Chapter 10

Bette woke the next morning to her cell phone ringing and found herself being spooned from behind by Alice, who was still dead to the world in her dreams. She contemplated ignoring the ring to stay cuddled up in bed, but finally decided against it remembering she was still waiting to hear from Robert about those artists.

Reluctantly, she pried herself from the warm, comfortable bed and searched for her phone among the clothes strewn over the room. Careful not to wake Alice, she quietly slipped out of the bed room to answer the call.

“Bette Porter” she answered, her voice still groggy from sleep.

“Hey, Boss, how did everything go last night?” Robert asked. Bette instantly became suspicious, as Robert was not the gossipy type. He typically only nosed around to avoid really bad news. News that would not make Bette a very happy camper.

“It was great,” she answered cautiously. Then, “What’s up? I know you didn’t call at,” looking at her watch, “7 AM on a Saturday to ask me how my date went.”

She heard Robert sigh through the phone, preparing himself for another verbal attack. “You’re right. I’ve got some bad news.”

“Well, it surely can’t be worse than losing all of my artists,” she teased, attempting to keep this newly acquired positive attitude as long as humanly possible. When no quick reply was forthcoming to ease this assumption, a slight panic began to take over. “Go ahead, Robert. Let me have it.”

Deciding it would be best to just lay it all out for his slightly anal retentive boss, he took a deep breath and spilled the problem. “The contractors have gone on strike.”

“WHAT?!” Bette yelled, not caring at this point if she woke Alice. “Why?”

“It’s something within their company. Something about their CEO and that he was essentially embezzling from his managers. It is all really complicated, that’s about the most I could understand from what they told me.”

Adrenaline pumped furiously through Bette’s system as she heard this. She only had another three and half weeks until opening night. ‘Where the hell am I going to find another fucking contractor?’ she thought. Immediately she was in her professional mode again, which meant for her, as long as there was a problem with the gallery there would be no more expending her time and energy on romance. This wasn’t exactly her conscious thought, but she knew it would result in spending less time with her girlfriend.