Just Another Day at the Office

by Amber Lynn

Nate was already getting dressed by the time my eyes opened in the morning. I liked to think I could be a light sleeper, but I was happy I didn't wake up a few moments sooner or I might have seen a show. After my little vision, the show would have been more intriguing, but I had a feeling Nate would've had trouble getting to work on time if I showed even a little interest.

  "What time is it?" I asked, not moving from my spot. The bed was warm and I was liable to stay curled up in the blankets all day.

  "Seven-thirty," he said as he came over and gave me a quick kiss on the lips. I loved the smell of fresh shower clean mixed with his usual woodsy musk. He backed away before I could stick my nose in his neck and get a big whiff, which was a good thing.

  Bringing me out of my mild daydream of trying to figure out why he smelled the way he did, he said, "Only two more days here and then we can go home."

  "Thank you for the reminder. I can't wait until I'm waking up in my own bed again. I imagine I'll bore myself to tears today listening to people's minds between soap operas," I said as I finally rolled out of bed to wake my muscles up. My brain was doing pretty good about firing on all cylinders, but my body wanted to fight about not getting to rest longer.

  "You hate soap operas, so don't pretend that you're actually going to watch them today."

  He took a spot on my side of the bed to sit and put his shoes on. He was right; I would've had to be extremely desperate to turn to soap operas. I couldn't handle drama in real life, and fake drama on TV was infinitely worse.

  "You're right, as usual. I really wish they had some kind of gym in this town. I could use a little time with my friend the punching bag. Dealing with the brainiacs, or idiots depending on who you talk to, leaves me with a lot of pent-up frustration.?I'll be right back." I said as I walked to the bathroom to take care of my morning business.

  When I returned, Nate looked a little hesitant to say what was on his mind, "I forgot to tell you that Anne and Ettie wanted to help you pick out your wedding dress. They said there weren't a lot of places around here, so they wanted to have a little party at Ettie's house tomorrow while everyone else is at work. I think they were planning on firing up the Internet and searching every wedding dress site they could find. Don't ask why they decided to relay the message through me, or why they thought you needed to find a dress days after the proposal."

  I rolled my eyes at the thought. Bringing up the fact that I hated dresses seemed redundant, Nate had heard that speech numerous times.

  "Everyone else is way more excited than they should be about a wedding that may not take place for a hundred years. There must be some chromosome missing from my makeup because I really don't care about having a huge wedding with zillions of guests and a huge buffet. When the time comes, I just want a small affair, which I personally cater and make the wedding cake for. Spending tons of money on carriages, ice sculptures and chocolate fountains makes no sense to me."

  He interrupted my rant to say, "Please don't say no to the chocolate fountain just yet. I'm sure we can find a reasonable priced option."

  I should have known he'd latch on to the part about chocolate. It was impossible to mention the word chocolate without his ears perking up.

  "Fine, we will discuss the chocolate fountain, but by the time we get married, we may be living in outer space and surviving on packets of food, so you may be out of luck. I hope you don't mind dehydrated, then rehydrated, made to last a million years lasagna."

  "If that's the case, I'm going to start stock piling chocolate now. I lived so many years without it that I don't think I can do that again. Since I've lived all those years, I'm pretty sure your idea of outer space living won't happen until after our wedding, but there could be a space boom, and I don't want to risk that."

  The man had a serious chocolate addiction. It was getting close to time for me to start planning an intervention for him, or at least start weaning him off. He was lucky that none of the chocolate he ate stuck to his bones.

  "Let's get you off to work, you crazy person. Tell Anne and Ettie to give me a time and destination and I'll be there. Even if it's something as torturous as picking out a wedding dress, it will give me something to do and a chance to say goodbye to them before we blow out of this town. Not that I've had a real chance to even get to know them, other than the few hours at the party I'm trying to forget."

  We walked out to the front room and he went straight for the door. "Since I've got all day to come up with something for dinner, I'm taking requests. I prefer it to be something that isn't on our regular rotation." It went without saying that if I was stuck without outlined activities, I was going to spend a lot of time hanging out in the kitchen.

  He backtracked away from the door to give me another quick kiss. After the toe-curling one from my memory, I was surprised he didn't try to take things a little further.

  "Just surprise me. I can't go wrong with anything you make, even if it's a brand new recipe." He smiled at me for a second and then was gone, off to work to bring home the bacon. I shut the door behind him and tried to make up my mind about what to do first.

  I decided to start my morning in the kitchen making cinnamon rolls. I mixed the dough up and then spent about ten minutes kneading it. Something about kneading dough into submission was soothing for me, which was why I tried to do it at least a few times a month. Once it was all smooth and elastic, I put it in a bowl to start rising. The whole process took less than half an hour, so I needed to come up with something else to do.

  I made my way into the living room and got comfy on the sectional. It was time to see what some of the people at work had on their minds that morning. Not knowing the majority of the suspects I had come up with, I thought it was best for me to focus on the two from my group.

  It was easy to picture Hank at his desk, since that's where I'd seen him more often than not. It didn't take long for me to pick up random thoughts that had Hank's tone behind them. Nate had mentioned the possibility of interference, but I thought things came in relatively clear.

  "I wish we could find that damn robot. The new installation is working great on the backup, but I want to get my hands on Vinnie. We need to teach that bucket of bolts that we are the boss. With half our team out searching, it won't be long before we bring him in."

  How boring. Listening into a mad man wasn't as appealing as some might think. I guessed he was going to spend most of the day obsessing about Vinnie. I did wonder where he ran off to, but it really wasn't my concern. Switching channels, I zoned in on Eric to see if there was anything better coming from that feed.

  "I can't wait to get out of this town. It won't be long now and everything will be in place, then I can tell the team what losers they really are. I can't believe I've made it here this long without causing myself severe brain damage from hitting my head against a wall. Now they have me out looking for a stupid robot that I really could care less about. My designs are way more advanced then Vinnie's metal frame. Just wait until they see my shell of the future."

  I brought myself out of his thoughts because they were a little too self-indulgent for my liking. It sounded like Eric was making plans of his own. The question was whether those plans were being funded by the selling of top secret documents. Nate was going to enjoy hearing where Eric's thoughts centered. I expected he'd already learned bits and pieces from everyone, so it probably wouldn't surprise him.

  All the concentration only wasted another half an hour of my time, so I decided I should get dressed for the day. There were no plans to leave the house, but I wanted to be prepared to in case anyone knocked on the door. I jumped in the shower and scrubbed off all the dirt and grime from our road trip. I didn't want to think about how much I'd left behind in the bed. At least that meant I could spend a few minutes doing laundry.

  I attached my knives, knowing I wasn't planning to go anywhere, but when you've been kidnapped more than once, you like to feel safe. I grabbed my standard pair of blue jeans and a shirt that said?Also, I can kill yo
u with my brain.?The statement had become true in recent days, so I thought it was fitting.

  My feet preferred to remain shoeless, so I let them have their way. It wasn't like they'd get cold walking around on heated floors. There was a little skip in my step as I made it back out to the kitchen.

  I poked the dough and when the indentation stayed, I knew it was ready. I grabbed the flour and sprinkled a generous amount on the counter before grabbing the rolling pin and the dough. I worked the dough into a nice rectangle, and then spread some softened butter over it.

  Next came scattering brown sugar and cinnamon over the butter. When my filling was done, I started rolling the dough up into a log. With some handy unflavored dental floss that I'd procured from the bathroom, I sliced the log into individual rolls and put them on a cookie sheet.

  I had another half an hour of rising to kill before I could put them in the oven. I thought about working out by doing jumping jacks in the middle of the living room, but just after having a shower that seemed counterproductive. I resolved to get out my laptop to see if searching for Eric on the Internet brought up any interesting information. That was how Vinnie found out about me and if it was good enough for a super-smart robot, I thought it was good enough for me.

  Disappointedly, after twenty minutes of clicking on every link with Eric's name, I had no new information. It was a long shot and something just to fill up my time anyway, so I wasn't devastated by my findings. I went back to the kitchen and turned the oven on to preheat. Soon my cinnamon rolls would be done and I could finally have breakfast around ten o'clock. There was a reason I usually did most of the process the night before.

  While the rolls were in the oven, I made up my famous cream cheese frosting. It was famous because it had actually been tried by at least five other people. Until recently, most of my culinary delights stayed in the house, but I'd taken cinnamon rolls and carrot cake featuring my frosting to work before, so other people had tried it.

  The oven beeped, leading me to take the rolls out and quickly start frosting them. When they all had their topping, I devoured one in three bites. Oh my goodness, sugar overload, but it was so good. I left the rest of the rolls to cool, while I went to the bathroom to wash my now sticky hands and face. I could've taken care of it in the kitchen, but if I stayed, another roll was going to find its way to my hips.

  ?By the time I was cleaned up, it was eleven. I still had hours until Nate got home, but I'd managed to waste most of the morning away. I hadn't talked to Rick since the trip to my parents, so I hoped calling him would waste another hour.

  When I tried calling, it rang a few times and then went to voicemail. I heard Rick's voice say,?"You've reached Rick, I'm not here to take your call, but if you leave a message, I'll get back to you as soon as possible. On a side note, if this is my girl Avery, rest assured you will be on top of my callback list."

  I couldn't believe he still had that on his message. I'd told him multiple times that it was creepy.

  "Hey, Freddie, it's me. What good is a protector if I can't reach him at all hours of the day? What if someone has kidnapped me and taken me to a deserted island somewhere and I'd managed to get this one phone call out only to find myself talking to a machine. I see where your loyalties lie.

  "Anyway, I learned some interesting things over at my folks, so when you get a chance to break away from your busy day, give me a call. Oh yeah, if you can't tell I'm extremely bored, so don't pay attention to anything I just said except you should call me back."

  Rick was a detective, so I knew he really did have more important things to do during the day than amuse me, but it was still fun to tease him. I guessed my idea of him entertaining me for a while was out the door, so I headed back to my laptop to do some recipe searching. Since I was planning on making something I'd never made before, I expected it to take longer than usual, so starting before noon made sense.