Office Play: Freaky Geek Series (5 page)

Chapter Six

Jeanette ordered lunch in. A couple of days went by and she was still knee deep in purchase orders and financial statements and there was no light at the end of the tunnel. Actually, there was one that was very clear however. This company was losing money like a running faucet.

So far she noticed over a three hundred thousand dollars discrepancy from last quarter. However towards the end of that same quarter it looked like they were about to break even. Odd. Someone was cooking the books too?

It seemed like old times, looking at mafia books. But that was okay, she was busy and finally doing what she was hired to do. She made sure she stayed out of Adams way and get some needed work done, and not think about what happed a few mornings ago.

She looked at purchase orders for the past two hours, and finally something jumped out at her. She noticed seven separate orders placed the same day by the same employee. She wondered why the employee in question, didn’t wait until they had everything they wanted written down, then place the order all at once.

“Got everything under control?”

Jeanette looked up from her work and looked into Adam’s eyes. He was standing in the doorway of her office with something in his hand.

Things were under control until he showed up at her office. She thought maybe that time away from him would put things back into perspective.

A part of her wanted to kick herself for what she participated in that morning. She was a forty-five year old woman, not some crazy hormone out of control teenager.

What was she thinking?

That was just it, she wasn’t. Her body had taken over her mind like an alien. It was as if the two were separate. Well, never again. They both had their fun. It was time for reality.

“About as much control as possible,” she said, and went back to her work. But out of her peripheral, she saw Adam walking towards her desk. He grabbed a chair and pulled it along side her.

“I found something, but I’m not sure if it means anything. Seven orders last week the same day—.”

“From the same employee.”

Adam cocked his head. “Yeah, how did you know?”

She passed him the orders she had. She didn’t tell him about the books. That was her area of expertise and she and Sam were the only ones that needed to be privy to that information.

Adam pulled a pair of glasses out of his shirt pocket and put them on, as he looked over the purchase order.

Damn. He even looked sexy with specks. She turned away and tried to focus on the data on the computer screen. “We need to look at those much closer. I hate coincidences in a case like this.”

“I agree. And I need to find out why my program didn’t catch these recent purchases.”

She turned her chair so she was facing him. “Still don’t have a clue?”

“Nope. But I’m going to bust my ass tonight trying to figure it out, even if I have to sleep here.” He took off his glasses and returned them to his pocket. “And speaking of sleeping.”

“Not now.” She turned back to her computer.

“I know and I think you have some preconceived notions about me, and I want to get them out of your mind.”

“We just need to really slow down. I don’t want any distractions.” Jeanette got up and went to the file cabinet. “I think we both got carried away,” she continued. “It must be something in the air. I’ve never done anything like that before. But it was fun,” she quickly added, when she saw he was about to say something.

Adam looked at her in a way that told her this conversation was not over. “This isn’t over between us. I don’t know what I have to do to convince you, but I assure you, you will not get away from me. We belong to each other; we’ll figure it out. I know it was too soon, but you can’t take back what happened. But I have no regrets and I hope you don’t either.”

Jeanette turned to say something, but caught Sam walking into her office out of the corner of her eye.

“Hey you two. Glad to see you putting your heads together,” Sam said, with the perkiness of a cheerleader.

“We think we might have something but not sure,” Jeanette said, taking some papers out of the file cabinet and the ones Adam held.

“Yeah, we notice the same employee ordering several times a day instead of all at once,” Adam said. He got up to stretch. His tall muscular body blocked the view she had of Sam. He smiled at her, knowing what he was doing to her. Jeanette moved around Adam and tried to push him aside with her forearm. It seemed he was nailed to the floor.

She rolled her chair out for a better view instead. “We’ll look them over later this afternoon,” Jeanette said.

“Good. Let me know which office as soon as possible. We might have to send you there to look at the operations personally. You’re first offsite business meeting.” She smiled hard, turned and walked away.

“Is she always like that?” Jeanette asked, scrunching up her nose.

“Yep, and that’s without coffee.”

“Yikes.” Jeanette returned her chair back to her desk and separated the problem orders from the others. “Let’s look at these now, maybe we can find something before the day is over, that way we don’t have to do over time. I’m tired.”

“I bet.”

She looked over at him. He had that arrogant grin plastered on his face again.

“Here.” She shoved half the purchase orders in his lap. “What employee is this exactly?”

Adam looked over each piece of paper carefully. “Wait a minute.”

“What?”

“This isn’t an employee, at least not one I know about.”

Jeanette scooted closer to him. “What do you mean, how would you know just by a number?”

“Well, first of all I have to see each employee number for other business a well, like online timecards. But look at this, and look at the most recent order.”

“These numbers don’t make sense.”

“You’re right. No employee has the number 9999, or social 6666, and there is certainly no office number 000. These are dummy numbers. And look here.”

Jeanette looked at the recent purchase orders “They have the same number sequence.”

“That’s it!” Adam said, slapping the papers against his thigh. “The system we had in place before, allowed these transactions. Now the program I made was suppose to catch that, but it’s not. That’s the thing that was bugging me.”

“That’s the bug.”

Adam smiled. “Exactly. Now I have to figure out how to fix it. Apparently, the system still allows dummy numbers and repeats to go through.”

“We’ll figure it out.” Jeanette was about to look at some more data, when her lunch arrived. “Thank goodness, I’m starved.”

She paid the man and took the food back to her desk.

“Mind if I join you?” Adam asked.

She looked up from her Chinese chicken salad. “Um…no.”

Adam left the room and fifteen minutes later, came back with a styrofoam tray.

“Watcha get?”

“Cheeseburger, fries and a large root beer.”

“Interesting. You don’t strike me as the type that would eat food like that.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah, you seem like someone who takes pride in his body.”

Adam put down his soda and smiled so hard, his dimples dug deep into his face. “You like my body?”

“I didn’t say otherwise. But I was just saying that I thought you would eat healthier. Unless this is a splurge.”

He chuckled. “It is a splurge. Since I know I’m gonna be here for overtime, I need to fortify myself.”

“Hmm, I should have done the same. Usually this gets me through the day until I get home.”

Adam took some fries off his plate and put them on hers. “May not go together, but it comes out the same way.”

“Thanks for the visual.”

Adam laughed and deep soulful laugh.

Jeanette found herself warming up to him again. She needed to watch it. She meant what she said earlier. They needed to slow down. If there was even a hint to the other employees that there was something going on between them, her job and what she was trying to do would be at risk.

Adam seemed to have a more relaxed attitude about the situation. But then he was probably used to that kind of attention. She saw the way the other women in the office nearly broke their necks to look at him when he came to their areas. He would smile at all of them and made small talk and laugh at their bad jokes.

He was mister popular all right. But she wasn’t going to join his fan club.

***

Adam was grateful for the time he spent with Jeanette. Even though they ate in relative silence, at least he was near her. But he wanted more. He needed to figure this out. He understood her concerns fully.

He’d been there done that, bought the T-shirt.

He already mentally kicked himself for breaking his number one rule. Don’t get involved with co-workers. But the chemistry was too strong. Damn! It felt so right—at the time.

Did he let his hormones dictate his actions? No. Jeanette was more than just a quick fix for his libido. His body knew it, his mind knew it and more importantly his heart knew it.

Now it was a matter of convincing her.

She didn’t say she
didn’t
want to talk about it. She just said later. So there was still hope to make his case. And make his case he would. The main thing he had to do was to get whatever misinformation she had about him out of her mind.

Two, and this was the tricky part. He had to do all of this without alerting the rest of the staff that there’s anything going on between them. He didn’t want to relive that fiasco. And he knew very well, if everything came crashing down, Jeanette would be the one called on the carpet and sent home. He wouldn’t have a chance to get things right and she would probably be so pissed or distraught, that she wouldn’t want to have anything to do with him.

He needed a plan.

But right now, he had another pressing matter. These orders that were getting by his program, and the ones from last month. At least now he knew the problem, now he needed to find out why it was happening and fix it.

“Do you think you have an idea of what’s happening?”

“Huh?” Adam, shook his head and looked over at Jeanette. “What was that?”

“I was wondering if you knew what was happening with these orders. You know what I think?”

“Please tell me, anything to make my life easier.”

“I think your bug in the system could be producing these orders. Maybe there isn’t a person doing it. And the fact that vendors are getting paid here and there, could be an oversight. You know, an invoice comes in before the problem is caught and a check goes out.”

“You mean the infamous computer gnome?” Adam wiped his mouth; the cheeseburger was getting a bit messy.

“Could be.” Jeanette swiped a French fry from his plate. “Hope you don’t mind. They are good.”

“No prob. You know I thought about that—for a split second. Then mentally dumped it in the preverbal round file.”

“Why?”

“Because the orders last month was before my program was set up. Those were taken manually.  But we can’t find the person who took the orders. And the vendors aren’t sending any checks back, so they are getting paid for something. No one knows anything, or no one is talking.”

“Oh, that’s right.” Jeanette sat there leaning her head in her hand. “So you really think that it’s someone inside?”

“Oh, yeah. Try not to think about it now, we only have fifteen minutes left for lunch.” Adam dipped a fry in the ketchup. He decided to change the subject, mainly to find out more about Jeanette. “So tell me, how did you find out about this position anyway?

“Through some friends. You know, the networking thing. I was thinking about retiring from the whole nine-to-five gig and become an independent consultant, that’s when I started working for the Feds. But this position sounded intriguing. I mean office supply pilfering on a huge scale. And Sam was so urgent about it, so I knew it was more to it than that. And see, I’m right. I’m a sucker for problem solving.” She smiled.

Adam felt warm. Her smile was stunning and sexy. Too bad it wasn’t really directed towards him. How he wished he could turn back the clock, he might have done things differently. Maybe. He still had no regrets about what happened. And it bothered him that she did.

He looked at his watch. Lunch was over. But there was still the overtime they both had to put in. He was going to get to the bottom of this whether she wanted to or not. The fact remained that they had to work closely together.

It seemed that his personal life was becoming more complicated than this purchase order problem.

Life sucked.

Chapter Seven

It was five o’clock Friday and everyone was running out of there as if the building was on fire. Unfortunately, Jeanette wasn’t part of the crowd. She needed to stay and figure out this missing inventory and money business.

Renee called her at five ten, like clockwork. Man this week flew by fast. “Hello.”

“Hey Nette, want to go to a movie? The sequel to that horror flick is out.”

“Isn’t this the tenth sequel?” Jeanette mused.

“Yeah, but it’s still good.”

“I would love to join you, but I have to do some overtime.”

“What? I thought you said that company doesn’t do overtime.”

“Technically, it doesn’t, but my position and the reason I’m here is different. Remember, I’m the super sleuth of business finance.” She laughed with her cousin.

“Okay then, I can wait. No fun seeing the movie by myself. I need to have someone there to make goofy comments.”

“Rain check?”

“Rain check. Is the IT stud doing overtime too?”

No sooner the words left Renee’s lips, Adam walked into her office. “Uh…yeah.”

“I wouldn’t want to see an old horror flick either.” Renee giggled.

“Let me let you go, so I can get through. I don’t want to be here too late.”

“Okay, then. Call me when you get home.” She disconnected.

“I didn’t mean for you to get off the phone.” Adam stood there leaning against the doorway.

“Huh?”

“I could come back,” Adam said, heading back out the door.

“Oh no. That was Renee. She just wanted to know if I wanted to go to the movies with her. I told I had to work overtime.”

“Ah. Well, shall we get started, the sooner we finish the quicker we can get out of here.”

“My sentiments exactly.” Jeanette popped up the data of last weeks purchase orders on her screen.

“And if we finish early enough, perhaps we can go get a bite to eat. I know of this great sushi bar.”

“I’ll think about it. You have any new info on these?” She scooted over some purchase orders to him.

“All work and no play. Okay. But no one is here,” he said, whispering in her ear.

“But we’ll never get this done.” She gently pushed him away. He looked genuinely hurt.

“Okay, okay. Professionalism it is—for now. But you know at some point we have to address this. Like you said, we need to tread lightly, but I want to be with you. I want you to get to know the real me and I definitely want to know the real you.”

Jeanette turned and faced him. He was sincere. “Too bad we started off too fast.”

“Yeah, but we can start all over. We just need to keep it professional here at work, then after hours we can get to know each other. We can keep it quiet. It’s no ones business actually.”

This was true Jeanette thought, but women had a way of figuring out who was seeing who. And these women looked like they all had dibs on the head IT guy. If there were the slightest hint, her job would be made miserable.

“We have to take it one day at a time. Right now my main focus is this.”

“I agree. It seems to be getting worse. I heard through the grapevine that the head guy might fire everyone in the purchasing department, and may layoff a few IT people too for good measure and start all over,” Adam said, rubbing the back of his neck.

“Oh no. So he must think it’s an inside job too.”

“I’m starting to believe it. Like you said, this is no coincidence. Someone has a nice home office somewhere or a warehouse full of expensive toys.”

Jeanette scratched her head. Yep, someone had a nice set up at home or where ever. She looked over the purchase orders again. There were a lot of them and they were multiplying like rabbits.

“You don’t suppose it’s more than one person. I mean for instance, several servers are missing. You only need one.”

Adam threw back his head and let out an exasperated breath. “I didn’t need that info. That means they could be scattered all over the place.”

Jeanette chuckled. “Sorry. But it just dawned on me. There are multiples of everything. This could be at the very least two people.

Adam leaned over and kissed her on the cheek. She jumped.

“Just admiring your brains—and beauty.” He smiled.

“I’m flattered that you find me attractive, but you have to admit that what we did was way out of line. I don’t want to give you the wrong impression about me.”

“I don’t have the wrong impression about you. I know what you felt was real, just like I know what I felt was real. I will never judge you for that. I just want to know that you don’t have any regrets, not even a little.”

Jeanette sat and thought. She did and she didn’t. She never acted that irresponsible. But at the same time no one knew and that made it easier.

“I don’t.” She sighed. “It won’t happen again anyway—right?”

“You’re hard to resist. But I’ll try my best.” He winked.

Jeanette stood up, straightened her blouse and headed towards the door. “I need to go to the restroom. When I get back, I hope we can get some work done. I would like to be home before the stroke of midnight.” She chuckled, turned and went to the ladies room.

She didn’t have to go, but she needed to distance herself from him and his words.

If she wasn’t careful, she could actually fall for him.

***

Aw hell! This was not going the way he planned. Adam couldn’t figure it out. But then women were more confusing than a Rubik’s Cube.

No, that wasn’t true. He figured out the cube in less than three minutes.

He couldn’t for the life of him figure out what changed. One minute she was crying out his name, screaming with passion and cooing words of satisfaction in his ear. Less than an hour later, she put the breaks on everything without warning. She explained later, but sheesh! She could have given him a heads up.

Adam let out a sigh. This was going to be difficult. How to romance the woman he works with, without raising the ire of every woman in the office and making sure Jeanette doesn’t get fired.

People were noisy. Jeannette was definitely right about one thing. If there were the slightest hint, their lives would be made miserable.

He sat there thinking. The best way to handle this was to hurry up and solve this purchase order problem. Once that was done, then he could pursue her fully. She would have no excuse then. She was an outside contractor, even though they gave her a title and access to the whole company’s files. Once the problem was solved she would be on her way to a new job.

Satisfied with his conclusion, he went over the purchase orders on Jeanette’s desk. He would think about his next approach on their relationship—or blooming relationship, later tonight. He too wanted to be home before he turned into a pumpkin.

Jeanette returned to the office. She had her business face on. That was fine, he was ready to work now.

“I see you’re looking over the orders, see anything new?” She returned to her seat.

“Not really….wait. Look at this.”

Jeanette pushed her chair closer to him. Her perfume tickled his nose and made his senses go haywire.

“What am I looking at?”

“This code here. These are the orders for the binders, the ones made after I set up my program. One thing it didn’t miss was country code. Domestic is seven, foreign is nine. All of these are nine.”

“The Paris office.” She gasped out.

“Yep.”

“So do you think we’ll find servers, binders and expensive pens there?” She rubbed her chin. “That would make sense sort of. Get the stuff out of the country, but not necessary the Paris office. That will be too traceable.” She scratched her chin. “And it won’t be hard to find someone that would look the other way and not document shipments to another country.”

“Don’t know. But I still think it would bring more attention to the situation.”

“At least this is something. Do the orders from last month have a nine on them?”

“Let’s see.” He grabbed the stack and looked over each one. They all came from the Paris office. “Yep.”

“Okay then, who took the orders?” Jeanette asked.

He looked over them again. “Damn!”

“Don’t tell me, dummy numbers.”

“Right-o.”

“Let’s not beat ourselves up. We made a lot of progress considering. We now know that all these orders came from the Paris office. It’s just a matter of time to find out who placed it.”

“And who took the order.”

“Yeah, whoever it is could be an accomplice, not just an innocent order taker.”

“Are you ready to go? Or do you want to see if we can attach a name to these?”

Jeanette looked at her watch. “I want to go home. These will still be here.”

“Okay then. Get you stuff together and I’ll walk you to your car.”

Adam left the office before she could protest. He gathered up his things and made sure everything was turned off.

He met Jeanette by the elevators. He was glad she waited for him. “I’m going to sleep well tonight,” he yawned out. “Sorry.”

Jeanette chuckled. He was going to stand there and enjoy the moment, no matter how fleeting.

“You’re forgiven. I’m feeling the same way. As soon as I get home, I’m taking a hot bath, and crawling into bed. I’m going to record my favorite shows and watch them over the weekend.”

The elevator arrived and they got on. Adam leaned against the back wall.

Why did she have to mention bath and bed? His hard-on was subsiding a bit, now it was aching hard again. Yep, he would be going to bed too, but he would be taking a cold shower instead.

They arrived at the parking lot. There was one night guard and he wasn’t allowed to retrieve the cars, like the day attendant, so it was a good thing he decided to walk her to her car.

But instead of taking her straight to her vehicle, he took her to his. He knew hers was on the upper level. He unlocked and opened the door. “Get in and I’ll take you to your ride.”

She looked at him for a split second, then got in. She probably realized that this was a good idea.

“Hopefully Monday, we can find out who placed the orders to these items during working hours,” he said, as he drove up the ramp.

“I hope so. I don’t want to come in early or stay late again.”

They reached her car. He pulled along side and unlocked his door. She grabbed her purse to get out.

“Thanks.”

“You’re welcome. And sweet dreams. If it’s not asking too much, I would like for you to think about our situation.” He blew her a kiss.

She smiled. “I will. Don’t worry.”

He sat there looking in his review mirror, and he watched her as she got into her car and drove off.

He wondered what kind of dreams he would be having.