Happy weekend everybody! I don't know about you guys, but where I am it's currently snowing (gross) and if you're somewhere with less than ideal weather I hope you're all staying safe, and if you enjoy snow then have fun. But anyway, I give you a longer than average chapter told from Logan's point of view as promised. Enjoy.
Since his move to New York Logan's morning routine has gone something like this: hit the snooze button twice, force self into the bathroom to take care of necessary business, change, grab a protein shake, hit the gym conveniently located in his apartment building (it had to be done in the morning or else he'd never go), shower, get ready for work, grab breakfast on the way into the office (or have his assistant bring it to him on days he runs late).This morning follows roughly the same outline, but it feels different, he feels different.
He hits it a little harder than usual at the gym, but he's been skipping leg days lately so he probably needed it. After he cools down he heads back up to his apartment, showers, picks a suit for the day, gets ready, and is out the door in record time. He skips breakfast, he's got a call he has to make on the ride to work and the office will have coffee anyway. He's still on the phone with the head of the west coast office when he makes it up to his office. Andrea, his assistant, is at her desk when he passes by and she nods at him in greeting. He mouths 'coffee' at her and receives another nod before he disappears into his office. The call lasts for a few more minutes while he boots up his laptop and runs through his emails, Andrea is coming through the door just as he's saying goodbye.
Setting the mug on his desk she says, "You're here earlier than usual, especially for a Monday."
She's right of course, considering that's she's been working for him for almost six years it's not surprising that she's intimately familiar with his morning routine. He's infinitely grateful that when he made the move to New York she, along with a few others, came with him; training a new assistant would be miserable after getting used to her.
"Had too much on my mind to stay away," he says and then takes a sip of his coffee, perfect as always. "I need you to send Dani and Holly to the conference room at about," he pauses to check his schedule, "nine thirty," he finishes.
Andrea raises her eyebrows but taps a note into her iPad nonetheless. "Of course. Holly has a meeting downtown this morning, but she should be back by then," she informs. He's always amazed at how easily she seems to be able to keep up with everyone around the office. According to her job description, Logan is the only one she needs to worry about, and yet she could probably tell him exactly where the head of the tech department is right now if he asked. Although that might have more to do with the iPad she keeps glued to her hand at all times. He got a hold of it once; if anyone ever wanted to get the inside scoop on the company all they would have to do is get their hands on that, it's practically an all access pass for all the information it holds.
"Sounds good, thanks Andrea. So what's the damage from this weekend?''
She nods and taps at her tablet again. "Jay Flores called, he's ready to work out a contract, I've already contacted the legal team. There's more angry men writing complaints about sending girls gifts and not getting anything in return," she says this with a bite of sarcasm and rolls her eyes, Logan agrees with the sentiment. "Also a certain pop star may or may not be threatening to pull her music from the site," she smirks.
Logan laughs. "Can't say we didn't see that one coming. But it sounds like a pretty calm weekend overall."
Andrea hums in agreement. "Profits weren't too bad either."
He grins and pulls up the company's finances on his laptop. "Not too bad at all," he agrees.
"So what's the deal with this impromptu meeting anyway?" Andrea asks from her spot at the corner of his desk. He's got a comfortable chair she could sit in but she never does, says she prefers to stand when she can at work. He doesn't really get it but whatever keeps his employees happy is good enough for him.
"A new marketing idea," he tells her. "it'll appeal to a larger demographic. You'll hear it all at the meeting." He glances at the clock and the ever mounting number of emails on his computer screen, he needs to get through the important ones at least and he'd like to go over the notes he made over the weekend before the meeting. "Hold my calls this morning," he tells her, knowing that if it's something urgent she'll transfer it to him anyway.
She nods. "Anything else?"
He shakes his head, already starting on the first message. "That'll do it," he tells her and he hears the door close a moment later.
With the aid of caffeine he works steadily throughout the morning, dealing with emails from suppliers and inquiries from those lower down on the corporate ladder. At nine twenty he grabs his notes and heads to the conference room located down the hall. Andrea follows, iPad in hand of course, ready to take notes during the meeting. The room is empty when he gets there so he settles in a chair and pulls up information on his own tablet before the other two arrive. Andrea had ordered a small breakfast spread from a local café earlier, bagels, muffins, fresh fruit, yogurt, and beverages are waiting on the table for them and Logan helps himself to a blueberry muffin while he waits.
"Impromptu Monday morning meetings? I hope this doesn't become a habit, Logan," Dani says as she walks through the door, voice lilting in jest.
Dani, the chief marketing officer, strides into the room and takes a seat across from him and follows suit as she sets out her things. Her assistant, a quiet man with a mop of curls, sits next to Andrea and murmurs a greeting.
"You never know, Dani," he says with a shrug. "This might be my new thing."
"If you do it every Monday morning it's not really impromptu anymore," Holly interjects as she enters the room.
Logan raises an eyebrow at her. "Were you skulking outside the room before entering again?"
Holly huffs and joins them at the table, tossing her bag onto to the glass carelessly. "You know I have excellent hearing. I have no reason to skulk." She pops a piece of honeydew in her mouth and leans back in her chair. Holly is the head of PR, and yet sometimes it feels like her own public relations skills could use a bit of tweaking.
Dani rolls her eyes. "No, you just prefer to make dramatic entrances whenever possible."
"I can't help it if people's eyes are just naturally drawn to me whenever I enter a room," Holly replies coolly.
Logan sighs to himself, he should have expected this. Both of the girls are loud and headstrong, just in different ways. Dani is tall, all tanned skin and dark hair. She's the kind of person that when talking to on the phone it's not necessary to hit speaker to hear her when the phone isn't against your ear. She's incredibly tenacious, a force to be reckoned with absolutely, and a good person to have at parties when there's a lull in conversation. Holly is shorter than average with dyed blonde hair, and when describing her the word spitfire comes to mind. Holly's the one who can be found in the break room gossiping during her downtime; she's talkative, flirtatious to the point that it occasionally borders on inappropriate, and absolutely ruthless if need be. Having the two of them together in one room can become overwhelming in no time.
"Ladies, please," he interjects before Dani opens her mouth.
The two quiet; Holly crosses her arms and perfects her posture, eyes looking anywhere but at Dani and Logan. Dani just shakes her head at her before turning her attention back to him.
Sometimes he thinks about how if he was like his father he would never allow his employees to act the way they did at work. Mitchum wouldn't stand for a cat fight in a conference room, he wouldn't let people below him talk to him so casually, he'd have everybody too miserable and afraid to be anything but on their best behavior. Logan's known since he was a kid that the last person he wanted to grow up to be is his father. He's been trying his damnedest to avoid becoming him in all aspects of his life, and he feels like he's done a pretty good job of that, especially at work. Compared to most CEOs Logan is young, and a lot of people underestimate him because of this, despite the Huntzberger name, he proves them wrong on the daily. He runs a tight ship, but makes sure that his employees are comfortable; he refuses to have the people that work for him fear him like those who worked for his dad. Considering the nature of the work they do here, it's important to him that the company promotes a creative workspace, however, in moments like this he'll admit that he sometimes needs to tighten the reigns a bit.
"I called you in to discuss a new marketing idea," he starts, which gets their attention pretty quickly. "We need to expand to include a larger demographic."
He continues to explain Rory's idea of aiming their site towards friends and college kids and their parents, including the idea of care packages. He can hear the assistants' rapid tapping on their tablets behind him as he talks.
"Thoughts?" he asks once he finishes.
"It's not a bad idea," Dani says with a shrug. "The site interface is definitely simple enough that most parents should be able to use it without a problem. And being able to just tap and click to send a package to their kid would certainly be more convenient."
"Yeah, but what could we include in them?" Holly asks.
"Basic foods stuff, gift cards, cleaning supplies," Dani rattles off. Both Holly and Logan raise a brow at the last one. "Have you seen a college boy's apartment, their bathrooms are the stuff of nightmares."
"Been in a college guy's place recently?" Holly asks with a salacious grin.
"Probably not as recently as you have," Dani shoots back.
Holly just shrugs, Logan rubs at his temples where he can feel a headache coming on.
"It's a good start," Logan says to get them back on track. "Have your team start working on ideas, I want a presentation by next Tuesday," he tells Dani. He'd like to have it earlier than that, but his week is already packed.
Dani nods and taps a note into her phone. "No problem, boss."
"Holly, I want your team to work on rebranding. People already know about how the site benefits romantic relationships, we need to show them how it can work for others."
"Absolutely," Holly says easily.
"Great. It might benefit you to have your team work alongside Dani's," he adds, knowing that neither woman will be thrilled at the idea.
He receives strained smiles and reluctant agreements in response but it's enough for him.
"Alright then. Well, that's all I need from you Dani. Holly, I do need to talk to you about something though."
Dani nods and gathers her things, assistant following suit, and they leave the room with polite goodbyes.
"So what's on your mind?" Holly asks. Her phone buzzes on the table but she silences it after glancing at the screen.
"We've got more complaints from guys."He doesn't even finish his sentence before she's already nodding.
"Bunch of idiots," she mutters. "It's their own fault. We're not a porn site."
The gist of the issue is this: girls are using the site and saying they'll put on a show if they're sent gifts, the guys do it, and then once it's been received the girls block them. It results in a bunch of disgruntled men whining on their site and other social media platforms.
"I agree, but I'd also like to have this whole thing cleared up as soon as possible. I'm not interested in my company having this reputation."
Holly nods. "Of course. For the time being, I think the best route is to have the men issue an official complaint, we'll cancel the transaction or refund it if it's already gone through, and remove the girls running the scam. We get these crybabies out of the way and then we can post a statement on the website that we're not responsible for the actions of members and what not. If we really need to we'll issue a public statement that we don't agree or approve of members using the site for adult entertainment and we're in no way affiliated with it," she says, switching from casual to business in a matter of seconds.
Logan sighs. He'd rather not have to refund these men, but all that would do is bring more negative attention on them. "Alright, take care of it."
"On it." She pours herself a glass of water and swallows half of it in one go. "Listen, one of the guys on my team, Blaise, had an idea; it's actually pretty good, and I told him I'd pitch it to you if we had time."
Logan waves his arm at her in a gesture that says 'go on', and leans back in his chair.
"So he was thinking that it would be pretty cool if people could order food for the person they're talking to. Like say person A mentioned they're craving a pizza, person B could pull up a list of pizza places nearby them and have one sent to their place."
Logan thinks it over for a minute before saying, "It's not a bad idea. The issue is making sure that the sender isn't able to find out where the receiver lives, keeping our members safe is the main priority here."
Holly nods. "I agree."
"I'll talk to tech and see what they can work up. It'll be a great feature if they can do it."
She grins. "I'll let Blaise know." Her phone buzzes again. "Are we done here? I've got some business to attend to."
Logan nods and she's immediately on her phone and sauntering out of the room, leaving her assistant to get her things and tail behind her, rushing to keep up with Holly's fast pace. The poor thing is brand new and probably won't make it through the next week; Holly goes through assistants like Emily Gilmore goes through maids.
With just him and Andrea left in the room, he props his feet up on the table and folds his arms behind his head.
"All in all I think that went pretty well," he murmurs.
Andrea hums from her seat. "A productive Monday morning," she agrees.
"But next time I decide to have Holly and Dani in the same room without a buffer please remind me why that's a terrible idea."
Andrea laughs. "They weren't that bad today at all, quit being dramatic."
He snorts. "Fair enough, we've definitely seen worse," he says thinking about last year's Christmas party. He lets himself have another minute of solitude before pushing to his feet and grabbing his things. "Back to the office we go."
"How exciting," Andrea drawls.
)()(
Later in his office when he's gotten the most urgent business out of the way he reclines back in his chair and stares out at the Manhattan view and let's his thoughts wander. And it doesn't take long before they wander right to Rory. The whole situation, Rory being back in his life, still seems unbelievable, like he's been dreaming these past few weeks and has yet to return back to reality. He's been spending a lot of time thinking about it lately, probably too much to be healthy, and he's had seven years to examine his mistakes and realize what not to do this time around. He's been reflecting on past conversations and recent ones and constantly kicking himself for being such an ass back then.
The day in the bookstore when he met with Rory to sort things out has been haunting him lately, or rather one sentence in particular.
You know when we were together I always thought we would get married, I wanted to marry you so much.
She had thought about marrying him. She'd wanted to be his wife, he could have had that; they could have been together these past seven years instead of being miserable if he had just slowed down and thought things through rationally. He doesn't resent her for choosing herself over him, he could never be mad at her for doing what's best for her. It's a bit soul crushing to dwell on the possibilities of what could have happened so he does his best to avoid it. After all, the universe has granted him a second chance to be with her again, he doesn't have time to wallow in shame over past mistakes. Rather he'd prefer to be spending it getting to know her again.
Seven years apart and at her core she's still the same girl he fell in love with, but she's different too. She carries herself differently now, like she's been through things, she's learned things, and she's stronger because of it. She's traveled the world for both work and pleasure, she's explored cultures, had adventures, she's grown and matured and he's so in awe of her. Rory was amazing back then and he knows that she's only become even more incredible since then.
He's dated briefly and had casual affairs over their years apart and none of them have ever come close to inspiring the feelings in him that Rory does. When Honor called him and told him about Richard he knew he had to go to her, and when he saw her sitting at the pool's edge it was like a punch to the gut. Even in her grief she was still one of the most beautiful things he's ever seen, and knowing how much she had to be hurting made him ache in need to console her. They'd sat in Richard's study and smoked his cigars and when she laughed it was like nothing had changed between them.
Their date on Friday is still fresh on his mind. The weight of her body pressed up against his, the feeling of her lips brushing his, his hands on her hips; he felt like he was back in college with his girl at his side, ready to take on the world together. It's hard to believe how easy it is to be back with her after all the time they spent apart. He's sure that at some point they're going to run into some problems, and they still have things they need to talk about, they'd only scratched the surface of their past issues. Eventually they're going to have to sit down and really hash it all out, there's no way for this relationship to work if they ignore what happened back then. For the moment though he's more than happy to let things lie and spend some quality time getting reacquainted with her.
His cell phone starts ringing in his pocket and he fishes it out, he briefly considers letting the call go to voicemail when he sees that it's Honor calling. It's a little early to deal with whatever she wants to talk about, but he knows better than to try to ignore his sister.
"Honor," he greets.
"Logan," she parrots. Her tone alone already has him wanting to hang up. "I just heard a very interesting rumor about you," she tells him, voice goading.
"Really," he says in a tone that clearly implies that he's not interested in whatever it is she's about to tell him.
"Mhm," she hums. "A friend of mine said she saw you on a date the other night with a pretty brunette. A pretty brunette who happened to look a lot like Rory Gilmore."
For a moment he considers how hard he'd have to hit his head against his desk to knock himself out, it'd be infinitely more enjoyable than this conversation. He has no interest in his family knowing about his relationship at the moment. It's so new and fragile right now and Huntzberger's aren't known for being delicate. He remembers very clearly how they'd reacted the first time they met Rory, he can only imagine how well it would go over now.
"Honor," he groans. "Can we please not do this."
There's a loud shrieking sound in his ear and he quickly pulls his phone a safe distance away from his eardrum. He puts it back when the noise dies down and Honor starts speaking like a normal person again. "But it's true?" she asks excitedly, she continues before he even has time to answer. "Oh my god, Logan, this is amazing. I'm so happy for you!"
He scrubs a hand over his face and sighs. After their break up Honor had been equal parts mad at him for being a jerk and sympathetic to the hurt he was feeling. She'd always been an enthusiastic supporter of him and Rory being together and she'd been so upset when they'd fallen out. So he can't say he's surprised that she's so excited about their reunion. However Honor tends to have a problem with keeping secrets when she's like this.
"Yes, it's great and I'm very happy about it, but you can't tell anyone about this, Honor," he says sternly.
"Anyone being our parents," she adds.
"Anyone being anyone. But yes, keeping this from our parents is a very big priority of mine. You know as well as I do how they'd react to this."
"Oh, you mean something like: Logan, how dare you go crawling back to the girl who turned you down. Have you no shame, no dignity. You've embarrassed this family and soiled the Huntzberger name," she recites in a dramatic interpretation of their mother.
He can't help but laugh a little. "That was pretty spot on. So you can obviously understand why I want to keep this whole thing on the down low for the time being."
"Of course," she drawls. "My lips are completely sealed. But since I'm doing this favor for you, I'm going to have to demand that you have lunch with me tomorrow and tell me everything."
He shakes his head and resigns himself to his fate. "Pick the place and I'll be there," he tells her.
"Fantastic."
)()(
He leaves work about an hour later than usual; his final meeting of the day with the tech department had gone much longer than they'd anticipated, but on the bright side it seemed that the bug with their video chat feature had finally been rectified. After making a quick stop at small café to pick up his dinner that he'd ordered ahead of time, he heads home to his apartment, ready to unwind from a busy day. He sets up his soup and sandwich on the coffee table, turns on the TV, and makes himself comfortable on the couch after he'd changed into more comfortable clothes.
His phone rings as he's finishing the last bite of his sandwich and he grins when he sees who's calling. He pauses his show and picks up the phone.
"Well hey there, Ace."
"Do you know how much I hate Donald Trump?" she says in lieu of a greeting. "I swear to god if I have to write another article about him someone's going to get it. I mean, I get that I write politics, and for whatever reason he's regrettably involved in them, but there are other things to discuss, more important things even," she vents.
He can't help the smile that's building on his face as he listens to her get worked up. Her intensity and passion for her work has always been one of the things he admired most about her. He listens as she goes on about her dislike for Trump for awhile longer until she either runs out of things to say or decides that's enough, the latter is more likely, he has no doubt that she can go on about this topic for hours.
"I'm getting the sense here that you're not a fan of him," he says.
"Don't be cute," Rory admonishes jokingly.
"My apologies. But hey, you did finish your article right, you're not just using me as a distraction?"
She scoffs. "Of course I finished it. I'm using you as a reward for getting through the thing and not just writing 'Donald Trump is an ass' and being done with it."
"So I'm a reward, huh?" he asks with a grin.
"Don't go getting a big head on me," she says and he can practically hear her rolling her eyes.
"I'll try my best," he promises and rearranges himself on the couch so that his head is laying on the armrest. "So how was your day despite the article from hell?"
They talk for a long time, about their day, work, whatever comes up. They talk until Rory's yawning into the phone and they both need to go to sleep so they're not dead on their feet at their jobs tomorrow. Rory mumbles a sleepy goodbye and it's amazing to him how despite the fact that they're living in the same city she still feels too far away. He longs for the nights they spent in the same bed, her small body curved against his, and he can only hope that one day they'll be able to have that again.
Sooo I hope you all liked getting things from his side. I know there wasn't that much Rory/Logan action, but I mostly just wanted to showcase how Logan is as a boss, also I kind of really enjoy writing character's that are big important business people so his side of things is fun for me. Next chapter is Rory's birthday which I'm thinking some of you will be very happy with judging by some past comments. Also does anyone have any idea when Logan's birthday is? I'm just curious and I couldn't find anything online so let me know if you do. As always reviews are super appreciated
