Lost and Found (Growing Pains #1)(6)

When asked for elaboration, she was told by Rachel, the girl leaving, that she had to sit behind him and smell the funk all day. It was a medical thing, so not his fault, but still, that was a thing apparently.

Krista couldn’t stop a few stray giggles breaking free. What a thing to tell somebody!

Next, don’t talk to the art department, or Jacob, the IT Manager. Apparently Jacob read people’s email if they landed on his radar. Rachel didn’t have to tell Krista twice.

The final thing of note—no one talked to Research. Don’t take it personally, Krista was told, but just know that Research employees weren’t the social stars of the company.

That was all Krista had learned. Not a great start. But one thing was for certain, she fervently hoped Jacob wasn’t as hot as Sean.

Time passed quickly after that. In a new job, a person never really knew what they were doing for the first few months, and Krista was no exception. But the pace was slow, and the database her department used for all their statistical information on products was pretty easy to figure out. Soon Krista was churning out reports like a pro, turning them in exactly on time so as not to get a pink slip.

That had been something she wished Rachel would’ve hinted about. When to turn in a report!

The first request for research Krista got, which was on toothpaste for an ad campaign coming up, saw her working like a beast, wanting to do her best work and impress her boss. With a satisfied smile, she had emailed her completed report a day early! She’d wanted to do jazz hands and shout, “Wacha wacha,” like Fozzie Bear. Why, was anyone’s guess.

A few minutes later Mr. Montgomery called her into his office. She could barely contain the strut she was so impressed with herself. That lasted until she appeared in his open doorway and saw the world-class scowl.

“When was that information due, Miss Marshall?” he’d asked immediately.

“Oh, well, it wasn’t due until tomorrow but I thought you might want to check it over early…”

“We aren’t sprinters here. We take time to thoroughly review our work before turning it in. I suggest you get back to it.”

She didn’t bother to argue that out of the million flaws she possessed, one of them wasn’t lack of thoroughness. Her entire school career could attest to that fact, usually with grumbles from her other team-project members. The way he’d said thoroughly hinted that wasting time was better than allowing the rest of the company to know the department could handle more work.

“Right, good point!” She’d thrown him something barely closer to a smile than a grimace, and scampered out. It had been a bad start to her new job. One of them, anyway.

It was a nice day in October, nearly four months after her start date, when Krista got to work in the usual, insufferable way via San Francisco’s public transportation. She had the schedule down now, though. Pretty simple, really. You showed up. If the train was there, you got on. If not, you waited. Once on, you hoped to hell it didn’t break down.

After just adding carrots to her grocery list, and wiping residual fear and pain out of her head from her latest bad dream the night before, Krista walked into the break room with mug in hand. She slammed into something unexpected, and went careening off toward the wall.

Her lucky mug hit first, bouncing off and twirling through the air. The universe paused, waiting for the reaction of a breakable object falling toward a hard surface.

The crash drowned out Krista’s thoughts.

“Oh no!” she said softly. “My lucky mug…”

Two large hands braced her, but she couldn’t focus; her brain started replaying all of the horrors of her first real job thus far. Things like her horrible first week where, in addition to getting lost constantly, she did most things wrong, and once actually walked in on a group of women gossiping about her. Then there was that fiasco with the guy in the art department, Tommy—she hadn’t seen that coming! He’d completely blindsided her asking to go for coffee, which followed with him getting a rejection so blunt she couldn’t sleep that night from guilt.

But seriously, he just kind of sprung it on her. She’d reacted more in fright than anything else. Then when she tried to apologize, they basically shooed her away. She went from a funny Research girl to a hated monster overnight. They didn’t even care that he found another girl within a couple weeks, Krista became enemy number one.

All this was egged on by the habitual nightmares of Jim she couldn’t shake even though she’d moved away from that old life. A broken lucky mug might as well be a funeral song. It was the symbol of good luck she got with each new venture; new semester, new job. She wasn’t all that superstitious but this one thing was law. She wouldn’t stand a chance.

With glassy eyes, she bent to collect the two biggest pieces. Forlorn, with thick fingers, she tried to fit them together, remembering the last time she’d broken a lucky mug. She’d had to drop a class. It had been that bad!

Near tears, she barely recognized the presence kneel beside her.

“Are you okay?” Sean’s voice rumbled gently.

She looked up into his concerned Romanesque features. For the first time, she no longer cared if he was handsome. Or his fantastic smell. She’d landed in a crisis.

“My lucky mug,” she pleaded. “I don’t think I can fix it.”

~*~*~*~

Sean’s chest constricted strangely with Krista’s words. She looked like a fallen angel perched on her knees, holding the fragments of her blue mug in her outstretched hands. Her eyes were filled with desperation as they pleaded with him, begging for a different outcome than what she was experiencing.