by B. E. Baker
I can't do it. If he wants to badger me to death over this dumb plant, then I guess that's okay.
Troy doesn't want me to leave Pam's that morning, so I spend an extra few minutes with him. Between that and the donut run, by the time I reach the office, I'm nearly an hour late.
“Morning Miss Jenkins,” Ish says with a smile.
He's a little odd, but he's always happy. I admire that about him. “Morning Ish.” I open the pink donut box. “Chocolate donut?”
His eyes light up and he snags one. “Thanks!”
I take the box to the break room on my way to the back of the office. I'm setting it on the main table when a voice startles me. “You brought donuts?”
I spin around to face Jack. “Morning. Sorry I'm a little late.”
“I'd say you're entitled to a full day off if you need it.” Jack leans against the wall. “You went above and beyond.”
“I have two jobs to do right now, unless you've hired someone for the assistant job over the weekend?”
Jack shakes his head. “I'm not sure bringing in anyone new right now is our best call, especially without Nancy around to vet them. If you think you can handle both jobs for a bit, I'll happily pay you double.”
The cha-ching sound in my head is practically deafening. “I think I can hold on for a bit.”
When Jack smiles, my heart executes a perfect front flip. “I appreciate it.” He turns on his heel to head back for his office. The second work day in a row that he's been here early.
I trot after him. “Do you have a hearing set up?”
“Tomorrow morning. My lawyer jumped on those files and the evidence of corporate espionage like a duck on the proverbial June bug.”
“Does that mean I need to wear a suit tomorrow?” I ask.
“If you don't mind. SITB's entire defense rests on your testimony to bring in the evidence we found.”
No pressure. “I'll be ready.”
“We should go over some documents to get ready,” Jack says.
Two hours later, we're still reviewing exhibits and files. My eyes are blurring a little about the medical and technical jargon, but I understand the computer parts at least.
“I think you're ready,” Jack says.
“I was born ready.” I lift my eyebrows suggestively.
Jack, the man who kissed me two days ago, turns back toward his screen so fast I'm worried he might have gotten whiplash. Come to think of it, he hasn't flirted with me a single time all day. What's going on? That's when I finally admit to myself that I do like him. In violation of my list, my plans, and my own better judgment, I really like Jack. I mean, I need to get to know him better, but I want to do that.
“About Friday night,” I say softly.
He turns back toward me slowly. When his eyes finally meet mine, I can't read what he's thinking at all.
He grunts. “I owe you a major apology. I don't know what I was thinking. I blame the combination of the late hour, my stress with Cynthia, and my fear over SITB’s leak. I swear nothing like that will ever happen again. In fact, I'll do my best to communicate with you after tomorrow via email as much as possible so my presence doesn't make you uncomfortable.”
What? My stomach ties in a wicked double knot. That's the opposite of what I want. Is he just being noble? Or does he regret kissing me? Maybe he didn't feel what I felt. When tears threaten, I blink them back. Something about giving birth to Troy broke my hormone regulator or something. Now I cry at everything from Finding Nemo to babies hearing their mom's voice for the first time when they get hearing aids. Doctors prepare new mothers for stretch marks and late nights, but they do not prepare you to be a hot mess for years after having a child.
This is so not the time for me to have a mommy moment.
“I have a confession,” I say. “That was a first date. I barely know Cole.”
Jack's hands tighten on the edge of his desk until his knuckles turn white. “Even if he was your boyfriend of a year, that would be completely fine. I'd have zero input about that, because I'm your boss, Gerty.”
When he finally meets my eyes, his are awash in guilt, so much guilt.
At least that's a feeling I understand. My job is way more important than some flirtation, no matter how great his biceps look in that polo shirt, or how his smile makes my pulse race. “I get it.”
I head back to Nancy's office and catch up on my most urgent tasks. Then I spend the next two hours dealing with a backlog of IT issues. Emails that aren't loading right, a power point program that's fighting with the anti-virus software, and a malfunctioning mouse. By four-thirty, my head is pounding. By five o'clock, I need to get home and hug Troy in the worst way. I wrap up a few more things, but by five-thirty, I'm ready to go.
I stop by Jack's office before I leave. “Hey boss. Just checking in before I head out. I prepped the Exhibits you sent and I think we're ready to go tomorrow morning.”
I set my old phone on the corner of his desk, the one I cloned Cynthia's phone with. I figure he can monitor the texts and emails she gets as well as I could, maybe better.
Jack hasn't even looked away from his computer, and his fingers are clicking away steadily. Okay, so maybe he's full-on ignoring me at this point.
“Alright, well, I'll see you tomorrow.”
“Wait.” He spins around in his chair. “If I pause when I'm in the middle of a thought, I lose it. I'm sorry if that was rude. I wanted to tell you that two other employees have come in to tell me what a great job you're doing. I'll text you the address for court tomorrow. The hearing starts at eight a.m. I know that's early, so it's probably best if you meet me there.”
“Oh. I'll grab the Exhibits on my way out, then.”
“Perfect. Thank you again,” Jack says. “You've really gone above and beyond.”
I bob my head in acknowledgment, a little embarrassed at the praise, and head to Nancy's office to grab the box with the Exhibits for tomorrow that I printed off earlier.
I'm reviewing our arguments in my head on my walk out to my car, which is why I don't even notice Chris until I reach for the door handle. I nearly drop my box when I hear his voice.
“Well, well, don't you look fancy?” His words practically drip with contempt.
I hate that he looks so good. He's leaning against my little Honda like he owns it, which he doesn't and never did. It was another in a long string of hand-me-down gifts from Mary.
“Is that why you're stealing my money now? So you can buy more high end escort clothes?”
11
Paul
I go over the plan for tomorrow with Mr. Brighton on the phone once, now that we have the Exhibits all prepped. “I think this is an open and shut case, now that you've got that information. Obviously, we'll need to track this to the end of the line, but from what I did today, it seems to point directly at WelshAllyn. The judge will find that quite compelling.”
I lean back and close my eyes.
“You said this Miss Jenkins is responsible for you obtaining the information?”
I grunt.
“You owe her a big thank you.”
He's right about that, and mere words aren’t enough. I ought to cut her into the venture like I did with Nancy. Another quarter percent won't impact me much, but if this goes as big as I think it will, it could change her life. I think about her cute little old Honda and how embarrassed she was about a granola bar wrapper in the seat.
I hope it doesn't change her too much.
I spin around in my chair to work on some files I brought over from LitUp. If I don't start spending more time on the car battery launch, Luke's going to fire me himself. I should tell him about SITB, but I really want to wait until I've sold the tech or gone public with it. I can’t tell him until it's an actual success, a done deal. There are still too many ways this could fold like a house of cards. Next week or the week after, I should wrap this up one way or another. I'll tell him everything by the time he returns from his honeymoon at the latest.
I can't wait to see his face when he hears about what I did on my own. My idea, my product, my launch. My success start to finish.
I'm digging into an advertising proposal when I notice something odd out of the corner of my eye. Something pink. There's a phone on the edge of my desk, and it's got to be Gerty's. She must have left it by accident. If I hurry, I might still catch her. I rush out the back door with it, but what I see stops me in my tracks.
Gerty's talking to a guy, a tough looking guy with a scowl on his face. I ought to run over, hand her the phone, and then leave. I should give her space. This really isn't any of my business, but something about the guy bothers me. Her date on Friday was too good looking and I hated him on sight, but this guy's different. He looks. . . menacing.
I probably sound as crazy as Trig did when he tried to convince me he was going to Macaroni Grill to protect Geo from her oldest friend in the world, that tough looking Marine. Except when this guy waves a piece of paper in Gerty's face, she flinches. He slams his other hand down on the hood of her car right after, his voice strident and his eyes sparking with anger.
That's about enough of that.
I jog toward the car. “You forgot your phone in the office,” I yell, hoping to distract them so Gerty can put some space between herself and that paper brandishing idiot.
She spins around with one hand against her chest, and I'm glad I ran over. Her eyes dart between me and the other guy nervously.
“I didn't realize you were talking to someone,” I say casually. “I just wanted to catch you before you left so I could give you this.”
Gerty pulls a phone out of her purse. “I left that on purpose. It's not mine, it's Cynthia's.” She widens her eyes intentionally, reminding me I'm holding the cloned phone. Duh.
I ought to head back inside. Gerty's a big girl, and she clearly doesn’t welcome my interference. But I'm not going anywhere until I know this guy's not a threat. “I'm Jack.” I reach my hand out to shake.
The loser looks at me with unbridled disgust.
“I'm her boss.”
“Maybe you should pay her a little more,” the guy says. “Maybe then she wouldn't be trying to steal from me.”
Steal from him? I glance her direction and notice something in the car that wasn't there on Friday afternoon. A booster seat with red fire trucks driving across it. I squint at the paper the guy's holding. Garnishment of Wages is printed in big, bold letters across the top.
“Do you have a kid?” I ask.
Gerty lifts her chin. “I do. A four-year-old son named Troy.”
She had plans that night alright, but they probably weren’t a first date with that tall guy like I assumed. She missed out on time with her son because of me. Poor thing had to scramble for a sitter, no doubt. Which begs the question, how did she procure Cole so fast? And that makes the guy who's slamming his hand down on her hood and making her flinch in fear. . . her ex?
“I'm gathering you're the ex-husband?” I raise one eyebrow and spear this guy with my baddest boss glare.
He bristles and puffs his chest like he and I are two apes about to fight over a box of bananas. Which would be fine with me. I can't handle men who intimidate women, no matter the circumstance. But there's a special place in hell for men who won't pay child support, and I'm happy to expedite his check-in.
“I'm Chris, yeah.”
“Child support payments aren't stealing,” I say. “Paying them is the law. If you're making it hard for her to get money from you to support your own child, it doesn't speak much about you as a man, does it?”
Chris's face turns bright red and his scowl deepens. “None of this is any of your business, man, so go back inside to your little wussy desk and leave us alone.”
He's a real winner. “I'll go inside when she tells me to.” I glance toward Gerty. “You okay?”
She swallows, her face still unnaturally pale. “He's not supposed to be here.”
“Here, as in at your office?” I ask.
She nods. “He's not supposed to be within five hundred feet of me, not ever.”
I close my eyes. She has a permanent restraining order against him, which means he has a history of violence. Now I really have no tolerance for his nonsense. “Hey, Chris, I get it. You're pissed off that some of your hard-earned money is being taken, right? I work hard for my money, too, so I understand.”
He nods. “Twenty percent, which is way too much. Total BS, man.”
“I'm going to talk really slowly, okay?” I point behind us at the SITB office building. “See that camera?”
Chris scowls at me.
“I take security seriously around here. I have a state of the art system. If you mess with it, like throw a rock at it, or try to cut the wires to it, the police will be here in less than two minutes. And your remarkable and quite recognizable face is now recorded in HD on that video feed. Which means one call to my good friend on the Marietta Police Department and you're going to spend the next thirty days in jail for violating your restraining order.”
Chris swears. “Are you kidding me right now? I just came to talk to her. If she'd give me her actual address, I wouldn't have to come find her at work.”
“How did you find her?” I ask.
“Man, none of this is any of your business, okay? So go back to your own stuff and leave us alone.”
I cross my arms. “In the several seconds after I came out that back door, I saw you slam your hand down on her car. I saw you threaten my employee in my parking lot. It's all on film, Chris. And while you don't seem like a very bright person to me, I think you'll understand this part. Twenty percent off your paycheck might suck. But thirty days without a paycheck would suck more. How long do you think your new girlfriend will remain faithful to you while you're in prison for violating a court order keeping you away from your ex?” That last part was a guess, but I doubt he left one branch before having a fist tightly wrapped around another. And Gerty's far too cute for him to leave without someone else in the picture.
“They don't put you in prison for making someone flinch. They just yell at you for not listening,” Chris says.
I step toward him purposefully and he stumbles back.
“The only reason I haven't already called the cops,” I say, “is that if you don’t go away, my friend here won't even get a lousy, unimpressive twenty percent out of you. But I'm going to make you a promise, and I think now that you've met me, you'll believe that I'm someone who makes good on his promises. If you contact your beautiful ex-wife again, I'll send this tape to the police, press charges against you as the owner of this property, and after all that's over, I'll beat the ever loving crap out of you myself.”
I step closer to Chris, and I whisper the last words. “Did I mention that I'm a boxer, Chris? In fact, if my business hadn't done so remarkably well that I never need to work again, I'd have become a prizefighter. I had an offer in Vegas my last year of college. It's been a long time since I beat someone to a pulp, and between you and me, I miss it. Badly. Don't give me a reason to turn your fairly nice face into hamburger meat, because I won’t pass on that opportunity.”
Chris scowls at me, but he backs off and climbs into a shiny orange Mustang. I wish he'd had a little more gumption. I really am jonesing for a fight right now.
When he roars off, I turn around to see how Gerty's doing. Her hands are shaking, and I step toward her and put an arm around her without thinking. When she turns toward me, my arm around her morphs into a side hug.
“He's gone,” I whisper into her hair. “And I think I scared him enough that he won't be back anytime soon.”
“He hasn't ever hit me hard,” she says. “I don't think he would.”
Very reassuring. “I'd rather you never find out.”
“Me too.” She squeezes me around the waist and then pulls back. Her hair has fallen over her left eye.
I reach out and tuck the silky strands behind her ear, and then I follow the path my hand took, brin
ging my lips down against hers for the second time in three days. Which is not enough, not nearly enough. Her hands reach up and wind around my neck this time, pulling me against her forcefully. I spin her around so her back is against the car and press into the kiss. I see the bright red fire trucks on the booster seat out of the corner of my eye, and I remember who I'm kissing. A single mother whose ex just accosted her.
My employee, my subordinate, in a vulnerable situation.
I break off the kiss. “I am so sorry. Again.” I stumble backward, needing some cold air in my lungs so I can think straight. “I don't know what keeps coming over me.”
I can barely hear her when she speaks, her words are so breathy and quiet. “I don't want you to stop.”
I'm not the creepy boss forcing myself on a young, impressionable employee? My heart lurches in my chest and I close the gap between us. “Are you sure?”
She reaches up and yanks my collar down, pulling my face toward hers until my mouth closes over her lips again. She melts against me and I fist my hand in her hair, tilting her head up toward me. Her eyes stare into mine unafraid, her lips swollen, and I don't think I've ever seen a woman more beautiful in my life.
“Let me take you to dinner,” I say. “I don't want to say goodbye, but we can't loiter in the parking lot half the night.”
“No, we can't. That's true.” She stiffens against me and rests a hand on my chest.
She's changed her mind. She doesn't want me. I swallow hard.
“I would love to go to dinner, but I can't, not right now. I've got to pick up my son. I'm already late, and he's struggling a little with the fact that I'm gone all the time for my new job.” She drops her voice as if she's embarrassed. “I used to stay at home with him.”
“That's a very impressive sacrifice. My mother stayed home with my brother and me.”
Her smile thanks me for understanding. Not everyone comprehends the difficulty and the importance of putting kids first.
“Not that I think it was a bad decision to go to work. You're obviously a valuable member of our team.” I force myself to let go of her and step back so she can open her car door.
