Chapter 22

ERIN WAS IN THE OFFICE fifteen minutes earlier than usual. The previous week, she and Carver had set up her office in the space that Jerico had graciously relinquished. They’d spent the time reviewing all the reports and status of projects for the company. While Cloudhaven was the focus of their energy, it was by no means the only project going on in the company. The residential construction group had recently begun building a new neighborhood on the west side of Jerico City and the real estate division was reporting an uptick in home sales consistent with expectations for spring. The one item Erin was unhappy with was the status of the foreclosed Mackenzie project in St. Louis.

Before she started on her regular morning routine, she sat at her computer and sent several messages and meeting requests. Rather than starting with her COO or General Counsel, Erin began with the PR department. Her new position needed an announcement with some fanfare. Then she would meet with the Director of Human Resources and get the new position paperwork taken care of. She’d already sent the personnel request to have Carver named as Chief Architect.

When she had those few items taken care of, she moved to the kitchen to make coffee. She could hear Carver moving upstairs in his bedroom and bathroom.

Preston came downstairs and headed for the kitchen.

“Will you join me for breakfast?” he asked.

“Oh! Is that allowed?” she laughed. “I’d love to have a cup of coffee with you.”

“Hardly enough to start your day as CEO of this prestigious company. Let me fix you something hot,” he said.

“Thank you, Jerry. I’ll just print out the schedule for the day.”

They sat to eat a light breakfast and talked about the agenda for the day. He fully agreed with her assessment of what was important. She scheduled an executive staff meeting for Thursday, with location to be announced. The PR person would be in the office at nine o’clock. Before that, the elevator chimed and Preston’s laundry arrived from the weekend. Erin jumped up to get it and put it away.

“I don’t think the CEO should have to put away my laundry,” he sighed. “Maybe I should learn to put my own clothes away. It’s rather pretentious of me to have an assistant do menial tasks, don’t you think?”

“I took them on as part of my job,” Erin said. “I never felt demeaned by doing what was my job to do. I suppose we might need another assistant, though. Let’s see how the day plays out and decide later if we need to do more work ourselves or to have someone else pick up some for us. HR might have something planned already. Technically, the workload in the room remains the same. We still have the Chairman and the CEO. I’m not sure it requires another pair of hands.”

“You might be surprised. You know, I have simply ignored a lot of the job. I don’t respond to a lot of messages and you pick that up. I don’t go out to social or public events, which the CEO might normally be expected to attend. I’ve left that to the President. I can’t really blame the other execs for rebelling. I ignored a lot of what people consider the normal tasks of the chief executive.”

The elevator chimed and Erin greeted a person from the marketing department assigned to interview her for a press release, while a second person carted in a camera and began figuring out where she should pose the new executive.

It took longer than Erin had allowed, Preston sitting behind his computer monitors the entire time. He never said a word. After the meeting and interview, she had time to check the new messages, one of which was the company-wide announcement from the PR person. Erin followed it up with her own company-wide greeting.

At ten-thirty, she left the sanctity and sanity of the penthouse office and went to the second floor to visit Human Resources.

“Erin! My God! You didn’t waste any time clawing your way to the top,” Ellen said when Erin appeared in her office.

“I started at the top when you sent me to be Mr. Carver’s assistant,” Erin said. She didn’t much like Ellen’s casual way with her. They weren’t friends. “Mr. Carver established a culture that treats executives with a degree of formality. You can refer to me as Miss Scott or Ms. Scott. I’ll expect the same treatment for Mr. Duval, Mr. Masters, Ms. Dirksen, and Mr. Carver.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Ellen said. Who does this upstart think she is? “I suppose we should get your paperwork taken care of. It should only take a few minutes to adjust your employment record with the new salary and benefit schedule. Then there is the matter of stock options.”

“Has Mr. Carver’s new position as Chief Architect been finalized? And I will need to hire a new assistant who can serve both the Chairman and the CEO. I do not have enough hands to juggle the work put on my desk this morning.”

“We have an office and assistant prepared for you on the fifth floor,” Ellen said. “I assumed you would be moving to that location.”

“We’ll hold that option open. For now, I’ll be occupying Mr. Jerico’s space in the penthouse. Let’s schedule IT to make whatever changes they need to in phone directory and computer connections this afternoon. Keep in mind the level of tasks you asked me to perform when I started here. That will also be the starting level for our new assistant.”

“Yes, ma’am. Will there be anything else this morning?”

“No. I’ll stop on the fifth floor and interview the assistant there to determine if he or she will be suitable for the penthouse position.”

Erin finished signing her forms and left Ellen’s office as the HR person stared after her. Ellen immediately called Shannon.

“Hi. Are you the admin for the new CEO?” Erin asked when she approached the woman sitting at the fifth floor desk.

“Yes, ma’am. May I help you? Mr. Duval isn’t in at the moment.”

“I see. I’m Ms. Scott. I am the new CEO. I’ll meet with Mr. Duval later. Please give me a tour of this part of the office and show me to mine.”

“Oh! Okay! I was ... I mean last week ... Mr. Duval said he was going to be the new CEO. He told me if I ... I mean...”

“If you what? Uh ... Miss Anders?” Erin read off the desk plate.

“Please, ma’am. I really need this job. Don’t make me say things that will lose it for me.”

“Miss Anders, I don’t intend to lose your job for you. I will tell you that if you are being sexually harassed by Mr. Duval or by any other member of our staff, that person will be dealt with immediately and harshly. Let’s step into the conference room here and have a little chat.”

Cheryl Anders was in her mid-twenties. She’d gone to community college to get an associate degree in office administration. She wasn’t stupid by any stretch of the imagination. It wasn’t completely clear if Duval had pressured her or if she had simply made herself available, though Erin doubted that.

When she heard the job responsibilities as assistant to the new CEO and Chief Architect, she thought they were a bit strange, but not difficult and certainly not exploiting her—sexually or even intellectually. Erin explained how the job could be expanded beyond the mindless, but that the basics were firm. Cheryl seemed excited, especially when told she would be taken to the penthouse for her job.

“This is a lot better than pretending to be attracted to Mr. Duval,” Cheryl confided when she’d been introduced to the office upstairs.

“You’ll probably do a fair amount of running up and down, as we seldom bring people up here. The first thing I’d like you to do is arrange my meeting with the four officers of the corporation on Thursday. We need a location, coffee, and rolls. And general meeting supplies, of course. I’ve scheduled it to start at nine. In the past, Mr. Carver held very few meetings, so I really don’t know what facilities are available. I’ll be sending a slide deck to you to polish. You’re good with that?”

“Yes, ma’am. Can you show me any tricks to resetting the cubes? I’ve never worked one before.”

If that was the biggest problem she had adjusting, Erin was sure she would work just fine.

When people heard the news that they had a new CEO, eyebrows went up. Most employees just assumed that since Royce Duval was President, he was also the CEO. No one thought of Preston as holding an office at all.

Erin hoped the transition would be quiet and was content to let Duval continue to be the public face of the company as long as he could do so in a supportive and positive way.

By the time of her meeting with the execs on Thursday, Erin was already feeling pressed by the demands of her new job. The executives had apparently decided they should make no decisions without consulting her. She had requests to approve the board meeting minutes, sign off on the partnership draft with Interlake Land Holdings, and decide on a cellular company. She knew these were normally things Duval handled, and in her mind, they were clearly the responsibility of the COO.