by Teddy Hester
"Sorry to break up the party, but AI does need to get some work done today."
She glances off in the distance, as if still thinking about the guys, and nods. "Of course."
"You promised not to interfere with the job."
The reminder rankles, as I intended. I watch her come back into herself with a snap, a faint light of battle creeping into her intelligent eyes. "So let's get to it," she challenges, her graceful chin jutting ever so slightly in the air.
I stifle a smile. It really rubs her the wrong way to have her little court disbanded. Too bad. I'm not quite done with Ms. Vickers.
I scan her silently, from head to toe, taking my time, making her squirm.
She pulls self-consciously at one leg of her jeans. A light blue t-shirt skims her curves, and her waist-length hair is tied back loosely with a navy ribbon. Those long legs I remember brushing up against yesterday under the conference table are encased in skin-tight denim, and her feet are stuffed into cowboy boots.
"Boots steel-toed?"
She beams.
"Lace-ups are safer."
Her face collapses into a scowl. I have to turn away to hide my grin. It's way too much fun ragging on her. There’s nothing wrong with her boots. In fact, they’re damn cute.
"This is my office. I'm rarely in it. If you need me—or anyone else for that matter—get Danny, the general manager, to show you how to use the loudspeaker back there." I gesture to a metal cabinet mounted on the wall by the front door of the pumphouse. Danny, hearing his name mentioned, waves at Jilly, then goes back to work.
My fingertips sizzle when I take her by the elbow and gently usher her out of my chair. It takes concentration to focus on what I’m saying instead of those interesting zaps of electricity sparking through my body. "There are phones at each of the work sheds, but the crew's usually outside working, and won't get the phones when they ring. The loudspeaker system is the quickest way to reach somebody."
She comes around the desk, clasping her notebook and bag. "Okay. Why did they take my cell phone at Security?"
"It's sort of like on an airplane. The frequencies can mess with operations in the control room or turbine areas. And, of course, no personal calls are allowed during your shift."
I indicate she should take one of the functional, though not particularly comfortable, metal arm chairs poised in front of my paper-strewn desk. "Since I'm not in here much, consider this your office, too.”
Jilly eyes the piles of clutter stashed around the room. "You need a real secretary, DePaul."
"I saved it for you. It’s your first task. Most of this stuff was here when Frank and I arrived yesterday. Anything that’s ours needs to be kept separate from the rest." Normally I spend the first day on a job setting things up the way I prefer. Knowing she was coming and that she’d need something constructive to do, I decided to wait. Now I just have to hope she can sort it out for herself. "There are some empty binders over there in the bookcase."
She sighs, a forlorn look in her eyes. "I'll try."
"I’ll need more than that from you, if you plan to stick around.”
CHAPTER FIVE
More of Nine Days to Deadline
"What's up, Chapman?" Getting a call from my general manager, Danny, right now is mildly irksome. "I'm in the middle of something."
The refinery supervisors, Doug Battles, and I hit on an idea yesterday for better coordinating activities between the control room and the deep well that turns CO2 gas into S-CO2 liquid that I’m eager to test before sending any of my crew to work down in that pit.
Danny clears his throat. “We’ve got a couple of problems here, Boss.”
I pause, dragging my attention away from the Control Panel screen I'm being shown, wondering why Danny is having so much trouble coming to the point. “So handle ‘em.”
“Uh…well, one concerns your new secretary—”
And here we go. Very first day. “Jilly?”
“Yeah. She has a, eh—concern—yeah, a concern—that she wants me to discuss with you.”
“Spit it out, Chapman,” I growl. “I’ve got people waiting.”
“Yes, sir.” His voice is sheer misery, like a calf bawling for its mama.
There’s a commotion, and Jilly gets on the line. “I have to go to the bathroom.”
I pause, nonplussed. “And?”
“There are no facilities.”
I snort. “Danny will show you the Porta-Jonnies.”
“That’s unacceptable, DePaul.”
What the hell. This is what comes from almost sleeping with her—no boundaries. No respect for me as a boss. Just some man she danced with and almost took to bed.
No matter how gorgeous her legs are, she needs to be reminded to be respectful of the boss when she's at work. And Danny’s other ‘couple of things’ better be damn important, after interrupting me with this shit. Guess I need to go lay down some law for the debutante and my manager. “I’m on my way.”
“Fine. I think that’s a good—"
I hang up and stalk out of the control room. Each step to the pumphouse stokes the fire in my belly. When I arrive, I'm met with a view of my general manager holding a pained head in his hands while my new secretary appears to be groping him, rubbing his temples. An oily green tidal wave of unexpected emotion slams into my midsection, its force nearly knocking me off balance.
“What’s going on here?” My voice is an electrified whisper.
“Sorry, boss. I shouldn’t have called you.” Danny cringes, causing Jilly to flutter a hand toward the man’s shoulder.
I’m across the untidy room in two long strides to his desk. “I’ll talk to you in a minute.”
Jilly’s hands on my general manager is not what I need to see right now. “No PDA in the workplace.”
With my palm in the middle of her back, I firmly guide her down the aisle, past several mesmerized observers, toward my office.
“DePaul!”
Ignoring her surprised squawk, I actually welcome the resistance she tries to put up against my physical tactic. The way she’s got me wound up, she’s lucky I’m not dragging her by her hair.
“Let me go,” she hisses, twisting herself so my hand drops away from her back. “You’re frightening Danny.”
The door closed, I pull down the window shade that separates my office from the rest of the pumphouse and twist the long, plastic handle which closes the blinds, mimicking what’s happening in my gut.
It’s as much privacy as we’re going to get. It’ll have to do. At this point, I really don’t care who hears what I’m going to say to Ms. Vickers.
“Sit down.”
She doesn’t. Instead, she pulls herself up straight and eyeballs me. Looks like she’s squared off with an irate male before. “You need to calm down,” she says matter-of-factly.
“And you need to grow up,” I pitch right back at her.
She gasps, and her eyes blink so fast, it’s like she’s sending Morse code.
“How dare you?” she whispers, face dark and crumpled.
I toss aside my hat. “I dare a lot when I’ve got a contract at stake.”
Doesn’t she realize what’s going on? Longhorn Petroleum is capturing their refinery’s carbon dioxide emissions to pump them into a deep well where pressure and heat will make the CO2 supercritical—becoming a liquid that’s much more efficient than water for generating electricity, and much more ecologically sound. They’ve invested half a billion dollars to hire Rio-Tex to do the construction, who in turn has hired us to make sure the job gets done on time.
My hard hat gets tossed aside, and I tear off my work gloves to rake a hand through my hair.
“I didn’t ask you to interrupt your schedule.”
“Really,” I drawl. “Do you have any idea what I was doing when you had Danny call me?”
“No, of course not. How would I?”
I perch myself stiffly on the corner of my desk, hands gripped on either side. Surely even she can fe
el the suppressed fury whipping around me like flags snapping in hot wind. “It was a hell of a lot more important than your pee.”
The crudity brings out her queenly side. “My needs did not require your presence. Just a rational suggestion.”
“You weren’t listening to reason over the phone.”
“So you decided to come down and bully it into me?”
Pitiful, pompous, pissed off. Her emotions are all over the place.
Maybe because I’m being a prick.
Since when do I shout at employees? Since when do I even let them get to me?
I force myself to shut the fuck up a minute, swallow the growl tearing up the back of my throat before it launches itself at her.
“Jilly. I’ll have to cough up fifty-thousand dollars a day for every day we go over the contract deadline. I can’t be spending time with powder-room inconsequentials. Danny knows it. That’s what’s got him scared. And with good reason.”
The wildcat actually takes another step into me, forcing me to step back or risk having my chin numbed by the top of her head on its way up to jut at me.
So, pissed off wins the battle for her emotions. Gutsy. But doomed to failure. It’s always about the power. My silence has fed my power in the past.
Looking down at her, several ideas of how to handle her sift through my mind.
I could send her home, where she belongs. Where I’d never see her. That would be the safest route.
I could have her come just during our dinner hour. Which would mean giving up the easiest way of talking to my crew about their progress on assigned tasks.
I could…
Shit. Look at those eyes scouring my face, stopping my heart.
…grab her and smash my mouth on hers before she tears into me with words that will probably shoot like spikes out of a power nailer.
Satisfying as that would be, it’s not an option, and it would have me looking for some privacy rather than getting me back into the control room.
She stands, arms akimbo, fists on hips. “Powder room inconsequentials? I didn’t ask you for this job; you railroaded me into it, and we both know it. All I wanted was to talk to some of your crew, but, oh, no, not your precious men, not on your precious schedule. Well, I’ve got news for you, Boss. The sooner you point me to a real bathroom, the quicker you can get back to your men and schedule. You’re the one wasting time, DePaul.”
She just turned “Boss” into a dirty word.
I don’t go in for violence against women. Not even in play, like Felix tried the other night at the party. But here I am, ready to slap Jilly’s hands off Danny, throttle her, throw her off the site, and smash her lips with mine. All in the space of a few hours.
Hiring her on was about as stupid a stunt as I’ve ever tried. For both our sakes, something’s gotta change, or she’s gotta go.
If the president of the plant weren’t so insistent that Ms. Vickers write and publish her Greenpeace article, I probably would have given in and fired her already.
I’m still staring at her full lips and wide, angry mouth, gloriously lush in the splendor of her fury, just inches away from mine, and I know, with absolute certainty, that even if I banished her from the site, once the job was over, I’d track her down and finish things between us. My cock twitches in agreement.
“I set you up with somebody to ask about these things. Where is she?”
The air around us drops out of Storm Category five, and Jilly’s arms drop to her sides. “You mean Nola?”
I shrug.
“She told me she uses the portables.” Her voice is subdued, red-haired temper corralled for the moment.
My conscience winces.
It’s her first night, asshole. You knew she’d be a fish out of water when you hired her. Cut her some fucking slack.
My sigh echoes off the office walls as I sit back down on the corner of my desk. “On a construction project, you often have to bring in portables for—seeing to bodily functions. We all use them. Men and women alike,” I add, staring hard at her.
She wicks sweat off her brow with a thumb. “I’m sure there are other options we might consider.”
The royal ‘we’. I shake my head in rueful disbelief and come to a quick decision about her 'problem' that'll help her out. Then I rise and walk around the end of my desk, noticing for the first time the blotter taking up the center. Was there a blotter underneath all the junk on the desk?
The infernal woman has been busy. The rest of the room is still a mess, but at least the piles have some organization and pattern to them now.
“I need you to do some copying.”
Her eyes widen at the change of subject. “Okay, as soon as I’ve gone to the bathroom.”
"The Porta-Jonnies are nearby. I'll have Danny point them out." I pull pages from a couple of her newly-formed stacks. “We don’t have a copy machine in the pumphouse. But we have an arrangement with the plant to use one of theirs.”
“Fine. But about my problem—?”
“The machine we’re allowed to use is about a quarter-mile down the gravel road to our right. Take this—it’s our billing code, don’t lose it. The copier is on the second floor, in the hall. Go in the side entrance, and the stairs there will take you right up to it,” I finish, scanning the page in my hand.
“I won’t be able to make it. I have to go to the bathroom. Urgently.”
Stubborn woman. If she'd stop and think, she'd probably figure out that bathrooms are located in the building I'm sending her to. "I hear you, Jilly. You're free to stop at the Porta-Jonnies before you make my copies." I hand her several sheets. “Go along now. Four copies of each.”
“DePaul--”
“My employees call me Mr. DePaul here at work,” I correct her. “Side entrance, remember.”
“Listen to me--” she orders, the pitch of her voice rising.
“I'm done. Go now, or you’re through.”
She clamps her jaw tight. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you? Well, I’m not letting you stand between me and this damn writing assignment, Mr. DePaul.”
Her feisty determination makes something spiral through my chest, reminding me of what attracted me to her in the first place. I let some soft creep into my gaze. “Trust me, Jillian.”
Her head cocks, and I can feel the gears turning in that facile brain.
What’s it gonna be, wildcat? Your pride and anger, or your article?
“Fine,” she huffs. “I’ll do your damn copying. And tomorrow night, I’ll pack adult diapers.” She turns and opens the door. A dozen eyes out in the main room fall instantly to their work.
“Jilly.”
“What?”
“I don’t know how you cajoled Danny into calling me, but don’t do it again unless it’s a matter of life or death.”
She nods once and starts to leave.
“And, Jilly?”
“What!”
“Don’t argue with me again when I give you something to do.”
She glares over her shoulder at me and nods one more time.
She’s halfway to the door before I call to her again.
“Now what?”
My jaw sets at her exasperated sigh. She sure is a hard case. Some poor fool is going to lose his mind, dealing with her.
“One more thing. Watch your mouth. I don’t put up with insubordinate employees.”
The front door hasn’t slammed behind her before I summon Danny into my office.
CHAPTER SIX
Yet More of the Interminable Nine Days to Deadline
Danny stands before me, shoulders set, ready to take his lumps. “I’m sorry, boss. I wasn’t sure how to handle her. But I know I shouldn’t have called you about it. It won’t happen again.”
So I’m not the only one who gets twisted up when she’s around. Beauty queens tend to make most men stupid. Even men in their thirties, like Danny. I’ve never seen him looking so hangdog. “Enough said about that. You had something else on your mind?”
Relief washes over his face. “Yeah. The guys are reporting stuff missing.”
“Stolen?”
“Looks like it. But not real serious yet.”
“Like what?”
“A couple have lost their gloves, a painter mentioned how two of his brushes had chunks of bristles hacked out of ‘em. A janitor told me he opened a new box of trash bags, and the next time he looked, half the bags were gone.”
“Odd.”
“The worst, though, was Zeke Culpepper. He took off his tool belt before using the portable, and when he came back out, it was gone.”
“His whole tool belt?”
“Yep.”
“Fuck.” Up to then, I wasn’t too concerned. Gloves go missing. Brushes wear out. Trash bags get appropriated for non-janitorial stuff. But a whole tool belt? That can’t be explained away so easily. “Just our guys are missing stuff?”
“No. It’s everybody.”
“All shifts?”
“Yeah, but mostly the night shift.”
Well, that narrows it down some, I guess. Could be happening in the chaos of shift change. “Okay, thanks. I’ll bring it up at dinner. In the meantime, find out what Zeke needs replaced, and get it ordered. Locally, if possible, and we’ll send Jilly for it. I can’t afford for Zeke to be out of commission.”
Why do we call it dinner when it happens at midnight and is carried in a lunch pail? The fact that that’s when I have my daily meeting with the crew just adds to the confusion.
Those are the considerations that occupy the back of my mind while I percolate on what needs to happen in the s-CO2 chamber, based on what we worked out in the control room when I got back there.
But the constant awareness, simmering underneath it all, is Jilly. What’s she up to? Did she find the bathroom? Did anybody bother to tell her to bring a lunch? Did they tell her she’d be eating it at midnight?
Just thinking about her makes me pick up the pace back to the pumphouse. I strip off my gloves and shove them in my back pocket.
