Page 20 of All for Love

MERCEDES

It’d been a weird few days. Settling in at the office had taken longer than I’d thought it would and longer than it usually did. Mostly because Wagner Industries was unlike any other company I’d ever worked in, and it wasn’t just because it was by far the largest.

Their offices were truly impressive, the scale they worked on massive, and my stepbrothers did a hell of a job running it. Technically, their father was still in charge, but not only had he taken off after the wedding, but rumor had it he’d been relying on them heavily for years to help him keep this place going.

Realizing all that was a big part of the weirdness. Around here, they were gods. Larger than life with the power to revolutionize just about anything they touched if they wanted to pick it up.

Kaden was on the creative side of things and Kody was on sales, and together, they made an incredible team.

Kaden had been friendly enough since I’d started, helping me out, checking in every so often, and he’d even jokingly taken to calling me sis—and not in that derogatory, snide way Kody had done it a time or two.

His brother was nice about it, and it wasn’t as weird or as irritating as I’d thought it would be. In fact, I kind of liked working with Kaden. I also really liked his girlfriend, Brooke, who often popped by the office.

She was cheerful and positive all the time, friendly and genuinely interested in what I did. I’d sensed definite tension between her and Kody, especially at the cake testing for our parents’ wedding, but that was none of my business. I was curious, but not enough to ask.

Today was the first day I was feeling a little more at home in my surroundings. I’d finally managed to explore the entire building that housed their headquarters and I now felt like I had more of a lay of the land.

The first step of my process once I’d gotten a feeling for a company and the environment in which they operated was to declutter. Kaden and Kody ran a pretty tight ship here, but I’d noticed that their file storage in the executive wing had become something of a dumping ground.

It was also not a place that could be a pressure point for Kody. As such, it was not a place that would result in an argument about what I was doing. Having decided to start with that, I headed to the large room that was the size of a banquet hall and rolled up my sleeves.

Rows upon rows of shelving had been installed here, but the boxes that had been placed on top of them seemed to be haphazard. There was no logical system to where they’d been placed, and worse yet was the fact that there were hundreds of piles of papers between the boxes and on the floor.

Their physical organization of files, supplies, and all sorts of random documentation was atrocious, and since this was where the stuff went rather than just paperwork generated by their workforce, I wanted to make it perfect.

Hours passed as I waded through decades of paper, old training binders for new hires, folders filled with research material, ancient contracts, and a bunch of spreadsheets dating back to the seventies.

It was tedious work, and a lot of the information was outdated and should’ve been discarded ages ago. Like the twenty-five-year-old marketing plan for an agricultural product that had long since been modernized.

There was also a whole pile of legal precedent for an intellectual property lawsuit that seemed to have taken place in the eighties and an entire bookshelf against one wall filled with engineering magazines from the nineties. Why my stepfather had kept it all, I didn’t know, but I started making a list of the things I was unsure about getting rid of.

Once I’d sorted through what was relevant and what wasn’t, it was well into the afternoon. Enough time to sketch out a plan for what this place is going to look like when I’m done with it.

Kneeling on the carpet, I was in the middle of sketching out my plan when a firm knock sounded from the door. It was so unexpected that I jumped. Blinking fast, I looked up before my gaze settled on Kody.

Dressed like he was auditioning for the Corporate Hotties of America pageant, he was in a tailored, dove gray suit with a crisp white button-down shirt and a sky blue tie that matched his eyes perfectly. All that golden blond hair was styled neatly away from his face, showcasing his chiseled jaw and his high, sharp cheekbones.

Silver cufflinks winked from his sleeve, and his jacket was undone, hanging open just so with his hand slid casually into his pocket as he watched me. “What are you doing?”

“My job,” I said cautiously, not wanting to give him any reason to go into a rage that might keep me busy for twenty minutes while he ranted. “What are you doing?”

“Why are there papers scattered all around you if you’re supposed to be organizing? This doesn’t look very organized.”

I rolled my eyes, but he had a point. At this stage, the room kind of looked like a hurricane had ripped through it. “It’s organized chaos. What do you want?”

His eyebrows swept up at the word organized, but then he shrugged and stepped into the room. “Are you coming to dinner at my dad’s house on Sunday?”

“It’s my mom’s house now too.”

He rolled his eyes at me this time. “Sure, it is. It’s all hers now too.”

Stopping about halfway in, he leaned against the wall and crossed his arms while I smiled to myself, not letting on that one day, I might be getting a slice of that pie too. It had been brought up when I’d agreed to help my mom and his dad with their wedding, after all.

I doubted it had been mentioned to him, though. If it had been, he’d have been running around like a headless chicken yelling, “Gold-digger! Gold-digger!”

Nothing could be further from the truth, but I still wasn’t giving him an excuse to hate me even more. “Yes, I’m going to dinner. I’m bringing the appetizer.”

Kody arched an eyebrow as he looked at me like I wasn’t used to the finer things in life. “The old man has a kitchen staff who will prepare dinner. You don’t have to do anything.”