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Without Carrie, they probably wouldn’t have anything to do, or anyone to discuss.
“Why do you keep fighting? Why not just move?” he asked.
“It’s my home,” she said simply. “I feel safe there and it’s a great location. I used to live in a unit like yours with a roommate, but she got married. When the new owners converted the apartments to condominiums, I couldn’t afford to buy the unit—I could barely make the rent as it was. Then they ended up with leftover space under the stairs and they offered to turn it into a one-room studio if I’d sign a five-year lease. So I did.”
Harrison knew all about her lease. Why the condo board didn’t just wait her out, he didn’t know.
He held out his hand. “Give me the citation. I’ll tell the board I spoke with you, and that you will keep your plants inside.”
“But how will they get any sunlight? Can’t I just set them outside the door—”
“Carrie.” He leveled a look at her and opened his office door.
She grinned. “Okay. Can’t blame a girl for trying.”
Actually he could, but he wasn’t going to.
She sauntered—apparently her top walking speed—past him. “See ya around, Harry.”
Harrison watched her stroll down the hall. “Don’t call me Harry,” he murmured under his breath.
Did she always have to make a huge issue out of everything? All the residents who lived at the White Oak Bayou Condominiums wanted was to maintain the property value of their investment. Was that such a bad thing?
“Was that business, or pleasure?”
Harrison glanced to his left, where his brother stood in the doorway to the office next to his. “That was trouble.” He took the copies of the agenda for this morning’s meeting out of Sharon’s in-basket.
“Pity.” Jon Rothwell watched Carrie’s progress.
She’d passed through the glass outer doors, and was waiting for the elevator. When it arrived, she stepped inside and waggled her fingers at Harrison as the door closed.
“Can you make her business or pleasure?” Jon asked.
“That was Carrie Brent,” Harrison said, irritated that she’d caught him watching her. He handed his brother a copy of the agenda. “It gives me pleasure not to have to deal with her.”
“Oh, come on, you like her. You know you do.”
“She’s an irritating, disorganized flake.”
Jon chuckled as he scanned the agenda. “Did it ever occur to you that she’s causing all the trouble in order to have an excuse to see you?”
“I—” Harrison broke off. No, the thought hadn’t occurred to him. He didn’t want the thought occurring to him. He was sure the thought hadn’t occurred to her, either. Pretty sure. “No.”
Jon glanced at him assessingly and mercifully dropped the subject. “Under the vice president’s report, do you want me to mention Felicia’s idea for expanding into the domestic arena?”
“Felicia’s already talked to you about it?”
“I’m marketing—of course she’s talked to me about it, and I think it’s right in line with our goals for the company.”
Harrison didn’t like being bypassed. “Domestic time management isn’t that different from corporate time management. We have to consider the possibility that this venture will flop. People might feel ripped off.”
Jon grinned at him. “You’re a single man living in a condo with total outside maintenance, a maid and plenty of money. You have a five-minute commute. Try a wife, two kids, a dog and a huge mortgage on a house in the suburbs with an hour commute, and then tell me domestic and corporate are similar.”
“It’s a matter of—”
Jon held up his hand and disappeared into his office. “We’ve had this discussion before. In fact, I should write the book, not you.”
“Be my guest,” Harrison called after him.
“I would if I had any solutions.”
Domestic time management. How hard could it be? But Harrison had thought corporate efficiency was self-evident, too. The success of his company, Rothwell Time Management Consultants, proved otherwise.
People needed help managing their lives, and Harrison was delighted to provide that help. He felt a deep satisfaction when he received letters of gratitude from clients—and he always received letters of gratitude. Effusive letters.
He treated his talent as a calling and felt he was fortunate to earn a living at what he felt compelled to do.
His brother, Jon, didn’t share that talent, but was an expert at selling others on it. Together he and Harrison were a great team. A profitable team.
Harrison didn’t want them to become a stagnant team.
With that realization, Harrison knew he’d made his decision. Typically, he didn’t waste time dwelling on it. Felicia had stewed enough waiting for him to call her back, anyway.
Harrison smiled to himself. Carrie Brent might have done him a favor by interrupting the call. Imagine that.
He returned to his desk, dumped the agendas beside the telephone and hit the redial. “Felicia,” he said when he was connected with his publisher. “I’ve thought it over and I’ve already got ideas for adapting Rothwell’s Rules for the home.”
Though he didn’t return any more phone calls before the staff meeting, Harrison felt the morning was well spent. Felicia made an offer on the project and Harrison would let her haggle details with the company lawyer while he ran the staff meeting.
The only blot on the day was the disconcerting lingering of Carrie Brent’s perfume.
He stepped out of his office, leaving the door open in hopes that the room would air out, and stopped when he saw his assistant. “Sharon? You’re not in the conference room?”
She sent him a tight-lipped look. “I’m sorry, Harrison. I’m waiting for a call from my daughter’s teacher. It’s a midterm telephone conference. I requested a telephone conference so I wouldn’t have to take time off work.”
“What do you call this?” Everyone who worked at Rothwell knew his position on conducting personal business during work hours.
“It’s only for ten minutes. I arrived ten minutes early this morning. The teacher is obviously running late.”
“But why should you and I have to be inconvenienced because she can’t keep to her own schedule?”
“Some people are better at schedules than others.”
It was an oblique reference to Carrie Brent. With her visit fresh on everyone’s mind, he couldn’t very well chastise Sharon, could he?
“Cecilia is covering the meeting for me until I can get there,” she added.
“Join us when you can.” With a curt nod, Harrison proceeded to the conference room, mentally plotting a chapter dealing with domestic responsibilities and how to plan for the unexpected.
Harrison didn’t think his policies were unreasonable. In fact, they were the cornerstone of a successful business.
To him, it made sense that work should be completed during work hours and not at home. Home life should not interfere with, nor be discussed, at work. He felt just as strongly about the reverse—he didn’t want company business interfering with his employees’ family life.
Each employee received a copy of the company philosophy, which essentially maintained that if one worked efficiently and kept interoffice socializing down to a minimum, then all work should be able to be completed during a regular forty-hour week. If, due to unavoidable personal business, work was pending at the end of the week, then the employee could come in on the occasional Saturday. Never on Sunday. However, if the employee found that he or she was working most Saturdays, then that employee was encouraged to reevaluate his or her personal time-management skills.
Personal time-management skills. He’d assumed his employees would know how to translate the practices of the company to their personal lives. That’s what he did. Obviously the moment had come for a book on personal time management. He knew others were out in the market, but they weren’t based on Rothwell’s Rules.
With a sense of mission lightening his mood, Harrison approached the conference room. People everywhere would be happier and more productive once he—
Jon stopped him in the doorway. “Hey, Hare, you got a minute?”
“No.” Only Harrison’s brother was allowed to call him “Hare,” and not because Harrison liked it, either. If he let Jon get the occasional “Hare” out of his system, then he’d refer to Harrison by his full name in public.
“Let me put this another way, take the minute now and save time later, or I’ll bring this up in my report and throw off the whole meeting schedule.”
Harrison laughed. “Since you put it that way, what is it?”
Jon pointed to the seminars chart. “You’ve got me lined up to start the Chicago Manufacturing training next week. I can’t go. You need to send somebody else.”
Harrison’s good mood evaporated. “What do you mean, you can’t go?”
“Remember Stephanie’s retreat?”
“Vaguely.”
“She’s leaving this afternoon, hooking up with some college buddies, then they’re all going to tramp around the wilderness and prove they’re Amazon women, or something.”
Harrison tried to envision his sister-in-law going native and couldn’t. This was a woman who thought “roughing it” was drinking beer out of the can instead of a glass. “I don’t see the connection.”
Jon gave him an impatient look. “The kids? Your nephews? I’ve got to be home to take care of them.”
“That’s what baby-sitters are for!”
“I’m not leaving them with a stranger for a week!”
“And when were you planning to tell me you were taking the entire week off?” The tone in Harrison’s voice hushed the murmuring of the department heads gathered for the meeting.
“I’m not taking the whole week off. I’d planned to work at home. Make phone calls, reports, that sort of stuff. The kids have a play group thing that meets a couple of mornings and I’ll stop by here then. And when I pick up and drop paperwork off, I’ll bring them with me, or hire a sitter. I didn’t see that it would a problem.”
This wasn’t a problem. This was a disaster. Harrison lowered his voice. “Chicago is a huge client. The contract was contingent upon you conducting the initial training.”
Jon shook his head. “Postpone it, then.”
“Impossible. They’ve had to rearrange the schedules of their top management to clear that week.”
“Okay, offer them a discount and send somebody else.”
“This is Chicago Manufacturing, Jon. They don’t want discounts, they want you.”
Jon glanced to his left and Harrison realized that everyone in the room was straining to hear each and every syllable they uttered. Here were the Rothwells, themselves, involved in a schedule conflict. How they handled it would demonstrate Harrison’s methods better than any pamphlet printed with the corporate philosophy.
Trying to communicate all this, he stared into his brother’s eyes. “What about Stephanie’s parents? Can’t they watch the boys?”
“They live in California.”
“What about our parents?” Harrison didn’t like the tinge of desperation in his voice.
Jon’s face turned hard. “They live in Florida. I can take care of my own sons.”
Harrison felt Jon was being deliberately difficult. “I know that. I only thought...well, whatever happened to doting grandparents? Wouldn’t they like to visit their only grandchildren for a week?”
“I’m not asking them. Steph wants me to take care of the kids, and I’m going to. She’s been at home with them ever since Nathan was born and she needs the break.”
“A break from what?” Harrison had been surprised when Stephanie hadn’t returned to work. He was even more surprised that his brother hadn’t objected. “They’re two little kids. What does she do all day?”
Jon raised his eyebrows.
Murmurings from the female members of their audience told Harrison he’d erred.
He held up his hands, palms outward. “Sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.”
“You shouldn’t have thought that,” Sharon commented, slipping past them and finding her seat in the room. “But we all know you do.”
Women were neither efficient, nor reasonable when it came to children. Harrison vowed to devote as many chapters to children as necessary in the Rothwell Domestic Primer. Ah, a title. That was a good sign.
Harrison carefully chose his next words. “What I think, Sharon, is that parents are reluctant to encourage efficiency in their children, and in the people who deal with children.”
“Harrison, raising children is not like running a corporation.”
Murmurings of agreement signaled mutiny in the ranks.
He forced a smile and casual body language. “Ah, but you see, running a household, even a household that includes children, is exactly like running a corporation.”
“Uh, Hare?”
But anything his brother had been about to say was drowned out by the eruption of disagreement from the department heads—male and female.
Ah, skeptics. Harrison liked converting skeptics to his way of thinking almost as much as reading their subsequent letters of gratitude.
With a confident smile, he took his place at the conference table.
People quieted—except Sharon.
“You know how to run a corporation, but you don’t know anything about living with children.” Sharon had experienced more than her share of domestic crises lately. That must account for her inclination to challenge him today.
“You are correct,” he said. The room hushed. “You all are also aware that Jon and I have been working out a schedule conflict. What we have here, are two problems with one solution. Backup plans are a key to avoiding delays. Jon, what’s your childcare backup plan, say, for a family emergency?”
“I’m Stephanie’s backup, then either of our folks.”
