A Charitable Scandal

The Father's Intuition

After gorging on a giant bowl of pasta and a cannoli — neither of which succeeded in drowning out all the noise in my head — I returned to my office. There was still a few hours left in the day and I needed to convene with Alec over how the show went and then go over my plans for the remaining weeks ahead. When I opened my office door, however, I found that my meeting with Alec was going to have to wait.

"Bout time you showed up! We were starting to think you took an early weekend. Not that anyone could blame you." Emily sat on the corner of her desk, while Ryan stood not far from her, watching me with a wary eye.

"Just a long lunch," I explained as I deposited my things onto my desk. "I'll probably be here a little later today, depending on what Mr. Radcliffe needs for next week."

"Yeah, now that we finished recording the commercial, half our team has suddenly freed up to do other things," said Ryan with a tired sigh.

"Oh right, you had that this morning too. How did it go?" I asked, turning to face him and Emily.

"Fine enough, with Emily's help here we were able to borrow some decorations to fill up the set. Made it look glamorous. Hopefully it will secure us some tickets." He nodded to Emily who brimmed with a pleased smile. "We did, however, take the time to stop and watch your interview."

"And?" I asked, not sure what to expect given my lofty promises.

"Well I can say all of us here in the office were just stunned by how well you handled Mariska," said Emily and Ryan nodded in agreement. "We thought she had you cornered for a moment, but I guess we should have known better."

Emily then gave me a knowing look from the corner of her eye and I gave her a flicker of a smile.

"It was interesting though," said Ryan, his eyes looking to the floor as a finger brushed the bottom of his lip, "what she was bringing up about the charity. At the set, we all started to talk about it and we realized that we'd been so busy selling the gala, we hadn't thought to pitch the charity in the commercial as well."

"Yeah, but the commercial is for the gala," said Emily. "You're trying to sell tickets, which in turn will get them to the event and we'll sell the charity to them there." She tried to give him a reassuring smile, but I knew she sympathized with him. We both did, but neither of us needed anyone else to get dragged into this mess. Unfortunately, Ryan had seen enough bull shit in his years to know what it smelled like.

"Maybe," he said. "Anyway, word is the top floor is a bit ruffled by your spur of the moment interview with the charity. Not that it really matters, it was clear that the audience loved your gracious attitude. In our field, that's all that's really important."

"Okay," I said, taking a deep breath, "I should probably..."

"You should do nothing," said Ryan with a fatherly smile. "I think you've done enough for today."

"We've both done enough," I corrected.

"Right," he said before taking a deep, calming breath. "Anyway, just relax. If Radcliffe shows up, then we'll have a meeting. Otherwise let the weekend happen and save your stress for Monday."

"Yeah, Friday is pretty much done," said Emily. "Most have already checked out. Speaking of which..." Emily went quiet as she looked over at the Pit. Her face tightened once she spotted something or someone and then she turned back to face us. "There's something I've got to do before the end of the day. So if you'll excuse me."

Emily left with no further explanation. Ryan, however, decided to stay. I figured he wanted to discuss how the commercial went, but when I smiled into his brown eyes, I only found quiet concern.