With Love, from Cold World(32)

It did almost seem unfair, that she and Daniel would have this advantage. But it made sense for them to know the financial ins and outs of the company. Asa was . . . whatever he was. A jack-of-all-trades. He didn’t necessarily need to add this arrow to his quiver.

There was a light rap on her door, and she looked up to see Daniel in her doorway. “Come on in,” she said. “I was just printing out the last spreadsheet.”

“Actually,” he said, giving her his megawatt smile, “could we move this to my mother’s office? She’s out until after lunch.”

It would make things a lot less convenient, because Lauren had wanted to stay near her computer in case she had to look anything up or make an adjustment. But she’d printed two copies of everything, so she supposed there was no reason why they couldn’t meet in Dolores’ office. “Sure,” she said. “Let me just gather everything up.”

Even a week ago, she would’ve had a much harder time staying chill this close to Daniel. Having his attention on her—her!—would’ve scrambled her brain. She was proud of herself for maintaining her cool. What had Asa accused her of, when he’d called her out for sloshing coffee on herself? Being stricken by Daniel’s macho charisma?

Well, she was one hundred percent in control. If only he could see her now.

She reached the door to Dolores’ office first, but she had her hands full with the folders of paperwork, and anyway, it felt weird to open someone else’s office. She stepped to the side, but Daniel was busy typing something into his phone. He gave a nod down at the doorknob. “It’s open,” he said.

She shifted the folders to one arm so she could bend down to turn the knob, but she misjudged which side of the folder was the open side, and ended up sending a sheaf of papers floating to the ground. So much for being cool.

“You can put those on the desk,” Daniel said, stepping around her. “I had something I wanted to run by you first.”

She slid the last of the papers back in their folder, hoping they were still in the order she’d arranged them in. She wondered what he had to run by her—was it something work-related? Or was he maybe going to renew his invitation to dinner?

This time, she’d take him up on it.

He took Dolores’ seat behind her desk, steepling his fingers together in a way that really did make him look like his mother’s son. She took the same seat where she’d been sitting just a few days ago, getting in trouble with Asa for the snowball fight.

She kept one folder on her lap, sliding the other one across to Daniel. He didn’t even glance down at it. Instead, he held up his hands, almost like he was quieting a crowd of adoring fans.

“Picture this,” he said. “Snowboarding. Sledding. The Winter X Games right here in Orlando.”

“Oh, cool,” she said. She had only a vague idea of what the Winter X Games were, but from context she assumed winter sports. “When is that supposed to be?”

“Whenever we make it happen,” Daniel said, leaning forward, his eyes bright. “Don’t you see? If we build it, they will come. This is the future of Cold World.”

“Snowboarding.”

“In Florida.” He smiled up at the ceiling, as if he was thanking the lord above for all the cash that was about to come pouring in. “The novelty alone will have people beating down our door. We’ll need to completely revamp the place, obviously. If we build over the back parking lot, we can put the slopes there, and then—”

Lauren almost couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “Where would people park?”

He waved his hand, as if it was no concern of his. “Where do they ever park in Orlando? At the Waffle House down the street and they can walk over. One of the garages downtown and then they can Uber. I don’t care.”

She pressed her fingertips to her temples. She felt a headache coming on, and she had a feeling it was the word slopes that had done it. He wanted to build actual snow slopes? Outside? In Florida? Was he absolutely off his rocker?

He picked up the folder in front of him, leafing through it quickly before closing it again. “So you’re the numbers girl,” he said. “You tell me how we can make this happen. I have a guy who says he’ll put up three hundred thousand, but we’ll probably need at least another one point two, something like that.”

“Hundred thousand?”

A line of irritation marred his forehead, like he thought she was being dense on purpose. “Million.”

“Million?” Lauren knew she’d reached the stage where she was just stupidly repeating words, but she couldn’t think of what else to say.

“What’s our overhead?” he asked. “There were a lot more people at that staff meeting than I expected. Do we employ too many people?”

She didn’t think cutting a few entry-level jobs would get them to over a million dollars, but what did she know. She opened her mouth, about to point out that operating a full winter sports park would likely require more employees, when the door cracked open and Asa popped his head in.

“Sorry,” he said. “Am I late?”

He didn’t wait for a response before coming in and sitting in the same chair where he’d faced down Dolores a few days before, calling their snowball fight a “lapse in judgment.” She hadn’t fully appreciated it at the time, but it was pretty decent of him to take the fall for that. She had started it, but he hadn’t even mentioned that in front of the boss.