I was a new woman at work the next day and couldn’t help but smile thinking about how dejected I had felt yesterday at the seemingly insurmountable task ahead of me, and how one amazing night with Justin had turned everything around.

I had left Justin to amuse himself for the day and came to work greeting Karen with a bright smile.I’m sure she thought I was high, but hoped she’d soon be as enthusiastic as I was once I had told her what Elliot and I had planned to do with her.

I got to work and logged into my workstation to find a shared video link from Justin.I opened it cautiously making sure the volume was at a quiet level, because I didn’t never quite what to expect with him.

It took a moment to load, and a second later Justin’s face popped up on screen.

“Hey watch this. I’ve been laughing all morning,” he said simply and the camera spun shakily around to a view of the ground where Barney stood panting by the pool. Justin hooked his arm underneath him and lifted him over the water.

I closed my eyes and shook my head, opening my eyes again to see Justin drop Barney into the pool.He was submerged for a moment and when he broke the surface of the water, he began paddling and I could hear Justin laughing in the background hysterically.

“Look at his little paws, Go buddy! Come on Barney you can do it,” he encouraged the beagle guiding him towards the pool steps and I rested my temple against my hand and shook my head smiling.

“Small things amuse small minds,” I said to myself watching my poor dog flounder in the water and paddling wildly to get to the stairs. I couldn’t help but laugh at how much effort Barney was exerting and the way he snorted water out of his nose as he paddled along and when he finally made it to the steps, he leapt out of the water and shook vigorously to the praise of a very amused camera man.

“Good boy Barney! Good work bud! Let’s go see if Bowser wants to have a dip,” he said and the video stopped suddenly and I leapt for the phone.

I dialed in his number, and when he answered almost immediately he was already laughing.

“Don’t you dare,” I warned him which only made him laugh harder.

“I won’t, I wouldn’t,” he promised and I sat back in my chair as Karen stood at my office door knocking, timidly.

“I knew I shouldn’t have left you alone with the children, please just behave yourself, I have to go,” I said rapidly.

“Okay bye,” he laughed and I hung up and shook my head with a sigh.

Karen eyed me questioningly and I waved a hand in the air as though it was nothing.

“My boyfriend is terrorizing my pets,” I explained briefly and motioned for her to sit down.

“Have a seat.”

She looked so cautious and I almost wanted to shake her and tell her not to worry so much but I pulled myself together, shook the image of the doggie paddling beagle from my mind and refocused on my job.

“How are you Karen?”

“Oh, you know,” she shrugged and I chuckled and nodded.

“Yeah, I hear ya. But hopefully you and I can turn things around a bit,” I began pulling my seat closer to the desk and so did she.

“The reason I wanted to meet with you this morning, is to talk to you a bit about your role.”

“Uh huh,” she still looked worried and I smiled and looked at her directly.

“Karen, relax I come in peace,” I assured her and she seemed to relax a little then. “I have spoken to Elliot about what I think the is best the course to plot in terms of the new staff we’re going to be hiring and we’ve both decided that we can’t keep you on front desk and expect you to also do all the various other tasks that go along with providing support for Elliot. So, What I proposed is that, the first role we fill will be a junior front desk, receptionist to take those tasks off you and give you and I chance to maybe do a little training so that you’re all knowledge up for your new role as Supervising Administrator.”

Karen’s eyebrows shot up in surprise and I’m not sure what else she would have been expecting.

“Wow…me? Really?”

“Well, yeah,” I shrugged, “who else would we pick?”

Karen laughed and finally it seemed to sink in.

“I know it can seem like all the work you’re doing here isn’t making a dent, and what you’ve done compared to what you still have to do can feel like a drop in the ocean, but Elliot is very pleased with you and the job you’re doing and it’s certainly not unnoticed, so it just seemed like a logical decision that if we were going to hire more staff, we would bump you up and have the few working ants we’ll hire report to you, leaving Elliot free to do all of his Managerial duties.”

“That sounds awesome,” she said with a relived smile and I was glad to see her relax a bit, hating to think that she saw me as someone who was either coming to fire her or make her job even harder.

“Excellent, so for the next few weeks, you and I are going to need to work together on-“ just then the phone rang and I held up my finger and looked over at the display, but there was no number showing.

“Hold on a sec,” I said picking up the phone.“Sophie Bowen speaking.”

“Sophie Bowen speaking,” Justin mocked my greeting and I bit my lip “You’ve changed, you’re all business now.”

“I’m in a meeting now, can I call you back?”

“Don’t bother, I just wanted to tell you how disappointed I am that I stumbled across a folder on your laptop at home called “Hot Guys” and I’m not in there.”

I didn’t know how to respond without letting Karen know that it was a private call, but she seemed to guess from my expression, so I just answered.

“What are you doing on my laptop when you have like five of your own.”

“Snooping. I would have thought that was obvious. Don’t panic, though, thanks to Google Images you now have many choice photographs of me from various periods of my life.”

“I’m hanging up.”

“Okay, but before you do, what’s in the folder labeled “Pics for Joel?” Is he an ex or something?”

I sighed and closed my eyes.

“Why are you bothering to ask, you’ve obviously already been through it.”

“Yeah,” he giggled, “you have great ti-“

“Okay Justin, from now on, this number is only for emergencies, okay,” I interrupted and hung up.

Other than the fact that I was beet red, I was the picture of composure and Karen was smiling and biting her lip.

“He sounds fun.”

“Yeah that’s one word to describe him,” I sighed eager to get back to business and before I could even continue on my iPhone rang on my desk. Although it was on silent, the display began flashing with a picture of Justin’s face and I sighed and tried not to pay attention.

“Um…” I said trying to refocus my brain a Karen looked down and noticed my screen.

“Why do you have Justin Timberlake flashing on your iPhone?” she said and I sighed and shook my head defeated.

“I don’t know how to begin trying to answer that question,” I sighed and looked down at the phone. “I’m sorry Karen.”

“Go ahead, do you want me to come back?”

“No, no please just stay. I’ll just be a second,” I said answering the phone impatiently.

“What did I just say?”

“You said the work phone was for emergencies.”

“Mmmm Hmmm”

“So I called your iPhone,” he said, his voice wavering with amusement and I hung up immediately and switched my iPhone off.

“Okay so,” I said launching right back into conversation with Karen who was laughing because she knew that whoever was on the other end was being mischievous.

“I’m in the process of hiring a replacement receptionist now so as soon they start, you and I will get to training as well as trying to get some of that back log cleared…as well as rebuilding the filing collection…room…thing,” I floundered and Karen smiled and flicked her wrist casually at the Herculean task that I had just described so flippantly.

“Piece of cake,” she said I smiled just as Elliot came to the door not looking too happy.

“Uh oh,” I said leaning back in my seat and Karen looked between us nervously.

“Because we didn’t have enough obstacles to overcome, it has been brought to my attention that the contracts we’ve been mailing out to our clients, had been updated and I had no idea because Jeremy, the son of a bitch before me didn’t bother telling anyone.”

Both Karen and I sunk low in our seats and turned visibly pale, knowing exactly what meant right away.

“Not only that, but the changes made to the contracts were in relation to changes in the laws specific to how we have to capture company information, so now all the signed contracts we have for the past two years are, in effect illegal….how are we going to fix this,” he asked, enunciating his words to demonstrate how angry he was, but was trying to stay cool.

My eyes flickered to Karen who looked nervous again.

“This is not your fault,” I assured her and Elliot shook his head.

“No, it’s not but we’re going to have to work out pretty quickly how we’re going to get twelve hundred contracts re-signed for compliance by the time Sophie has to go back to New York.”

I didn’t know how to begin trying to resolve that question and all the stress I thought I’d left behind suddenly came flooding back to me.

“We’re going to have to go over budget,” I said simply, “there’s no getting around it, we need hands in here. New York is going to have to accept that if they want Houston back up and running, then they’ll have to spend some money to make money.”

“Do you want to tell them that,” Elliot asked grinning, happy to leave that ball in my court and I shrugged.

“Well I don’t think we have much of a choice now, do we? Houston is just going to have to go over this year.”

“Well first thing is first, we need to get Marketing out here, to help rebuild our client confidence,” and the mere mention of Adrian’s department tightened my chest.

“Marketing, why would we do that?” I asked jumpily.

“Because if we go back to our clients right now, telling them that they’ve signed illegal contracts, that doesn’t bode well for business and we need to go into damage control.”

“But what are we reassuring them with? We don’t have any processes here and no staff to answer their questions or anything?”

Elliot nodded and though about it for a moment.

“Yeah Soph, I agree, but I still think we need Adrian out here, for a week or two after we send a mail out to all the clients explaining to them why they need to re-sign their contracts…just to sweet talk them into not pulling business.”

Even though I had to step back, be professional and realize that my decisions needed to be made on what was best for business and not myself, the thought of having Adrian in Houston for any period of time, churned my stomach.