Page 83 of Touched By Moonlight

“Her orchid keeps growing. It’s mutant.” I leaned back and stretched. “Maybe she’s feeding it Randy’s stash ofViagra.”

Kara didn’t bray her usual laughter. Instead, her eyebrows knit together. “There’s something not quite right about thatplant.”

I agreed that it was growing fast, but perhaps thelight…

“None of my business. As long as she doesn’t bother me. I have work, by the way.” I pointed at my screen. Work I needed to finish if I was going to quit, because I didn’t trust Randall. He might find a way to dock me for the days off I had justtaken.

She vanished behind her cubicle. I spent the next hour combing through the printed data Randall had given me. Around 9:30 a.m. I heard a humming and shuffle offeet.

Popping up out of my cube like a gopher, I saw Lavender’s lamp switchon.

Kara wheeled around to my cube. “The princess is back,” she whispered. “Bet she was having a late morning session with theCOO.”

“The Chief Operating Officer was operating on her hoo-ha,” I whispered back and Karalaughed.

Then her smile died. Kara stared out the window. “So much for a niceday.”

Unease flickered down my spine, hinting that something felt off kilter. The morning started out bright and sunny. Now clouds scudded across the sky and dull, leaden light filtered in through the clearwindows.

Oddly, this seemed to happen more and more lately when Lavender showed up for work. When she bothered to come in. Last week she called in sick three days in arow.

Needing a distraction from the prickle of unease, I asked about her weekend. “Tell me what you did this past weekend, Kara. Any newboyfriends?”

“No. Got two more subscription boxes. Nail art and bathproducts.”

Kara’s weakness was subscription boxes, especially anything to do with personalgrooming.

“That smell,” shemused.

“Please don’t tell me your new bath salts smell like that. I’d demand arefund.”

Her gaze sharpened, became almost predatory. “I’ll be back, Sienna. Don’t gofar.”

Focusing on the computer, I resumed my work. And then I heard the unmistakable clomp clomp clomp approaching. Kara had ducked away, maybe to hide in the restroom. She hated our boss. I stared at my computer monitor again. A large shadow fell over mycube.

Damn. I had held out slim hope he’d be absent today, or still at that training seminar. No suchluck.

Randall Lewis Jones. The Third. He peered down at me through horned rim glasses. Grease slicked back his hair. But his business suit was Italian weave and those loafers cost more than my monthlysalary.

“Have those reports readyyet?”

I kept typing. “I’ll have the first batch finished bylunch.”

“I need them all by teno’clock.”

Now I did stop typing and stared. “You gave me the last set of criteria Friday at five o’clock. I can’t possibly input it all thatquickly.”

“Then you should have come in over the weekend. I thought you were a responsible worker,Sienna.”

“I can’t work weekends here. The company won’t pay meovertime.”

“Simply because they won’t pay overtime doesn’t give you any excuses. Take the work home withyou.”

This was crazy. “I don’t have alaptop.”

Trueenough.

“Borrow or rent one. Show someinitiative.”