“I’m relatively new—” he answered her earlier question “—and I’m wearing a mechanic’s coverall, so that should answer your second question.”
“Then you must be working on the new Faber-jet design,” she said excitedly, curious at the sudden stillness of his big body when she mentioned that.
“Yes,” he said noncommittally. “You’re familiar with it?”
“Sort of,” she said, sighing. “Nobody can figure out why it’s such a lemon. The computer people ran one of those very expensive design graphics, and according to it, the modifications should produce a big improvement on the old Faber jet design. But it performed very badly on its first test flight. That’s too bad. I guess it will give Peters Aviation the edge on us.” They were the competition and were trying to outmaneuver MacFaber by producing the new design on their own small jet first.
“It might appear that they have the edge, but don’t count on it,” he said coolly. “Hadn’t you better get to work?”
She flushed a little. He sounded full of authority somehow. Probably he was married and had children. He was old enough. How old? she wondered, glancing at him as she picked up her purse and the coffee cup. Middle or late thirties, definitely. He had a few gray hairs and there were lines on his face.
“I’m Maureen,” she said. She shifted her feet and peeked up at him through her glasses, wishing she had Charlene’s gift of gab. “What’s your name?” she asked.
“Jake,” he said shortly. “Excuse me. I’m late.”
Jake. He didn’t look like a Jake. She stared after him. He was pretty dishy—big and capable looking. And he’d made her feel different. Almost reckless. Imagine her talking to a man like that and being bold enough to ask his name. She grinned to herself. Maybe she wasn’t totally helpless. It was like a milestone in her life, and she was glad that she’d decided to stay in Wichita. She’d thought that a change of scenery might bring her out of her shell and help her become independent and capable. It still might. But her newfound male co-worker hadn’t seemed too interested. Not that she was surprised. She had so little luck in attracting men. Maybe it was the glasses. If she hadn’t been so nearsighted without them, she might have put them back in her purse and risked talking to hat racks and potted plants.
She dashed into Arnold M. Blake’s office breathlessly and sat down behind her desk. She glanced at the phone. One line was open. Thank God. Mr. Blake was at his desk. Maybe he wouldn’t realize how late she was. She punched the second of the four lines and rang the janitorial department.
“Someone has spilled coffee all over your spotless carpet in the entrance,” she reported with blithe innocence. “Could someone attend to it, please?”
There was a world-weary sigh on the other end. “Miss Harris?”
She swallowed. “Yes.”
“No problem,” came the dry reply. “Late again, are you?”
She flushed. “My washing machine flooded.”
“Last time,” the man’s voice drawled, “it was a strawberry milk shake.”
“I’m sorry,” she groaned. “It’s my karma, you see. I must have been an ax murderer in a previous life.”
“We’ll get up the stains, don’t you worry. And thanks for that bag of pralines you brought us from New Orleans,” the voice added. “We all enjoyed them.”
She smiled sadly. She’d had to go home for a few days to approve the sale of her parents’ home. It was her last link with the old life. They’d planned to move to Wichita, Kansas, with her, but a tragic car wreck just before the move had taken their lives. She’d almost gone back herself, after that, but she had decided that a new start might help ease the pain. So she’d invested the money she’d received from the sale of her parents’ home in half of a duplex in Wichita and stayed there. Since she’d already gotten her job with the MacFaber Corporation, at least she didn’t have to worry about living expenses. The pralines had been an afterthought, and she was glad now that she’d thought to bring the harried janitorial staff a little sack of treats.
“Thanks.” She hung up and dabbed again at her skirt. It would have to be light blue. Nothing was going to take that stain out.
“So there you are,” Mr. Blake said from the doorway, smiling at her. “I need you to take a letter, Miss Harris.”
“Yes, sir.” She grabbed her pad and pen. “So sorry. I was late, and I’ve spilled coffee…Everything’s gone wrong…”
“No problem,” he said easily. “Come in, please.”
She took several letters in a row, all pertaining to the new Faber-jet design. She never paid much attention to what they contained, which was so much gibberish when he started using technical terms. She had to ask the spelling of one or two of them, but Mr. Blake was very patient and never yelled.
Joseph MacFaber, it was said, could rage like a wounded bear when he was in a bad temper. But then he was filthy rich and used to getting his own way. He spent most of his life trying to commit suicide in a variety of dangerous hobbies, from what Maureen could gather, and left his subordinates in charge of the MacFaber Aircraft Corporation in his absence. He was in Rio now, she’d heard. He’d been away for the better part of a year, getting over the death of his mother—or so they said. Mrs. MacFaber had died in a car wreck in Europe, gossip said, and MacFaber was still grieving. They said he’d been driving the car, so perhaps he was running away from his conscience. It would be a hard thing for a man to live with.
Mr. Blake finished his dictation and Maureen went back to her desk to transcribe her notes on the electronic typewriter. That was a signal for the phone to start ringing nonstop and two other secretaries to come in and ask questions that she had to ask Mr. Blake to answer.
It was almost time for lunch before she got enough of her backlog cleared away to even start on the mail. By then Mr. Blake was leaving, and she was left with a handful of letters that she could do nothing about until he came back.
She usually went to lunch herself at noon, but she felt guilty because she’d been late. So she went along to the canteen and got herself a soft drink and a chocolate bar and sat by the window alone, eating it. It wasn’t nutritious, but it was filling. She was finishing the soft drink when the new mechanic sat down at a table near the middle of the room and opened his lunch pail.
Without meaning to, Maureen found herself watching him. He was so big. She wasn’t used to particularly masculine men, and she usually didn’t stare. But he was a dish. A real dish. She sighed, just as he looked up unexpectedly and caught her in the act. He glared at her as if he found her interest infuriating, and she flushed furiously as she quickly turned her eyes back to the window. This was absurd. Probably she’d been working too hard and her mind was disintegrating. She finished the soft drink, put the bottle up, and smiled faintly as she passed the mechanic. She meant the smile as a kind of apology, but his dark eyes only glittered more angrily.
He dropped his eyes to his coffee cup and ignored her completely. He was still wearing his cap and kept it pulled down over his face. She felt uncomfortable. He made her feel like a man chaser, and she wanted to crawl off into a corner and hide. His anger had actually hurt her.
She put thoughts of the mechanic at the back of her mind and doggedly spent the rest of the day answering the mail. Mr. Blake had a long conversation with some official, and at the end of it he wandered around, preoccupied, for the better part of an hour.
“Is something wrong, sir?” Maureen asked gently.
He glanced at her, running a hand through hair he hardly had on his balding head. “What? Oh, no, thank you, Maureen. Just a knotty problem. There’ll be a government inspector here in the morning, by the way. Do try to be on time, will you?”
“Is it about the Faber-jet design change?” she