Her Unexpected Detour Read Free

side of their table. “About what?”
    “About being handed a week off with no pay.”
    “ What? ” Heads turned in their direction. Tommy lowered his voice, but the rage remained in his tone. “Why the hell would they give you a week off? And with no pay? If anything they owe you a week off, all expenses paid.”
    “Trust me, I’m with you on that. But something blew up in our faces this morning, and Jacober thinks I’m behind all of it.”
    “Blew up? What happened, you accidentally miss a few typos in an ad or something? Put a logo in the wrong spot?”
    Kayla offered him a weak smile. “I wish. ’Cause that I could handle. But this? This was the wrong file altogether. Someone took my team’s ad and modified it to include an image of two dogs, um, making puppies. Only, the faces of our biggest client and his wife were superimposed over where the dogs’ heads should be.”
    “Oh, nu-uh.”
    “Yep. Right there, big and bold, smack dab in the center. All the rest of the copy was correct, but who would bother to keep reading after seeing…” Kayla clamped her eyes shut and shook her head. It was going to take years for that image to fade from her memory. Years.
    “So, who did it?” Tommy asked.
    “I don’t know. Someone with a serious bug up his you-know-what.”
    “But it doesn’t make sense—why would Jacober pin this on you?”
    Kayla grimaced. “Because. I was the one who sent the email.”
    Shock clouded Tommy’s normal happy-go-lucky countenance. “You did what ?”
    “Keep your voice down,” Kayla said, chancing a quick glance at the tables around them. “It’s embarrassing enough as it is.”
    “Kay, what the hell were you thinking?”
    “It wasn’t like that, all right? Look, when I left yesterday the image looked fine. Better than fine. In fact, it was perfect. One of our best. Then I come in today and there’s a typed note on my desk asking me to double-check a change made to the headline one last time before I forward the ad on to the client for their review. I was a bit miffed someone had gone in and made a change after we’d finalized it yesterday, but last minute changes happen sometimes.
    “When I opened the file to proof the changes, it was saved at a view zoomed in to the title. It looked fine, so I didn’t bother to zoom out and look at the rest of the ad.” She shook her head when Tommy threw her an incredulous look. “You’ve got to understand, I looked it over ‘one last time’ at least twelve times yesterday. And no one’s ever pranked me at work before. So I hit send and half an hour later I’m getting my butt handed to me on a silver platter. I’ve never seen Jacober so mad before. He said if my track record hadn’t been so squeaky clean they would have fired me on the spot. As it is, the board of directors might still decide to do just that.”
    Tommy snorted. “They won’t fire you. You do everything around there. Hell, they’d be lost without you.”
    Kayla couldn’t argue with that. In fact, she’d had that very same thought several times on her way up here.
    “Since Jacober doesn’t seem out to get you, that means someone else wants you gone. Question is: who would stand to gain the most if you got canned?”
    Tommy had a way of seeing past the BS that tripped up other people. Like now, focusing on identifying the who and why, not chastising Kayla for her mistake. It was one of the things she loved most about her little brother, and the main reason she’d come here. It was that or run to her father, but she worked hard enough to keep him from worrying as it was.
    “I have no idea. Even worse, our team’s proposal for the huge Foellinger project is due in two weeks. No one would want me gone right now.”
    Would they?
    No, Kayla decided after a moment, everyone on her team got along great. Sure, she’d met some resistance when Mr. Jacober originally named her a team leader—she’d only been with the company for two years. But any animosity