My Life Is a Cliché

The first thing I did after physical therapy was run to the office. I was so glad to be back and see how things were going.

“Morana!” both Beatrice and Gregory exclaimed.

“Hey guys,” I said happily, hugging Beatrice and shaking Gregory’s hand. “It’s so great to be back! So, fill me in!”

“Well, we have two more dealerships,” Beatrice said as Gregory handed me a folder I asked them to make. “And Gregory managed four more clients.”

“Oh, this is wonderful,” I grinned. “You guys are the best!”

“What are you doing today?” Beatrice asked.

The phone rang and Gregory went to answer it.

“Check my email,” I answered. She followed me into the office and I was pleased to see she was keeping up with the filing. “I imagine I have a lot.”

She smiled and left me to my emails. I was right. I had at least 100. I settled in for a long day of computer work. At 5, someone knocked on my office door.

“Come in,” I called, adding another potential client into my database.

I grinned when Thaddeus walked in, looking very clean.

“Time to go,” he said but I shook my head.

“I still have 20 emails to go through,” I told him.

“Nope. You have 20 emails to go through tomorrow. I’m hungry and we’re going out for dinner.”

I shook my head again stubbornly. “Emails.”

He narrowed his eyes, putting both hands on my desk. “Food.”

“Emails.”

“Food.”

“Emails!”

A sly grin formed on his lips and, too late, I realized what he was going to do. Next thing I knew, I was tossed over his shoulder.

“Hatch!” I cried out indignantly.

“Good night, Beatrice and Greg!” he said cheerfully.

“Good night, Mr. Hatch,” Gregory said with a grin.

“Beatrice, help me!” I yelled but she only grinned, holding up her hands to show how many folders she had.

“Sorry, Miss Morana. I have a lot of filing to do.”

I glared. “You filed those this morning!”

“I must’ve done it wrong.”

“Hatch, put me down,” I demanded when we got out.

“Okay, boss,” he said and only put me down when we got to his car. “Buckle up! It’s dinner time!”

“How did you get them on your side so fast?” I grumbled, crossing my arms. He chuckled and I rolled down the window. “Don’t forget to-!”

Thaddeus rolled the window up and I slapped his arm.

“So, I was thinking Chinese for dinner,” he said conversationally.

“Oh, fine.” He smiled in satisfaction. “Why aren’t you at the ranch? And you’re so clean.”

His smile faded and he didn’t answer until we got to the restaurant. We got a platter.

“Hector and Frank are working for me,” he said finally and I leaned back. “I know.”

“Why?”

“They got into some trouble at the bar,” he answered, rolling his eyes. “They needed me to pay the bail for Frank so I did with the condition they work it off at the ranch. And they’re visiting the guy,” he added.

“What guy?”

He shook his head. “They got into a bar fight and the man ended up in the hospital.” I covered my mouth. “It’s time they start learning they can’t just leach off of their parents and mine.” I smiled and put my hand over his, feeling very proud of him. “So, tell me about your first day back at work.”

-Thaddeus’s POV-

I haven’t seen her this happy in a long time. While we ate, she told me about the new clients and dealerships they got over the last two weeks.

“Just three months ago I was sitting in my living room with nothing but a laptop and a cheap cell phone,” she said as we took a walk down the street, holding hands. “And now look at me! I have an office space, two employees, all these people working with me…. It’s a little overwhelming, to be honest.”

I nodded. “But you’re really good at it.”

She beamed at me. “What about you? How are things going for you at the ranch?”

“I was able to focus more on the numbers today,” I answered. I laughed. “I had them out shoveling the stables I didn’t get to. They showed up in designer clothes,” I added and she snorted. “They definitely won’t be doing that tomorrow.”

When I stopped talking she pulled me to the side of the sidewalk.

“What’s wrong?” she asked, correctly interpreting my silence.

I sighed and leaned against the fence to someone’s yard. “We’re really short on money. I didn’t know how bad it was.”

She frowned. “Do you need a loan? Because I have-”

“No,” I interrupted quickly. “Thank you but no. We’ll just have to do some more fundraising. I guess it’s a good thing I don’t have to pay the guys. I don’t know the last thing about benefit parties and all that.”

“I happen to know the perfect person,” she said and pulled me back to my car.

-

Ten minutes later, I was in her apartment at the table with Katie. There were several pieces of paper in front of us.

“There are different types of fundraising,” she explained, accepting the wine Morana poured. “When you think about fundraising keep two important things in mind: One, how much money you need, and two, how much the fundraiser will cost. If you were just raising money for a church event, you’d do something like a bake sale or garage sale. Now, for something like we did for Morana – looking for an investor – you want a bigger event but you’ll factor that into the sales. We had donations for that one.”

“I should probably do something big then,” I said thoughtfully. “But I don’t know where we’re going to get the money to host a big event….”

“Well, like Katie said, we got a lot of donations,” Morana said. “The restaurant were we had it? I have a link to their restaurant on my website, whenever I print something out for marketing purposes, their logo is on the bottom, and other such things.”

“You think we could find people?” I asked.

Both women nodded.

“I have no doubt in my mind,” Katie answered.