Coming To Reason (A Long Road to Love) (5 page)

Carrie suspected the task would consume her entire day, but
she preferred it over doing nothing.

Three papers in, she became frustrated with the convoluted
input methodology. She had to pop back and forth over six pages before she
logged all the data. Why would anyone build such a god-awful interface?

The door opened and a young woman in gothic black, wearing
the tiniest leather skirt ever made, entered. Destiny beamed from ear to ear. “Greg,
I’ll take the new hire off your hands.”

“No. She’s inputting client specs.”

Destiny grabbed the pile of yet to be done specs with one
hand and Carrie’s wrist with the other. “She can do them in my office.”

Greg’s brow furrowed. “I need them done by tonight.”

“You have my word.” Grinning from ear to ear, Destiny
pulled Carrie from the room, down the hall, and into an office with cobalt blue
walls covered with giant intersecting yellow circles.

She pointed to the
chair
. “Sit while I steal a seat.”

Returning a short while later with her purloined perch, Destiny
plopped down. Her impish grin warned Carrie ‘steal’ had been the key word in
her quest.

“I couldn’t believe it when Dad said you’ve come to work
for us. This is so super great! So you dumped Trent? Good for you!”

“No, we decided to be a normal couple with separate jobs.”

“Well, different jobs is a start, at least.” She grimaced
at the pile. “God, this is like a month’s work.”

“It shouldn’t be. Did they give you access to a manual when
you bought this system?”

“Before my time. I would have bought something else. This program
tops the charts on user unfriendliness. Dad says, when he bought it, the sales
guy promised each consultant would be able to enter information on their own.
What a crock. The only one who can do it is Greg…and you now.” She grimaced.
“Which means he’s going to shunt this job off on you, which means you won’t make
your quota. But don’t worry. Dad won’t fire you.” She paused. “Did you tell him
you’re still seeing Trent?”

“Yes, but why would it matter?”

Destiny rose and walked to her bookshelf. After fifteen
minutes of pulling out binders, she returned. “No manual.”

“Let’s pull up the program and locate the company.”

Upon doing so, they called them. After ten minutes of being
passed from one person to another, they came upon yet another person who
couldn’t help them, except to provide one piece of valuable advice.

“Your systems person should be able to help you.”

“I
am
the systems manager,” Destiny replied.

“And you can’t find anything in the electronic manual?
There’s a whole section on creating customized interfaces.”

Upon acquiring the link and finding the section on
interfaces, Destiny, with Carrie providing advice, created an interface that
mimicked the consultant document.

Halfway through their project, Jeff opened the door and
frowned at Carrie. “Did you at least get my data processed before you abandoned
me?”

“Yes. I didn’t mean to dessert you. I thought you’d
dismissed me…polite
ly,
after I overstepped my boundaries with your client.”

“And I rescued her from Greg’s stress. He had her inputting
client specs.”

Jeff grimaced. “I hope you failed his request. Otherwise,
you could be stuck doing them for the rest of your life.”

“No worries. Carrie and I called the software manufacturer
and they gave us a link to their manual, which shows how to create input
interfaces. By tomorrow, everyone can fill out their own.”

“Wonderful,” Jeff muttered and pulled Carrie from the room.
He led her to an empty office and closed the door. “I’m not going to be your
pimp, so if you plan to conduct business using sex as your advantage, you need
to stay the hell away from my clients.”

Carrie struggled to make sense of his words. “Dear God, what
did I say or do to make Mr. Harmon think such a thing?”

The anger in Jeff’s eyes faded. “I didn’t see anything.
However, once you left the room, he asked me to send you to his office tonight.
When I insisted I could handle his needs, he admitted what he wanted handled
required a woman.”

“Oh, God!” Carrie’s hands fluttered. Dan had promised her
sex was not part of the job.

Jeff rubbed his temple. “Once I got over the embarrassment
of having offered myself to the man, I asked him why he thought you would do
such a thing.”

“And?”

“He said your former boss has a harem of girls and, while
he’d never had you before, he believed you one of them.”

“Trent doesn’t have a harem!”

“Don’t yell at me. I just wanted you to know what he said.”

“The guy’s a jerk and a liar.”

“I find him most reliable.”

“What the hell do you mean?”

His hands flew up in surrender. “You know what? I’m sorry I
said anything. However, I don’t want you around my clients in the future, so
tell Greg to find you someone else.”

As he turned to leave, Carrie gripped his arm. “I’m sorry.
I had no right to kill the messenger. But I worked so hard to turn Trent’s
company around, and yes, the new sales people are pretty young women, but I
trained them. They know their job. They can determine a client’s needs
in
chairs
and describe both the Lancaster products and the equivalent of the
competitors.”

“Good for them.” He once again tried to leave.

“Jeff, I want to train under you. You are far superior to
any of the others I’ve met. Give me another chance. I won’t talk to the
customers if you don’t want me to. But I need to learn how to do the job right.”

He ran his long fingers through his hair. “All right, but
you cannot tell any more customers you worked at Lancaster Chairs.”

She opened her mouth to reiterate no pimping occurred at Lancaster
Chairs, but realized it didn’t matter. He wanted a promise she could give. “I
will never mention its name again.

In between clients, Carrie rushed back to Destiny’s office
and recorded more data, on occasion locating a glitch in the process, which
they would fix together.

Thus, by the end of the day, not only had she sat in on
five client meetings, getting an excellent perspective on handling the customers,
but she’d inputted all the client specs, and they’d debugged the new interface.
She and Destiny returned the paper docs to Greg. Carrie placed them in his ‘to
file’ tray, while Destiny showed him the new input page.

For a moment, he remained silent. In fact, he almost looked
angry. After a deep breath, he spoke with intense control. “Destiny, if you
knew how to do this, why didn’t you do it before now?”

Destiny’s eyes rounded in outrage. “I didn’t know how to do
anything in this software. If a manual ever existed, it disappeared before I
arrived. However, Carrie suggested we call the manufacturer and after fifteen
minutes of pass the potato, someone final
ly
admitted they had an electronic document which I, as systems
manager, had a right to access. And voila! You have a format your people can
fill out, so you don’t need to ever do this again.”

Greg hugged the girl as if she’d saved his life.

Greg asked a guy flirting with a young woman to find Carrie
an open office. Romeo muttered about all the work he could be doing as he waved
her to follow. At the end of the hall, he stopped and pointed at a door. “Yours,”
he snapped and hurried away.

Compared to Jeff’s office, her office came from the wrong
side of the tracks. It was less than a quarter the size of his and lacked windows,
being an inside office. The pale blue carpet was worn to its backing near the
door, or maybe it needed cleaned. Either way, she hated it. The dull white
dusty walls looked as if they’d never been painted. All in all, the place
ranked as the ugliest closet she’d ever seen.

She sat down and grimaced. First thing, she planned to
order a new
chair
, even if she had to pay for it herself.

The small, but real wood desk had
probably
been expensive
back in the 1800s when some craftsman built it. But life had not been kind to its
surface. It had more scars and nicks than a wooden bench at a beaver pond.

A good sanding along with a coat of stain and po
ly
urethane might
cheer it up. She’d come in on Saturday and work on it. Maybe Trent would help.

Her mind pictured a Lucille Ball scene with Trent sanding
holes in her desk. Better to come in on Sunday and do it alone.

The porcelain handle came off when she tugged on the bottom
drawer. Mentally, she added ‘bring tools’ to her weekend project to-do list.
She’d need her whole weekend to repair the desk. Maybe she’d arrange to meet
Trent after she finished the job.

Thinking of Trent made her smile. He’d be so impressed with
how fast she’d found new employment. They could go out and celebrate tonight,
and he could tell her about his workday, too. The thought of him going eight
hours without her assistance worried her. She suspected he’d had a
day
in hell.

She reached in her purse and discovered her cell phone missing.
The phone on the desk looked built in this century, so she called Trent at his
office, but no one answered. His first day without her and he left before six?
How? He should have been swamped with work.

Unless he had a heart attack from the stress.
She dialed
his cell phone.

At the third ring, she began to panic, hung up, and called
his driver Sam.

“What?” Sam asked.

“Is Trent okay?”

After a long pause, he asked, “Who is this?”

“Who do you think? Carrie. I tried calling him but he
didn’t answer. I feared his first day without me had killed him.”

Sam chuckled. “If
only
, but no. Master Trent remains alive and well.”

Carrie understood his love/hate relationship with Trent
better since she’d learned they were half-brothers. “Are you okay, Sam?”

“I’m fine. Why would you think otherwise? Oh, this is about
my removing your laptop, iPad, and cell phone? No, I’ve not taken up stealing
to appease the anger festering inside me. Trent said he’d fire me if I didn’t
take them.”

“I didn’t mean…Trent took my cell phone?”

“No. I took your phone so I could keep this fabulous
fucking job.”

“The phone belonged to me. I paid for it when I first
started working for Trent. He said I didn’t warrant a phone, and given how
often he threatened to fire me, I could see his point.

“Crap! Send me a bill, and I’ll get you reimbursed.”

“No, I want my phone back.”

“Your phone committed suicide this morning by leaping out
of the window of the limo and diving into the Hudson River. Buy a new phone and
send me the bill.”

“I’ll take it up with Trent.”

“Fine. When it doesn’t work, I’ll get you reimbursed. I
have to go now. I’m at Dawn’s apartment.”

She smiled. “Are you two back together?”

“As of this morning, yes.”

“I’m so happy for you. Tell her hello for me.”

“Not happening,” he snapped before the line went dead.

Clearly,
rudeness ran in the Lancaster blood.

She tried Trent’s number again, but he still wouldn’t pick
up. She tried Mars, the penthouse butler. Trent’s Long Island butler oddly went
by Mars, as well. They had different names, Marston and Martin, but both wished
to be called Mars, which saved Trent from having to remember
two
names.

“Lancaster residence, how may I be of service?” Mars
answered with deep, rounded vowels.

“You answer the phone so nicely. Maybe you could teach Sam
some phone manners.”

He chuckled. “I have tried, believe me. How are you doing,
Miss Carrie?”

She sensed great concern in his voice, but had no idea why.
“I’m doing great. I got a new job this morning, and my first day went very
well.”

“Excellent news! Nothing like a new job to take one’s mind
off of other matters.”

Man, he must think leaving Lancaster Chairs devastated me.
“I needed to
leave. I had run out of things to improve.”

“Well, you worked miracles, and for a short time, you made
my job much easier. Unfortunate
ly
, there are people in life who defy change.

His response had her worried. Mars normal
ly
stayed on
topic. Did Trent misbehave on his first day of independence? Tossing her phone
out the window hinted at the possibility.

“I called you because Trent can’t recognize the phone
number I’m calling from and thus refuses to pick up the phone. Would you let
him know I’m trying to call him?”