Page 70 of Waitress at the Shadow Ridge Inn
“Will you explain it to me? Why you were there. How you knew. Why you cared enough to …” I let the sentence hang.
He exhaled. “Yes, I suppose my showing up on your doorstep unannounced, deserves explanation.” He paused thoughtfully, as if trying to decide where to start. “I’ve been watching you for a while, Casey.”
I couldn’t help my sharp intake of breath. He had admitted to being a stalker the other night, hadn’t he?
“Not like that,” he hastened to add, as if reading my thoughts. “More like I was looking out for you.”
“Why would you do that?” I asked, confused.
“Because I knew your father.”
“You did?”
He nodded slowly. “A long time ago. I was an intern in your father’s company—and not a very good one at that,” he said, smiling faintly at the memory. “Your father took me under his wing and taught me everything I know about business. He said he saw something of himself in me. He was a good man, your father.
“A few years after he and your mother passed, I was offered a management position at Kleiner, and I took it. Imagine my surprise when I saw your name on the new-hire list.”
“You never said anything.”
“No. I thought it would be inappropriate. After looking at your résumé, I knew I wanted you on my team, and I didn’t want it to appear as if you’d received any special consideration because you hadn’t.”
“Why would it? We’d never met before.”
“We had. At a company picnic. Your father introduced us. I think you were around sixteen at the time. Far too young for a seasoned twenty-five-year-old man like me to do anything more than nod politely and acknowledge your presence.”
I thought back to the annual company picnics my father had sponsored for his employees. They were held at a local park in the summer. My dad would rent the whole place out, and employees could bring their immediate families for a day of fun, food, and games. Everyone raved about those days, and I’d met so many people.
“I don’t expect you to remember,” Aaron said, drawing me back from my memories. “Regardless, I thought some people might view employing my mentor’s daughter as impropriety, especially when it came to promotions, as it inevitably would. You were too good for it to be otherwise. That’s why I put you under Dax Roberts and not under me directly. I knew right away that hiring you was a smart decision. You would have made your father proud.”
“Thanks for that,” I said softly.
His expression sobered.
“Your friend Angela, however, was a different story. She was trouble right from the beginning. Her work was mediocre at best, and several male colleagues accused her of harassing them.”
His words, while harsh, were not surprising. Angie wasn’t afraid to go after what she wanted, and when she had a few, she used to joke that her primary career goal was to find a husband who could provide for her so she wouldn’t have to work.
“You didn’t fire her though.”
“I couldn’t. Letting someone go is a complicated process. I needed documented justification and a lot of it. Some of the complainants went to Dax about it. He encouraged them to talk to HR. If any of them did, nothing came of it. No formal complaints ever made it to my desk.
“Dax attempted to broach the subject with Angela on several occasions, but to no avail. So, I called her into my office. I realized later that I should have had someone in the office with me.”
“She came on to you, didn’t she?”
He nodded. “When I rebuffed her advances, she threatened to file discrimination and harassment complaints herself. It would have been her word against mine. Who do you think they would have believed? I don’t need to tell you that the firm frowns on scandal in any form, especially in today’s litigious environment.”
No, he didn’t need to tell me that. I understood all too well. Optics were everything.
“She was doing the minimum required of her job in terms of the accounts. We could keep her from advancing, but we couldn’t terminate her based on her performance alone. And without a formal complaint on conduct …”
“I know,” I said wearily, having heard the same thing repeatedly from the authorities. “There was nothing you could do.”
“Not officially, no. But … Dax and I agreed that something had to change, so we did what we could to minimize disruptions. As projects were completed, we assigned her work she could complete on her own. Smaller clients, the ones who didn’t require a full team. As you can imagine, she did not take kindly to that. Around the same time, Dax promoted you, and Angela accused him of favoritism. It wasn’t, of course. Your promotion was justified. You were logging more hours than anyone else and we’d received nothing but praise from your clients and coworkers.
“Needless to say, I was watching her closely, as was Dax. Angela was growing bolder. We suspected it was only a matter of time before she did something we could use as grounds for dismissal.
“I noticed subtle things that suggested she wasn’t as good of a friend as she pretended to be. The way she would look at you sometimes. The things she would say to others, making unfounded accusations about you receiving preferential treatment—not to mention the insinuations ofwhyyour predominantly male bosses were favoring you. Frankly, I was worried for you, Casey.
