Lost and Found (Growing Pains #1)(60)

Finally Ben tapped her on the shoulder. She looked up and met a confused expression.

“Are you hurt?” he asked.

“What? Why? What are you talking about?” She looked at her extremities for blood.

“Well, your hair looks like you just woke up, you have ink all over your face, and you might as well be drooling while staring at white paper. This isn’t like you.”

“Oh. I am trying to find a way into the creative genius of a guy at work so I can do some field research on his ideas. His ideas are just so out there that I can’t find a logical basis to take off from.”

Krista was starting to get teary-eyed, which was the first sign of defeat. She hated failure. No, not hated; she was terrified of it. In school she rarely ever got less than an A-. She worked her ass off to make sure she did well. Overachiever didn’t even begin to describe it, it was a complex.

But no matter how hard she worked, every once in a while there was something she just couldn’t grasp. In school it had been woodworking. No matter what she did, she just couldn’t get it. Every time she went to that class she felt like one of the dumb kids.

For a change of pace, actually, it was the dumb kids from her academic classes who were the ones excelling. The tables were solidly turned. She’d been glad she helped them when they needed it in academics, because when she hit woodworking, her fellow book-smart students all failed miserably where she had mountains of much-needed, reciprocated aid.

Ben’s face turned to one of desperation as he saw her close to tears. Like all men she knew, Ben could not handle when a woman cried. He quickly sat down next to her and looked at the paper she was stewing over.

“Hmmm, I don’t know much about marketing, and I know nothing about jewelry, but maybe I can help you bridge the gap between art brain and logic brain?”

“But you have art brain.”

“I’ve learned to work with business types like you. I just imagine I am the most boring, white-and-black person on earth, and try to condense my thoughts appropriately.” He smiled, trying to cheer her up. She really wished it was working.

“What do you mean ‘white-and-black’?”

“Devoid of all gray matter,” Ben said with a mousy smile.

She really did love this guy. He was so sweet and good. So opposite of her.

“Okay,” she agreed weakly.

“Okay.” Ben pulled his chair closer so they could look at the notes together. “Why don’t you take me through these notes?”

“Well, maybe it would be better if I take you through the notes that actually came from his mouth?”

“Oh yes, that would be much better, yes. The horse’s mouth, as it were.”

Krista pulled her scribbled notes from her handbag and laid them out in front of Ben.

Ben squinted, eyes scanning the pages. “Well, maybe you should read them out loud so we can both look over them?”

“In other words, my writing looks like something a five-year-old would do?”

Ben just smiled encouragingly, which meant that it was exactly what he was thinking but too nice to say.

With their heads together, the two spent the next two hours going over the notes from Marcus, then what Krista thought they meant. It turned out she had it all wrong. From the first word out of Marcus’s mouth, she was not on his wavelength. Her brain was too organized and logical. Marcus was too haphazard and creative.

Ben was the perfect combination of both, thank freaking God! He literally spent two hours saving her ass. She had no idea how she was going to thank him, but she would, and it would be spectacular. Possibly expensive.

The next day she showed up to work early to get started on Marcus’s real ideas; the ideas Ben translated. It was totally doable once she had the decoder ring in place.

She flew through the company databases and that of the library both. She even took to the streets looking for newspapers, magazines, and sometimes crowd watching for a new take on data collecting. Real stat style!

She needed a TV show about this stuff!

Once she had a good start, she catalogued, organized, graphed and once again stuffed data into nooks and crannies. She kept a stockpile of things that still didn’t make sense, and just chugged away at the new onslaught of data that did.

Finally hitting a roadblock, she headed back down to the land of the Dark Hub. Marcus was at his desk, talking on the phone once again, this time to someone about this new style of shoe that was making a comeback in today’s market. It sounded legit and work-related until he said that that was a perfect reason for him to own a pair. Making a comeback meant he would be the forerunner in fashion!

Half of her wanted to roll her eyes. That was the half that was working. The half that was female, with a life, wanted to listen in. It was a great idea. She might need a pair.

As before, he saw her and said he would talk to the person on the phone another time.

“My favorite geek girl! How is it going in the land of Nod?”

“It’s going. Slowly, steadily, but grindingly going.”

“I hear they got you out of that stuffy math hole and put you in your own office?”

Apparently, this marketing genius had been checking up on her. That was probably bad news.

“Yeah. I went from a bunch of anti-social people to no one at all. I’m not sure which is better.”

“On your own, darling, of course. At least now you can sing and talk to yourself in peace.”