anxiety. She hated confrontation; even before she had had to deal with her ex-husband Richard, she hadn’t been fond of fighting. “If you don’t want to sound like a total idiot, you should think of how to sound smarter. I was thrown into this emergency, and I have to deal with it.” She bit her bottom lip, turning away so that Bradley wouldn’t see how upset she was. “Look, we both have jobs to do. Go back to your own work.”

Bradley scowled at her for a long moment before turning and leaving, and Regina shuddered at the lingering tension she felt.

She ate at her desk; her gaze glued to her computer screen as she absently ate her salad and leftover steak and drank her coffee. Regina knew she would end up having to stay late, which was both a good and a bad thing for her first day; the stress of the situation made her want to go home as soon as she could, but she knew that not only would staying late cement her first impression on the higher ups at this branch that she was a dedicated employee—it would also give her the satisfaction of knowing that the project was absolutely done. It would be a big deal, she thought, to have taken over a project and completed it on her first day, satisfying a client right off the bat; it was the kind of behavior that made a career move forward.

That afternoon, Regina had just finished her component of the Brockway Industrials project when a man knocked on her door and stepped into her office. He was tall and heavy-set, dressed in a tailored suit. He had short, dark hair and brown eyes, and a flushed face that was faintly shiny with sweat. “You’re the new assistant project manager,” he said, his low voice somehow aggressive-sounding to Regina’s ears. “I’m Albert Cohen, the President of the Design Concepts department.”

Regina felt her heart beginning to race; this must be the ‘Al’ that Bradley had mentioned before. “Pleased to meet you, Mr. Cohen,” she said politely, swallowing against the sudden dryness in her throat. The man looked nothing like her ex-husband, but there was some quality about him that reminded her of the man she had left after years of abuse—a kind of veiled contempt and brutality that still had the power to make her feel intensely scared and small. She had learned, however, that the best way to deal with bullies was to stand up to them.

“I understand that you’re taking care of the Brockway Industrials project,” Albert said, standing on the other side of her desk rather than sitting in the seat provided. Regina thought that Albert would prefer to pre-empt her seat at her desk, to assume the position of power in the room.

“Yes, I’ve hit the ground running in that sense,” Regina replied, keeping her voice as level and polite as possible.

“Did you have to take designers away from such an important internal project?” he asked her sharply, crossing his arms over his broad chest. Regina took a secret, deep breath.

“I’m afraid I did,” she said, schooling her face into regret-filled lines. “When a client is upset, you do what it takes to satisfy them. Talitha told me that Brockway Industrials is one of the biggest clients we currently have—so I considered it important to get their project completed by the end of business.”

Albert looked at her, and Regina suppressed her revulsion at the greasy feeling she got from his glance. “Well, I expect that now you’re here, we won’t have any similar issues, and you can let the work go on without interference.”

Regina nodded. “I certainly hope so. I also hope that someone discussed with that account manager why clear communication is important. I’m very sorry, Mr. Cohen—may I call you Albert?”

He nodded.

“I’d love to discuss this with you further, but I’ve still got several components of this project to oversee and to finalize.”

Albert continued to stare at her for a moment before leaving.

Regina managed to get through the rest of the day, all the time waiting for Albert to appear again, to chastise her. Her experience with casually brutal men was that when they started an argument, they usually preferred to end it on their own terms, and would make repeat attempts. But Albert was nowhere to be seen, and by the time Regina left her desk at seven o’clock, she had sent off the completed project to the client, with a note apologizing for the miscommunication. Exhausted but pleased, she made her way home.

Regina had been in her new position for a week when she got called into Talitha’s office. The other woman grinned at Regina as she came in.

“You’re doing a great job,” Talitha said, sitting back slightly at her desk, “which is why I’m bringing you in on a larger project. You’re not going to be working on it alone, however; the scope is just too big. I’ll tell you more about it when your partner arrives.” Regina and Talitha made small talk about her progress on the projects she was currently working on, with Talitha asking a few questions about how Regina was settling in, whether she needed anything for her office.

Just when Regina was beginning to wonder about who she would be working with, and why they were taking so long to arrive, she heard the door open behind her and turned to see Bradley walking into the room; he glanced at her with an almost unreadable expression and then turned his attention to Talitha.

“I’m not interrupting am I?” he asked.

Regina tried not to let her gaze hover for too long on the man, reminding herself of how unpleasant he had been in the first meeting they’d both been in. But in spite of her dislike of him Regina had to admit he wasn’t difficult on the eyes. He was incredibly tall—which was a feature that Regina always noticed in a man right off the bat—and his clothes fit him well enough for Regina to notice that he was well-built underneath the suit, not muscle-bound but with the tight, toned look she liked in a man. Regina felt the blood rush to her face and turned away, pretending to look down at her notebook.

“Not at all, Bradley. Come on in.”

Bradley closed the door behind him and took the seat farthest from Regina’s, and Regina had to fight down the impulse to be offended; after all, she reminded herself, she didn’t like him either.

“You and Regina will be working on our newest client. It’s a huge project—more than any one project manager could oversee—and I think you two would be the best fit not just for the client but also in terms of working together.”

Regina glanced furtively at Bradley, wondering what Talitha knew that she did not; although a week hadn’t given her much time to get to know the other assistant project managers, she had encountered Bradley just enough to confirm her initial dislike of him.

“I’m sure we’ll do a great job,” Bradley said, opening up his notebook and taking a pen out of his breast pocket. “So, give us the details.”

Regina took notes, barely paying any attention to Bradley as Talitha outlined the requirements of the project: it was a complete package for five different products that the company, Alistair-Pole-Richards, would be putting out in the next year. Pater-Gray had won the contract for the products’ packaging and complete marketing program, along with brand development and market research.

“I’m not sure how you two would like to divide the tasks,” Talitha said, finishing up with the run-down on all of the things that would have to be done. “That’s part of the reason I wanted to have a meeting, instead of just sending an email to the two of you.”

Regina tapped her pen idly against her notebook, thinking.

“We could divide up the products; two each, with one that we share responsibilities on,” Bradley suggested.

Regina bit her bottom lip in thought, glancing at the list she had made of the different products and the tasks associated with them. She wanted to have as little contact as possible with Bradley, and thought that the one product that they’d have in common under her plan would be more time than she wanted to spend with the annoying man. She considered the possibilities, trying to find a way to counter Bradley’s assertion.

“We’re going to have to interact with each other regularly on all of them anyway. Why don’t we break up the task types instead? The work load on certain tasks for certain products may be heavier than others, but we can shift around as needed more readily that way than if we’re each responsible for individual products.”

“If the workload is unevenly distributed, why don’t you guys sort of…” Talitha paused for a moment, looking at her master list. “You could each do estimates of the timeframes for the different components of the project, meet up again this afternoon and present your thoughts. We can then divvy up the different responsibilities that way, so that each of you is involved equally and no one is swimming out of their depth.”

Regina glanced at Bradley again, thinking that it was going to be a long several months. She took a deep breath and nodded acceptance of Talitha’s idea.

“I think that’s a good compromise,” Regina said, her mind already starting to work on the problem of figuring out the different timeframes. She knew that some of the members of her team were already almost full to the brim—but they would be finishing up the projects in backlog within a few weeks, giving them more time and energy to work on the new assignment. Regina also knew that in spite of the importance of the contract and the very large price tag that Pater-Gray had attached to its services, there would be more projects coming in; she had to make sure she had work allotted to the designers and developers with wiggle room for the inevitable other bits and pieces of work that the next months would bring.

“I’ll be able to pull an estimate together by two o’clock,” Bradley said, giving Regina a glance that suggested to her that he didn’t think she could live up to the standard he’d set.

“That sounds fine to me,” Regina said, smiling as pleasantly as possible in spite of the flare of indignant anger that swept over her.

“I’ll email you both the proposal and statement of work for the project, so you can develop a good working estimate,” Talitha said. She stood and Regina, still feeling a little piqued by Bradley’s arrogance, followed her example, murmuring a polite goodbye before walking out of the office.

Regina managed to conquer her sense of annoyance while reviewing the files that Talitha sent her and going over the production and development schedules she had already ongoing for her team. She started to piece together a workable timeline for each of the tasks that the statement of work included, shifting personnel around on a list that she kept and checking against their time off requests and other occurrences that would affect who was available at different points. She knew that overall, no matter how carefully she organized her team, and how much each designer or developer was able to accomplish individually—and even taking into account her ability to chip in—it was going to take a full year to accomplish everything. Things like the market research components would take a certain amount of time just on their own.

The project was even larger in scope than what Talitha had originally suggested, Regina discovered. She was excited at the prospect of being involved in such a big assignment, but daunted at the number of bottlenecks that were possible. Each phase of the design processes required approval from the client, and they had a handful of revisions on each piece available to them before they were required to make a final approval. Certain parts of the project, Regina knew, would go faster than others; she might even luck out and find that the new client was agreeable, requiring very few changes or amendments to design concepts.

Although her first week at in her new position had gone well, and she had the approval of the company president for the slightly controversial decision she’d made to take personnel who were working on internal projects and put them on finishing the Brockway Industrials assignment, Regina knew that her job security wasn’t a sprint—it was a marathon. She would need to prove over and over again that she was a good fit for the position, that she was able to keep her team running efficiently and that she could jump in to take care of responsibilities technically outside of her position as needed. Regina budgeted her own time in the major project heavily, taking on tasks to herself that she knew no members of her team were capable of executing as efficiently as she was.

Regina also reluctantly budgeted for plenty of time towards meetings with Alistair-Pole-Richards. They would need to be kept apprised of every development, Regina knew. She didn’t particularly enjoy client meetings—that aspect of her position made her uncomfortable—but they were necessary. The fact that she would have to present to the client alongside Bradley was another annoyance, but Regina told herself that the higher pay her position gave her, the independence it allowed her to have, was worth the minor frustration of dealing with the pompous know-it-all.

Regina ate at her desk, determined to complete her timeline by the deadline that Bradley had set. By two o’clock, she
had her time estimates assembled, with billing estimates and a graph showing how the work could be divided the most effectively. She brushed the lingering crumbs from her lunch off of her skirt and checked her makeup, making sure that she looked presentable before she returned to Talitha’s office to present her data.

Unlike the previous meeting, Bradley was punctual, stepping into their boss’ office almost the moment that Regina had settled in her seat.

“It looks like a little competition has brought out the best in both of you,” Talitha commented with a little grin. Regina returned the smile, although she didn’t feel particularly amused at the way that Bradley had challenged her. “So, tell me what we’ve got here.”

Bradley glanced at Regina, one eyebrow raised slightly as if waiting for her to go first. After an awkward silence, Bradley produced copies of his documentation, similar to what Regina had put together; he had taken into account ongoing projects for his team, though he mentioned that he didn’t really know where Regina’s team was in terms of their workload. “Here’s what we can get done without overloading everyone,” he said, pointing to the timeline he had created.

Regina noticed that he had allocated a lot more of his own time to the project than she had—even though, based on the information he provided, his team didn’t have any more on their plate than hers did. Regina wondered at that; was he trying to show her up by being more “dedicated” to the project? Bradley explained that he was expecting a certain amount of additional work to come in for his team over the course of the year-long project—but that he’d accounted for it by shifting around some responsibilities on his team. “Linka is really fast with design concepts, so I know I can count on her to turn this around and still have space in her schedule for two more projects.” Talitha was nodding as Bradley went through the rationale for his decisions, and Regina worried that in not putting herself forward she would be making herself look less qualified, or suitable.

When Bradley had finished, Regina cleared her throat and handed him and Talitha copies of her documents, shuffling her own needlessly as she tried to conquer her sense of nervousness. “I don’t think that the demo phase is going to take as long as Bradley believes it will,” Regina said, looking at her notes. “If we put more effort into refining the concepts, we can get through the testing more rapidly; it won’t even take very much more time—give it maybe an extra day or two of man hours.” She grew in confidence as Talitha nodded at her assertion, while Bradley gave her a slightly perturbed look.

“I think the real bottleneck is going to be the status meetings and the design revisions; from the perspective of effectiveness—that’s pretty cut and dried. And the market research usually doesn’t exceed this timeframe I’ve listed; it’s kind of set in stone, and we won’t be able to trim much time from it if we run out somewhere else, but there’s really only so much market research that’s useful.”

Bradley chimed in with an argument about her estimate on meeting times; saying that she had assumed the client would be one of the needier ones.

“I’m just preparing for the event that they are,” Regina snapped back. “After all, if I didn’t allocate time for extra meetings, and they came up, it would throw us off.”

“So then what are you going to do if they just rubber stamp everything?”

Regina shrugged. “In that case I’ll have more time to get things done in other areas and we’ll be ahead of schedule.”

Talitha’s lips twitched and Regina knew their boss was suppressing laughter at the retort.

“I’m not sure I agree with your timeframe for development on product A6-95-G,” Bradley said, turning his attention away from the argument about the amount of client-facing time that Regina had estimated.

Regina smiled slightly to herself, realizing from the flush in his cheeks that Bradley knew he was defeated on that score and resented it. “What’s your problem with it?” Regina asked mildly, looking over the facts and figures she had noted.

“I just think it’s going to take longer than you’ve put in—I mean, Alistair-Pole-Richards barely has the formula down; coming up with effective packaging and targeting for the product, along with a brand concept is going to take more than 6 weeks, won’t it?”

Regina shrugged. “I was planning to put Alex on the design, Ashley on strategy, and Jason on brand concept. Alex may not be as fast on design as some, but he’s thorough; they won’t need as many revisions. Ashley will only need a couple of weeks to conduct market research and develop targeting for the product, and Jason’s brand concepts have consistently been good, according to his records. I think six weeks for development is fine.”

Bradley pursed his lips.

“I think, looking at both of your estimates, that we have some things we can agree on,” Talitha said, raising her hands to quiet both of her assistant project managers. “I think Regina’s come closer to what would be a realistic timeframe, granted that she doesn’t really know where your team is at in terms of work load, Bradley—and you don’t know where her group is.” Talitha went through their estimates, marking the two sets of documentation with her signature green pen and explaining her thoughts as she went about it. Gradually, Talitha was able to forge an agreement between the two that would put most of the design aspects of the ongoing project on Bradley’s team, with most of the research and development tasks on Regina’s team.