Connie gave him a long look, then ostentatiously held up her wrist, looking down at her watch. She waited.
Nate sighed. Yes, all right, he was being juvenile, and Connie had every right to stand there like a schoolmarm counting through a time-out. In just a second, he’d sit up, remind himself that he was a professional and professionals had to take care of paperwork, and get back to work.
Just a second. And for that second, he could just imagine a new job, something that would take him out into the field, away from his desk and his office and his paperwork...
“Time, sir.” Connie’s voice brought him back to himself. He took a deep breath, sat up, and summoned his professional voice.
“What’s next?”
Connie set the forms in front of him. It was an enormous stack of paper. Security agencies generated a hell of a lot of forms.
Nate stared down at them. “How much would I have to be paying you for you to do all of this instead of me?”
“A lot more than you do, sir.” Connie’s voice was amused.
“That’s what I figured. I don’t suppose there’s any sort of security crisis out there that would require me to leap into the field immediately?”
Connie shook her head. “No, sir.”
“Great. Paperwork it is, then.” Nate picked up a pen and started in, while Connie left to go do her job without any further boss-related distractions.
Briefly, he entertained the fantasy of retiring. It was something he thought about a lot, and he had more than enough financial resources to do it, but he’d never been able to pull the trigger.
The problem was, he didn’t want to retire. He liked working security. He liked figuring out tricky problems; he liked troubleshooting; and he really liked being better than the guys who were trying to steal, harm, or otherwise mess things up.
He didn’t like being management. And that was the problem.
He’d built this agency from the ground up, and now it was his, and he wasn’t about to abandon it just because he was bored with the paperwork.
But the agency was now big enough that as the top man, he did nothing but paperwork. He’d hired enough good people that there were plenty of younger specialists to put into the field, deal with the nitty-gritty on-the-ground problems. And meanwhile, there was no one else up at his level, with the experience and understanding to handle the staff- and legal- and administrative-level stuff.
Well, except Connie. She’d been his assistant from day one. Maybe he could retire and just leave the entire business to her.
But he didn’t even want to be retired. What would he do all day? No, that wasn’t the solution.
So he pulled himself together and plowed through all the paperwork. It was his job, and he’d committed to doing it, and he had a whole agency of people depending on him to do it.
He’d been in the Marines, after all. He knew all about doing tedious work because he’d committed to something larger than himself.
When all the forms were done, it was time for emails. Emails could be more fun than forms, because there were actual people on the other end. Inevitably, there’d still be some tedium, but it was at least a step up.
And today, there was even something totally unexpected in his inbox—an email from Ken Turner, one of his old platoon buddies from the Marines.
He’d been keeping in better touch with the guys since they’d all met up at their old Gunnery Sergeant’s wedding. Cal worked as a park ranger at Glacier National Park, which Nate had to admit was one of the most beautiful places he’d ever been. Ken must have agreed with him on that, at least, because Nate had heard through the grapevine that Ken had moved out there recently.
It was a move that made sense for Ken, because the man worked as an environmental science researcher. Nate himself would never want to be all alone, away from any human civilization, in the forest for days on end.
Even his panther didn’t quite like that idea. Run through the forest, was his panther’s response to that. Then meet up with pack.
We don’t have a pack, Nate reminded his panther absently. We’ve got friends. We make new friends a lot.
New lady friends, his panther pointed out.
Nate frowned to himself. Lately, there’d been more and more rumbles of dissatisfaction while Nate was out on dates with women. He’d always dated around, and his panther had always seemed happy to seek out company and physical gratification. But these days, his panther was just as likely to see a woman and ask, Is she for our pack?
Or, more often, look her over and decide, She’s not pack.
It was definitely making dating less fun, that was for sure.