by Penny Ward
Harper smiled and her wobbly legs walked out the doors.
“Nice butt,” Beau whispered as she disappeared through the doors, watching her go. “Yum.”
Beau wanted to get his hands on those gentle curves.
“You look confused,” one of Beau’s team members walked past.
“Uh?” he hadn’t realized he was in a daze.
“You’re standing there, staring at nothing.”
Reality sank into Beau and he realized that Harper was long gone, and he had been in a daze about the girl.
But what was it about Harper that made him want to forget everything but the way her gorgeous green eyes looked up into his and the way she smelled like strawberries in June and looked like she could melt the ice caps with that body of hers?
The curves on her body put other women to shame.
“Hot damn,” he mumbled as he walked away from the doors.
Chapter Three
Harper was early to the office on Monday morning, in contrast to her chronic case of lateness.
She wanted to make a point of showing that she was happy to have the job and it wouldn't hurt to earn a few brownie points with the new boss.
The parking lot was empty save for a few cars and she found a parking spot closer to the front entrance than she had the first time. When she went into the reception area, the same pretty blonde woman was sitting at the front desk.
“Hey, good morning. Harper, right?” she greeted her with a huge smile and got up from her desk.
“Good morning and yes, Harper,” she liked that people already knew her name when she walked in on the first day.
That seemed like a good thing.
“I'm Jill. I don't think I introduced myself last time you were in,” she said, picking up a small pile of papers from her desk and a stack of Manila mailing envelopes.
“Nice to meet you, Jill,” Harper said, smiling back.
“I'll show you where your office is and then I'll go around and do the mail and come back to check on you to make sure you're getting settled in alright when I'm done,” Jill said, leading Harper through the doors and down the same hallway she had gone down the day of her interview.
“Thank you. I appreciate it,” she said, looking around and peeking into the rooms whose doors were open.
“How long have you been working here?” Harper asked her.
“I've been here about three years now… I think. Wow, time is flying,” she laughed.
Harper liked looking into the offices and conference rooms as she passed. She was curious about what else went on in the building.
She saw meetings going on in one of the rooms, a group of the players hanging out in the other discussing plays on a big projection on the wall, the other room was Mr. Edward's office and it was empty.
“Here you go. All yours,” Jill said opening a heavy oak door and turning on the light.
The office was empty but for a few leather chairs and a desk with a computer and three large boxes on the floor.
“What's in those boxes?” Harper questioned.
“Um… I think that’s all the financial stuff from the last guy,” Jill said, frowning.
Harper's eyebrows could have escaped into her hairline with how high they climbed up her face in looking in the boxes.
“What kind of accountant did you have before me?” She asked.
“Really, whoever was available at the time. We didn't really have a designated person but most of the time it was a guy named Dale,” Jill said sorting papers against her arm.
“What happened to him?” Harper wouldn't be surprised if he was in the mental hospital from the insanity of his ‘filing system.’
“He walked out about a month ago. He just had enough, so he walked out,” Jill shrugged. “He didn’t even say goodbye to anyone. He just got in his car and never came back.”
“That doesn’t sound promising.”
“I'll be back in a little bit to check on you,” Jill said with an apologetic look.
Harper fired up the computer and pulled up the records she could find.
Everything online was a little more organized, but it was missing a lot of information that she was going to have to track down and input on the spreadsheets.
She opened one of the boxes and pulled out a Burger King napkin and tossed it in the trashcan, shaking her head and taking a deep breath.
“Oh, this is terrible,” Harper moaned.
Pulling up the spreadsheets and payroll records and combining them with the stack of hodgepodge file folders and papers that weren't even organized by year made Harper's temples throb.
Her mind worked best in an organized environment and she relied on it to do her job but this was disorganization beyond anything she had ever worked with in the past. It was going to test her patience and her skills to get this into a workable order.
As she was sorting through the mess, someone knocked on her door and she thanked the heavens for the distraction from the mess.
“Come in,” she called, stuffing a pile of the papers back in the box she had pulled them out of.
“Hey - whoa... what is that?” Jill asked and stopped two steps into the office staring at the pile on Harper's desk with wide eyes.
“Your guess is as good as mine. It's everything that was crammed into those boxes... seems to be a cluster of everything from the last two decades,” Harper said looking, disheartened, down at her desk.
“Then you really need this,” Jill said, smiling and holding out a little box with a cupcake inside with a thick swirl of chocolate frosting and colorful sprinkles.
“Oh, thank you so much,” Harper said with a big smile, taking the box.
“I figure us girls need to stick together since we're the only ones here. I'm kind of glad to have another woman in the building honestly... the guy talk was starting to rub off on me and my husband has been giving me looks,” she laughed.
“I can imagine... I don't want to, but I can,” Harper laughed. The men she had met so far were definitely in the category of a “Man's man” and she didn't want to think about what it was like to be the only woman in the office.
Jill was an attractive girl in her late twenties with long auburn hair that curled at the tips in the middle of her back. She normally wore it down with it partially French braided at the top to keep it out of her face. Harper imagined that she got quite a few compliments from the team on a daily basis.
“Yeah, the guys are... enthusiastic, but they are honestly a pretty good bunch of guys. They get a rap for being a lot worse than they are in my opinion. Most of them are pretty decent guys but they're human and being the only girl in the office has really caught their attention,” Jill said and reached around to check her braid.
“Most of the players I've met seem pretty nice. I don't really watch sports. Soccer has never really caught my interest. I used to watch football years ago but I lost interest,” Harper shrugged.
“Is it weird to work for a soccer team and not even watch the sport?” Jill asked, laughing.
“Hmm, not really. I deal with the numbers and paperwork a lot more than a deal with the players or the game,” Harper said. “Right now, with this mess, I would rather deal with the players than the paperwork,” she laughed and made a dramatic sigh over the piles of papers.
“Oh, honey, me too,” Jill said sympathetically. “I should get back to the front and make sure everything is still okay up there. If you need anything, buzz me upfront and I'll come dig you out if it avalanches,” she winked.
“Thanks,” Harper said. “I might need it. And thanks again for the cupcake. It might just save me today.”
She smiled as Jill went back out to the reception area and left her alone with the explosion of files.
She opened the box and dipped her finger into the frosting and licked it. “Mmmm...definitely going to help me get through this,” she said, taking another lick and then picking it up and unwrapping it.
“This is going to take a w
hile to get into anything even resembling an order,” she mumbled, slowly eating her cupcake and savoring the sweet, richness of the chocolate cake.
Harper spent the afternoon finding the most recent paperwork from the jumble and trying to organize everything by date.
What she was finding was that the Warriors were in some serious financial binds and it didn't give her a good feeling.
Ticket sales were down to the lowest they had been in five years.
They were on a losing streak and sponsors were dropping them left, right and center as fan favorite players retired or were sidelined for injuries.
Bills had racked up and gone unpaid and collections were starting over some of the debts.
There were pink letters of third and fourth notices on some of the bills and Harper wasn't sure how the team was even staying afloat.
The team was hemorrhaging money and it was only going to be a matter of time before they ran dry.
“Damn,” she mumbled as she rechecked the numbers.
A few months at most before they were entirely broke.
They might even need to file bankruptcy before next season... if there was even going to be a next season.
Harper wasn't convinced they would be able to pull it off.
She wondered if the owner or any of the managers knew about the state of the team's finances.
She doubted that any of the players knew.
It wasn't really their job to know about things like that but they really needed to start winning or they were going to be out of a job.
All of them.
Herself included.
She really couldn't afford to lose this job now that she had finally gotten her foot in the door to getting her life back on track and heading in the right direction.
Everyone seemed clueless around here of anything that didn't revolve around games and player stats.
But that was their job and this was hers.
It figured and followed suit with the way things were going in her life that she would finally land a job and the whole operation was on its way underwater.
Even if they weren't completely under yet, the boat was definitely taking on water.
She hated to be the bearer of bad news.
People loved to shoot the messenger.
Even if the messenger was new and down on her luck as well.
But she was going to have to tell them whether she liked it or not.
“Maybe they already know about it and it won't come as a shock?”
She hoped so. If they didn't know what was going on, she couldn't imagine them being very happy about it.
Harper scheduled a meeting with the business manager John Cahill.
She didn't think she needed to get Mr. Edwards involved just yet, but it probably wouldn't be long before she was going to have to talk to him about the situation as well.
She wasn't looking forward to it at all and she was going to need a lot more coffee and maybe another one of those cupcakes before she had the energy to deal with the rest of the mess in the office.
“What have I gotten myself into?”
Chapter Four
The business manager scheduled a meeting with Harper on Wednesday evening, and just as she had suspected, no one knew about the state of ruin the finances were in.
She was going to have a lot of work to do to try to get things back in order and if the team didn't do something, they were going to be closed down and forced to stop playing.
The meeting with John Cahill was delayed, and then delayed again. It was 8pm by the time John came to her office. John was a nice guy, but his focus was on the team, not the finances.
As long as he and the team were getting paid, he didn't care about the rest of the financial hell world she had just been through and witnessed.
He shrugged his shoulders when told the team was going under and was down five million dollars. Harper suggested they take the information to Mr. Roger Edwards, the team owner, but John didn’t think it was a good idea.
“I wouldn’t take it to Roger yet. See if you can sort it out first,” he remarked.
“I can’t sort it. We’re down five million dollars and we can’t pay our loans but nobody seems to care,” Harper stated.
“Look, I appreciate what you’ve done but now is not the time to raise the issue.”
“But they need to know.”
“We need to focus on winning games, honey,” he replied. “If we win games, we get bums on seats. And bums on seats means more money for the club. So I’ll focus on winning out there and you focus on winning in here. Once the season is over, then raise it with Roger. There is only one more game to go, it can wait.”
Harper was surprised by his attitude, “I’ll take it to Mr. Edwards after the next game then.”
“Good girl,” John winked at Harper as he left the office.
“Could this place be any more sexist?” Harper mumbled as John left her office.
After another hour organizing the files, Harper rubbed her temples, turned off the computer, and locked her office up before heading out. The two pots of coffee she had taken in earlier were still keeping her wired, even though she was mentally tired.
It was already after eleven and the city was settling down in this area.
Most of the businesses were a nine to five around here and everything was relaxingly quiet after the hustle and mayhem of the soccer team barreling through the office after their training session.
Harper pulled her keys out of her purse and held her fob in her hand debating over what she wanted to do. She turned toward the street and started walking down the uneven sidewalk in front of the parking lot.
With the amount of energy she had and the blissful silence Harper decided walking home wouldn't be a bad idea.
She was maybe a half hour away from her apartment if she walked and took 132nd street as a shortcut.
Living in the city for so many years had given her a sense of awareness and the ability to read her surroundings.
She kept her keys out as she walked as she had always been taught to do and held her pepper spray, just in case.
She had never needed to use the pepper spray before but she kept it on her keychain just in case something happened and she needed it.
There had been a time where she almost had to use it when a stray dog tried to attack her while she was out putting in her applications at all of the different businesses. The dog had lunged at her and was snarling with it's mouth ready to bite her but she stood her ground and yelled at the dog and it took off instead of attacking.
That was the closest she had ever come to needing the pepper spray in the eight years she had lived in the city. She liked to think she could get herself out of any situation, but it was there just in case she was wrong about that.
Harper turned on the radio on her cell phone and listened to music while she walked through the empty streets.
The area was a little run down, but it had a kind of urban charm in the graffiti and street art that popped up overnight and vanished as the city tried to keep it off.
There had been a full wall mural of a woman looking up to the sky. She was painted in grays and whites and blacks with splotches of color, almost like it was raining down color onto her skin and hair.
It was a stunning piece and the owner of the building had left it up for a few months but had it removed since the last time she had looked and she kicked herself for not taking a picture of it last time she was there.
Harper was a little sad to see it go.
She had gotten used to seeing the painting when she went by and the mural was a lot more pleasant to look at than bare brick or the gang tags kids were putting up on anything stationary these days.
Beau's face came to her mind while she was walking.
The man had something about him that made her curiosity spark.
And not just his looks.
He had a machismo that made him come off as arrogant and uncaring, but he also had char
m and Harper could tell there was a sweetness inside of him that he was keeping hidden from the rest of the office.
“Uh-uh. No way. Nope,” she mumbled to herself as she remembered how strong his chest felt. “Bad choice.”
She shook her head, trying to get his perfect image out of her mind.
She wasn't about to be one of those girls who clings to the bad boy, trying to change him and bring out his inner gentleman. That trick never worked for long and the process was entirely exhausting.
Harper always believed that there was good in everyone.
That was both a blessing and a curse when it came to relationships and people who she trusted enough to get close to.
She had been hurt too many times because she wanted to give people the benefit of the doubt and hand out second chances to anyone who wronged her.
Second chances were often just another free pass to hurt her.
Harper was tired of giving people that pass. It took something out of her every time she let it happen.
The sidewalk was broken and had kicked upward in hills and mountains that she had to step up and hop down on the other side.
'Tax dollars doing a world of good here,' she thought sarcastically as she jumped down from one of the concrete spikes.
She was getting closer to where the shortcut picked up and Harper was admittedly starting to wind down and get sleepy like she had hoped when she set out.
The fresh air always made her tired.
There was a slight wind blowing and it picked up the smell of car exhaust and pizza from one of the shops nearby.
The pizza smell was making her stomach grumble at her and she was starting to regret walking home. She could have been home by now and sitting on her couch eating pizza instead of still having another ten-minute walk ahead of her.
As she turned down the street, she noticed that several of the street lamps were burned out or broken out by kids with rocks. There was a series of four lamps that were out before the path was lit up again in front of the Laundromat.
She shook her head at how disrespectful the kids of the city had gotten to be over the years and sighed.