Summer's Need Read Free Page A

lump in her stomach.
    A soft, furry warmth twined about her bare legs and she bent
down and picked up their “husky” marmalade cat, Pickles. Ugly, overweight and
battle scarred from his life as a stray before they adopted him, Pickles
nonetheless had perfected the mysterious cat aura of superiority. Dave liked to
joke they weren’t Pickles’ owners, they were his support staff.
    With an armful of purring cat she made her way to her office
at the other side of the house, dreading what lay inside her email. All manner
of horrible things could have happened while she was in her self-imposed work
seclusion. Mainframes hacked, bank accounts stolen, identity thieves charging
up millions of dollars to old ladies who only had cat food to live on. Right
now some third world country could be on the edge of a civil war all because
she wasn’t there to stop the cyber attack on their government’s mainframe.
Well, that last one was probably a bit of an exaggeration, but she still felt
as if she’d let people down and she hated it.
    Pickles meowed in protest as she put him down onto his
memory-foam-lined cat bed on the corner of her desk, but he stopped his
complaints when she took a small bag of catnip and sprinkled some for him. Not
even bothering to turn on her desk lamp, she sat in her black leather computer
chair and opened her email, her heart pounding and her brain conjuring up
disaster after disaster.
    Sure enough, there were at least a dozen emails from her
work. Cursing Ember and her husband for making her agree to taking the day completely
off, she opened the first email and frowned. There had been an issue with the
Hong Kong office, but one of her staff had taken care of it. The next email
came from her recently hired assistant, Eric, an intense young man who’d just
graduated MIT. He detailed the problem in Hong Kong and his fix. To her
surprise it was exactly what she would have done.
    Email after email showed the same thing, a problem and
Eric’s quick response to it. As she worked her way through the email list she
began to feel an uncomfortable tightness in her stomach, a small kernel of
worry that the company might not need her as much as she thought they did. She
liked being needed, thrived on it even, and had busted her ass to make sure she
was their go-to person for problems no one else could solve… Well, no one else
but Eric.
    The last email in her folder was from her boss and in her
glum mood she imagined it would say she’d been demoted and Eric would be taking
over her job. After all, Eric was a man and in the highly chauvinistic world of
computer security having a cock and balls gave you extra points. Add to that
the fact she was pretty and most men in the field looked at her as a piece of
eye candy. How she loved making their jaws drop when they realized she was the
one keeping all their precious data safe, that she was her company’s big gun.
    Opening the email from her boss she mentally prepared
herself for a scolding for being unavailable all day.
     
    Summer,
     
    Congratulations on actually managing to take a whole day
off. I didn’t know if you’d be able to do it. It’s nice to see you taking care
of things besides work, and more importantly it’s nice to see you giving Eric a
bit of room to grow. He is trying hard to impress you and you did the right
thing by giving him a chance to prove himself. I’ll see you in a few days at
the management retreat.
     
    Murray
     
    Pickles’ throaty purr mixed with the low hum coming from the
computer. She leaned back, the chair tilting beneath her weight as she stared
at the screen. It had never occurred to her she was holding Eric back and guilt
tightened her stomach again. When she looked at her work relationship with Eric
from the perspective of him being an employee trying to please her instead of
competition she felt like a real schlub. No, more than a schlub, she felt like
the kind of self-centered bitch she’d always hated. Had she really