Professional Restraint

1 The Substitute

Ella

"Miss Hernandez?" My attention shifts from the woman exiting to the man at the head of the board table as he gestures for me to come in. "Would you like to come in and get started?"

"R-right, yes, sorry," I stammer and hastily make my way to the front of the conference room where a screen and computer dock sit. "Carter," I mumble.

"Excuse me?" the same silver-haired guy asks.

"Sophia Hernandez is sick, I'm afraid. She sent me instead, sorry." I drop my gaze and focus on setting up my laptop. My fingers tremble, making it ten times harder to connect the cords as I feel all twelve sets of eyes on me.

"That's... unusual," he replies with a frown. With a quick glance up, I have already lost half of the room to their phones. And, by their expressions, the other half isn't far behind.

My nerves take over and my heart starts to race. I keep wiping my sweaty palms on my pants, but it just won't stop. I launch the presentation and take a deep breath, trying to steady myself and force myself to focus on the task at hand.

"I do apologize for the last minute substitution. Hopefully, you will not hold it against us," I start.

"Let's hear what you have to say." The silver-haired man leans back in his chair and levels his gaze at me. "Impress us."

Before my nerves can flare further, I dive right into our presentation, focusing on the raw data and how we process it differently with our proprietary software. Slowly, I notice a few of the men set down their phones and actually jot some notes down.

Midway through my presentation, one man interrupts. "Miss..." he trails off, raising a brow and locking a pair of piercing emerald-green eyes on me.

In a sea of businessmen, he stands out in his tailored dark suit that fits like a second skin, showcasing broad shoulders and a trim physique. Even seated, he's the tallest man in the room, and has a dark, dangerous air to him that catches me off guard, almost wolf-like.

"Oh... umm, Carter," I mumble, feeling heat flush my face.

"Miss Carter," he starts again, shifting in his seat and adjusting his jacket. "Your stats are impressive and the data is sound, but why should we go with your company? In all honesty, you're much smaller than the other firms that pitched today and yesterday." His tone is dismissive, like we shouldn't be wasting his time.

It makes me bristle, and I struggle to bite my tongue, knowing that losing my cool isn't going to win the bid. "Mister?" I ask, playing his game.

"Anthony," he says with a stone-cold expression. "Liam Anthony."

With a slight shift in his seat, Liam crosses his arms across his chest, stretching the tailored suit over his broad shoulders. His green eyes practically glow in the low light while he watches me with a challenging look.

"Mr. Anthony," I say, as I stand a little straighter. "You seem to think that our company's size is a downfall. Sophia picks our clients as carefully as you pick your bids. We are small by design. She would rather foster close-knit, long-term relationships with companies she believes in that share our ideologies."

He lifts his chin slightly, giving me the slightest satisfaction that I might have caught him off guard. With no argument from him, I press on.

"When we take on a project, it gets the attention it deserves. We craft the program it needs, not a cookie cutter solution that is only good enough for the status quo." I pause, letting my words sink in, then scan the room to gauge their reactions before continuing.