“No, she’s not a programmer,” Ormond continued, “but I want her to learn as much as she can from you two. You’re my two best guys. Get her trained up on the systems, have her work on tickets, inputting incident data, that kind of stuff. She doesn’t need to be a programmer to help you guys out.”
Ormond turned to her and shook her hand. “Good luck.”
“Thanks.”
Poor Rhys. Korbin could already see the signs of his friend tripping all over himself for this woman. He was ever the eternal optimist. “Let me show you to your desk.”
Korbin rolled his eyes and headed back to his desk. “I’ll leave you to it,” Korbin said. “I have real work to get done.”
Chapter Five
It didn’t take being an ubergeek for Manny to see that Korbin was in no way thrilled to have an interloper working in the office with them. Chilly didn’t begin to describe his attitude. She suspected he could hold a warm can of soda in his hand and freeze it in seconds.
Ormond left while Rhys Gilyard stepped forward. Taller than her, but not toweringly so, he had an unruly, curly mop of black hair and sweet brown eyes behind his glasses. Korbin was a tad taller, with blond hair and blue eyes.
“You’ll be working at this desk,” Rhys said as he led her over to it. He reached under the desk and pushed a button on the computer tower before turning on the monitor. “I’ll assign you a username and password. I’m one of the system admins.”
He slid the keyboard tray out and, in a rapid-fire flurry, had the computer up and running.
“We use a system-wide username formula of the person’s last name, three letters of the first, and if there happens to be a person with the same one, then a number after it. Croyle, was it?”
“Yes.” She spelled it for him.
“So you’ll be croyleama. For a password, you need at least eight characters, a mix of numbers, and both upper and lowercase letters.” He slid out of the way. “Enter it twice for confirmation.”
She donned her reading glasses before she reached down and typed something she thought she could remember.
He finished the process. “You’re good to go.”
“Great. Now what do I do?”
“I’ll set you up with a couple of workflow manuals I developed. Read through them, and expect it to not make much sense at first.”
She smiled. He had a cute accent. “Believe me, it won’t make much sense to me at second, either.”
“I’m sure you’ll do fine.” He brought up the first .pdf manual for her and left her to her own devices.
She settled in and knew she was in trouble when she found her eyes glazing over after the first three minutes. After an hour, she was ready for a break. “Which way to the bathroom?” she asked Rhys, since he was the only one to periodically check in on her. Korbin had mostly shot icy glares her way.
“I’ll show you.”
She stood. “Do I need to do anything to the computer?”
“No, a screensaver will pop up. Follow me.” He led her out of the lab and down the hallway to where the bathrooms on their floor were located. “There you go.”
“Thanks.” She stopped in front of the mirror and splashed water on her face.
Must. Have. Coffee. She hadn’t seen a coffeepot in the lab, but maybe there was a break room close by where she could get some. At this point, staying awake would prove her most difficult challenge.
When she returned to her desk a few minutes later, there was a blue screen on the monitor. She reached out and wiggled the mouse but the blue screen remained and the cursor didn’t move.
Hmm.
A bad feeling developed in the pit of her stomach. She reached out and tapped the spacebar on her keyboard, but still, nothing happened.
Crap.
She cleared her throat. “Um, Rhys, I think I need your help.”
He sat up, almost eagerly. “Yes?”
She pushed back from her desk and pointed at her monitor. When he rounded the low divider between their desks and saw her screen, he frowned.
“Odd.” He leaned in and wiggled the mouse, then clicked the spacebar.
Nothing.
“I already tried that.” She stood so he could take her seat. She glanced over at Korbin and noticed how he kept his head down, not even looking toward them.
Suspicious.
After a minute or two, Rhys reached under the desk and held down the power button until the tower shut down. Then he restarted it, waited for it to run through the start process, and then brought it back up.
“Well, it seems to be working now. This workstation hasn’t been used in a couple of months. Maybe it was just an irregularity.” He stood so she could retake her seat and continue reading the manual.
And still, no reaction from Korbin.
Hmm.
She slogged her way through that manual. When she finished, she got Rhys’ attention. “I’m finished with that one.”
“Oh, excellent.” He walked over and pulled up a different one for her. “Would you like some coffee? I don’t know where my manners are today.”
She breathed a sigh of relief. “I would kill for a cup of coffee right now.”
“Right. Follow me.”
He showed her to the break room and demonstrated how to operate the one-cup coffeemaker there. “All the different coffee flavors are in this cabinet.” He opened the door, showing her a large box full of a variety of cup-style flavored coffees. He pointed at a small carafe on the counter next to the machine. “Use that to refill it when the water runs low. We have mugs in the cabinet over the sink, or you can bring your own.”
“Thanks.”
He left her alone again while she fixed herself a cup of Columbian coffee. When she returned to her desk, she felt her stomach sink.
The blue screen was back.
“Dammit.”
Rhys’ head popped up. “What’s wrong?”
She wiggled the mouse. Nothing. “It hates me. I’m sorry, but it did it again.”
Once again she stood and he repeated the earlier steps, only this time muttering under his breath at the machine. “I don’t understand why it’s behaving like this,” he said. “I’m the last one who used it, and it was fine.” He restarted the computer, opened the manual for her, and cleared out of the way.
And still Korbin didn’t react.
By the time she managed to get halfway through the second manual, it was lunch time. Manny was ready for a break.
“Would you like to go with us?” Rhys asked.
Korbin had started to stand and she noticed how he froze at Rhys’ invitation.
“No, I’m okay. I need to take care of a couple of things, but thank you. Maybe tomorrow.”
As he left, Korbin gave her a grunt she interpreted as good-bye. Rhys turned at the door. “You really must forgive him. He hates change.”
“Yeah, I get that.”
“Well, we’ll see you in an hour.” He followed Korbin down the hall.
She stared at her computer. If she was Tom, she could start rifling through the system to see what she could find. As it stood, she’d barely managed to make nice with the damn tutorials throughout the morning.
If she tried to do anything else, she worried she might accidentally wipe something out. Or break the system.
Why the hell did they have to pick me for this assignment?
She did need to call her mechanic, and got her Jeep scheduled to drop off in the morning. Then she walked over to Ormond’s office.
“Did they scare you off yet?” he teased as she closed the door behind her.
“No, but Rhys seems to have warmed up to me. Korbin’s still a block of freaking ice.”
“He’s not happy with me for forcing you on them.”
“That’s an understatement.”
After putting the sticker on her Jeep’s rear passenger window and running out for lunch, she returned to campus to the lab.
Rhys and Korbin hadn’t returned yet, but it was sti
ll early.
And her computer, once again, had the blue screen.
Well, Rhys did it. What can it hurt?
She shut the computer down and restarted it without incident and picked up where she left off reading. The men returned a few minutes later. She’d heard Korbin’s voice in the hallway, but as soon as he walked through the door, he didn’t say a word.
“How are you doing?” Rhys asked.
“It did that blue screen thing again, but I just restarted it like you did.”
He rubbed his chin. “I’ll have to take a look at that later. It really doesn’t make any sense at all.”
She didn’t miss how Korbin kept his eyes firmly fixed on his own computer monitor.
It did it one more time, while she went to use the bathroom an hour later.
Rhys let out an exasperated sigh. “Let’s get you started on something else.” He pulled up a spreadsheet of information. “We get behind on entering our data reports after our test runs.”
She remembered she was supposed to be clueless about what they did. “Test runs on what?”
“Artemis.”
She gave him what she hoped passed for a clueless look, which wasn’t that difficult for her to manufacture at that point.
He went into a highly detailed explanation of the software and what it did, using her computer to demonstrate some of the features to her and taking nearly forty-five minutes in the telling. Several times, she caught her thoughts drifting and had to force her focus back onto Rhys.
He’s sort of cute.
Stop it. You’re working. And you don’t even know if he’s a good guy or not for sure.
When he finished the explanation, he gave her a smile. “Make sense?”
She nodded. “Sure. Just don’t give me a test on it.”
She heard Korbin let out a snort from his desk.
“Ah,” Rhys said, craning his neck to look at his friend. “He lives.”
Korbin flipped him a bird over the divider.
She suppressed a smile. He had ’tude and she didn’t blame him.
He wouldn’t, however, scare her off.
Rhys set her up with her task and left her alone. Ten minutes into the process, after one of the saves, an error message box appeared on her screen.
Database not found.
She blinked, eyes wide.
“Um.”
Rhys’ head popped up again, reminding her of a curly-haired meerkat. “Yes?”
She backed away from the monitor and simply pointed. “I just hit save and that message popped up. It’s been working fine.”
Frowning, he walked around. “Bloody hell!” He leaned in and started tapping on the keyboard.
“What’s wrong?” Korbin asked.
While she couldn’t be sure, she swore it sounded like he was trying not to laugh.
“This blasted workstation is just buggered right up today.”
Korbin slowly stood and stretched before walking over. His blue gaze glanced off her before turning to the computer Rhys now worked on.
Yes, that was definitely a twitching little curve of a smile on his face.
Now she was certain of it. Whatever was going on, Korbin was behind it.
She had a glimmer of an idea, remembering something Tom had told her once about setting her screensaver on her office computer so only a password would unlock it. “Hey, check the screensaver.”
Rhys didn’t look up. “What?”
“Just…check it.”
“That has nothing to do with this.”
Korbin now watched her with an appraising look. “Just please check it.”
“Fine.” She watched him open the settings and then listened as he let out another string of swear words.
“Problem?” she asked.
“Someone has set up a screensaver program on this workstation. And it locks the mouse and keyboard as well unless you hit a certain keyboard combination.”
Korbin headed for his desk.
“Whoa, buster,” she said as she yanked off her reading glasses and followed him. “Stop right there.”
He turned. “What?”
“Fix it,” she said, pointing at the computer.
He shrugged. “Fix what?”
“Whatever the hell you did to that computer. You fix it right now.”
He crossed his arms over his chest. “How do you know I did anything?”
“Because you’ve been sitting there like a block of granite all morning, only snickering when I have problems. Fix. It. Now.”
She didn’t take her eyes off him, waited for him to blink first.
Behind her, she heard Rhys stand. “What?”
Korbin finally broke. “Okay, fine.” He stepped around her and took Rhys’ place at the workstation. Less than a minute later, he stood. “There.”
Rhys looked from Korbin to her and back again. “What the fecking hell did you do?”
“Just a little hazing.” Korbin glared at Rhys before turning back to her. “You don’t want to run with the big dogs? Then get back on the porch.”
She stepped in, inches from him, and dropped her voice. “Let me tell you something. You better get this through your head right now, and hear me well. I am not here to screw with your job. I have been hired to help you. There is nothing you can do to me or throw at me that’s going to make me puss out and quit this job.”
“What?” Rhys said from behind her.
She held up a hand at him without taking her attention from Korbin. “So get this juvenile bullshit out of the way now. I understand you’re pissed off. I get it, I really do. But taking it out on me is going to be the absolute worst thing you can do. So help me, you do not want to get on my bad side. I’ve been through stuff in the Middle East that would make you curl up under your desk and cry like a little bitch. I did time as a cop. No, I’m not a brain like you are. I never claimed to be. I’m here to do a job. Stop with the pissing contest, because all you’re doing is pissing on your own shoes.”
She jammed her hands on her hips. “You want to screw around? Fine, have it out with me right now and get it out of your damn system and let’s get back to work.”
His jaw worked, tightening, and she wasn’t sure if he was scared or pissed off or a goodly combination of both.
After a long, tense moment of silence, he said, “I told Ormond we didn’t need an administrative assistant.”
She nodded. “Fine. Go on.”
“I told him we don’t have time to train someone.”
“Understood.”
Now that he’d opened the dam, he finally unleashed the torrent. “If he wants us to have an administrative assistant, he should at least hire someone in who’s even slightly qualified for the job considering what we do. It’s insulting to us to have to train someone in the basics. Rhys and I are under enough stress right now as it is to be doing this.”
She nodded. “Got it. Feel better?”
He looked like he might say something else, paused, and finally nodded. “Yeah.”
She pointed at her workstation. “Good. Anything else you want to take care of, or am I good to go?”
“It’s fine,” he mumbled.
She took a deep breath. “I’m going to hit the can. When I come back, can we start over? Or do you just want to have the kind of relationship where we nod and say, ‘s’up’ to each other and nothing more?”
He finally smiled. A small smile, but she’d consider it a win.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“That’s very big of you. I understand you’re stressed and I’m sorry I’m adding to that. Butting heads every time we turn around isn’t going to help either one of us.” She held out her hand.
He looked at it before finally shaking with her and nodding.
* * * *
Korbin watched as she headed out of the lab. As he’d expected, Rhys nearly came unglued as soon as she was out of earshot.
“What the fecking hell is wrong with you? Are you deranged? Do you
want to get fired for screwing around like that?”
He shot a glare at Rhys. “Ormond’s not going to fire me for a couple of harmless pranks.” He turned to head for his desk, but Rhys caught him by the arm.
“Like bloody hell he won’t! We aren’t completely indispensable, you know.”
“Hey, you were all for encouraging her to move on to greener pastures.”
A guilty look enveloped his face. Korbin knew his gut instincts were dead-on. “She’s very nice. I see no harm in her working with us.”
Korbin snorted as he shook his arm free. “Yeah, she’s nice. You’re just ready to get into her pants.”
“Oh for fuck’s sake, man, listen to yourself. You’re taking this whole thing personally.”
“Damn right I am.” He yanked out his chair and sat. “Ormond needs to let us do our work and get out of our way if he wants us to deliver the project on time.”
Rhys stared at him. “Whatever, just quit screwing around. If you’re so bloody worried about the work, you shouldn’t be wasting time sabotaging workstations.”
He shrugged. “It was just a harmless prank.”
“You told me how you were bullied as a kid,” Rhys said. “I know I damn sure was. How’s it feel to be the bully?”
Rhys turned to head for his desk. Korbin was going to shoot back a comment, but Manny returned and he swallowed it.
He hated that he found himself physically attracted to her, and Rhys’ last shot burned all the way through his ears to the depths of his soul. Yes, he had been bullied in school. Brutally. It wasn’t until college that he’d actually started making real friends, friends with the same interests he had.
He’d hated every one of those bullies.
Taking a deep breath, he stood and walked over to Manny and extended his hand. “I’m really sorry,” he said. “I was out of line.”
She glanced from Rhys to him before accepting his handshake with a nod. “Thanks.” She smiled, but he didn’t miss the sadness behind it. It didn’t touch her eyes, which bore deep crow’s feet at the corners, as if she’d spent a lot of time crying and little time smiling.
“Look,” he added, “if you need help with something, let me know.”
“Thanks.”
* * * *