Lost and Found (Growing Pains #1)(55)

She opened the attachment. She was greeted with a Word document filled with numbered informational needs. The page was full. There weren’t that many numbers—six in all, but each piece of information requested had about five sub-pieces. It was madness!

Before she decided to be overwhelmed, she looked at number one. One step at a time. Usually it was a lot easier, went a lot faster, when a girl just started at the beginning and soldiered through it. There was no need to feel like she couldn’t do the job.

Not yet.

She was to pull all the information on jewelry from the company’s database. She was to print out and put together everything—everything was specified—she could possibly find. And organize it for Sean and Ray’s viewing pleasure. In addition to organized, it should be user-friendly, meaning no overbearing math stuff.

Just to see what she was up against, she did a quick, broad search. It yielded a crap load of information. Seriously, a crap load!

“Feck.” Moving on.

Next she was to deduce trends influenced by fashion, economy, social status, global influences, and anything else she could possibly think of. Within each trend she needed markets and demographics by region, by world economy, by freakin’ Popeye’s treasure map if it was available.

Next was the list of visual aids. A graph was the least of her worries in this section. She was told to get creative, and above all, make it look aesthetically pleasing to people who were not math geeks. He actually said “math geeks” too.

Ass…

“Okay, sure.” Next!

After she got all that information from the system, she was to head to the library. She needed anything new that might’ve been overlooked in the past. She was to ferret out trends within trends that might have been marketing-inspired.

Basically, she was to have the largest, best organized mountain of information in all eternity solely focused on jewelry.

Then…

Then she was to refine everything by sapphires, blue and black. Quality, size, what type of jewelry—everything down to what type of store sold it to what type of person.

That was all number one.

Krista took a big, lung-filling, solid breath. She read the list again.

Took out a tab of paper to scrawl down some notes and a plan of attack.

Got overwhelmed.

In that order…

And then, to stop herself from crying in frustration—which was a huge flaw of hers—she glanced up with the intent at swearing into the open space, and noticed a looming, male figure over her.

“Ay!”

After her heart rate slowed she realized that the looming figure was merely leaning against the door jamb, and was now laughing at her for yelling at him in surprise.

It was Jacob.

She almost yelled again.

“I came to check in on your setup,” Jacob said, strolling into the office.

“Oh,” she’d just found a drawback to the office. “It’s great. I haven’t been here long, but I can log in and everything.”

“Great,” he sat in a visitor chair.

“I was just reading a list from Sean McAdams about the freaking mountain of work he expects me to do right out of the gate!”

A.K.A. Get out.

“I heard he expects a great deal when he works with someone. Everyone’s a bit surprised he picked you—you being so inexperienced and all—“

She needed to nip that in the bud right quick.

“And I’m sure there are plenty of rumors as to why he picked me, me being so young and inexperienced. I’d expect that from the gossiping Golden Girls of this company, but you, Jacob?” Krista gave her best conspiratorial smile and huffed as she shook her head. Hopefully he would take the bait.

He did.

“Of course they would say that, yes. You have to expect that sort of thing from a bunch of deadbeat old women, don’t you?”

Krista just shook her head in dismay as she looked back at her email.

Look at how busy I am, Jacob. Too busy for the likes of you!

“I saw that report you cataloged, though,” Jacob went on. “I head all of IT, of course, so I make sure the catalogers are doing their job. Yeah, that was quality stuff. All original design. Looks like you got a leg up on the rest of those Research yuppies.”

“Well, I don’t know about that, but since they were all working on Dell, I was the obvious one for the job.”

“Don’t trust that McAdams, though. He has a reputation…”

So do you.

“I haven’t yet. I don’t intend to start now.”

Jacob laughed, “Yeah, you’re a smart one, alright. What are you doing after work?”

She needed to tread lightly here. She didn’t need a stalker. “Oh, my boyfriend is taking me out to dinner.”

“Oh? Oh right. I was going to say we should go for drinks …”

“I can ask if he wants to do that first?” She gave a completely fake, hopeful smile.

Jacob waved it away. “Ah no, that’s alright. Next time. Anyway—I’ll be off.”

Krista bobbed her head, “Alright. Thanks for stopping by. See ya.”

She waited until Jacob was out of sight before she sighed in relief. That was nearly tragic.

She looked back at the list, at her notes, then sat back and pushed away the adrenaline that always came when she realized what she was facing was way over her head. She let her brain clear.