“You will not use the f-word in front of my baby’s delicate ears,” pouted Kaelyn.
“Seriously, does it even have ears yet?” Cora flinched as she saw the tiny fist winding up again. “Okay, okay, your baby is a perfectly form specimen of humanity, but it doesn’t make me any less fat.”
“All right, since punching isn’t going to work I’m going to try some tough love. I worry about you, not that you’ll die, but because you’re lonely.”
They sat and talked for almost an hour, Cora made some tough decisions about what she wanted and what she needed. Kaelyn got her coffee and they went back to their office, and apparently, no one had even missed them.
“Whatever you do I’m here to be a cheerleader, my uniform may not fit again for a few more months but I’ve still got my pom-poms.” And with a stern nod of her head, Kaelyn waddled back to her cube rubbing her back, death-grip on her Starbucks. God help the person who tried to steal it from her.
Logging back onto her computer, Cora started research, not on actual work or accounting. By the end of the day, she had an account with Weightwatchers, a grocery list, a new group of friends from a message board and a plan for the week.
Present day
Tap, tap, tap, tap… then interrupting her staccato of pen drumming was the *ping* of her calendar alarm, it was 12:55, time to gather up her copies and head to the conference room.
She followed the herd down the hall into the room with the giant table that easily sat thirty people taking her usual seat beside Kaelyn and across from Dan, whose seat was currently empty. There weren’t assigned seats but even corporate drones, especially corporate drones, are creatures of habit, and no one would dare sit in someone else’s seat, ever, it just didn’t happen. Once again, kinda like middle school.
The large clock on the wall struck one and the meeting started. Mr. Jameson goes on and on about the activities of the second quarter, and still no Dan. She started doodling again. Where was he? She hadn’t seen him in a week—so odd. With the holiday thrown in, it had been three weeks, anything could have happened. He could have been in a tragic car accident, broken a leg skiing, gotten married to his hot blonde girlfriend on a whim in Vegas. At five after one the door to the conference room opened, Dan slipped in, made hushed apologies, and took his seat. Cora felt him before she saw him, and as she looked up she almost gasped. Over their holiday break, he’d gone all mountain man and grown a beard, with that and the plaid flannel shirt he was wearing her heart stopped. If she thought he was her cup of tea before, he was every one of her favorite things to drink now. At just about 5’10, he had dark brown hair and whiskey brown eyes, was on the stocky side and that’s just how Cora liked him, this new development just made him all the more enticing.
“Cora… Ms. O’Malley, are you with us today,” a voice broke through the fog in her brain. It was Jameson, crap.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Jameson, what was that?” a small chuckle sprouted from Kaelyn’s mouth as Cora kicked her under the table.
“I was just asking if you were ready to talk about the suggestions for budgetary increases for the third and fourth quarters. The first half of the year created significantly more revenue than expected I was hoping you’d had time to prepare something for the rest of the department heads to review, since we’re here and all.” Sean Jameson had pulled himself up by his own bootstraps, growing up in Southie, he worked hard and ended up with a scholarship to Harvard and then business school after that for his MBA. He knew jack shit about researching and developing new drugs; but he knew how to run a company and find the right people and with a couple of his buddies growing up who did turn out to know about research and making drugs. He built this company from a rented space in Fall River to a company with over five hundred employees and was one of the more successful small drug firms.
“Sorry, I was just thinking about how many days were left until spring training started, and whether or not we actually had another chance this year.” Cora new talking Red Sox got you out of just about every jam you could get yourself in to, opening day was a religious holiday here at Boston Pharma and Mr. J probably had two dozen different Red Sox neckties, the only kind of tie he wore, ever.
“There are thirty-six days left until pitchers and catchers report and of course we have a chance. We’ve reversed the curse and Tito knows how to manage the boys.” He sat down ceding the floor to Cora and looked as if his mind had already fled to baseball season.
Clearing her throat, she stood up and passed the stack of reports to her right, and handed a stack across to Daniel to pass down his side of the conference island, as she liked to think of it, their fingers brushed and she almost lost all rational thought again.
“Well, as you can see from the summary on the first page, and then the requests and spreadsheets following the three areas of greatest need in the firm are HR, employee health benefits contribution and IT,” she snuck a small glance over at Daniel before continuing. “During package negotiations in the fall, our vendor informed us that the cost of the healthcare package we currently supply all our employees will be increasing. We could maintain the cost if we took on a lesser package but that would double almost every co-pay our employees make. I think that with the current budget surplus and some long term adjusting in other areas of potential waste or duplication, we can find the money to cover that internally and not pass the costs on to our workforce. Our HR system is outdated, I’m pretty sure the program that Jim and his team use had code written by Copernicus. In their request for funding, HR let us know that the vendor who originally sold us the software we use for all HR functions and payroll is being sun-setted this spring. We quite simply cannot afford to be in a position where we cannot issue payroll checks or other documents our employees need. If the system decided to crap out after June first, we are SOL, sorry Mr. J,” blushing she hurriedly continues, “and then there is IT.”
After another quick shy look at Daniel she rushed on, “IT needs to be able to upgrade some of the infrastructure as well as replacing some of the older computing equipment our staff are using. Take Jim for example, his computer very likely is run by mouse-power, like on a wheel, running to catch some cheese, not clicking, and wouldn’t run any new software program we bought him for HR functions anyhow.” A soft chuckle erupts and Jim enthusiastically nods his head.
“Jim, I’ll be expecting that small crate of neatly packaged unmarked twenty dollar bills by the end of the week,” with a wink in Jim’s direction, “seeing as apparently you’re getting the lion-share of the all the spoils from my budget-y goodness.” She is actually feeling a little bit saucy, and this might be the first time that Cora was intentionally funny at a meeting. Notice that, why don’t you, Dan. Well notice it, but remember, I’m not actually flirting with Jim because he’s gay, flag waving, parade marching, Cher loving gay.
Daniel’s head is bent over the cover sheet, and he flips back and forth to the spreadsheet and data he had provided which now included additional information from the accounting team. He looks up at Cora. “How is it that you’re able to get me more than I had requested? This covers everything on my list, plus what I need to support a new HR infrastructure, several new computers as well as upgrades for the AV equipment in the conference room.”
“Well I’m magical, Daniel, didn’t you know that?” she says with a smile, startling herself, Kaelyn, and probably everyone else at the table; that bordered on flirting, clearly she was high, or insane… yup, she’d gone round the bend.
“Which is why I made sure not to anger her when I left her my request along with a sacrificial offering,” Jim pipes up from the end of the table, which brings another round of snickers and guffaws. When did the monthly meeting become amateur night at the Laugh Track Comedy Shack?
“Mr. J. and I reviewed all of the requests and really focused on what our priorities should be to move us forward through the rest of this fiscal year and into the next, IT and HR are two key areas. The computing equipment made sens
e, as did the infrastructure, and the conference room equipment will pay for itself if we are able to properly court buyers and investors. What we have now doesn’t give us the opportunity to make eye grabbing sexy multi-media presentations. You want the money; you need to bring the sexy sometimes.” Oh My God Cora, sit down and stop saying sexy, you are embarrassing yourself, again, just stop.
Cora sat down and the meeting continued as all the other divisions reported on their areas, progress, needs, etc. Stacy from HR, her official title was employee relations specialist, but she liked to call herself the cruise director, solicited ideas for what to do for the rescheduling of the holiday party, which had been cancelled by a bitch of a blizzard. Since Boston Pharma was a “family” company this was a spouses, significant others invited to-do, and after much chatter it was decided that we’d have a dinner dance for Valentine’s Day at the jazz club down the block if they were free. Inwardly Cora groaned, attendance at these things was compulsory unless you were actually dead, hospitalization did not excuse you. Drinks, dinner and dancing while she sat with Kaelyn and her husband Tommy while they made suggestive comments and got handsy with at each other all night—so very seriously not Cora’s idea of fun. It was not a good time, and it was most certainly not for those who were single or who had a weak stomach.
The meeting ended and the room cleared out quickly. Cora walked around the table to pick up the copies of the report left behind, stopped next to Daniel, and took a deep breath. He was still looking over the spreadsheets trying to make sense of it she guessed.
“Hi,” she said, trying not to sound too breathy, “how was your break? You grew a beard.” Inwardly she kicked herself, well duh Captain Obvious, it’s all over his sexy hairy face.
“Yeah, I got lazy over break, I moved at the beginning of December into this little bungalow I bought and I spent all of the break painting, sleeping, or eating beer and pizza while I painted.” He was looking at her, right into her eyes; and it made all kinds of her parts tingle in some serious ways.
“Well it suits you, very handsome.” She couldn’t snap her mouth closed fast enough, stupid, stupid, stupid girl. Why not just take off all your clothes, lie out on the conference table and offer to do all manner of naughty things to him and his hotness of a body? Her mind drifted as she wondered what the scratch of that beard would feel like on her cheek, her inner thighs, her nipples—focus Cora.
A blush rose up his neck as he shyly responded, “Thank you, I needed some validation. I like it but my mom is all over me to shave it off and the guys upstairs are making Grizzly Adams jokes. How was your break? I feel like it’s been forever since I’ve seen you. I spent the last week at the plant in Woburn. Some knucklehead turned off all the heat and a pipe burst in the server room. Computers don’t work, we can’t produce drugs, and we don’t make money. Said knucklehead is up to his eyeballs in shit. Luckily that’s covered by insurance and won’t eat into this nice little late Christmas budget miracle you worked for me.”
“Oh it was nothing, you guys need the money, I found the money, I found it for Jim, and others as well so you’re only kinda special.” She was flirting with him, actually flirting, what in the hell had possessed her? Who cares, she was going to run with it. “Well ‘someday, and that day may never come, I'll call upon you to do a service for me. But until that day…’” again, she snapped her mouth shut, at this rate she probably looked like a turtle, or a guppy. “I’m so sorry, that was a crappy Godfather impression, please forgive me. Although it was better, and more relevant than ‘Leave the gun, take the cannoli.’ I’ll just go hide under my desk now. I clearly lack social skills to be allowed to interact with other humans. I watch way too many movies, way too many quotes clogging up useful space in my head.” Oh my god, stop talking Cora.
“I’ll let it slide, this time, and I’m sure whatever that favor is I can handle it.” She could not breathe, and her smile at him must have been blinding, she really could not have been any more obvious if she rubbed all up on him and marked him with her scent. “That’s a really pretty smile, Cora, you don’t smile often enough, I would have grown the beard years ago if I’d known it would have this effect.” He winked at her, he actually winked at her, and he wasn’t sure what had overcome him. Cora was pretty, but she seemed shy, except for today; today she was on fire, and it felt like he was seeing her for the first time.
Obviously, he’d seen her, second Tuesday of every month since he was promoted two years ago, and whenever he had to fix her computer or steal some candy. She looked very different today than she did at that first meeting, she seemed to have put serious effort into her physical appearance, but Daniel had always thought she was lovely. She always had a smile, but it seemed a sad smile and it made him wonder what it was that made her sad. Every now and again, he wondered if there was a way to make her happy, instead of sad, but that wasn’t his responsibility, right?
It’s work, and after a disastrous experience in his first job out of college, he’d never really put anyone at work in the “potential” category, maybe he needed to rethink that.
“Well, I need to get back to my desk, I’ve got a conference call shortly with a potential HR systems vendor.” He could feel her pulling away as all those words rushed out of her on a breath. He could feel the moment fading, and it had been a moment, hadn’t it? Had she felt it too?
He met her eyes again, held her gaze, and smiled; a slow, sweet smile that said he had things on his mind, and wouldn’t she like to know what they were. “Well Cora, thanks for the support, and the compliment. I’ll try to make sure I get to stop in to say hi again soon. Three weeks is way too long not to say hey to a smiling friendly face, who always has those tasty strawberry hard candies to steal.”
It was her turn to blush as she stammered, “No problem, you know where to find me if you need candy, or whatever.” She turned and nearly ran from the room.
Yup, there was definitely something different about her today, or maybe he was just finally waking up; but he didn’t have the first idea of what he should do about it. So, he tucked it in his back pocket, grabbed his tablet, checked his Blackberry and walked towards the elevator and back to his quiet space on the fourth floor where he could fix things and think and drink coffee, lots and lots of coffee.
Back at her desk, Cora logged back in to her computer and turned off the voicemail. While she waited for her screen to come up she dumped the extra reports in the recycling bin and picked up a strawberry candy, they were sugar free, and she could have five for one point, no one but Kaelyn knew they were sugar free. Apparently Daniel liked them, she pulled out her grocery list and put a x3 next to that item on her list, no way was she going to run out now.
Before she even opened her email, a chat box opens up:
Kaelyn- So, did you go for it, did you offer yourself up as a sex slave, to love and cherish til death do you part? At the very least invite him to drinks with the group?
Cora- Don’t you have actual work to do? Besides I’m not here for drinks this week, so the less he knows the better, no one can poach on my turf
Kaelyn- Yes, Mr. J is paying me to work as a yenta, or a pimp, whichever works. If you want to stop poaching you need to mark your territory, go rub up on him, or pee on his shoes
Cora- I did talk to him after everyone left, I complimented his beard, he thanked me for the budget support. Apparently he bought a house and he’s been busy painting and last week was in Woburn fixing a water pipe server room destruction, as for the shoe thing…ewwww… you are twisted, how is it you are allowed to raise actual humans?
Kaelyn- Yeah I noticed the beard, you removed all the oxygen from the room when you looked up and took a deep breath as you took it in, I know how you love beards, what is that about anyway?
Cora- Oh fuck you, no one turned blue, but holy hotness, that beard made me tingly in parts I’d forgotten got tingly, we chatted a little, I said some stupid shit, blushed like an idiot and ran before I made an even bigger fool of
myself
Kaelyn- There is no way you made a fool of yourself, he was peeking at you during the meeting too you know, and not for the first time
Cora- He was just looking at me because he was all grateful that I bought him stuff, Jim was probably looking at me like that too
Kaelyn- Trust me, Jim might look at Adam in reception that way, but not you, sorry you don’t have the right bits and pieces
Cora- Fine, fine, fine, we’ll talk about this tomorrow at lunch, you know I don’t like to use chat for this, and there’s really nothing else to say. We’ll go out for lunch before I leave for the conference in Norwalk
Kaelyn- Blargh, you are always pissing on my parade
Cora- At least I’m not pissing on your shoes
Kaelyn- Touché
Cora closed the window and went about sorting through emails. She was pretty sure that no one in IT actually read the chat logs but she wasn’t going to say anything else too foolish. She had stuff to do to get ready to leave for the conference and she needed to buckle down and stop thinking about the handsome beardy IT guy on the fourth floor who wanted to steal her strawberry candy. And since she had hair the color of a ripe strawberry, she could pretend that meant any number of things, right?
Chapter 3
While sitting in the booth across from Kaelyn at the local diner the next day at lunch Cora decided to throw caution to the wind and order eggs and toast and bacon and home fries. Oh, she’d track it, but she’d need some sustenance to go another round with Kaelyn on her relationship, or lack thereof with Daniel Santagata.
“Before you start on me, one conversation, some compliments and a little flirting does not mean we’re headed towards some sheet melting sexy times, or anything more serious,” Cora keeping her face stern as she tried not to let her mind wander to said sheet melting, and scratchy beard goodness.
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