Stan was still twittering on. “Do you know how long it took me to put that collection together? Some of those aren’t available anywhere anymore. You can’t just go around erasing people’s files.”
Ben tapped a little framed certificate on the wall.
“DBA,” he said in case the guy couldn’t read. “I maintain the data systems. I take out things that don’t belong as part of my job description. Porn doesn’t belong. Especially illegal p**n —and in Washington State, bestiality is illegal ever since that guy died at the sheep farm.”
“Horse farm,” said Lee, the DBA in the next cubicle. “And I think it might just be the act of bestiality that’s good for jail time, not films or photos.”
“You would know,” muttered someone behind his other wall. It sounded like one of the security people. If Ben hadn’t had werewolf ears, he wouldn’t have heard her—or the very quiet snickers that accompanied the remark.
“You had no right,” whined Stan, who wasn’t cursed with Ben’s hearing. “No right to steal my stuff, man. I’m going to go to the police and report it.”
Ben was too bemused to be angry. Was this guy really that dumb? Hadn’t he gotten the same on-hire speech about what was and was not allowed on-site that Ben had?
“I tell you what, Stan,” he said slowly because that was how he talked to people too stupid to live. “Those were on the critical backup server, I still have backups of your files—and will for the next decade, because, hey, critical backup server. You get your supervisor to sign a letter asking me to restore those files—detailing exactly what kind of data we are talking about—and I’ll restore them for you.”
Stan threw out his chest as if he’d won the battle. “I’ll do that.”
When he had left, Fitz, in the cubicle with all the security people, stuck his head over the partition, and said, in awe, “There goes the stupidest man I’ve ever heard. Do you suppose he’ll really try to get a letter?”
“Hey, Ben,” said someone farther down. “Can I get a copy of the backup files?”
“Would you all shut up so I can get some work done?” said Lori, the makeup lady.
• • •
Several hours later, it was the smell of coffee that pulled Ben out of electronland. He would have dismissed it—no one brought him coffee—except that Mel was standing, very quietly, on his mat. He made a few changes and buttoned up the database he was working on.
When he turned around, Mel held out a cup of gourmet coffee that hadn’t come out of the company kitchen. Her hand barely shook. He frowned at her and made no move to take it.
“What?” he said.
She set it down on the desk beside him and cleared her throat. “You know I’m married.”
He raised his eyebrow. “I would have propositioned you, but I have a harem at home, and you just wouldn’t fit in.”
Her face flushed. “That’s not what I meant. My husband is overseas for another six months.”
He waited in obvious irritation. Her fluttering and flinching made him want to bite her. His wolf said she was easy prey.
“The coffee is from my husband,” she said, quietly, so no one else would hear her. “I finally figured you out—my husband did, actually—so your snarling isn’t going to make me flinch anymore.”
He tried a subvocal growl, and, by Saint Andrew’s great hairy b . . . balloons, she didn’t back off.
“Duffy got a secretary fired when she turned him down,” Mel told him. “Another girl, who couldn’t afford to lose her job, let him . . . you know.”
Ben tried a raised eyebrow again, but it had noticeably less effect than it had the last time he’d done it to her. No tears. Not even any flinching or cringing.
“I’m married, and he still . . .” She shuddered. “Between him and you, I was pretty upset this weekend when my husband called. I told him about everything that had been happening here, and he said”—her voice dropped into what was evidently her attempt to sound like her husband—“‘It sounds like every time Duffy comes out to bother you, Shaw emerges to yell at you and make you run stupid errands.’ I agreed, and he told me to think about that, then get you a cup of good coffee from him.” She smiled, revealing a charming dimple. Ben reminded himself he hated dimples almost as much as gratitude. “So here’s a cup of—”
“Ben,” trilled Lorna Winkler, head of IT.
Ben felt a headache coming on. For such a promising day, it was going to end badly. If Mel triggered his dislike of women, Lorna clubbed him over the head with it. He wasn’t fond of the company’s policy of women bosses—but he might have dealt if they had mitigated the damage by hiring the smart ones.
Lorna was beautiful, power mad, and needed help to send e-mail—just exactly the person to put in charge of a bunch of computer nerds. Whenever she came down from on high to invade his cubicle—which she did to everyone because it was “friendlier than summoning you up to my office”—he figured there was a fifty-fifty chance he was going to quit in the next ten minutes. In the time he’d worked there, she’d visited him, personally, twice.
He’d overheard enough of her “friendly pep talks” to know that she liked to begin speaking well before she made it down to the cubicle of whoever she was aimed at. Her first calling out of his name had started near Mel’s desk.
“I’ve had a report from one of my people,” she warbled at him from halfway down the hall, “that you are harassing our secretary.”
Mel raised her eyebrows at him, and Ben curled his lip, and whispered, “Duffy’s been whining to Mummy, again.”
Mel grinned, then covered her mouth as Winkler, all six feet of the immaculately groomed gorgeousness that had allowed her to be Miss California a decade earlier, entered his sanctuary.
She clearly hadn’t been expecting Mel. She stopped, regrouped, and began again. “I’m so glad you’re here, Mel, so that Ben can apologize to you. Our company has a firm policy against harassment.”
“I’m sorry,” said Ben, with patent insincerity.
“He’s not harassing me,” Mel said at exactly the same moment. She continued with a confident smile. “He can get a little grouchy, but everyone knows that. And we all make allowances for genius, right?”