Bride by the Book (Crimson Romance) (5 page)

Maintain a professional relationship with your employer at all times.

Angie blinked, nonplussed. She’d love to have this man call her Angie. Besides, this small-town law office didn’t really require the formality of a big-city corporation.

“You can call me Angie,” she said, smiling agreeably.

The manuals were right about one thing. Having her employer call her Angie definitely led to unprofessional thoughts. But he was the boss, she reminded herself. She was paid to do as he requested.

He regarded her again with that peculiar mix of suspicion and eagerness. Maybe he wondered if she could even type.

Angie smiled at him cheerfully. She’d show him. She’d show everybody, including certain persons left behind in Palo Alto, California.

“I’ll be back in half an hour,” she said. “If we’re going to get a space on my desk cleared off by tomorrow, I’ll need to get started right away.”

Angie went home and gleefully changed clothes. This was an opportunity to wear the beautiful trousers that went with the linen suit. They were much more suitable for the afternoon’s activities than a business suit.

Actually, the only thing suitable for the afternoon she planned was a pair of old jeans and an equally ancient T-shirt, but not for anything was Angie going to let down her professional guard. Never again, she vowed. Only in her own yard would she wear casual clothes. Her days of going to work in comfortable jeans and T-shirts were over.

She had chosen the large bedroom at the back of the old-fashioned little house. She liked it because it looked out at the sunny backyard. Angie had discovered she loved sitting on the back steps gazing at her own yard. Owning property was a new sensation in her young life, and she mentally thanked Great Aunt Loretha for making it possible.

Casting a possessive glance at the backyard, Angie plucked her secretarial manuals from their place of honor on the bookshelves. Thanks to them, she knew everything necessary to build a satisfying new career upon the foundation of the computer skills she already possessed.

She opened each manual and reviewed the section on professional relations with her boss. She hadn’t expected any problems, but then, she hadn’t expected a boss like Garner Holt. In hopes of increasing her professionalism, she polished the plain glass lenses of her glasses and centered them carefully on her nose.

She returned the manuals to their shelves and went into the master bedroom, where she’d temporarily set up her laptop computer on the old-fashioned dresser, and her laser printer on top of an antique chest-of-drawers.

She stepped around boxes packed with her collection of books and textbooks and flicked on the computer. When it had booted, she brought up the inter-office messaging program she had used in Palo Alto and paged her friend, Fonda Clancy.

When Fonda answered, she typed hastily,
Guess what? I just landed a job.

That fast?
Fonda returned.
I didn’t even know they had your kind of job in a town that little. Or are you still intending to be a secretary?

Angie debated telling Fonda all about her new job and her handsome boss, but something told her to keep that quiet for the time being. Fonda did not believe in mixing business with pleasure and would consider the handsome boss a liability.

If anyone asks
, she typed,
tell them I’ve got a job with an Arkansas-based computer chip maker, and I’m seeing to it that BrownWare and VP-Base are blacklisted with every major Arkansas business I can locate.

Fonda returned:
His Highness actually told Ripplecroft he’d personally pull VP-Base from every computer they manufactured if they hired you. Johnny Croft is so mad, he wants to hire you on the spot
.
Are you sure you want to go through with leaving your whole life behind like this? Maybe you should talk to Johnny, just in case.

I was never more sure of anything in my life
, Angie typed back, more certain than ever she’d been right to leave BrownWare and her former career far behind.

She had left California in the nick of time. Apparently, her father had gone ballistic, but she wasn’t there this time to bear the brunt of his fury.

Here’s the latest update on the situation
, Fonda typed, and proceeded to fill Angie in on developments at BrownWare, which Angie had left barely one week ago.

Angie wasn’t interested in hearing the increasingly acrimonious hell-raising at BrownWare. She had more important things to do, but Fonda was a good friend. She exclaimed suitably then logged off with relief.

She swiftly scanned the messages in her e-mail inbox. Thank goodness she’d had the foresight to tell everyone at BrownWare to e-mail her. Since her cell phone had no service here, she’d bought a new smart phone with local service, but no way was she giving the new number to anyone in Palo Alto.

“Got a phone call yesterday from some guy looking for you,” Peter Van Holden had written. “It wasn’t a prospective new employer, I hope. He didn’t call back.”

Angie replied that she’d just been hired by one Garner Holt, attorney-at-law, and reminded Peter of every favor he owed her from the five years of their association. Rereading Peter’s message, she noted he’d misspelled several words and had left out most of the punctuation.

“Angie, darling, I’m worried about your father’s attitude,” her mother had written. “Are you sure you don’t want to come back home? I’ll insist Vernon rehire you, or else Stanford will reevaluate the use of VP-Base in their computer training courses.”

Celia Brownwood, a full professor, taught radiation-physics at Stanford, and her recommendations carried a lot of weight among the senior faculty.

There was a lot more, but Angie scanned it swiftly and shuddered. She wrote Celia that VP-Base had enough troubles without being kicked off the Stanford campus and said she loved her new home in Arkansas. As for her father’s attitude, she no longer found it bothersome.

There were several other messages from her former colleagues at BrownWare. Each told of a new and different atrocity perpetrated by Vernon Brownwood, who seemed to be on a tear now that he’d fired his own daughter and accused her of disloyalty to the firm he’d sweated blood to found.

Angie thanked each writer and privately wished they’d make their complaints to a major computer publication.
She
was no longer interested, especially when she knew they hoped she’d return and draw Vernon’s fire once more, thus smoothing the waters for them.

Thank goodness she had an interesting new job and a glamorous new career. She shut down her computer and sailed out the door happily, pausing only to exchange insults with a resident mockingbird that had taken exception to Angie’s arrival. She even loved the hostile Mr. Mockingbird today, the first official day of her new life.

• • •

Garner looked up, surprised, when Angie walked back into his office. He was grumbling at his computer, cursing the fact that he needed the letter he was typing yesterday, and that his computer had picked today to act up.

“I’ll need to know where you want me to buy the shelves.” Angie fairly brimmed with enthusiasm. She cast a proprietary glance over the outer office. “By the time they’re delivered, I should have the front office cleaned and ready for them.”

Not unless she intended to clean all night, Garner thought grimly. He felt like an elderly curmudgeon in the presence of so much youthful joy and vigor.

He said nothing aloud, but his thoughts probably showed on his face as he assimilated the crisp, white linen trousers she wore. Obviously she didn’t intend to do any real cleaning. Not in that outfit.

“I’ve got a better idea,” he said. “Why don’t you type this letter while I go buy the shelves?”

Angie came around his desk to peer over his shoulder at the computer screen. Her excitement, if anything, increased. “Is there a copy to follow?”

Garner gestured at the hand-scribbling that decorated a yellow legal pad. “Think you can read my writing?”

She smelled like lemon flowers. He stifled an urge to turn and pull her down onto his lap and absorb both her scent and her joyous spirit.

“Of course.” Angie surveyed the hieroglyphics masquerading as handwriting with undimmed confidence.

He studied the glasses she wore and wondered again if they were real. When he had looked through them earlier, he’d have sworn they were plain glass. And if they were not real, then why on earth was she wearing phony glasses?

Maybe he’d better not worry about it until after she’d proven whether or not she could actually do secretarial work.

“Damned computer.” Garner punched the save command, but the machine proved recalcitrant. If he wound up having to take the thing to the shop now of all days …

“Here,” Angie said. “I’ll deal with it. I’m good with computers. You go buy those shelves. Tell them you want delivery tomorrow morning at nine o’clock on the dot.”

Garner turned to look at her. He closed his mouth firmly on the urge to salute and say, “Yes, ma’am.”

Angie smiled kindly at him. “You could probably use an afternoon out of the office. It’s beautiful outside.”

On that, Garner found himself in total agreement. “Angie … ”

He gave up. Telling his new secretary he was the boss when she’d ordered him to do exactly what he wanted to do probably wasn’t the way to begin a working relationship. He got to his feet, stretched, and wondered if she really intended to clean his office in the two hours before five o’clock.

Angie settled in the chair before the computer. “If I can’t do anything with this one, I’ll use the one on my desk.” She stared at the screen a moment then looked up at him. “The computer out front is a working computer, isn’t it?”

“It was working when I last had a secretary.” Annoyance at himself for noticing how well she filled out her trousers led him to attempt reclaiming his authority. “Clean off that desk of yours, first. It looks like a rabbit warren.”

On that, he fled the office.

• • •

Angie whipped around but all she saw was his back. She shrugged and returned her attention to the computer. She fully intended to clean the entire office. The desk would have to wait its turn. She had her own schedule.

As she had suspected, Garner had no idea how to treat a computer. The data on his hard disk was hopelessly fragmented, and the drive held no software with which to defragment it. Moreover, it was probably clogged and cluttered with temporary files from every website he had ever visited.

Clicking her tongue in disapproval, Angie opened never-before-touched programs on his hard drive and did what she could to remedy the problem. Then she returned to his word processing program to type his letter.

She printed it out proudly after cleaning and adjusting the printer, which wasn’t in prime working condition, either. Then she printed out an envelope and called it quits. Even she had to admit she’d done a beautiful job. Her first secretarial duty, and she had succeeded. Angie printed a duplicate copy and stowed it in her briefcase as a memento.

Since there was so much to be done, she cleared the top of the desk that was to be hers, placing everything on the already crowded sofa. She might as well get the computer in order, since she was the one who was going to use it. Cleaning and defragmenting the hard drive would take a couple of hours at least, and that could be done in the midst of other cleaning chores.

Garner walked in two hours later and found her attacking the floor against the far wall with a broom. She nodded and smiled at him, then wondered why he seemed so fascinated by the computer screen.

She had no idea why. The computer was so old, it ought to be junked. She might have to start bringing her laptop to work if she hoped to get anything done, especially if her boss wanted her to research anything online.

Garner stared at the elderly computer. “How did you get that thing online? I thought it gave up the ghost a couple of years back.”

“It’s old, but it’s not dead.” Angie surprised herself, defending the old computer. “Part of the problem is that you don’t have any of the latest Windows XP updates, including Service Pack Three. So I’m putting it on for you. Plus the hard drive was so full and so fragmented, it was lucky it could even boot up.”

“I see.”

Angie bit back a grin because it was obvious he didn’t see at all.

He actually leaned over to stare at the winking pixels and squares that bounced around the screen. “What are you doing now?”

“I’m sweeping the floor.”

“This is amazing,” he said, indicating the screen. “Are you some sort of computer genius or something?”

Angie flushed. She could only feel thankful he was watching the computer screen rather than her. She had never dreamed he’d assume she had computer expertise just because she knew the basics of operating Windows XP.

“Not at all. I just opened the programs that are available on Windows and put them to work. We … er … learn this sort of thing at secretarial school, since computers are the office machine of choice these days.”

“I was never able to figure out how to keep this computer running. In fact, my last secretary quit because of it.” He looked up at her and grinned. “Among other things. She said the computer was the last straw.”

“You should have ordered a new computer,” Angie said. “Desktop models are really cheap now.”

Garner said nothing. Angie bit back a smile upon realizing a new computer would not have changed the secretary’s mind.

“I’ll bet you keep up with all the new developments in computer technology,” Garner said, still watching the computer screen as if mesmerized. “Do you own one of those smart phones that goes online for e-mail and social networking?”

“Cell phones are necessities these days.” Angie said nothing about the state-of-the-art smart phone that currently resided in her purse and made a deprecating movement with her shoulders. “Mine is … reasonably smart.”

“What about a Facebook page or a Twitter account?”

She gave him her best “Are you kidding?” look and reminded herself to change her Facebook page status to friends only. She had almost forgotten the fun prospective employers could have with would-be employees’ Facebook pages.