Twelve Days The Beginning - By Jade Reyner Page 0,8

hell was wrong with everyone today?

Glancing up, she noticed that Olivia had finally made it to the office; albeit late and looking a little rough around the edges. The devious side of her nature had a small grin at seeing the usually perfect Olivia looking a bit under the weather and decided that it served her right. Hang on! Where did that thought come from? So she left with Vaughn, what the hell does that matter? God!

Frustrated at the direction of her thoughts and telling herself that it was definitely a result of lack of caffeine, she headed to the kitchen to get herself a coffee. Celeste bounded in after her and Elise pasted a neutral smile on her face as she concocted a story about watching midnight TV with Dale for a while before settling down to bed. Celeste was great and definitely her best female friend but there were just some things that she couldn’t share and until she knew where her head was at with her marriage, she needed to keep everyone else out of it.

Returning to her desk clutching the much-needed nectar, she wasn’t surprised to see another e-mail sitting in her inbox. Deciding that she would have to open this one, if only to respond and get rid of him, she settled down and pressed the read button.

Fri Dec. 14th 10.01am

Where have you gone? I thought we were talking?

Just saw you walking to the kitchen. You really are beautiful and no, that’s not a line.

Please let me take you to lunch.

Yours, Vaughn.

PS. Can I have your phone no.?

OMG! This was ridiculous! He clearly wasn’t going to go away; either that or he was totally thick headed and just didn’t get that she wasn’t interested. Her phone no.? Yeah right, like that was ever going to happen!? She turned to Stephen.

“Erm, Stephen?” He twisted to face her, “Any idea where the new guy’s desk is? You know, Vaughn isn’t it? The one you were with last night?” She knew it was around here somewhere if he had seen her walk to the kitchen.

“Babe,” Stephen spoke patiently as if addressing a child, “Vaughn doesn’t have a desk, he has an office. It’s just around the corner on the left, opposite the kitchen.”

Opposite the kitchen? Well, that would explain how he had seen her but why did he have an office? Wasn’t he just a – what was it? – ‘off site rep’, whatever that meant. It didn’t sound terribly senior and certainly not a position requiring an office in her opinion. They were reserved for management usually; she knew this because Cole had his own office on the other side of the building. Whatever. If he had an office, so be it. In fact in some ways, that would be preferable. Less likely to cause a scene when she stormed round there and bawled him out.

Pushing her chair back, she got up intent on heading to find Vaughn and his ‘office’.

“Babe! Where are you going? Are you going to do any work today or what?”

She resisted – just - flipping the finger at Stephen as she headed off in the direction of the kitchen again. Work? She’d give him work. She worked harder than most of the staff on her floor, generally staying later than most, although that was largely to put off the inevitable waiting for her at home. If his stupid new ‘best mate’ had not been e-mailing her, then she would be sat at her desk right now. Men, men, men, men, men!

Rounding the corner, she frowned as she noticed the new office construction for the first time and wondered how she had missed it on her previous visit to the kitchen. Their office block was modern, fully-glazed and open plan. The accounting firm had grown to such a level that they now occupied both the ground and first floors; the upper floor largely housing the Directors and Secretaries although Cole maintained his office on the ground floor because he said that he wanted to be ‘with the troops’. The ground floor was divided into blocks of desks with each block dealing with a section of the alphabet based on surnames and Company names. Herself, Stephen and Olivia had somehow ended up with P through to Z, which made for some interesting phone calls and correspondence.

Despite having worked for Andrews & Andrews for five years, she had not arrived with any Accounting experience so had started with general admin duties. After a while, Cole