by Drea Stein
Within moments, she was at work. She found a spot easily enough in the parking lot of the large, warehouse-like building that had once been a sailmaker’s loft, though it had been a long time since a sail was stitched there. For many years, it had been a genteelly rundown eyesore at the edge of town, the only tenants a health clinic and Madame Robrieux, Queensbay’s one and only psychic. Tory had never visited the great Madame, preferring to make her fortune rather than having it dictated to her.
Now, though, the building was getting a second chance. The new owner had come in and re-sided, painted and given the clinic’s rooms a facelift. The second floor was home to a construction company, while the third floor and addition was to be the new corporate headquarters of North Coast Outfitters, the company where Tory worked.
She took the newly refurbished elevator up to the third floor, and the doors opened up onto a dimly lit space. The whole place smelled like sawdust and fresh paint, and it made her smile. At least someone’s plan was going according to schedule. Her boss, Chase Sanders, had taken over his family’s ship chandlery and t-shirt shop when he had returned home from racing yachts in Europe. In a few short years, he’d turned it into an upscale apparel company for the yachting set—or those that aspired to be. Even though there was still a store down by the harbor, most of their orders came from their website—for which she was mainly responsible, along with a hodgepodge of other technical responsibilities.
The company had grown so big that Chase had decided to move them out of their space above the store and into here, where they would have plenty of room to grow. She’d volunteered to come in and do the setup work on the new computer system, and she expected to have the place mostly to herself, except for the construction crew, which she could dimly hear farther back, in the newer part of the building. Everyone would be moving in over the next couple of days, but for now, she was pretty certain she’d be alone.
“Finally, you’re here!” She jumped at the sound of the voice, the coffee in her to-go cup sloshing as her heartrate pounded and then slowed down when she saw who it was.
Chase Sanders, the owner and CEO of North Coast Outfitters, was running his hands up and down the smooth walls, his blue eyes sparkling like a kid on Christmas morning. She could tell that he was excited about the new space, raw and unfinished as it was.
“I was going to check out the new server room you and Horace promised me. See if I could start to set it up,” she said as she began to set her stuff down on a desk in one of cubicles. Horace Wentworth was the current Chief Technology Officer and, technically, her direct boss.
But Chase had other ideas.
“Oh no, you don’t,” he said and grabbed her arm.
“What do you mean?” she asked, propelled along by Chase’s energy.
“You’re going here,” he said. Now he not only looked like a kid on Christmas morning, but he sounded like one too.
He led her to a door, flung it open and turned on the lights.
“Like it?”
“What do you mean? What is it?”
“Your new office.”
“For me?” Tory asked, trying to keep her voice cool. She was a computer geek and wasn’t used to an office. She’d barely had a desk in the old building, since space had been so tight.
“Yes, for you. Since you’re the Chief Technology Officer of the company, I think it’s time you had your own office.”
“I thought I was your assistant website designer and all-around tech support. Isn’t Horace the Chief Technology Officer?” Tory asked carefully, not quite able to breathe. It had been on her plan, toward the bottom of the list: Be a CTO by 30. But it had been a stretch goal, something Tory had put down because she wanted to have something to strive for. A lot of other boxes were checked off—her own place, a cool car, a visit to Paris, run a marathon, but this … this was more than she had expected.
Chase laughed and led her into the office. It was white and came with a desk, two chairs and a bookshelf. There was a window, too—not enormous, but Tory was pretty sure she could glimpse a flash of the blue surface of Queensbay Harbor in the distance. An office, with a view. And her birthday was still months away.
“This is my way of offering you a promotion,” Chase said. He walked over to the desk and pulled out the chair, giving it a little wiggle. He was grinning.
“You couldn’t have pulled me into a conference room with HR and asked me there?” Tory said, still trying to find her balance. “What if I don’t want a promotion? And again, what about Horace?” She was trying to stay calm, and not be carried away on a wave of giddiness. This had to be a joke.
“This is way more fun, and besides, you’re more likely to say yes and not ask a lot of silly questions if I take you by surprise.”
“Like what kind of questions?” Tory gave in to the temptation. She sat down in the ergonomically correct chair and savored the small feeling of accomplishment it gave her. She’d been working at North Coast Outfitters since just after college, starting out as a sales clerk. Then she had offered to help out with the truly awful website and had found herself promoted to the chief web geek—Chase’s title, not hers. Still Horace, who had to be seventy if he was a day, had remained the Chief Technology Officer. He was an old friend of Chase’s father whom Chase hadn’t had the heart to get rid of.
“Horace’s daughter just had a baby, and he wants to spend more time with the grandkids. He’s retiring, effective just about now. He said that the only person who could replace him was you.”
“He said that, really?” Tory tried to keep the surprise out of her voice. She and Horace hadn’t always seen eye to eye. He was a nice enough guy, but she hadn’t felt he’d been interested enough in some of the newest technology on the market, the kind of stuff that could help North Coast Outfitters outperform its competitors.
“Well, close enough,” Chase said with a wave of his hand, as if the details weren’t that important. She decided that they weren’t, especially if it meant a promotion for her.
“So, what other questions were you afraid I was going to ask?”
“You know, the usual. Being the Chief Technology Officer means a lot more responsibility. It’s more than just the website—though that, of course, is huge. You have to support marketing and all their requests for sales data. And I’m told our inventory system sucks.”
“I’m the one who told you that,” Tory pointed out.
“I know, and you also were the only one who researched alternatives, complete with a cost-benefit analysis, and presented it to me in a way that made sense.”
“So … do I have the job because I convinced you I know what I’m doing or because Horace retired and you have no other choice?”
“Let’s just say, after a couple of years of working with you, I’m pretty sure you’ll handle anything I throw your way. And this is my way of recognizing it. Horace was a good guy, but we both know he was a little old-fashioned. If it hadn’t been for you, we would still be taking orders over the phone and faxing them someplace. I know how much you’ve pushed when it comes to technology, and you’ve shown that you can manage the team here. I may not be the most computer-savvy guy, but I know when someone else is.”
“You’re the only person I know who can break a computer just by looking at it,” Tory shook her head.
Chase laughed. “Exactly. Hey, I know my own strengths, and deciding which software to pick isn’t one of them.”
Then he turned serious. “Look, even I can tell that the website you’re responsible for makes up more than seventy percent of our sales, and the new inventory system you want to put in will cut down on our order processing costs, and that you’ve somehow managed to take all the sales reports for the past five years and accurately project demand for the last two seasons, so I’d say you’ve earned this. And I have to give myself a pat on the back. Who knew when you’d needed a summer job that you had a degree in computer science and that you are, like, you know, totally brilliant. Besides, I don’t w
ant you to leave.”
“Leave?” Tory said carefully.
“Don’t tell me recruiters haven’t been calling you,” Chase said, a sly smile crossing his face.
“Well, maybe,” Tory kept her voice neutral. Truth was she had been getting tired of working under Horace, of not being able to do as much as she wanted, of not being able to check out all the new technology, so she had been talking, just a little, with a few recruiters. Her plan, which was carefully laid out and full of details about what she needed to do to achieve it, had felt like it’d been in a holding pattern under Horace. Sure, she was happy here in Queensbay, but the salaries and opportunities that had been dangled in front of her had been tempting, even if most of them meant a move to Boston or New York City.
“Opportunity knocks, so don’t shut the door on it. Besides being good for the company, Phoebe would kill me if you moved away,” he added, referring to his fiancée and Tory’s friend.
“With a new office? A new title. And more money, right?” As good as everything sounded, she knew that Horace had been making a great deal more money than she had. If she was going to be taking over his job, it was time for a raise.
“Of course. But just remember there’s more responsibility and now the whole IT staff reports to you. Means you get to do all their performance reports,” Chase said in a whisper. Everyone knew he hated all the paperwork that went into running a company.
“Ok,” Tory said, taking a deep breath and letting it out. She could do this. It was what she had wanted, a chance to run the show, to really help build a business, using all the cool technology that was out there. And now Chase was offering her that opportunity.
“Ok?”
“Ok, I accept. You have yourself a new Chief Technology Officer.”
“Great, there’s some paperwork from HR on the desk. You should read it over, let me know if you have any questions. By the way, Sandy in sales said there’s s something wrong with the order processing system, so I think you’d better check it out.”
And with that, Chase was gone and Tory was left alone with her new responsibilities. Tory sat stock-still in her office, not quite believing what had just hit her—a freight train or the chance of a lifetime?
Her phone buzzed, and there was a pinging from her tablet. As if on cue, the desk phone started ringing. And so it began. Tory took a deep breath, grabbed her mobile, told the caller to wait, then grabbed the desk phone, told that caller to hold on, and then reached for her tablet to check her email.
Nice new office: check. Great job: check. First trial by fire: check. It was going to be a long day.
Chapter 3
Tory let her head fall slowly against the hard surface of her desk. Closing her eyes, she took ten deep, calming breaths, just like she had learned in the few yoga classes she had attended. It was past five o’clock, well past, she saw with a start, and she was beginning to hope that maybe the crisis—the latest one of the day—might be over for a moment. Sure enough, one of their servers had gone down, and it had taken hours of calls with their tech support company to fix it. That led to a backlog of orders that needed to be processed manually. Then the marketing team had asked for a whole boatload of reports about last quarter’s sales. And, through it all, everyone had come to her. Well, they usually had, but this time they weren’t hoping she would find a way to help; they were expecting it.
Being in charge. It was kind of a bitch when she thought about it. She lifted her head and looked at her coffee cup. Only the cold dregs remained. She wanted more, but stopped herself. The next one would probably be her tenth cup of the day, way more than she normally drank, and she already felt jittery, her nerves stretched tight.
Water. She should have water or a nice cup of calming herbal tea, and then she should attack her inbox. And then go over her to-do list for tomorrow, prioritizing all the tasks she would need to get a jump on. But first, the manila envelope with the paperwork from human resources sat on her desk. Chase had promised her a raise, but she hadn’t had a chance to ask what it would be.
Heart beating a little too fast, she opened the envelope and skimmed through the paperwork, which seemed pretty straightforward. Then she looked at the number written on it. Wow. Chase had said he’d give her a raise, but this was more than she had imagined.
It wasn’t quite enough to make her rich, but it was enough of an immediate bump in her salary that she could take her parents out to dinner to celebrate. And buy a new pair of running shoes. And maybe take a trip to Boston to run the marathon in them next year. She allowed herself a smile, a private moment of celebration, and mentally ticked off another item on her list. She’d finally made it.
Feeling as if dealing with all the headaches of her day were slightly more worth it, Tory texted her friends Lynn and Phoebe to see if they might be up for a celebratory drink, hoping for the best as she started to pack up her things.
She was still riding high, ready to hit Quent’s, the local pub, when she exited the doors of the building. She was looking around for Lynn, knowing her friend was probably running late, when she saw it.
Chapter 4
She almost didn’t know what to say, where to start, so she zeroed in on the guy who was standing over the hood of her Mini Cooper. His back was to her, so all she registered was height, even in his half-bent-over stance. He was alone, except for some sort of enormous black pickup truck that sat in the middle of the parking lot.
She reached her car, her beloved baby of a car, just as the guy straightened and turned toward her. Tory was on the edge of the sidewalk, but still the guy had a good four or so inches on her, putting him at over six feet tall. Or maybe that was because of the boots. They were brown with white stitching and heels. Who the hell wore cowboy boots in April in New England, never mind paired with stained work coveralls? The question quieted her shock, which turned instead to righteous indignation and then to near fury.
She saw that in one hand he had a bunched up, greasy cloth, which he was using to wipe his fingers, as if that would clean away the evidence.
“Oh, no. No, no, no you don’t,” Tory said, as she looked at it. She stepped off the curb and toward her car, not daring to touch it. The imperfection—no, it was more than that - it was a big, long, nasty gouge that ran along the driver’s side door. Her side mirror dangled precariously, as if hanging by a thread. Her Mini, her baby, was ruined.
“How could you?” she said, snapping her eyes up to him.
“Do what?” There was a puzzled tone in his voice. It wasn’t cold, but he wore a knit cap that covered most of the top of his head. He appeared to have light brown hair, evident from the sideburns that highlighted his sharply angled cheekbones. And a long swipe of grease ran across his forehead and down the left side of his face.
Still, it was a face that Tory could see was more than just good-looking, veering toward the dangerously handsome. High cheekbones, straight nose, a full mouth. But it was his eyes that stopped her. Twinkling blue, they were looking at her with a bemused expression.
“You think I did this?” He gestured with his hand. She could see the grime was well and good in there, under his nails, and that there were scrapes across the knuckle of his left hand, but no ring. Not that she cared, or should even have thought about it for a second.
“What else am I supposed to think? I go in there, and my car,” she pointed at her beloved hunter green Mini with the white racing stripe, placed precisely down the middle of the hood, “is fine, all in one piece. Then I walk out and see you here and my Mini in at least two pieces. And that dent,” she added with a moan.
He laid his hand over the dent, as if feeling its depth as he ran his fingers along the length of it. “Oh, it’s not so bad. Won’t take too much to knock that out. I can probably help with that. And the mirror’s not anything to worry about. I fix those all the time.”
He had an accent, she noticed, slow and syrupy like molasses dripping off the edge of a spoon. From somewhere well south of New England.
Mississippi, Tennessee, someplace where Spanish moss hung from the trees and people spent long, slow afternoons sipping sweet tea on white-columned porches. Along with the blue eyes and face, she was finding herself slightly mesmerized by the accent, by him in general, but it didn’t stop her from drawing a firm line. She had never picked up a guy in a parking lot, and she wasn’t about to start now.
“Like I’d let you touch my car after what you did.” She adopted what her friend Lynn called her tough girl stance—hands on her hips, head slightly tilted to one side. She worked in the tech industry, which was notoriously male-dominated, and she wasn’t going to be swayed into cool acceptance of the situation by a sexy voice and twinkling blue eyes.
He laughed, holding his hands up. “Listen, ma’am, I didn’t touch your car. When I came out of the clinic after dropping off one of my guys, it was like this. I was just taking a look. Somebody else must have done it, and taken off. Just how do you think I could have done it?” His tone was curious, amused even, as if the whole thing was some sort of joke.
Tory looked wildly around, trying to find something, anything, to prove her case—and trying to forget she had just been called “ma’am.” Should she be insulted or thrilled by the way the word had rolled off his tongue? Thrilled, she decided against her better judgement. There had been something completely sexy about the way it sounded.
“With that thing,” she said, pointing at the big truck taking up at least three spots about fifty feet away. Now that she was focusing on it and not him, it looked entirely capable of causing a fair amount of damage.
“I drove that thing, as you call it, in here, parked it way over there, where there was plenty of room, and walked Joe into the clinic because he’s in a lot of pain. That truck never got any closer than that to your car. I don’t think I would have fit into this spot.” His blue eyes danced with amusement, and he rocked back and forth on his booted heels as if that settled the matter.