Natural Magick (10 page)

“
He kissed me. The fucking bastard kissed me. He kissed me and then pushed me away like I had attacked him or something. This whole house is nuts, you’re aware of that, aren’t you? I’ve never…I’m leaving. Don’t you dare try to stop me. I mean it, Mrs. MacManus. I’ll hurt you as well.”

Pete was crying and Sara’s heart went out to the young woman. He had hurt her. He had not hurt her physically, but she still hurt deep inside. Sara wanted to take Pete into her arms and hold her, and then go in and kick some vampire ass.

“
I’m not going to stop you, well, not really. But I did wonder if you knew that you are only dressed in a t-shirt and panties? I have no doubt that you can ride that monster without shoes. But I’m reasonably sure that once you get to your apartment, that Booger person and whoever else lives there will notice your lack of attire.”

Pete looked down at her clothes, and then at the house. She began playing with the hem of the shirt. Sara realized that she had never seen that shirt before, that it must have belonged to Dominic. It was much too large to belong to the tiny woman who was wearing it. Pete took another quick look at the front door, and then looked back at Sara.

“
He kissed me. Why did he do that? Why did he do it then toss me away? I’m not dirty and I…I didn’t ask him to, didn’t even want him to. I mean, it was nice. Very nice, but I didn’t ask him to do it. I just wanted to go pee. Then I was going to leave.”

“
I have a good idea why he did it, but I’ll let him explain that to you. Would you please come into the house and talk to him? Or we could just gather up some clothes and you can leave now. Okay?”

In a voice that was low, so low that another human might not have heard it, Pete said, “I don’t even know his name and he kissed me.”

Sara stiffened at that. To have a mate meant all sort of wonderful things to a couple, especially a vampire who was as old as Dominic. Sara knew that now that he had tasted her, touched her, he would only want more from Pete, need more from her. But to not even tell her who he was, or even to talk before kissing her was...Sara and Dominic had a lot to talk about, it seemed.

Sara led Pete into the house, and left her in the kitchen while she went to Dominic’s room to gather Pete’s clothes. Sara told the men that were recovering in the living room not to even think about confronting the woman in the kitchen. Or they would have to answer to her. And she left them in no doubt that she would not be as gentle as Pete had been.

“
And you,” pointing to Dominic, “don’t even think about leaving this house. You and I are going to have a conversation and it won’t go well for you if I have to go looking for you. And believe me, I will. I’m in no mood to fuck around anymore with you. You will be right here when I return or you’ll be one sorry man. Do I make myself perfectly clear?”

“
Yes, mistress.”

Sara continued on up the stairs. She had just had twins and these people were making a mess of things. Well, no more.

After Pete left the house, Sara sat down with Dominic. She didn’t want Aaron there, but he insisted that he was there purely for entertainment value, he told her. Dominic just glared at the vampire. For some reason she could not understand, that pissed her off more. She owed that woman her life and those of her children. It was time someone made him realize he could not toy with Pete as long as she was around, or he would have to answer to her.

“
I want you to stay away from her. You brought her here against her will, you kissed her, and she doesn’t even know your name. As your master’s mistress and his mate, I demand that you stay away from her from now on. It is quite clear that you don’t want her as your mate. You have made that perfectly clear from the moment you met her. Fine! Then don’t go near her again. If you do, then I will make sure that you either regret it, which you know I can, or you’ll mate with her—your choice. Have I made myself clear?”

“
Perfectly. Is there anything else?”

She wasn’t happy with his tone, but she would live with that. When she said that there was not, he got up and left. She looked over at Aaron who was smiling at her.

“
Well done, my dear. Nothing like making someone want something they really need by telling them it’s off limits to them. I’m impressed.” She hoped he was right, hoped they were both right.

~~~

Pete showed up at the Mackey Corporation at seven-thirty that morning. She was going to be working for them for at least a week setting up their new payroll and accounting programs.

Mr. Mackey had contacted her a few days ago, telling her that he had had her investigated and had found nothing that would make him not want her to come in and work for them. He did tell her that a query around the computer shops and programmers in the neighborhood said she was not only the best in the field, but that she was the most trustworthy person around as well.

“
I really appreciate your advice and the heads-up about Sailor. He was into the company for over six hundred thousand. It was a hard hit to the company, but I believe we are going to be able to get most of it back. He tended to spend his money locally and I’m getting his purchases, as it where. He is in jail for theft. I don’t want this to happen again. I’d like for you to show us what you can do to prevent this from happening in the future.”

Pete spent the next two days going through each program that they had and made a list of who had access to the files and how the information was obtained by a person. Some of the techs had both card reader access and password. Most of the other personnel had only password. And a majority of them had their passwords written down somewhere. A few even shared them with co-workers. In some cases, she found programs left running and email and payroll information up while the person went to lunch or the bathroom.

She had better computer skills than she had people skills so she stayed to herself during most of this time. The men in the office nearly fell all over themselves trying to get her attention and the women just tried to ignore her. But a woman as beautiful as her and as elusive just drew more attention.

Pete just didn’t notice anything going on. Well, she did but chose to ignore it. She was so wrapped in what she was doing that she could have been alone in the entire building and it would have made the same impression on her. She liked staying busy. It kept her from thinking.

She and Mackey met on Thursday morning in his office. His daughter Shelia was there as well. Shelia had a pretty good head on her shoulders about the computer aspect of the business. She was no way near the level of Pete and they both knew it. They were comfortable with it. Shelia told Pete on Tuesday that she was glad to have her there and that her dad was finally coming into this century.

“
How do you want this, Mr. Mackey? Straight up or honey coated? I can do either, but straight up will save me time trying to figure out how to say it nicely.” She grinned at him.

“
Straight up, Pete. I think I can take it.” She hoped he could as well.

“
You have a crappy set up to input your payroll. There are over seventy people who have access to the files that generate the final checks and over two hundred who can manipulate their own time sheets as late as the night before checks are printed. That has got to be a nightmare for your payroll department, by the way. There are, at the very minimum, eighty-four input errors on last week’s timesheets alone, costing you a cool ten grand. I’ve already fixed the time sheets for this week’s payroll and froze the account as of Tuesday morning. You also need a centralized accounting and a clock-in program, one that charges each person’s work to the specific department. That is where you’ll find most of your problems—double payroll when someone works in another department and charges their time to each one.”

“
Christ. Maybe I should have asked for it honey coated. How do I fix that? I’m sure you know a way one, right?”

Pete nodded. She liked Mr. Mackey. He was a straight up sort of guy and he didn’t pull any punches either.

“
Yes, I do. When a person signs onto his computer with his badge, they’re on the clock and in the department they’re working, same to sign off again. The program is inexpensive and easy to install. I can do that for you in less than two hours. The badges that you use already have the program installed. I just need to turn it on and set up the computer mainframe to recognize it. The other issue you have is your accounting department.”

“
Accounting? I thought we’d worked those out when you were here before. You mean there are things going on now, or something we missed?”

“
The program is fine. It’s your entire department. Were you aware that most of the time used in that department is online shopping, Internet usage not pertaining to work, Facebook, eBay and other sites that are costing you major downtime? About sixty-four percent of the day, as a matter of fact. If you take that service off their system grid, you can lower the percentage of people in that department alone by fifty-six percent with a payroll savings of four hundred thousand per year. Less people will also mean less mistakes and less access to your bank accounts. That will also make the department’s productivity rise up to nearly ninety-six percent.”

“
Can’t I just tell them not to use those sites unless they’re on their breaks?” Mackey asked.

“
You can ask until you’re blue in the face, but the truth is, no one thinks they’re using the Internet all that much. If you asked most of them, they would probably tell you they’re only on it for a few minutes, when in actuality, they’ve been on it nearly their entire shift. No, I would remove the temptation.”

Shelia was frantically writing notes, trying to keep up with her, so Pete reached into her backpack and handed her a copy of what she had found. She leaned back in her chair and waited.

“
You found this all out in two days? Christ, I wonder what you could find if you were here for a month. I shudder to think how much more I’m losing daily in my other departments. I take it you have that program with you now and that you have a general idea who should be let go in the accounting department?” Mackey stood up and began pacing the room.

Pete bristled. Damn it, she had not asked to come here. He had asked her to find his mistakes. She’d had enough of people for awhile. As soon as she left here, she decided, she was becoming a hermit.

“
Mr. Mackey, if you don’t like what I’ve just told you, fine. No harm done, I’ll just move on. I gave you the information you asked for. I don’t give a rat’s ass if you use it or trash it. Everything you need is right there in your daughter’s file. If you’ll both excuse me, I have another job.” She had gathered up her pack and was nearly to the door when he stopped her.

“
Wait, Miss Bartholomew, Pete. I’m a businessman and I have a business that you’ve just told me is losing money, not by my hand, but by employee theft. I didn’t mean to imply what you are telling me is your fault. On the contrary. It’s just that in the past two hours, you have torn apart my whole payroll system and told me I’m losing half a million a year paying my accounting department for shopping online. That’s a lot to handle. I guess I needed it a little more honey coated than I thought. Please, Miss Bartholomew, come have a seat.”

She came back into the office and continued to break apart each department one by one. The money he was losing and the profit he would make by following her suggestions was staggering. When he followed her plan and there really was no doubt he was going to follow everything to the letter, she thought, he would see a net profit of three million in the first year and a twenty-eight percent increase each year following that, she told him.

On Friday morning, Pete received her consulting check from the Mackey Corp. The amount on the check was well over what they had agreed upon. When she asked to see him about it, Shelia took her into her new office and explained that they had discussed her plans and what the company’s profit and loss statement would look like once her suggestions were implemented, and the board had decided to pay her salary and a percentage of the profits they would net thanks to her.

“
They were only being fair since you had found the money in the first place. We would have had to have paid a consulting firm had we brought them in. And Daddy is sure that they would not have found near the amount of mistakes that you did. Take the money, Miss Pete. You earned every penny of it.”

Overwhelmed and slightly dazed, Pete left the offices.

She went to the bank that was holding the account open for the house being built by the Becca Foundation, the account set up to pay for Becca’s Place and put half of the check, one million dollars of it, into the account. She then took out her list of people she helped out and she and the bank assistant put money into over sixty accounts, enough for some of these people to live on for a couple of months more without losing their houses, cars, or both, and with enough left over to pay the utilities and buy food within that time frame as well.

Most of the people she helped had no idea that a single person was helping them. It was just as well. Pete would have been thoroughly embarrassed to have them know. The bank assistant could lose her job if anyone got upset about Pete putting money into their accounts, but so far, no one had complained. The assistant manager had told her that she must notify each person who was helped and not to ever mention the donor’s name. Everyone was happy about that arrangement, especially Pete.

CHAPTER TEN