Breene, K F - Growing Pains 01

by Lost (and) Found (v5. 0)

  Krista reeled in her urges as if they were fishing line, strapped on her chastity belt, and finally noticed that Sean had not walked in alone. Not at all. He’d come in, arm brushing arm, with Monica.

  Well, if that doesn’t ruin my mood...

  Jealousy reared its ugly head, before she turned away and focused on her material. Sean was off-limits, and Monica was welcome to him. Krista did not need boy-drama at work. In fact, she didn’t need boy-drama ever again.

  She just wished her body would be in line with her brain on that one!

  Sean sat across from Ray. Monica sat next to Sean, angled toward Marcus and Judy, trying to put her back to Krista. Krista was, again, the furthest away from everyone else at the table.

  “Thanks for joining us,” Sean started, looking to Ray. “We have some great things in the works.” Ray slid him a leather portfolio, which Sean opened and scanned. It must have had the notes for the meeting.

  “First, does everyone remember the team members?” Sean looked around the table, avoiding Krista’s eyes.

  “Who is the…ah, Research girl again?” Monica asked in a loud, clear voice. She looked at Krista with a composed face. This call out was girl code for, “I know you, but you aren’t important enough to care about.”

  Krista glanced at Marcus, who rolled his eyes and smiled while leaning back and crossing one leg over the other.

  “For those who don’t remember our first meeting, when she was a participant,” Sean said, apparently having missed the obvious scorn she’d used, “Krista is handling our research for this project. We haven’t had a chance to see what she’s been able to uncover for us, but I have all the faith she has found some great things. We’ll check into that a little later.”

  Fear spread its ugly claws through Krista’s body and started raking across her midsection. She hated this suspense—especially when it really mattered. It was like the time when she had to get a B average in a course just to advance to the next course. There were huge stakes, not to mention money, invested, and she struggled the whole time.

  Granted, she’d gotten the highest grade in the class, but that was school. This was work. Work didn’t have an outline and sample tests.

  “First let’s talk to Monica,” Sean was saying. “We don’t want to take up too much of her valuable time.” Sean turned his eyes to her, the shade of green so vibrant and pure Krista was sure she’d never seen a pair as stunning. He had a flirty smile playing around those full, luscious lips.

  Monica laughed a flirty laugh and looked around the room, avoiding Krista and Ray. “The time spent is worth it.” She gave a quick glance to Sean. Wasn’t hard to catch that double meaning. “We are getting our first chance to mingle with our hopeful client. It will be a fundraiser. I am organizing a dinner party held at a prominent winery in Napa. It will be fancy, though not black tie, and feature food and wine. There will be ample time to mingle so our star salesman has a chance to meet and impress some of the representatives of our target company.”

  Krista rolled her eyes at the obvious flattery.

  “I’ve been working with Monica on the details, and this party is shaping up to be a stately affair,” Sean said as he looked intently at Monica. Her eyes twinkled and she tried a pretty giggle that didn’t work to her benefit. “Remember, it is a fundraiser, so our executives will be there to represent our company. My team, however, will be there, also. Getting in with the client is goal number one.”

  Everyone nodded mutely.

  “Ray,” Sean went on, “you are in charge of transportation. We won’t be inviting dates in order to leave ourselves completely open. If someone asks why you didn’t bring someone, make up something reasonable. I don’t care what.

  “You’ll be sporadically placed in tables. The seating is assigned at the event, so I’ll go over with each of you who your target is. You are to engage them, but stay friendly and distant. You’ll make an impression, but you will leave it at that. We don’t want to push our luck. We want to stay completely under the radar here.”

  Krista couldn’t help but thinking it all sounded like some top-secret mission. Well, it sounded ridiculous was how it sounded. But whatever, Krista was research, they wouldn’t put her with anyone of note, so she could just enjoy the free food and wine. She’d never been to Napa, any reason was a good one as far as she was concerned.

  Sean talked longer about things they might bring up, things to shy away from, and on and on. Krista looked at him because he was speaking and he was gorgeous, but she didn’t hear much of the sermon.

  I wonder if Ben plans to eat that cream puff? I’m hungry.

  Krista belatedly noticed Sean had stopped talking. She realized this because he spared her a glance that begged to know why she was staring at him.

  She jumped like a hot poker stabbed her and looked around. Monica was up and talking about decorations or something with Marcus. Ray was talking to a distracted Sean about a limo. Judy was going over some note, probably thinking about her end of the needed material.

  Krista nearly stood up, wondering if this was the end of the meeting. It would be prolonging the torture if it was, but avoiding the judgment, too. It was hard to say which was worse.

  Monica gave Sean a scorching look across the office, before she said good-bye to everyone but Krista and Ray, and made her way out of the office.

  “I’m glad I’m not the only one ignored anymore,” Krista muttered to herself.

  She heard Ray, who had regained his seat, snort.

  “Alright everyone, let’s move on,” Sean said in a voice that carried across the room. It wasn’t hard, the room was small, but Krista had a feeling that was his theater voice.

  She smirked.

  He’d unfortunately chosen that moment to glance at her, and seeing her expression, did a double-take. It took him two seconds to place what she thought was funny, then he turned crimson for the second time that afternoon.

  “Okay, let’s go over where we are. As you know, the client we have is happy with the art mock-ups, and is going ahead with that. Judy has handled that side of things marvelously.

  “As far as we know, their company has been approached with a buy-out, but details are still being worked out. It is looking good, though, so that means the work we do now will set us up effectively. If we do a thorough enough job now, it will greatly minimize the work to come. It will also put us in position for immediate campaign ideas. To that end, I would like to benchmark where we all are now, and provide notes. Then we’ll talk about the next steps. Judy, why don’t you lead us off?”

  Judy passed around printed images of art featuring jewelry and sapphires. As they reached Krista, she had the distinct feeling of déjà vu. While these pictures weren’t in her material, she was sure she’d seen them before. It took her a second to realize it had been from Marcus’s desk, which meant either Judy had furnished these to him, or they’d come from the same company catalog of art and marketing information.

  As Judy talked about the various pictures and what she was going for, Krista noticed Sean glancing at her. He was obviously wondering where these had come from. He was looking at her because it had been one of the items she had yet to get to!

  The claw of fear did another pass. It didn’t help that the air conditioning was too low and her body was on a personal mission to sweat through her blouse.

  Judy’s pictures done, Sean said a few words about good work, as always, and moved on to Marcus. Marcus started talking about marketing crap that made about as much sense as fog in summer in California. A bunch of hogwash, Krista was sure.

  To illustrate his points, he passed around some art Judy helped him with. It was the same type of thing Judy had passed around already. These two were trying to create new ideas from old crap, and obviously working together so they could share the load.

  Krista wondered if perhaps cataloging all the old stuff wasn’t a hindrance more than a help. She also wondered how Sean hoped to land a high-profile account with this t
ype of information to work off of. Krista couldn’t imagine it was near good enough, and it was a shame, because Marcus seemed to have some pretty good ideas. Even Ben thought so, and he didn’t know anything about nothing.

  “Great,” Sean said, turning to Krista. He held her eyes for a moment before saying, “You’re up. What have you done with a month?”

  Krista nearly threw up. She’d had a whole month and she’d only done the first two numbers. Sean was obviously bracing himself for bad news.

  “Relax,” Marcus said from across the table in his caterpillar voice.

  Krista jumped, looked at Marcus with panicked eyes, then turned and grabbed the first book off her stack.

  “Um. Okay. Well,” Krista cleared her throat and looked at Judy, who was looking back with a reassuring smile. Krista plunged on, “Sean gave me a list of things he was looking for. The list ranged from a general, broad history of the whole genre, to a narrowed scope of just sapphires. I then broke that down further into sapphires within the piece and type of jewelry. Then he wanted that information across the country, also the world, various markets, niches, regions, you name it, he wanted it.”

  Krista stood and passed around the first couple books. Each book was well executed, probably half the size of a textbook, and had plentiful graphs and images in it. Once Krista had given them out, she sat back down. This section, which was Sean’s item number one, yielded three books. Judy, thinking that Krista had made a book for each person, presentation-style, looked at Krista to see why she didn’t get one.

  “Oh, ahhh, each of those is part of the whole. There was too much information for everyone to get their own. So there are three parts. Ray has the first, Sean the second, and Marcus the third. I would have done one book, or two, but I didn’t really know how to work the machine and couldn’t get it to bind any more than that at a time. Plus, we really only need one set. I have everything saved electronically.”

  Sean’s eyes snapped up from the information in front of him. He looked from his book to the others. When his eyes hit Krista’s they were wide with disbelief.

  Judy, not caring about quantity, scooted over to Marcus to look over his shoulder. He immediately passed it to her, who scanned a few pages and gave up. They probably didn’t know what the hell any of it meant.

  It was Krista’s turn to confuse the art people. Hah! She would remember to throw that in Marcus’ face.

  If she didn’t get fired first.

  “This is really good work, Krista,” Ray said to no one in particular, bringing her back to Earth. He was herding her focus like a sheep dog. He probably had a teenager. “Where did you get all this info?”

  “Well, I looked at historical information first and got some broad stuff there. There was a lot there, but selective, you know? So I took to the library and pulled the rest.” She knew Ray knew what Sean knew, even if Sean said he wouldn’t tell anyone. Krista was not so naïve to think it was an honest secret. She also wanted to get across to Sean the type of information the others had, and how it ranked in the grand scheme of things.

  “You have a library card?” Judy said with a chuckle.

  “Geek Girl,” Marcus said with a smile, passing his book to Ray.

  “Cheap books,” Krista retorted. “As in free. I have a lot of time to read on Muni, especially when I am trapped in a tunnel.”

  Sean was now devouring the information in front of him. He glanced at everything in his book and then looked at Ray. Ray passed him the first book in the set, which was opened to the table of contents. Sean scanned it immediately.

  “Geek Girl, you are making Judy and I look bad,” Marcus said disapprovingly, leaning back with a smile.

  Sean glanced at Marcus, then shaking his head, looked at Krista with drunken, overwhelmed eyes.

  Fear stabbed her again. It was a lot of information. Maybe she spent too much time on it? Maybe she spent too much time organizing it? Maybe she should’ve been watching Sean’s back with the art stuff?

  She was on the edge, wondering which way the wind blew when Sean said, “Good work, Krista. This will be invaluable. It will also help us make contact with light comments.”

  It sounded good, but his face was still blank as he looked through the information. Ray had the third book and was looking through it, slightly shaking his head. It sounded good, but the actions didn’t match.

  Krista hated this. She hated having no idea where she stood. Her first real assignment with her first real job for a boss she really wanted to impress, and it was heads or tails if she totally messed up and wasted everyone’s time.

  And that was just step one. She still had to show step two, which was an even bigger gamble.

  Sean interrupted her self-loathing, still looking through the material, with, “Okay, everyone, let’s convene for now and we’ll meet back after I can process all this information.”

  “Wait…” Krista grabbed the remaining stack.

  Sean looked up with a light scowl. Everyone paused in their various stances, except for Marcus who was always lounging. He had a hopeful look, though. He wanted to know what the rest of the information was. Namely, he wanted to see what she did with his ideas.

  “Um, that was just the first part of the list that Sean gave?” Sean’s scowl got slightly more pronounced. Krista hurried on. “I got a good way through the second one with Marcus’s help?”

  Stop rounding off sentences with a question! You sound dumb and green!

  “Yes,” Marcus settled back with his hands behind his head, his arms out to the side like wings. He was like a little boy about ready to see if his new model airplane would fly.

  Krista passed out the remaining books. “Okay, well first, you should all know that Marcus and I speak a different language. He speaks in high-art, and I speak in normal person…”

  “There was nothing normal in those books you passed around.” Marcus cut her off.

  “Okay, well, affluent math, then. So when I went to get Marcus’s ideas, which I think was Sean’s big practical joke to torture me…” Marcus and Judy both laughed. Sean was looking at her blank-faced. She hurried on, “I wrote down a bunch of genius crap that I then stared at for a couple hours before realizing there was no way in hell—excuse my language—that I could turn it into logical, statistical research. It was all gibberish as far as I could tell.”

  Marcus and Judy both laughed again, but Sean and Ray wore very similar masks of confusion.

  “So I took his notes to someone who could speak both our languages, and asked for help. What I got was something I could work with. Now, before you look at these, please know that this is my interpretation of Marcus’s ideas turned into research. I made no decisions beyond that. If the ideas are stupid and not worth pursuing based on numbers, blame Marcus.”

  “Wouldn’t be the first time!” Judy laughed.

  “Why four smaller books rather than three?” Ray asked. “Did you do these before you figured out the machine?”

  Krista smiled. Ray had a sense of humor it seemed.

  “There are four ideas turned into research. I figured I would just break them down that way. The other collection, we’ll call number one, was a solid mass of information.”

  Ray nodded as each person delved into their book. Each book was a little different, and each covered a different amount of terrain. They had graphs and, what Marcus and Judy latched on to, art. There were even photographs from when she people-watched. If the team missed her over-achiever status thus far, they were currently getting a rude awakening.

  Plus, working on the whole idea was kind of fun. She got to do more than just work with statistical stuff—taking pictures and working with graphics was a great way to exercise the other half of the brain.

  Krista was watching Judy and Marcus laugh about the perfection of one of the photos when she felt eyes boring into her. They were Sean’s. Their look was unreadable, as was his face, but his focus was acute.

  Krista flushed and fidgeted, not sure what to make of
the stare; not sure if it was good or bad or lust based.

  “Too much? Did I waste too much time on this stuff?” Krista asked with a grimace.

  Sean remained mute for a moment, his stare acute. When he was done trying to shoplift her grocery list, his eyes pivoted to Ray. Before either said anything, Marcus said, “Hey Krista, what is this one?”

  It was a picture of a little girl at the beach with her mother’s bracelet. The bracelet was ugly and cheap, which was probably why the mother allowed the child to have it in the first place, but Krista thought the idea of it worked.

  “Oh, well, you know that idea where you wanted to create some sort of collectable jewelry for kids? Kind of like those charm bracelets, but more for special occasions? You know, so that they could hold onto it through the years?”

  “Yeah, but—“

  “Well,” she said interrupting him, “the idea to market heirlooms was so similar, and you were hitting the very young and the very old, I—and my secret helper—thought maybe we could combine that. You know, a keepsake you get as you grow that you could then pass on? Something like that? It, ah, sounded good at the time.

  “Anyway, I looked up info for the individual thing, then did some comparing numbers for the overall deal. I don’t know what you all aim for or whatever, but the overall deal seemed cool to me, so I went out and tried to find some people who might buy into that. That picture was cute and fitting, don’t you think?”

  Sean’s expression changed. Now he looked at her like she’d just sprouted a third eye. It put her into defensive mode. “I mean, it’s not my job, I know, so I did both of Marcus’s original suggestions, but thought I might just throw that in for spice. It really didn’t take much more time. Just a few extra photo sessions, which was on my own time anyway, so…”

  She was shrinking under Sean’s heated gaze. She’d gone overboard. Definitely overboard. This was the kind of thing she should have done after she got some direction. She should have kept it generic until they landed the account!