by Louise Clark
Not a reassuring scenario. So how should she handle it?
As the credits splashed across the screen, she slumped down in her seat. Maybe Liz was right. Burrow deep and keep her head down.
Thursday was almost over when Angela appeared in her doorway. From the chagrinned expression on her face Faith guessed she’d done it again. “Angela, you’ve come to tell me you’ve finished the letters and they need to be signed.”
“Not exactly.” Angela’s pale features didn’t register an expression, but she leaned her body against the doorframe with a lazy sensuality Faith had never noticed before.
She gave herself a mental shake. Last night she was fantasizing about spike-heeled shoes. Today she was looking at one of her clerks and seeing her in an entirely different way. Angela was one of those people who never stood out. Her straight hair was a true, pale blond, but it lacked vibrancy. Her body was the same way, not too tall and not too short. That pretty much defined her manner as well—pleasant, undemanding, unassertive. If there was any sensuality in her movements, it was because Faith had imagined it, not because it was really there.
Dragging her thoughts back to Angela’s comment, Faith sighed. What Angela really meant was that the letters weren’t done, but she couldn’t quite bring herself to say that because it might cause offense. “Okay, what is the status of the letters?”
Angela straightened. Clasping her hands together and holding them in front of her in a prim way, she said, “Well, I typed them into my computer.”
“Good start.”
“And I was going to print them off, but…”
“Let me guess. Your computer froze. It lost the letters. It exploded in a hail of shrapnel that took out all the lights in the office and there was a major panic…”
Angela’s eyes widened to round saucers, then she giggled. “No one was hurt!”
“That’s good to hear.” Faith shot her a considering look. “So what happened?”
“Well, you were right, sort of. My computer refuses to print them. I’ve tried everything I can think of, but still it won’t work. Can you fix it?”
With Ava’s sweetly uttered command still fresh in her thoughts and Liz’s practical advice to keep her head down, Faith was not about to allow herself to become involved in fixing what sounded like a reasonably simple problem. Besides, her quitting time was four-thirty and today she intended to get away right on the dot. Sticking around to fix Angela’s ailing computer wasn’t on her priority list. It was Cody Simpson’s job to stay late and tinker with the wretched machine. “I can’t.”
Angela frowned. “Then what do I do?”
“I’ll call Cody Simpson and ask him to come down.”
A sudden intelligent gleam brightened Angela’s eyes. Evidently she didn’t expect Cody to show up anytime soon. “If he doesn’t come can I go home early?”
“Do you have any time owing to you?”
Angela shook her head.
“Then no. Take the opportunity to clear up your desk and see if there is any filing to be done around the office.”
Angela’s plain, undemanding features screwed up into a temperamental expression that on another woman Faith would have described as a pout, then she stomped back to her desk in a way that looked remarkably like a flounce. Faith reflected that she was only a year out of school. She supposed it was as good an excuse as any for having a hissy fit in the office.
She called Cody, reached his voicemail—of course!—and left a message explaining the problem and asking him to come down and fix it. Then she went back to work.
Her first inkling that something odd was happening was about five minutes later. Her office door opened out into the bullpen, but her desk faced the window with its panoramic streetscape, so she heard what was going on rather than saw it. Usually there was a low murmur of sound as people exchanged information relating to their jobs. Occasionally, there was laughter and very rarely, when something out of the ordinary happened, there was an excited babble.
Like now.
Faith could hear a delighted squeal or two and some truly breathy giggles. Neither was appropriate to an office environment, but she decided to give the squealers and gigglers a minute or two to vent and then bring themselves back under control before she did anything.
Over the next couple of minutes, though, the volume in the bullpen rose, instead of diminishing. Mystified, Faith went to her doorway. From her viewpoint all she could see was that the whole place seemed to have congregated around Angela’s desk.
And they were giggling.
She had a bad feeling about this. Had Angela gotten bored and decided to access the net? Had she found a site that featured beefcake photos? The local firemen did a calendar every year that Liz loved, because the firemen had such outrageously gorgeous bodies. Maybe they did a website too. And maybe Angela had found it…
Or maybe not.
One of the women crowding around the desk moved away, allowing Faith a clear view of the person sitting in Angela’s chair. And it wasn’t Angela.
Chapter 7
It was a man. A man with dark hair, wearing a shirt that fit across his broad, muscular shoulders in a way that made a woman want to rub her hands along it. A man with dark hair, working on a computer. Was it possible? Had Cody Simpson actually descended from his secluded office to fix a lowly word processing clerk’s computer?
The group shifted again and Faith’s amazement grew as she saw that Angela was perched on the edge of her desk in a way that could only be called flirtatious. She was leaning toward Cody, watching him. From time to time she touched her dress, smoothing the fabric against her thighs. The girl’s actions looked pretty suggestive to Faith. Cody, though, appeared to be too focused on what was happening on the screen to notice. A little bemused at the difference a man could make, even in a timid soul like Angela, Faith observed the scene unabashedly.
Cody typed furiously on the keyboard. Dialogue boxes appeared and disappeared. He asked Angela a question. She pouted and shrugged. More dialogue boxes flashed on the screen and then he said, “I think that will fix it for awhile, Angela. Just be sure you don’t…”
It had taken Cody all of ten minutes to fix the glitch. Better yet, it appeared that he had identified what Angela was doing to cause the problem, which meant that if it happened again she—or Faith—wouldn’t have to try every possible option to make the wretched machine work.
Faith glanced at her watch. It was twenty-eight minutes after four. Wow, thanks to Cody Simpson she really was going to get away on time. There was a spring to her step as she retreated to her desk to log off her computer and lock up.
In the bullpen the female giggles were joined by a deeper male voice. Faith frowned. Was Cody Simpson flirting with the clerks? She went back to her task. If her staff wanted to flirt with Cody and he with them it was none of her business. It was four-thirty, quitting time. They were no longer her responsibility, any of them…
“Good. You haven’t left yet.”
Faith was so deep into her mental meandering that she shrieked and jumped up, knocking her chair, which wheeled away leaving her teetering precariously on the edge of falling on her backside. Cody leapt forward, caught her by the arm and steadied her.
“Thanks,” she said, a little breathlessly.
“Sorry about that.” He spoiled the effect of the apology by frowning at her and adding, “I didn’t think I moved that quietly.”
Faith took a deep breath to steady herself. “I was going over what needed to be done and planning my day tomorrow. I tend to be pretty focused.” No way was she going to admit she’d been thinking about him.
He nodded, accepting her explanation. Not surprising, since he was known to concentrate on a project so intensely that he might not emerge for hours on end.
“I found the problem in Angela’s computer.”
“Oh?” Another thing she did not intended to tell Cody was that she, like the rest of the women in the office, had been watching him work. He
had a big enough ego as it was.
“It’s a simple problem, operator generated.”
“So you’re saying that Angela causes the problem by something she does?”
“You’ve got it. What’s more, I think she does it intentionally.”
Faith was so astounded her jaw dropped. She couldn’t help it. “Angela? Angela who types correspondence for everyone in the office? Angela in the bullpen?”
He nodded.
Faith laughed. “Give it up, Cody! Angela is a timid little mouse who would never intentionally disrupt anything because she’d be too scared of making waves.” Faith had an uneasy memory of Angela propping up her doorframe, then later, leaning toward Cody, her hand on her thigh, her expression worshipful. That was an Angela she’d never seen before.
And didn’t expect to see again.
Cody had raised his brows. Perhaps he was visualizing the same behavior that Faith was. “Angela likes the attention she gets when her computer goes down. It breaks up the monotony, makes her day more interesting. Sue has been tracking her requests for assistance. Before Sue’s accident Angela was calling once a week, usually on a Friday, often just before lunch, but not always.” He stopped when Faith sucked in her breath. “Ah, I’ve hit a nerve.”
Now that he mentioned it, Angela would often say that her computer was down just before she took off for lunch. She even said it was terrific timing as it could be fixed while she was away from her desk. Sometimes she returned within her usual forty-five minutes, others she was a few minutes late. It wasn’t a big issue when her workstation was occupied by Sue Green and she’d only be standing around looking useless anyway.
Faith remembered Angela’s request just a half-an-hour before. Can I go home early? Anger began to replace shock. How long had Angela been playing her this way? True, when Sue was there the staff were encouraged to call her themselves, rather than go through Faith. That meant that Faith couldn’t be expected to know of every problem that occurred. But still, it was her job to manage the clerical and secretarial employees. In Angela’s case she had clearly failed.
“It’s harmless stuff,” Cody was saying. “I made a big deal of going into the code on her computer and messing around in it. She thinks that I’ve made it problem-proof so for a while there won’t be any more disasters. She’s pretty bright though. She’ll figure it out soon enough.”
“Great,” Faith muttered. “At least I’m on to her now.”
Cody rubbed his hand down her arm and Faith suddenly realized that he hadn’t moved since he’d valiantly kept her from falling on her behind. Not only hadn’t he moved, but he was standing so close that she could feel his body heat and smell the clean male scent of him. Her stomach knotted unexpectedly as her heartbeat sped up.
“I know your instinct is to pounce on the kid and send her packing,” he said, “but I think that would be a mistake.”
She looked up into his eyes. They were a warm, caring blue. For Angela? Or for Faith? “Why?”
Almost absently his hand slid down to hers and his thumb stroked small circles on the back of her hand. “I think she’s being under-utilized. She probably needs the job so she’s sticking it out, even though she’s bored. Find her something more challenging and I believe she would make an excellent employee.”
With Cody caressing her hand and smiling at her in a way that was entirely too enticing, Faith was ready to concede pretty much anything. She felt the same way she did when she’d had too much wine on an empty stomach. Giddy. Delighted with the world and everyone in it. Irresponsible. Above all she wanted those euphoric feelings to continue forever.
She pulled her hand away and stepped back. With feigned composure, she gathered her purse from her desk drawer, then locked it. That done she headed for the door, a clear and final dismissal to Cody Simpson. “I’ll monitor Angela for the next few weeks. Thanks for the heads up Cody.” She paused at the opening to her office so he could precede her into the now quiet bullpen.
He waited for her as she locked her door, clearly intending to walk out of the office with her. He was standing very close, making Faith feel as if she was off balance, not quite in control. She didn’t like the feeling. “It would have been nice if you and Sue had included me in the loop on Angela.”
He shot her a guarded look. “How so?”
“You could have shared your suspicions.” Faith heard the tension in her own voice. She took a deep breath as she struggled for control. Losing her temper with Cody Simpson hadn’t done her any good so far. “Had I known I could have checked on her from my end. As it is, what you’ve just told me has come as a complete surprise.”
“We had suspicions, with no evidence to support them!”
Faith could hear the frustration of the scientist in his voice. A hypothesis had to be made, data gathered and a theory formed before action could be taken. That was the way he’d been trained and even in matters of personnel he wasn’t prepared to toss away the method and go with his gut.
He was just like her father, grounded in a methodical world where everything had an explanation and nothing happened magically.
They reached the door to the outer office. After they exited Faith locked that door too. Then she stood with her back to it and surveyed Cody Simpson. “So why did you decide to say something now?”
He shoved his hands into the pockets of his jeans. “I discovered a pattern and once I’d found that, I analyzed it and drew a conclusion. It seemed to fit so I thought you ought to know about it. Like I said, I’ve dealt with my end of it. If you handle yours, I think Angela’s computer problems will be a thing of the past.”
He was standing in front of her, tall and strong and far too good-looking for a computer nerd. Agreement hovered on the tip of her tongue. Sure she’d handle it. Smile at me one more time and I’ll agree to anything. She slung her purse on her shoulder and said, “I’ll think about it. Right now I don’t feel too positive about Angela.”
His eyes searched her face, almost intimately. “I can understand that.” Then he grinned. “She’s a total pain. Smart people often are.”
Faith made a derogatory noise in her throat. Before she could stop herself the words slipped out. “You ought to know.”
For a moment he looked incredulous, as if he couldn’t believe she’d dare describe him that way, then he laughed. “Me?”
Yes, you! Faith wanted to reply. Instead she eased past him as she said, “I’ve got to get going. Thanks for coming down to troubleshoot this afternoon.”
He nodded and said, “No problem.”
Faith could feel his eyes on her until she’d pushed her way through the door out to the street. It was an unsettling feeling that put her on edge.
Damn the man!
Cody Simpson had a way of getting under Faith’s skin. That last comment of his about Angela made her doubt herself and her ability to do her job to the top-notch standards she demanded of herself. Could he have been right about Angela? Was she being under-used in her current job? If Faith accepted that possibility, then why hadn’t she noticed it? Why hadn’t she provided Angela with something more challenging to test her abilities?
As she tossed and turned, trying without success to get to sleep, she finally admitted to herself that it wasn’t how well she was doing her job that was bothering her, it was how she appeared in Cody Simpson’s eyes that had her restless. She wanted to wow him and the only way she could think of doing that was to be the most efficient manager to have ever graced an office building.
But why should she want to wow him at all?
She couldn’t be attracted to him—she wouldn’t allow it. Sure he was great to look at, but she didn’t have relationships, especially with men schooled in the sciences. No, it must be something about his refusal to be part of the team. He was the outsider and she wanted to show him what he was missing. Sure, that was it. Simple. Now go to sleep!
The next day her mother breezed into the office as Faith was eating lunch at her desk. Faith shr
ieked and jumped up to hug her. “Mom, you’re back! You’re here. You’re safe!”
“Of course I am.” As the hug ended Chloe stepped back to observe her daughter. “Darling,” she said with her usual extravagance, “you look tired and worn out. Why are you sitting here munching when you ought to be at a nice restaurant taking a much needed break?”
“I’m backed up. I decided I’d work through my lunch so I could leave the office at a reasonable time.”
Chloe sat down rather gingerly on the small seat that served as Faith’s guest chair. “There are some benefits to living in the twenty-first century. Office furniture isn’t one of them.”
Making a decision, Faith packed up her lunch. Chloe had a way of drawing a crowd and Faith didn’t think she could handle listening to her mother chatting about her trip to Washington when anyone might drop in. “It’s a nice day outside…”
“So it is! It was raining when I left Washington.”
Faith eyed her doorway warily. “When did you get back, Mom?”
“Last night.” Chloe leaned forward and lowered her voice in a conspiratorial way. “It was fascinating, Faith. Much more civilized than I expected, but appallingly brutal as well.” A look of contentment crossed Chloe’s face. “It was an amazing experience. Imagine being part of the Civil War! Experiencing what the people of the time did, but knowing, as they do not, what the outcome will be. I was hard put not to—”
“Mom, it’s such a beautiful day and I haven’t finished eating my lunch. There’s a park not too far away with a bench. Let’s go there and sit. You can tell me all about your—trip—while I eat.” And her stomach wouldn’t be in a knot because she was terrified someone might hear Chloe’s wacky-sounding conversation.
Chloe looked down at her fashionable suit and patted her newly styled blond hair. “A bench, you say.”
“I’ll bring paper towels for you to sit on. How does that sound?” Since Chloe dressed to suit the time period she was visiting, she liked to be thoroughly modern when she was in her own era. As soon as she returned she always paid a visit to her hairdresser, then went out and indulged herself by purchasing the most up-to-date, vivid clothes she could find. This time the outfit consisted of a vibrant red jacket, teamed with a brightly patterned skirt. The blouse she wore under the jacket was an eye-popping citron yellow.