Coming To Reason (A Long Road to Love) by Liza O'Connor Read Free Book Online Page A

until
seven.”
    Dan frowned. “Which makes your first day twelve hours long?”
    “I don’t mind. I’m used to long hours.” Dan glanced at the
phone, no doubt thinking she meant she often had long hours of phone sex. “He
just started this.” She threw her hands up in frustration. “He turns on a porn
movie and acts out the part.”
    Dan stared at his shoes in great interest.
    “Sorry, you don’t want to know about Trent’s sexual
activities.”
    “Not unless he becomes celibate. That would interest me.”
    Carrie suspected her face glowed neon red. “Is there anything
I can do for you?” She cringed, fearing he might misinterpret her question,
given she’d been having one-way phone sex.
    Please be a gentleman, please!
    “I stopped by to see how your day went and ask if you
needed a ride to Penn Station. It’s rather a long haul from here.”
    After a glance at the blinking light on the phone, she
focused on Dan. “You know, I would like a ride. If I’m lucky, he won’t
even notice I’m gone. He turns the volume up so loud I can hear…” She covered
her mouth with her hand. Dan did not need to know any further details.
    She grabbed her purse and hurried from her office, turning
off the light so the blinking phone remained the only illumination.
Trent would no doubt give her hell for abandoning him, but he’d used up all her
patience for the night.
    Dan placed his hand on the small of her back, and her Trent-induced
stress disappeared.
    “So, tell me about your day.”
    Happy she had someone to share her successes with, she gave
him the highlights.
    When they reached Penn Station, she had yet to tell him
about Destiny’s fabulous job. He glanced at his watch. “When is your train?”
    “One just left, so an hour from now.”
    “How about I buy you dinner and drive you home?”
    She hesitated.
    “Unless you’d rather continue this conversation by cell
phone.”
    “We can’t because Trent had his driver steal my personal
cell phone and then one of them, Trent, I suspect, threw it in the Hudson River.”
Thinking about him seemed to suck out the remainder of her energy. She leaned
back and closed her eyes.
    Dan felt her forehead. “When did you last eat?”
    “This morning, around four.”
    “Jenson, take us to Giuseppe’s.”
    She hoped the place served food, because his question had
woken her stomach and its rumblings declared it unhappy.
    He then made a phone call. “Giuseppe, Dan. I’ve got a
starving employee on my hands. We are about fifteen minutes away. Can you have
my favorite appetizer ready when we get there? Thanks, I appreciate it… Yes,
but irrelevant… Stop interrogating me and get to cooking.” He hung up and
smiled at her. “Now, you were saying…?”
    Unable to remember, she shook her head and shrugged.
    “Jeff sent you to Greg and told you to wait until he
processed the client specs, which I know is a waste of Greg’s time, but until
today, only he could do them.”
    She slapped her leg. “Awww, you already know.”
    “I’d still like to hear it from your perspective.”
    After relaying the initial events, she stopped when she got
to the point she asked Greg if he’d show her how to do them. “He was so stressed,
I feared my offer might kill him.”
    “I know. I’ve lectured him about delegating, but until
today, he’s resisted the idea.”
    She shared how she and Destiny made Greg’s day.
    He had lost his smile by the time she finished. “I know you
like Destiny, but I need your honest opinion. Should she have been able to
resolve this before today?”
    Carrie cringed at his question. “What you want to know is,
should she have a boss?”
    He nodded.
    “I don’t know the answer. In my experience, system managers
are most ly ‘show and posturing’, depending on better skilled employees beneath
them to do all the work. What happened today resembled what happened at Lancaster
Chairs with a very good, but overworked systems person named Jack.
    “When I