Tech Support
(Working Stiffs – Book 4)
S.L. Carpenter
Sahara Kelly
Copyright © 2019, S.L. Carpenter & Sahara Kelly
Cover art copyright ©2019, S.L. Carpenter
For P and N Graphics
Dedication
Scott and Sahara dedicate this story to everyone who has been with them from the early days, nearly two decades ago. To those whose passion for romance, steamy stories and laughter matches their own, and whose delight in a variety of weird tales has kept them writing together since that first novel appeared so long ago. Thank you—you’ve saved them both from spending a fortune on counseling and therapy.
To their families—their love and gratitude as always. They have had to put up with two writers, not an easy job at the best of times, and they’ve stuck it out over this unusual journey, showing patience, support, encouragement and a lot of rolled eyeballs. Nobody could ask for more than that!
Neither Scott nor Sahara could have guessed—when that first email winged across the country between them—that all these years later they’d still be partners in the most wonderful adventure of all…writing stories. Sometimes, life really is freakin’ awesome!
Chapter One
“Chad, this idea came over from the Concept Development department in Boston. Developed by Matt Stronzo and Kevin Schwanz. They’ve assigned a temporary ID…” Denise glanced at her notes as she relayed the information to her boss. “They’re calling it the Double Duet.”
“Hmm.”
“It’s been run past Grover in Tech and Mike in Production. They gave it the thumbs up. Consensus is that it could really be a profitable product for us...” Denise looked at Chad’s back as he stared out at the landscape in his best billionaire-at-the-window pose.
He was listening and absorbing everything she said, but running through several other ideas at the same time. His mind liked to have more than one thing to focus on and it leaned toward the high-tech industry because he was a born geek, lucky enough to have money.
However, his father wasn’t going to let him just walk into a glamorous and high-powered job without earning it.
After getting his Master’s in Engineering at Stanford, and his Ph.D. at MIT, he worked for the family business, starting in the mailroom and rapidly rising to project manager in IT security support. When he realized that he was now heading a very large department that dealt with all the new software integrations, and prototype IT systems, an idea came to him. He wanted to create a subsidiary company dealing with those systems; analyzing them, taking the useful ones as far as they could go and disposing of the non-starters.
“...you know Chad, I always thought you were hot.” Denise checked to see if he was paying attention. She never tired of teasing him. “I’m not wearing any panties at the moment in case you’d like me to bend over your workstation. You can spank me, or I could get under your desk and ease some of the...”
“You know I’d prefer to have you on my desk so I could eat. Brunch was always my favorite meal while we were dating.” He turned, winked at Denise and then sighed.
“Sorry, just thinking. Can you send the usual acknowledgement and thanks statement? I saw the specs too, and it sounds like the concept could really sell well. We’ll have to make sure they get some help with the design of the final product. It’s a prime think-tank department but they outsource their design art. I’d rather keep it in house. Get them a short-term contractor for this job and we’ll see how it goes...”
“You should go out there.”
“What? Where? Me?”
“Yeah, you. Boston.” Denise swiveled in her chair as she talked. “You could use the break. All you do is work, work, work. Try a change of time zone.”
“Ever since we stopped seeing each other you’ve been telling me to go places. When we were together you never wanted me to leave.”
“That’s because I liked the attention, and the sex was, amaz—well, it was different. Now that I’m a respectable married lady with a husband that doesn’t live for technology, I can see some of things I missed. A little getaway can help clear your mind. Maybe you’ll even get laid.”
Chad laughed. He and Denise had been a sexual firestorm a long time ago, but they knew it wouldn’t be anything more than that. She was his intern, he was the big boss’s son, they were both young and it had become close between them for a short while. But eventually they acknowledged that they would always be better friends than anything else. He wasn’t looking for a wife and kids and she wanted to start a family.
Over the years, one thing never changed. She was loyal and protective of her job, committed to the company and Chad. And he listened to her ideas, thoughts and advice because beyond all that sensuality, beauty and sarcastic sass was a brilliant, tenacious businesswoman who didn’t fuck around when it came to shrewd strategies. That’s why she was now his top advisor and oversaw the day to day business operations, no questions asked.
“I appreciate your interest in my sex life, but maybe you’re right. Going over there would be a nice getaway. Perhaps I’ll do a surprise visit to their facility. I’d like to get a feel for their development group, especially if they plan on debuting the Data Duet at their October trade show.”
Following his father’s example, Chad had always kept a relatively low profile, which made it easy to stroll around the company facilities incognito. A few upper level managers knew him, but he liked anonymity better than being brown-nosed every time he walked onto a different floor.
As far as his public persona went, he was pretty much scandal free—except for his twenty-fifth birthday week when he wanted to have sex with a woman from each continent in seven days and couldn’t find one from Antarctica. It was a pretty embarrassing moment when he threw a fit in the airport, and then went from bar to bar looking for a woman from Antarctica with loose morals and lower than normal standards.
The charges of indecent exposure were dropped after he was caught standing in a hotel lobby showing off his tool. He did complete his mission, but it was in the police car with the female officer who took him into custody. He spent a week or so in hospital after that, with a bad case of frostbite. She had left him on a quiet road, with nothing but a beanie for warmth.
But that was well-buried in his past.
So, obedient to Denise’s suggestions and his own inclinations, Chad decided that yes, he would visit the New England branch of TechNow. His suitcase was checked and eaten by a conveyor belt, he’d suffered through the TSA inspection, been randomly selected for a feel up by a nice guy with large hands and been winked at. To complete his total hatred of travel, Chad was stuck in coach because they overbooked his flight and he didn’t want to wait for a first-class seat on another flight. He was tired, felt like death warmed over, needed a shave and had a persistent ringing in his ears from the older woman sitting next to him. She yelled continually over the noise of the engines, telling him all about her family and sisters and the four granddaughters, any one of which would be perfect for him.
God, he hated travel.
*~*~*~*~*
“Damn shit piece of motherf…”
“Good morning Meredith.”
Meredith gritted her teeth and summoned a smile. “Good morning, Matt.”
He nodded and passed her desk, but not without the obligatory visual check to see if she had both breasts with her this morning. She did.
Biting down on an inappropriate and anatomically impossible comment, Merry returned to her previous occupation of trying to open the top drawer of her desk. The one that continually jammed.
The force of her anger was f
ueled—not by the drawer—but by the notice she’d seen on the way in. It was posted in the elevator so that no employee of the company could miss it.
“The Office of the C.E.O., TechNow Inc., offers congratulations to the development team headed by Kevin Schwanz and Matt Stronzo for their recent initiation of the design and implementation of Project Double Duet. The results have been reviewed and accepted, thus will shortly begin production. Again, the thanks of the company go to these two devoted managers and the teams they represent.
Signed, Denise Matthews, Director of Operations.”
God-fucking-damn.
Those words rankled in Merry’s brain as she booted up her system and began the routine task of sorting her emails. The messages blurred as fury clouded her vision again and she forced her temper back down to manageable levels by closing her eyes, breathing deeply and imagining a beautiful chestnut tree, full of leaves, shining brightly in the summer sunshine against a sky of perfect blue.
On the lowest branch, just beneath the heavy white blooms, were the bodies of Kevin and Matt, hanging by their necks, eyes bulging and feet twitching in their death throes.
There, that was much better.
She returned to her emails and pushed aside the memory of the weeks she’d spent working on that project. The hours of overtime that had been devoted to creating a template for a product that would add many gazillions of dollars to the company’s coffers. A project that she believed was state of the art, useful and would appeal to the geek in every person who used a computer. Which was, of course, most of the world.
The result, now known as the Data Duet, was going to highlight TechNow’s autumn presentation at the New England GeekFest. It should attract everyone from office managers to parents of high-schoolers, not to mention fly off the shelves in every college town in the States. And that was only the domestic market.
Internationally? She couldn’t begin to imagine.
The sleek box, no bigger than a deck of cards, was home not only to six terabytes of solid-state data storage, but also a petite one terabyte flash drive which slid neatly into a concealed slot on the side to become part of the unit. Everything was as secure as humanly possible and pass-coded up the wazoo for good measure.
It was unique, useful, state-of-the-art tech and it was her baby.
Or had been until Kevin had peered into her design files and promptly lifted it, sharing it with Matt and presenting it to Corporate as their brainchild.
Hence the chestnut tree gallows moment of meditation.
Merry finished her morning’s check of things to do and found none that inspired her into action. She was angry, depressed and—as she’d done many times before—questioning why she stayed on with TechNow. This had to be the third…no fourth time those two scheming needle-dicks had “appropriated” one of her ideas as their own.
Sure, they were the ones who presented projects, since they were heads of the department. But it was customary for the actual source of the concept to be credited.
That never happened. Merry wasn’t the only one to be so slighted, though. Her colleagues Deb and Kat had also suffered the same indignity. Stan, the third member of the team, was the worst affected, since he was quiet, socially awkward, and damn close to Einstein when it came to brain power. His knowledge of obscure software, not to mention code, was invaluable, and Merry had benefitted enormously from his input.
In fact, when she’d first proposed the idea to him, he gave her the ultimate approbation.
“Cooool.”
There was no greater praise than getting a “cooool” from Stan.
But there was nothing cool about seeing a corporate acknowledgement praising the project and the developers to the skies. Matt and Kevin were garnering company kudos and most probably a salary to match.
But they were dull, ignorant, oafish clods who wouldn’t survive a day without Merry, Deb, Kate and Stan.
And Merry really hated the way Matt ogled her cleavage. He was clever enough not to hit on her, but his overt attention to her femininity made her skin crawl and she made sure to stay far away from him at parties.
As she began the one chore of the day—documentation—she sighed. And allowed herself a final quick glimpse of that lovely chestnut tree…
Chapter Two
Landing at Boston’s Logan Airport always freaked Chad out. It was exactly like surfing. Everyone was prepared for arrival, with their seatbacks locked in the upright position, their tray tables secured, and their personal bags stowed beneath the seat in front of them.
And then they looked out their windows and their gasps as the ocean got closer and closer—well Chad managed a chuckle even as his own heartbeat accelerated.
Of course, this was quite routine to the pilot, and once again the wheels touched down on dry land.
He’d decided to maintain his preferred low-key approach to the trip, so there was no uniformed chauffeur holding a sign with his name on it and waiting outside baggage claim.
He was going to grab a good old traditional cab and enjoy the ride out of town into the suburbs. Which would, of course, include a complete autopsy of the last Red Sox season and the multiple reasons why the New York Yankees sucked.
He had booked a suite in one of the best hotels, but he wasn’t about to broadcast that fact. It was a business necessity for him…staying in touch with Denise and his home office kept everything running smoothly and he’d requested a wall monitor and the fastest internet connection available.
He would be able to video-con with Sacramento if needed. He hoped that need wouldn’t arise, since he preferred to focus on the job at hand. But he was prepared, and so was his suite.
Although the time difference had added hours to his day, it hadn’t added hours to his internal clock and after a wonderful dinner at the hotel restaurant which included fresh Wellfleet oysters and an even fresher Maine lobster, Chad hit the sack at an unusually early hour.
Which explained why, when the alarm on his phone went off the next morning, he jumped, fell out of bed on the wrong side and whacked his shin against the edge of a bedside table that shouldn’t have been there at all.
Once he’d remembered he wasn’t at home, things went more smoothly, and he avoided the rush hour by lingering over coffee and muffins. He took care of his essential emails, sent a totally inappropriate meme to Denise and grabbed his jacket in case one of those icy New England breezes decided to chill everyone out there wearing a t-shirt.
The local branch of TechNow was part of a sleek new office complex right down the road from the hotel, so Chad decided to walk just for the pleasure of seeing some of the leaves beginning to turn red as the summer drew to a close.
Plus, he also wanted to gauge the external appeal of the building. Some might think that the outside didn’t matter, but his father had insisted that a business should convey professionalism from the minute it came into view, not the minute a visitor crossed the threshold.
Pleased to see that the warm golden frontage was softened even more by a well-tended planting of shrubs, Chad mentally put a check mark in the approval column and walked into TechNow/New England.
The receptionist was young, attractive—Chad admitted to a “thing” for redheads—and clicked off her headset as he approached the curve of glass blocks which served as her desk.
“Good morning, sir. Mr. Schwanz is expecting you. I believe your interview is scheduled for eleven. Would you like me to let him know you’re on your way?” She smiled, flashing him a mouthful of white teeth that would have sent a dentist into a vortex of ecstasy.
“Uhh…”
“He’ll be pleased to know you’re here. He’s in a hurry to begin work on this project since the other contractor bailed on him.”
She walked out from behind the gleaming barrier, dazzling Chad with a pair of slender legs, a short skirt and perfect blue pumps that had to be five inches high. He managed not to drool
“Of course. Thank you.”
The idea of no
t playing along, or announcing who he was? Never crossed his mind. With his capacity to deal with more than one issue at a time, he deduced that the contract company candidate had failed to show, and Miss Long-legged Redhead had mistakenly assumed that he, Chad, was the replacement.
It had to be for the Data Duet project, so what the hell. The ever-present imp of mischief that had lain dormant since the Antarctic, poked up its head and grinned. After all, it said, this is your company, Chad. You can be whoever you want.
She led him to an elevator and pressed the button. “I’m sorry, I forgot to ask your name.”
He stepped back as the elevator doors opened, allowing her to enter first. “An-Anderson.” The first name that came to mind. “Chad Anderson.”
Another dazzling smile. “Thank you, Mr. Anderson. If all goes well, I’ll make sure the contract paperwork goes through.”
“Thanks.” He was on solid ground here. “I’m sure the folks at Greenleaf will appreciate that.”
“Indeed.”
The elevator stopped at the sixth floor and she walked out, turning to her right. At the end of the corridor was a glass door announcing that it was the entrance to the Concepts Development department, and under the aegis of Mr. K. Schwanz and Mr. M. Stronzo.
Chad, who had picked up a pretty good working knowledge of several languages over the years, immediately translated the names. And tried hard not to laugh.
What the hell must it be like, working for Dick and Asshole? Ms. Red tapped on an inner door and opened it at the sound of a voice grunting.
“Excuse me, Mr. Schwanz. This is Mr. Chad Anderson. Greenleaf has sent him over to replace the other candidate.”
“Thank God.” A large man rose from a massive executive desk chair, complete with maroon leather tufts and brass rivets. “About time too.” His gaze flickered over the receptionist, lingering a moment too long on her legs. “Thank you, Lulu. Lookin’ fine today as always.”
Tech Support (Working Stiffs Book 4) Page 1