by Mia Madison
“Yes, ma’am.” I did the quick keystroke sequence that would lock my computer, a required security measure that also had the added benefit of wiping all evidence of my inquiring-minds-wanna-know pursuit to dig up dirt on Mr. Worthington off of my screen. Taking the folder from Pam, I headed to Mr. Worthington’s office and stood outside. Just as Pam had said, Mr. Worthington was on the phone, and I could hear his raised voice seeping through his closed office doors.
He was mad. I couldn’t pick out every word but from what I could put together Mr. Worthington was furious about the quarter projections. I fought to keep away my gleeful smile that his company was not performing as well as he’d thought it would, but as more words drifted to my ears I realized that under performance wasn’t Mr. Worthington’s concern. The quarterly projections weren’t adding up with the raw data produced independently by each department. Either the raw data was being recorded and reported incorrectly or there was something terribly wrong with the quarterly report, and Mr. Worthington wanted to know which it was. If the data they used to make decisions was corrupt, then the decisions they were making could be leading the company in an entirely destructive direction. Entire corporations had been felled because of such errors, and there was no telling how long the erroneous data had been being used to drive the company’s future plans.
I had my father to thank for the lovely bit of knowledge.
The phone call seemed to go on forever as behind me various office staff closed their computers, gathered their belongings and left for the day. But I stayed right where I was, shifting my weight from one tired foot to the other. Finally, another twenty minutes later, Mr. Worthington’s voice raised to a crescendo before dropping down to a dangerous growl. A moment later, the sharp sound of the phone slamming into its cradle reached my ears followed by the echoing sound of silence.
Feeling more timid than I was comfortable admitting to myself, I reached for the handle of Mr. Worthington’s office door only to have the cold metal torn from my fingertips when the door yanked open. The solid wood’s disappearance left me face to face with a furious Mr. Worthington. I knew that my eyes had to be as big as saucers, and I felt heat flood my cheeks. While I had been purposefully snooping about my boss and his life back at my desk, that had not been my intention here. Yet, that was exactly what it looked as though I’d been doing.
“Here!” I thrust the Sandburg report forward in both hands even though both his hands were full, one with his briefcase and the other with his draped coat. “Pam said you needed this and not to disturb you while you were on the phone.” I said it all in one rushed breath.
Mr. Worthington’s reply was more grunt than words as he transferred his coat to lay over his forearm before taking the report from my hands. He looked down at the folder then back up at me. “Where is she?”
“Meeting with department heads, Conference Room E.” I pointed over my shoulder.
Mr. Worthington shoved his report into his briefcase. “Tell her to cancel my evening meeting and to reschedule the board meeting set for tomorrow. Tell her I’ve gone home for the day and that she’s excused to leave as well.”
“Yes, sir.” He brushed past me without another look as he blazed a trail down the hallway, around a bend and then out of sight. Meanwhile, I slid my foot into the swing of his office door. Some locked automatically on a timer for security purposes, and given that it was already after hours, I didn’t want to risk that Mr. Worthington’s office was one of them. While Pam surely had a key, I did not.
Pushing the door wider, I slipped inside Mr. Worthington’s office, broke into a run and covered the twenty feet to his desk in a flash of heartbeats. There, in the middle of his desk were the quarterly reports alongside a much, much thicker binder that had to contain the raw data for the departments.
I scooped them both up in my arms. “Oof!” I exclaimed, trying not to stagger under the unexpected weight. This time, making my way back out of his office was not so much a sprint as a hurried walk. Opening the door, I flinched at the sound of the door’s latch clicking locked behind me. In the empty, quiet office, the sound was much louder than normal.
I tried the handle again and had my fears confirmed. His door was now locked. There would be no sneaking these reports back inside his office before he got back in to work. No second thoughts possible. If I was going to get in trouble for snooping, then I was going to at least do some snooping. I was going to find that discrepancy! My talents as a math whiz would be good for something, even if it wasn’t figuring out how to launch the next person into outer space. I could at least figure out what was off in these ledgers, even if it took me all night to do.
I liked numbers. They soothed me and I could use the distraction. Maybe I should have become an accountant, I mused.
Chapter Four
Harris
It wasn’t even seven o’clock in the morning yet when I made my way through the maze of corridors that lead to my office. Rounding the corner, I stopped and my eyes narrowed. Addilyn Clement was at her desk. She was slouching over something and I wasn’t sure if she were asleep or not. It was another notch in support of my theory that she had joined my company with some sort of clandestine plan to undermine it—and thus me—in some way.
Walking forward with a quiet step, I stopped while still a good ten feet away from her desk and cleared my throat. Her head snapped up and her already mussed hair flew everywhere. What I had not been expecting to see were bloodshot eyes.
“What are you doing here so early?” I asked, sure that the answer would have nothing to do with racing in early to impress the boss, and if it was, then she had failed. Seeing an employee clearly too tired to have a productive day in clothes that were wrinkled and disheveled was not high on my list of favorable attributes.
I frowned then, I studied her clothes further. “Is that the same dress you were wearing yesterday?”
“I can explain,” Addilyn said, standing up at the same time as she closed a large binder on her desk.
My felt my mouth literally gape open. “Is that the quarterly report and the departmental reports?” I asked, already knowing the answer as I closed the distance to her desk.
“Yes, sir. I—”
“You’re fired. Get out. Leave right now or be escorted by security.”
“But sir!” she exclaimed as he cheeks paled. The thing she didn’t do was turn around and start her trek out of the building.
I started to reach for my cell phone in the inside breast pocket of my suit jacket.
“Sir, I found the discrepancy!” Addilyn blurted, stilling my reaching hand. “I know why the quarterly report is off by more than eight and a half million dollars.”
My brain ground to a halt. I had not even realized that the discrepancy was that large. I had known it was significant, but eight and a half million? Our profits dropping so drastically would have been a difficult conversation to have with our shareholders.
“You found it?” I asked, needing to confirmation that this monumental problem had been solved. That it had been solved me having to roll the head of more than one department lead was a huge bonus.
“I have, sir,” Addilyn said, standing up a little taller and squaring her shoulders. Even with seemingly no sleep, she was still one of the most beautiful women I’d ever seen in my life. She put me in mind of a wild horse that had never been tamed.
Nodding my head to give me a second to think, I reassessed how to proceed. “Bring those reports to my office. Be there in five minutes.”
“Yes, sir,” she said with open enthusiasm.
I made my way into my office, started a brew of coffee and did the other things and got me settled to start my day. By the time it was ready, Addilyn was tapping at my door.
She struggled with the weight of the large binders as she carried them the long distance to my desk, but I didn’t offer to help. I figured that if she’d managed to carry them out of my office all on her own—and without permission—then she could manage t
o carry them back in as well.
“Do you like your coffee with cream and sugar?” I asked as I retrieved a small pint of half-and-half from a recessed mini-fridge.
“Uh... yes, sir. Thank you,” she said as I handed her a cup of steaming joe.
I sat down behind my desk, picked up my office phone and dialed Samuel Druthers, our accountant. It was not lost on me that the man whom I had chewed up one side and down the other last night before leaving was not yet at work.
I hung up the phone, leaned back in my chair, and folded my hands in front of me. “Alright, Ms. Clement, why don’t you start with why you had these reports and how you got them.” It was possible that Pam had given them to her to review. I didn’t know why Pam would do such a thing, but it was possible.
“I couldn’t help but overhear your phone conversation yesterday,” Addilyn said after taking a sip of her coffee.
“You couldn’t help it?” I parroted her in a gentle challenge to her claim. Her cheeks turned pink.
“No, sir. I was waiting to give you the Sandburg report. Pam had told me not to interrupt you while you were on the phone but to wait until you were off before giving you the report. So, I had to... listen, sir, in order to know when it was okay to pass the report over to you.”
Grudgingly, I had to admit to myself that that made sense. I’d worked with Pam for years, and she knew my quirks. I did not like people walking in and out of my office while I was on the phone. But, that still didn’t explain how the quarterly report and the departmental reports ended up in her possession. “Go on.”
“I kept your door from closing after you left, and I went into your office so that I could get the reports.” Her head was held high, her shoulders were squared, and her gaze was unwavering as she looked me straight in the eye.
The sheer audacity of her confession kept me silent. She didn’t even have the good graces to be embarrassed by what she’d done. Of course, what she’d done was find a missing eight and a half million dollars. So, she’d said, anyhow. That alone had earned her a few minutes of my time for her to explain herself. “Go on.”
“I was... I am a bit of a math whiz.” This time she did look embarrassed, as if what she was admitting to was a bad thing. Why it would be or ever could be, I had no idea. “I knew that if I had a chance to look at the reports that I’d be able to figure it out.”
I glanced down at the reports and then back up at her. “So, you glanced at 800 or so pages of numbers and figured it out?” I leaned forward in my chair. “Are you wanting to get fired? Because from where I’m sitting, you’re doing everything a person would do who wanted to get fired. You eavesdropped, stole confidential information, and used company time on a task that was not in your purview.”
Anger flashed in her eyes, and I had to force a smile from taking over my lips. “And if I had asked to see them, what would you have said?”
“I would have said no.”
“Exactly! So, I didn’t ask.” Her chin was no longer level, it was held high, and her hands were white-knuckled on the chair. “It’s true that I don’t need-need this job. I won’t go hungry or homeless without it. But I’m here and I can make a difference. If I hadn’t done what I did, I wouldn’t have found the error where a decimal point had been put in the wrong spot, throwing off all the other calculations. And, on top of that, it didn’t happen just once. It happened twice.”
My brows went up. “Twice?”
“Yes, sir. Twice!” Her blue eyes sparkled. She was like ice and fire in one, and God help me, I wanted her. “If you want my opinion, I think someone is embezzling. Or your accountant is sloppy.
I sat back in my chair once more. “Did you make it all the way through the document?” I had to keep my mind on business. She was an employee. Just an employee. Nothing more and would never be more.
“No, I was about two-thirds of the way through by the time you came in this morning.”
“And you haven’t been home and haven’t slept?” She shook her head, and that was all I needed to make my decision. Standing up, I extended my hand. “Congratulations, Ms. Clement. You’ve just been promoted. I’ll think up a title later, but your new job is to review the rest of last quarters figures as well as the quarterly figures dating back the last ten years in search of other discrepancies. But first—” She took my hand and stood, meeting me eye for eye and toe for toe; it was everything I could do not to lean forward and kiss her lips—“Go home and get some rest. We’ll have a new office set up for you by tomorrow.”
“Yes, sir!”
I was aware I was playing a very dangerous game with her. But, who knew? Maybe it would add some spice to my otherwise, bland world.
Chapter Five
Addilyn
At 7 o’clock in the evening, it was almost exactly twelve hours since I’d seen Mr. Worthington. I’d slept, showered, and was now dressed in something that didn’t look as though it had been pulled out from the bottom of the dirty clothes hamper.
I tapped on Mr. Worthington’s office door, not at all surprised to find him still here while almost everyone else had gone home for the night. What I had not expected, though, was the way little butterflies took flight in my stomach when he looked up from his work. Get it under control. He’s your boss, nothing more! I chided myself, knowing even as the thought filled my mind that I wouldn’t pay it any heed.
“Mr. Worthington, I have a report detailing the errors from last quarter.”
“Good! Come in.” I was taken a little aback by his upbeat response. Every other time I’d seen him, he seemed as though he was ready to kick puppies. “Have you had dinner yet? We can eat while we go over your report.”
My stomach growled at the mention of dinner, and I felt my cheeks heat. My thoughts reached back to when I’d eaten last, and it had been half an egg bagel on my way out the door to come back to work at two this afternoon. Even so, I probably would have lied about being hungry if my stomach hadn’t given me away. I was downright starving. “That’s would be great, Mr. Worthington.”
“Please, call me Harris,” he said as he picked up the phone. “I’ll call Terry and have him double the order I’ve already called in. Chinese okay?” Terry was the company concierge, the get-anything-you-need gopher who made the lives of the executive staff a little easier as they did their best to balance life with the not-uncommon twelve-hour work day.
“Sounds great,” I said and meant it, even though I would have said the same if he’d offered to feed me monkey brains. While it was true that I did not need this job in order to survive, I did want it. I valued my Independence, and I wasn’t ready to give it only to crawl home to daddy and his claims of being right about he thought my life should be.
“Give me a few minutes to finish up this paperwork, and then you can walk me through your report,” he said, losing himself to his work once again. I couldn’t help but take the opportunity to study his face. When he wasn’t having to wear the mask of authority, when he was instead able to lose himself in himself, he looked much younger.
A few minutes easily turned into half an hour, and it was not until Terry showed up with our food that Mr. Worthington—I mean, Harris—put his work aside.
Opening food-swollen cartons and divvying out generous portions of the various dishes, I soon found myself sitting side by side next to Harris as I walked him through my report. I’ve managed to find two more mistakes, although very minor ones, in the last third of last quarter’s report. In addition, I’d outlined a recommendation of what I thought would be the most efficient and accurate method for evaluating previous quarter reports. I already understood that with programs and earmarked budgets that had changed throughout the years that reviewing the reports for previous years would be much more challenging in comparison to reviewing the last three months of operational results.
Harris took everything I said in stride. I’d watched his face carefully, being sure I hadn’t lost him during any part of the explanation, but he remained completely on
target, always asking questions that were insightful and which showed true comprehension of what I was proposing. It was a slow transition throughout our conversation but when it finally happened, it took me by surprise. Mr. Worthington was no longer just a figurehead at the top of a huge corporation. He was not some clueless leader sitting in a useless driver’s seat while hundreds of workers manually pushed his car forward. No, that was him at all. He was brilliant, and he was quickly becoming one of the sexiest men I’d ever met.
“This is some excellent work you’ve done here, Ms. Clement,” Harris said, leaning back in his chair before popping a pot sticker in his mouth.
“Call me Addilyn, and thank you.” It was nice to see Harris when he was, in essence, letting his hair down. He wasn’t who I’d expected to find. He was more relaxed than the harsh boss I’d first seen him as.
“Addilyn, tell me about yourself. Why is the daughter of Clement Securities working for my company?”
“Oh,” I couldn’t stop the smile that pulled on my lips. “I wanted a job. Being my father’s daughter was either going to open doors for me or shut them in my face, and I wanted neither one of them. So, I went my own way.”
“Okay. But why are you here?”
“Humph,” I huffed, not bothering to hide my contempt. “Daddy has specific ideas about what I should do with my life, and they all involve me marrying rich and being a socialite’s wife to help my husband climb the corporate or political ladder.”
I was aware my response was less of an answer and more of a rant.
“I see. Well, that still doesn’t tell me what you’re doing here,” prompted, though his voice was coaxing rather than pushy.
I shrugged, and then said, “A girl’s got to pay her rent.” I smiled brightly.
“And if your father paid your rent?” he asked, leaving it an open-ended question.
