by Louise Clark
Andrew considered what she’d said. Then he laughed. “You’re telling me that I need to go back and face George Strand, are you not?”
Faith grinned back at him. “I am asking you to think about it.” She pointed to her doorway. “Now, I need to get some work done and you need to look busy and effective. Go fiddle with the spare computer station out in the bullpen.”
Andrew looked out the door. His expression was glum. “Computers are tedious.”
“For some of us, not others.” She pointed to the door again as she said firmly, “Now, go.”
He went.
The morning sped by with few interruptions. The bullpen was quiet, with only the normal low buzz. No computers needed health care. Andrew successfully entertained himself without entertaining her staff at the same time. When the phone rang just after noon, Faith stretched and let her focus slip away from budget figures before she answered.
It was Cody. “Hi. I’ve reached a frustration point and need a break. Want to go for a walk?”
“How about eating instead.”
There was a moment of silence, possibly while Cody consulted his watch or looked at his computer clock. “Oh yeah. It’s noon. Time for lunch. Now you mention it, I am kind of hungry.”
Faith could hear the surprise in his voice and her heart warmed. When Cody was deep into a project he lost track of everything. His ferocious ability to concentrate was one of the fascinating things about him.
“I’ll be down in ten minutes.”
“I’ll let June know I’m leaving and I’ll organize Andrew.”
Cody sighed. “Yeah, Andrew. Okay. I guess.” His voice lowered, became husky. “Though I’d rather have you all to myself.”
Faith laughed. “And when does that ever happen around here? I’ll see you in ten.”
Cody agreed, rather wistfully, and hung up. Humming to herself, Faith walked out of her office.
And froze.
Andrew was on the Internet. On a site about the history of Boston and its regions.
That was bad enough, but standing behind him, looking over his shoulder at the screen was Ava Taylor. Judging from the set of her shoulders, she was not pleased.
Chapter 18
“Andrew. I’m going to lunch in ten minutes. When I get back I’d like you to create a spreadsheet that contains the specifics of each computer in this area, including the model, operating system, ram, rom, and any other details—”
“Like the number of times each computer has gone down since Sue Green’s accident,” Ava said, nodding approvingly. There was considerable enthusiasm in her voice.
Andrew looked up with a frown. “I believe that promises to be a dreary task.”
Faith shrugged. “Assembling data often is, although it is absolutely necessary if you want to come to a balanced decision.” She looked down at the computer screen and added, “If you want to research American history on the net, do it on your own time.”
“I completely concur,” Ava said with relish.
Faith headed back to her office to get her bag, leaving Andrew to log off the Internet and prepare for lunch. She had just unlocked her drawer when Ava marched into her office. Glancing up, she saw Ava close the door. Warning bells went off in her head.
“Does Andrew always slack off like that?” Ava said without preamble. She advanced to the centre of the room, invading Faith’s space, dominating the small area.
Faith slung her purse over her shoulder. One hand resting on the bag, the other crossed at her waist and holding on to the strap, she prepared to defend herself. “There isn’t much for him to do.”
“My thought exactly,” Ava said with considerable relish. “What I saw this morning confirmed my belief that an intern is neither necessary nor useful. I did like the way you handled him, though. You must let me know how well he responds to your direction.”
“Of course,” Faith said. She glanced at her watch before she added, “Is there anything else you’d like to discuss, Ava?”
“I think I heard you say that you have a lunch engagement?”
Faith nodded.
“I won’t keep you, then. Is it with Cody Simpson?”
Faith nodded. “And with Andrew.”
Ava contemplated this, the expression on her sweet, rather doll-like features considering. Then she said seriously, “I know you’re close to Cody, Faith, but, girl-to-girl, he’s not reliable, you know.” Faith didn’t reply. Ava retreated to the door where she paused, her hand on the knob. “Not only does he refuse to work as a member of the NIT team, but he clearly is willing to manipulate other employees to further his own agenda. I do hope you will bear that in mind when interacting with him.”
“I think you’re wrong about Cody. I trust him and I know he would never do anything to harm anyone who works for NIT or the company itself.”
Ava pursed her lips as if she was about to say something, then the door opened and she had to jump away. She glared at Cody, as he stood revealed in the doorway. “Cody. We were just talking about you.” She looked over at Faith. “Remember what I said. We’ll talk later.” She swept out of the office.
Cody raised his brows. “What was that all about?”
Faith sighed. “Ava being Ava. Shall we go?”
They discussed the incident over lunch. Andrew grumbled about the data digging, but Cody and Faith were both adamant that he needed to appear to be doing something useful. Ava, they agreed, would jump at any opportunity to criticize Andrew’s performance. It they weren’t careful she might even be able to get him fired before the week was out. Andrew grumbled some more, but finally accepted his fate.
Faith watched him pick up a fry, then dip it in ketchup, before he ate it. Andrew had ordered fries with his lunch every day this week. He was fascinated by them, the crisp outside covering the soft inside, the faint taste of oil, the sugar sweetness of the ketchup that turned an ordinary vegetable into a candy. He loved everything about fries, including wiping his greasy fingers on a napkin made of paper. Faith had the uneasy feeling that he’d be instructing his cook on the basics of deep frying potatoes the moment he returned to 1772.
Cody was watching Andrew eat his fries too, but he wasn’t paying much attention, since he didn’t know that fries were a special treat. There was an abstracted expression in his eyes that told Faith he was deep in some puzzle-solving universe of his own. She went back to worrying about changing history and Uncle Andrew’s cholesterol count.
“Weird woman,” Cody said suddenly. Faith looked at him, a question in her eyes. “Ava Taylor, I mean.”
Andrew laughed. “Aye, that she is.” He worked the paper napkin over his fingernails, fastidiously cleaning the edges. “She puts me in mind of a snake, always slithering around where no one can see her until she is ready to strike.”
Faith shivered.
Cody nodded. “Interesting. She doesn’t slither around me, though. She’s right there, in my face. She has this crazy idea that employees need structure and a predictable environment. When I first started she tried to get me into a routine that included office hours and meetings—dozens of meetings on stupid things like the cost of paperclips. I told her—politely, I might add—that meetings for the sake of meeting were a waste of my time and I wasn’t going to participate. I don’t think she believed me. When I missed the first one, she sent me an e-mail telling me I was expected at the next and then a reminder of the date and time.” He shot Faith a rueful smile. Andrew might not even have been there. “I managed to lose that message somehow.” His smile grew into a grin. “In fact, when Ava suggested I’d ignored it, I told her it had probably gotten lost in transit. So she checked the server and, you know, there was no record of it at all.”
Faith’s eyes widened. “Cody are you saying what I think you’re saying? You went into the server and you trashed her message?”
He nodded, still smiling. “Yup and every shadow of it. No record of that e-mail existed, except in her out basket. It simply disappeared into th
e ether. She was livid.”
Beside her, Andrew was chuckling softly, but Faith didn’t know whether to be amused or terrified for Cody. “So what happened?”
He shrugged and laughed. “She took to phoning me to remind me about meetings. Since I don’t always answer my phone when I’m working on a project and I collect my voicemail only off and on, I’ve managed to miss most of them. She hasn’t given up, though. The woman is stubborn.”
Faith began to laugh. “Focused, Cody. You should be able to relate. Ava is as focused on her path as you are on yours.”
“Could be.” He shook his head, bemused by a person he couldn’t understand. “Enough of my issues with Ava. Andrew, any problems come up this morning? Do you need any tips to make you look good through the rest of the day?”
As office politics went, the battle Ava was waging with Cody over meeting attendance was pretty minor. As long as Cody did the creative work he’d been hired to do, Faith was pretty sure Ralph wouldn’t care if Cody avoided meetings related to office organization. Ava would continue to be infuriated by his absence, but how much harm could she do with Ralph on Cody’s side?
Bringing in an intern into the company under false pretences was a very different matter, though. If Ava found out that Andrew was not what he was supposed to be she wouldn’t hesitate to use the information. How far she would go, Faith didn’t know, but at the very least she could damage Cody’s position, and his reputation.
Because of her, Cody might lose his job.
“Hey.” Cody stroked the back of Faith’s hand to get her attention. “Time to go.” He smiled at her. “We’ve already been out of the office for an hour. Ava’s going to be furious.”
Faith stared at him, loving his quiet confidence, worried about the danger she might have put him into. “And you don’t care.”
“Not a bit,” he said cheerfully.
Feeling as if his voice was caressing her, she smiled at him, but inside part of her wondered if he was underestimating the damage Ave could do. “Andrew’s right, she is like a snake, slithering around in the background. I want you to be careful, Cody. I think she’s capable of being vindictive.”
He tipped her chin up. His eyes were dark, their expression amused. “You’ve got that one right. She’s probably added luring you into bad company and corrupting you into chronic tardiness to my list of sins.”
Faith laughed. Put that way, Ava didn’t sound quite so intimidating.
Cody bent toward her. He might have kissed her then, but Andrew cleared his throat, reminding them both that they were in a very public place. Cody smiled that sexy little half-smile and took her hand. There was no reason they couldn’t walk back to the office, together, as a couple.
With Uncle Andrew as their chaperone.
Faith opened her fridge door and contemplated the contents. With Andrew visiting it was fuller than usual. The meat drawer contained a package of chicken breasts and one of steak. There was asparagus, broccoli, and green beans for vegetables to be cooked and served with the meal and three kinds of lettuce, tomatoes and yellow peppers for a salad. She’d discovered that Andrew was an eager-eater. He devoured an immense amount of food, but never seemed to gain a pound. She figured he must have a metabolism that burned energy with the same abandon as a jet airplane.
Since Faith couldn’t bring herself to view food with the kind of lusty enthusiasm Andrew did, she chose the low fat chicken breasts. Deciding she would stuff them, she also pulled out a package of deli cheese slices.
Andrew wandered into the kitchen from her little project room where he’d been doing his typing exercises at the computer. He found the package of chicken breasts in its disposable hard foam tray and picked it up. As he had yesterday and the day before that, he ran his finger over the plastic wrap with a kind of amazement. “Is this for our dinner, then, Faith?”
Faith put broccoli and green beans on the counter, to the right of where the chicken breasts had been resting before Andrew picked them up. She shut the fridge door. “Yup.”
A gleam of enthusiasm entered Andrew’s eyes. He bared his teeth in a wolfish grin, dropped the package on the counter, then poked his thumbs into the plastic wrap and tore it apart in a sweeping gesture of manly authority. Faith leaned against the counter and watched him. As he exposed the poultry with considerable satisfaction, she shook her head. “It doesn’t take much to entertain you, does it?”
He laughed and poked a chicken breast. “I understand why you cannot have chickens outside your door for eggs and meat. You do not have the space. I must own, I do not recognize this city for the place where I lived. The size…” He shook his head as he abandoned his contemplation of the raw meat, then he washed his hands in the sink. As he dried them, he looked out the window. “You have a pleasant garden, Faith. The trees are large and well grown. They hide the fence that divides your property from those of your neighbors. Your flowerbeds contain plants that I have never seen before and are pleasing to the eye. But you no longer have enough land on which to place a kitchen garden of any size. I could not grow my vegetables here or pasture my cattle. And I can walk to the next house in the space of a heartbeat.”
“Well, not quite a heartbeat, Andrew. My neighbors aren’t that close.” Faith began to slice pockets into the chicken breasts.
Andrew flashed her a grin. “Well, perhaps I do exaggerate.”
“A little,” Faith murmured. With the pockets done, she too washed her hands, then reached for the cheese slices. “Would you mind getting that square pan out of the cupboard by the stove, Andrew?”
While he hunted around, Faith found a can of cream of broccoli soup that she planned to pour over the chicken to make a sauce. As she plunked the can on the counter, Andrew hauled out a pan. “Is this it?”
“That would be the one.”
He turned it in his hands, viewing it from all angles. The pan was nothing special, just an aluminum square with sides two inches high. It had a few dents, and dark spots in the corners. Inexpensive to start with, it was practical but not particularly pretty, yet Andrew handled it with the reverence of a priceless artifact. “You have so many things in your time that are different from the ones in mine. This pan, for instance, is made with a metal that is light yet durable. If such a thing were created in my time, it would be made from cast iron and would weigh considerably more.”
Faith switched on the oven to heat it up, then wiped the counter before she attached the can of soup to the electric can opener. “In your time you’d be cooking over an open flame. If you used my little aluminum pan the food would scorch. I can use it because my oven provides a regular, even heat.”
Andrew nodded as Faith set the can opener in motion. “All these gadgets you have in this century,” he said, watching the can whirl around, its lid gradually cut away from the sides. “I hunger for them when I’m in my own time.”
“I hunger for my supper,” Faith said. She placed the chicken breasts into the aluminum pan, then dumped the condensed soup over top and set the pan into the warmed oven.
“I could make a fortune inventing some of the things you have.”
Faith tidied the counter, throwing away packaging, recycling the soup can. “There was a man in sixteenth century England who invented the flush toilet. Look how long it took before anyone thought it was a good enough idea to do something with it. Ideas have their time, Andrew, and your world isn’t ready for electric can openers and condensed soup.”
There was an edge to her voice that Andrew caught. “You’ve got something eating at you, girl. Spit it out or we’ll be bickering before the night is through.”
Faith threw the cloth she was using to wipe the counter into the sink. Then, with a sigh, she sat down at the big, round table. “Andrew, my life is such a mess.”
He sat down beside her and said, “There now, isn’t that so for all of us? Why don’t you tell me about it?”
“Ava is after Cody.”
Andrew’s jaw tightened and the expression
in his eyes hardened. He nodded. “Aye. I am not surprised. Have I not said the woman is a snake?”
Faith rubbed her eyes. “Liz calls her a tyrant—” She broke off, feeling guilty. Dinosaurs hadn’t been discovered in Andrew’s time.
Andrew didn’t seem to have noticed there was supposed to be more to the sentence. He’d been dealing with Ava all week. Apparently describing her as a tyrant struck a chord. “Miss Elizabeth is correct in her assessment. I believe conflict between Cody and Mistress Taylor is as inevitable as conflict between England and its colonies in America.” He shot Faith a speculative look. Faith gave him back a blank expression. Andrew laughed.
Faith sighed. “The conflict between Ava and Cody is all about total control of the NIT organization. Ava lusts for it. All Cody wants is to manage his time and his area his way. If Ava would just leave him alone, everything would be fine, but she won’t be satisfied with anything less than complete domination.”
“It is the way of all tyrants. It is what King George of England desires. He and your Ava Taylor would understand each other very well.”
That made Faith laugh. “Don’t ever say that to Ava. I’m sure she’d be deeply insulted.” Andrew’s eyes gleamed. Faith realized she’d just handed him another clue about his future. She hurried on. “Cody is trying to protect his little patch of independence while Ava is intent on his complete surrender. I don’t think he realizes that she will do pretty much anything to get to him, including using you and me. She has already guessed you’re not the expert you claim to be and she figures that if she knows, Cody must know.”
“She is quite correct in that assumption.”
Faith shot him an impatient look. “Yeah, but I think she plans to use you to get at Cody. Andrew, you have to be careful. It’s Wednesday night. We have two more days to go. No more Internet. No more goofing off.”
