Daphne

Rick thought his presentation was right on the mark. So did every executive in the room save one: Daphne. He was warned about her, and sure enough she had continually interrupted him, diving into the most minute details. In short, she had taken a well crafted talk and made a complete train wreck of it.

Daphne was the executive Vice President of strategy and was loathed by most of RIck’s peers.

As he sat in his office licking his wounds Ginger and Mark stopped by. “How’d your meeting go?”

He laughed, “Got my head handed to me.”

Ginger chuckled, “Told you, she’s toxic”. They turned and walked off giggling down the hallway. As he watched them go，he felt a twitch in his stomach. They seemed nice enough, but they also seemed to be celebrating the fact that Daphne had played to type. It was like they wanted to enlist him in their army of Daphne haters. Just one more walking example that she was mean.

An hour later, after he’d gone back over the notes he’d taken of her critiques, he headed up to the executive suite. He walked past a row of mahogany doors and knocked on the last one.

“Come in.” Daphne looked up from a book she was reading, “Oh listen, your presentation was damned good. Sometimes I get carried away. I guess it’s intimidating.”

He smiled at her, appreciating her candor. “Actually I came up to thank you. Everything you said was spot on. And don’t worry, I don’t intimidate easily.”

She laughed, “I can see that!”

Neither of them said anything for a few seconds and he found himself looking at her. She was smart as a whip and very pretty, and an idea, a breathtakingly stupid idea, was starting to form in his head. She had taken her hair down since the meeting and he was surprised to see it was full, very long and wavy. At the moment she was twirling a few strands in her fingers but stopped as soon as he noticed the body language.

 He took a breath “What are you doing for dinner?”

“WHAT?”

“Dinner tonight, unless you’re dating someone…are you?”

“No, I mean…ARE YOU HITTING ON ME?!”

He grinned, “It’s just dinner.”

She considered for a minute, “Sorry, I’m flattered really, I shouldn’t go out with a subordinate.”

He was thinking about the difference between shouldn’t and won’t when she spoke up: “Well, I am hungry. Ok look, we’ll split the check so then it’s just a dinner meeting. That’s the rule okay?”

Thirty minutes later they got out of the Lyft at “Tony’s” and the maitre’d, recognizing Daphne, gave them a seat overlooking the ocean. Dinner turned into after dinner drinks and conversation and before they knew it the waiter was dropping hints that it was time to go home.

“One check or two?”

He spoke up. “One, and I’ll take it.” Daphne looked at him but didn’t say a word.

As they waited for a ride back to their cars Daphne was staring straight ahead. “To tell the truth, your presentation sucked.”

He grinned, “And all your advice was bullshit.”

She offered her hand, he took it.

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