Against all odds

CHAPTER 4

It’s Sunday evening, Rosaria’s favorite time of the day, she was snug at a corner table in her favorite work cafe. Rose had started this Sunday evening solo date when she lost her dad. After his death, she was diagnosed with separation anxiety disorder at first, but over time, as she healed from the loss, she was still always anxious. Coming to this quaint Woody-themed cafe helped her relax and sort out her thoughts in anticipation of the new week. She's multitasking between planning and sipping her drink when her elbow accidentally knocks into the arm of Andres, Mr. Ford’s only son, her future boss, unknown to her of course. The impact sends her drink tumbling onto her keyboard, causing a minor disaster.

"Whoa, I'm so sorry!" Andres exclaims, reaching for napkins to help her with the spill. Rose’s frustration is palpable, and she begins to mop up the drink while trying to salvage her laptop.

"No, no, it's fine,” Rose mutters curtly, avoiding eye contact and clearly flustered. She tries to downplay the situation, but her tone is far from friendly.

“Oh good.” He drops the napkins he’d been holding and shakes his hands to dry them off.

Rose is confused- “What do you mean good?”

“You said it’s fine, so it’s fine, right? What do you need my help for?”

Gosh, his slight British accent made him sound even more pompous.

“It’s NOT fine, do you have any manners at all? You knock over someone’s drink and you’re not even trying to help- who raised you?”

“You must be confused lady, because first of all I tried-“

“Barely.”

“I tried to help you, and you said it was fine. Am I supposed to beg you to let me help? I don’t beg.”

“I don’t even need your help, you can take that nasty attitude, double it, and go give it to someone else.”

Andres almost laughed at that. She was being rude to him, that was new. Most ladies would have found a way to get his socials by now. He wanted to get a bigger reaction out of her.

“Fine, don’t get your panties in a bunch, you’re practically begging-“

She stares him down so she can communicate her irritation to him better. He’s overcompensating for the awkwardness and goes to grab some more tissues, and in the process knocks down her phone.

"Oh my God, can you leave?" Rose raises her voice a bit at him, flustered and irritated by the mess. “Stop trying to help me and just leave-“

“Look woman, I’m just trying to help.”

“Well, your helping is just making everything worse. Just leave -“

“Rude much?” He flings the tissues on the table, “You’re not even going to acknowledge that I was just trying to be helpful? You’re not even going to say thank you?”

“Thank you? For spilling my drink on my iPad and shoving my phone to the floor?” At this, she makes a show of picking up her phone and wiping it.

“And I said sorry! I even tried to help- look I can just easily get you another drink if that’s what you’re really upset about.” He turns away to call a waiter then-

“No! I don’t want another drink, and I’m not upset, you're just annoying. Thanks for your help” Her ‘thanks’ was enunciated and highly sarcastic “But you can leave now.”

“Well fine then.”

He heads toward the exit, casting a final glance over his shoulder before disappearing out the door. He suppressed a smile. What an interesting young lady, she managed to both offend him and impress him at the same time.

Unbeknownst to both, their paths are destined to cross again, albeit under different circumstances.

But in the meantime, Rose struggled to get back into her productivity flow.

Gosh, I hate clumsy people, are you five?

————-

“Are you done yet? We don’t have all day, there’s things to be done.” Rose was in the HR department of the company and her time was being wasted. She came here for two reasons. One because Mr Ford was in a cranky mood and kept shouting at someone in his office, and two, she had a deadline today that needed some data from HR. Yet, they were intentionally stalling and wasting her time.

She thought back to the conversation she heard Mr Ford having with someone in his office. She could only catch a few snippets of what they were saying, but from the tone he was angry, and he also mentioned Rose more than once.

“…can you at least be grateful? I don’t know what you want me to do-“ a bang on the table- “I’m at my wit's end! Listen, you HAVE to do it…What do you mean there’s nothing here? There’s everything here!…you’ll be fine, they’ll be fine. That’s literally what social media is for. I promise it’s not that hard, you have Rose, she’s a help…No, she’s really sweet and nice…What else do you want me to do? I need coffee gosh.”

Snapping out of the flashback, she snatched the papers out of the printer and started to head out the door when she bumped right into Suzie.

“Rose, you’re not the queen of this office, and I’m not your handmaiden okay?”

“What are you even talking about?” She shoved past Suzie and started walking back to her desk.

“Mr Ford has been calling for ‘your highness’ for at least ten minutes, and you were nowhere to be found. You were running around in your little ‘palace’, and he made me, the designated queen maid, come find you. Maybe you could walk a bit faster? He’s been waiting gosh.”

She dashed up the stairs to their office area and knocked on the door rapidly before stepping in.

Rose walked into the office and tried to collect herself. She smiled her shiny smile at Mr. Ford. “I’m so sorry, I didn’t know you needed me, I was printing the reports from HR.” Mr Ford just waved his hand and gestured to the person sitting in front of him, backing Rose. He turned his head and she was face to face with Mr. Clumsy from the cafe.

What did he want with Mr Ford?

She turned away from him to look at Mr. Ford, a question in her eyes.

“Andres, Rosaria. Rosaria, Andres. CEO meet secretary, secretary meet CEO.” He sipped his coffee, watching their reactions to his introduction.

They were both stunned, Rose was frozen. She’d already gone through a good number of scenarios that Andres’ hatred for her could result in. Just her luck, the very person who could secure her place in the company thought she was rude and annoying. In those few seconds, she already imagined her sack letter, her mom and sister in rags in an empty desolate house without electricity or water, and of course, the hell that was modern-day job hunting.

Rosaria physically shuddered and shook the thoughts out of her head. But the fears loomed higher and higher in her mind. Maybe she could convince him that she wasn’t an annoying, condescending secretary who would give him hell every day at work. Should she apologize? Ask Daniel to put in a word for her. Something, anything?

Yet, HE knocked my drink over! I was working and he brought his clumsy self my way. Maybe if he’d been more careful I wouldn’t be having literal palpitations right now.

The thought gave her a little comfort. If she was asked why she was rude to the future CEO of Ford Industries, she would simply tell them he knocked over her drink.

Yeah, no.

She could already hear all her colleagues laughing at her. This would surely cement it in their heads that she was badly behaved.

All she could do was act normal. She planned to avoid him until he was officially CEO, she assumed and hoped he’d have forgotten about their encounter by that time.

“Oh, nice to meet you, Andres.” He looked sideways towards her and nodded.

“Officially.” She smiled a bit awkwardly wringing her hands. Daniel either was too occupied with his thoughts or just didn’t care, but he didn’t ask Andres what he meant.

“Take a seat, Rose.” She sat down at the only free seat, the one next to Andres. She faced Mr. Ford squarely, avoiding any contact with Andres whatsoever.

Andres on the other hand, was showing off the most smug smile known to man, he’d even turned towards her and crossed his legs, unabashedly staring at her and grinning.

“The most powerful shareholder, Mrs Greenwitch, feels that Andres should take over as soon as next week.”

Phew.

But wait-

“Next week? That’s way too soon. We haven’t even gotten all the other stakeholders on board the handover.”

“I know, and that’s what I’ve been trying to tell her. But she’s insistent. She feels the company needs this fresh management and it will do the company some good. But like you said, it’s too soon. Andres here just arrived on Saturday.”

No way I was rude to him on his second day in America. Way to secure the job, Rosaria.

“Well, we need to up our pace then, right?”

“Right, the entire thing is just really stressing me out because Andres needs some orientation before he takes over. He needs to be familiar with the system a bit. He’s a great businessman, but we need him to train to be an even greater CEO of this company.

Andres was looking up at this point, focused on what his dad was saying and nodding.

“Yeah, 'cause I don’t feel confident enough in what I know to actually run this company. I’ll need help.” He turned to look at her and she was taken back by his eyes. He had deep brown eyes that sucked her in. He was clearly waiting for her to say but she was a bit disoriented by his stare. She tore herself away from the insane eye contact moment they just shared and looked at Mr Ford. Still a bit confused on what to say, “Um yeah, definitely there’s so much to know about the company, how is he going to be trained?”

“I was going to take him up for the next couple weeks while we sort out all the paperwork, but since he’s expected to take over by next week, he’ll need some sort of crash course.”

“…yes…”

“Yeah, so that’s where you come in. Andres is going to be with you for the week. Take him around, let him get familiar with the staff, take him along while you’re working so he gets more comfortable with the workings of the company, the system, as much as you can possibly teach him.”

OH NO.