At The Edge of Lust

Chapter 11: Office Affairs

It had been a long and difficult day, everything that could have gone wrong seemed to go wrong that day for Shelby and she had faced complaints like you would not believe which had meant an internal investigation or two had to be launched, she had been responding to emails and sending some of her own out to reassure her customers. The hours had flown by with all this work and some developmental projects that she had been working on had to be pushed to one side.

There had been some sort of security compromise within the company, it had been traced back to a phishing attack on an intern's computer and thankfully their network had been rid of the digital assailant within 10 minutes of the breach. The money she was spending on cyber security experts finally made sense when confront with situations such as these, she was so glad that Hanson and his team had sorted out the mess before it got out of control. 90 percent of their existence was digital as a company, they couldn't afford to be compromised and then to have to report all that to the authorities and have reporters snooping around trying to find out more information. She felt life was already exciting enough without having to deal with extra bullshit on top.

She felt she deserved a nice little reward for all the paperwork that her hands had clasped, all the emails and endless phone calls. She had three new meetings to fit into her busy schedule next week and she wasn't looking forward to any of them, One was out of the way in London and she knew if she didn't go to the client there would be no deal, there was too much money to make and she was willing to go out of her way to get it. With any important deals, Shelby knew she had to find an angle of attack to take, and she could spend the next three days doing her research and preparing for them. They would want to know what sort of profits her company was pulling and how the apps her people produced helped to boost profits for her business partners/customers.

On the other side of it however, there were letters like the one she received from her complaints and conflict resolution people. A repot which compiled complaints from the customers and specifically attached was a graph that showed the most common areas of contention – issues with the apps, minor little bugs that marred the user experience and had to be rectified. She already had a team of competent software engineers, but the more complaints were made and the more emails that came in. It was definitely one of the prices of doing business, like hate-comments under YouTube videos but she wished she could find a way to reduce them, she knew there was no such thing as perfection, but she could keep pushing for it.

The more she handled complaints and reports about complaints, the less time she had for the other very important work of strategizing, seeking innovation and doing product research and development. The business she was in, was stiff with competition, fickle and constantly shifting a couple of weeks of complacency and they would be playing catch-up whilst someone else ate off their plate. She sighed as she looked at the numbers and then added an 'engineer meeting needed' note to her to-do list. Shelby decided she had, had enough for the day, she picked up the phone and called Tommy after abruptly closing the laptop and shoving the stack of company files to one side.

The phone was picked up on the 5th ring and Shelby got straight to the point. "Hey, Tommy, are you in town?"

"Yes. I've just finished work and was getting some drinks with colleagues."

"Oh, that sounds nice!"

"Yeah. I finished late, so they caught me and dragged me in with plenty of peer pressure."

"You got dragged in? More like you were the leader cheering them on!" she said to him with a smile. "Am I wrong?"

"Well, I'm not going to even dignify that accusation to my good name with a response, my darling," he responded with a laugh. "My woman doesn't believe that her sweet innocent man has been forced to imbibe alcohol for the last hour? Well then, what am I supposed to say to that?"

"You are supposed to say that you will come pick me up so that we can have dinner tonight."

"Oh, is that so? What if he's too boozy to drive?"

"Well then, she will tell him to sober up unless he wants to miss out on a nice evening with his significant other. She is a decent conversationalist with a pretty pair of eyes."

"Say no more, my sweet. What time shall, I lick– sorry, I meant pick you up?" he asked her with that tone which sent chills down her spine.

"Meet me in the lobby downstairs. They have a nice comfortable sofa. You can wank– sorry, I meant wait for me there." Giving back as good as she got made them both laugh. She had to cut the call short before tension could rise any further. They said their goodbyes and hung up.

Sitting in the office, she had her suit jacket and the heaters on; the day had been sunny but the temperature had dropped, as it sometimes did. The building was borderline deserted apart from a couple of overachievers like her on the other floors. She was alone on her particular set of four floors: 21–24 belonged to her company and had a fantastic view of the city – not as fantastic as 40, but then again, she had never wanted to be at the very top, not until she could afford it comfortably. She knew it was better to remain humble. Four floors were enough for now and served the needs of her slowly growing company well enough.

Not many people liked going above and beyond the call of duty even in her company. She liked to think she had loyal soldiers in her ranks, people who were willing to go the extra mile for her, but when five o'clock rolled around, a lot of them were gone. She understood, even though she still felt a sense of desertion. They had lives to get back to; they couldn't be chained to their desks the way she was. She was the sort of manager who liked to stay, who felt obligated to stay, whether to check on paperwork or to inspect the office or to just make sure no emails were forgotten.

The clock now said 6:45. Time had flown, and a full hour and change had passed between her phone call with Tommy and this printout. It was high time for Shelby to pack up and finish the research she was doing. She stood up at her desk and reviewed the documents, flicking from one to the next on the elegant track-pad. They backlit keys on her high-end laptop glowed softly, and she clicked a couple of keys to print something else. She moved the black curls out of her eyes absentmindedly. Her posterior was facing one of the windows, and the possibility of being seen in the massive floor-to-ceiling window made her self-conscious. She closed the blinds and retrieved the document from the printer to check it had come out the way she'd intended.

At this point it was just her and the security guards. Even the cleaners had come and gone. If there was a risk of getting caught, it might be in resting one's elbow on the telephone and accidentally alarming the guard down at the front desk with moans and inappropriate sex talk. She was horrified by the idea of getting caught on the PA system moaning and gasping like she had seen in so many comedy shows and movies. It looked deliciously humiliating in a comedic setting, it so funny to laugh at, but she knew she would probably die of embarrassment if it happened in real life. It was the sort of thing that would do the rounds of the office and her subordinates would never look at her the same way again. Uptight ones like Rosemary Withers would hand in their notice and probably drag other co-workers with them under the banner of righteous indignation.

That was why she had specified that she would meet him downstairs; she wanted to avoid all temptation to make stupid decisions. She remembered the 69 on the beach and nearly getting caught. How mad that had been! She smiled to herself. This man is wild; he is driving me crazy. I still can't believe we did that! On a beach! In broad daylight! She felt the most electrifying tingles just at the thought of it. Lord, and I would ask him to do it again in a heartbeat. I need that kind of excitement in my life after all this work stress. What is the time? At that precise moment there was a knock on the door. Shelby stared at the door and then at the computer, her eyes wide with panic. It was 6:50. She was confused. Tommy wasn't great with timing; he would probably be there on time, but it wasn't like him to be ten minutes early, God bless him, and there were times where he was just out-and-out late, which she didn't appreciate, but he always brought flowers or chocolate so all would be forgiven. She wasn't sure who this could be, then she reasoned it might a cleaner. But Gerald, the regular cleaner, knew she worked late and always came round later in the evening. "Come in?" she said with a tone of anxiety.