Page 113 of Timeless

I scanned the room. Everyone was staring at me, waiting for me to make a decision. I looked back down at my raw ingredients. I was missing something.

“Amber! Are you listening?” Cole thought he would yell at me from the couch. “Stop fucking cooking. You have people here, trying to tell you that you’ve lost millions and I’m not in banking or anything but I think that needs more attention than whatever you are fucking cooking.”

“This is more important,” I answered simply.

“What, these people losing their jobs isn’t as important as whatever you are fucking making?” Troy again snapped at me.

My brothers and Jax had been listening to everything that had been going on this morning.

I looked Troy in the eye and flicked on the mixer. My brothers looked at me like I was mad.

I waited until it was mixed and I flicked the machine off.

“You know, Amber, maybe you aren’t in the right frame of mind to be working today?” Tyler came to my side and placed a hand on my shoulder. “You had a really bad night, and clearly you know your mind is somewhere else.”

Were all my brothers thinking I couldn’t do my job because I had a bad night?

I ignored him and got the sugar out. They were all still waiting on me. “Okay.” I started to weigh out the sugar. “Hit me with the negatives.”

My spreadsheets formers rattled them off and I nodded. “Okay, Chelsea give me the bonuses and what we are under.”

Chelsea gave me sum after sum, building a figure that had my whole team nervous.

I sighed and added the sugar. “Okay, we are in the minus over 562 million.”

“Sorry, Amber, we let you down.” Beau went to comfort me again.

“You know you need a new team, right?” Chelsea said but I heard how guilty she was feeling. “I’m so sorry, Amber. I know you put me in charge and—”

“Chelsea, shut up.” I looked down at my bowl. I was missing something. What the fuck was I missing? “I do not need to hear you all saying how sorry you are.” I ran a hand through my hair. “We all fuck up. We all lose money. It’s not a big deal.”

“It’s over half a billion, Amber?” said Lisa, my other assistant. “Mrs. Daniels isn’t going to let this slide.”

“Her name is Rebecca,” I corrected Lisa. And then had a brainwave. “I’m missing the salt!” I quickly spun around. Then turned back around. Okay, now I had found out what was missing, and I could deal with their melt down.

“Losing half-a-billion-dollar account is a negative.” I looked up from my mixing bowl.

“Amber, I am so sorry,” Chelsea started again.

And I put my hand. “Chelsea, do you regularly share and spread their increase capital?” I took my eyes off my mixing bowl to look at her.

“No.” Her eyes dropped to her clipboard.

“Why?”

“Because that’s not my job.”

“Whose job is it?”

“Yours.”

“Exactly. My job.” I looked up at my team, who thought they had all lost their jobs. “It is my job to monitor the shares and increase the capital. I failed to do so. Thus, losing the account.” I licked my thumb. God, I love sugar.

“We are so fucked,” Beau muttered to the quiet room and walked back to his laptop.

“I want Zed’s number,” I said to the quiet room, causing them all to start searching their phones.

“Amber, he gives his number out personally. It’s not on the company record.” Lisa delivered me the bad news.

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