Putting It to the Test Read online

  “I could move to Texas, but Mom and Jodi need me.”

  “They rely on you for a lot.”

  Carly sighed. She knew if she left Hall Technologies, she’d find a way to make things work, but making a move like that out of anger wasn’t the smartest thing to do.

  Right now she felt stuck, and if there was anything Carly hated, it was feeling trapped without choices.

  “It’s not fair,” she said, the tone coming off whinier than she’d intended. “They should be giving everyone opportunities to be challenged. When they announced how they were handling the assignment of Singles Inc., I thought they’d finally seen that and done something about it.” Gazing out toward a clump of cattails, she added, “I guess I was wrong.”

  “I don’t know about that. I heard another rumor today.”

  “There’s more?”

  Bev nodded.

  “Is it good news?”

  “I don’t know. It’s all in how you choose to speculate.”

  Carly clasped her fingers around the seat of the wooden bench and braced herself. “What is it?”

  “I heard Hall’s planning to open a new management position.”

  “A manager?”

  This was news. Mr. Hall had always preached the hazards of being top-heavy, which was why so far he only had two managers under him—Hugh Simonds, in charge of the programmers, and Frank Meyer, Carly’s own manager and head of the creative-design team. The sales staff reported directly to Mr. Hall, as did Renee and Andrea, the two women who handled Human Resources and Payroll. The idea of a new position opening up was a big deal.

  “Any idea who’s getting the job?”

  Bev shook her head. “Not a clue. I don’t even know if he’s planning to hire from within or bring in someone from the outside. But what I’ve heard is he wants to put together a team that exclusively handles the bigger projects and that he plans to assign the team a leader.”

  “A special project team, huh?”

  “To take on jobs like Singles Inc. I guess he wants to keep moving in that direction.”

  The mention of Singles Inc. darkened Carly’s mood. “And if he’s thinking about hiring from within, you know what golden child he’s got in mind.”

  Bev quickly held up a hand. “No one’s said Matt’s getting that job.”

  “But it’s obvious he’d be considered. They’re handing him Singles Inc., aren’t they?”

  Bev shrugged and Carly’s infuriation mounted. “I’ll kill myself if they give him that job.”

  “Carly, you’re getting too far ahead of yourself. No one even knows if Hall’s going to promote anyone on the team. He could have a golfing buddy or some IBM crony in mind. Who knows? And if he was planning to promote from within, who’s to say you wouldn’t be considered? You’ve been here from the start, have handled just as many big projects as Matt has and you’re a way better people person. There’s a lot more to managing staff than technical expertise.”

  Carly knew that, but did Mr. Hall? And what if he did think technical skills mattered most? If that was the case, whoever handled Singles Inc. would have the best shot at proving themselves where that was concerned.

  And she wanted a shot at that job.

  She deserved it. In fact, she shouldn’t even have to fight for it after all these years. She should simply get it. But apparently Mr. Hall didn’t see it that way. Which meant she’d have to show him.

  “I need to get on that project,” she said.

  “Huh?”

  “Singles Inc. I need that job.”

  “Then you’ll have to match Matt’s answers closer than anyone else on the team.”

  Carly’s hopes faded. “And of all the women on the team, I probably know the least about him.”

  “But you and I are the only women on the team who know he’s the guy to match.”

  True, she did have that advantage. But unfortunately, thanks to a two-year-long resentment, coupled with her relentless attraction toward the man, she’d all but avoided Matt from the start. What she knew about him could be jotted down on a two-inch sticky note. She knew he was single, lived in an upscale condo down in Sausalito, drove a shiny BMW, had once played baseball and looked delicious in faded Levi’s. That was the sum of her Matt Jacobs knowledge. Five basic facts. Plenty to feed her sexual daydreams but hardly enough to strike gold on a compatibility survey.

  Attempting to change her answers to match his would be a total shot in the dark. Unless she had help.

  “How close a friend are you to Patty?”

  Bev shook her head in protest. “Oh, no. You could get in big trouble. Our company’s image would be at stake, and you know how Hall feels about that. If Singles Inc. found out we’d tampered with their survey and it got back to Hall, heads would roll.” She added with conviction, “I need my job and so does Patty. I can’t ask her to get Matt’s answers for you.”

  Carly frowned. “I won’t ask you to, but it’s so unfair. You know as well as I do, I deserve a shot at this. I was the lead Web designer before Matt stepped in, and you were just as angry as me when he kicked me off that first project by telling Frank he could handle it alone. We were supposed to work together on that.”

  “Jay-Lee Personnel Services. I remember that.”

  “I don’t want you to do anything that would put your job at risk. Just help me brainstorm how I can swing this.” Pushing off the bench, the two women returned to their workout, but this time headed back toward the office. “We still have through Thursday to finish our surveys, right?”

  “I don’t think that’s changed. Holly and Paul are only coming back from vacation tomorrow. Hall wanted everyone to have an equal shot at the project.”

  Carly snorted. “Except for Matt.”

  What a joke, she thought, Mr. Hall making such a big deal out of the survey, how Singles Inc. had liked his idea so much they were considering developing a new survey designed for corporate teams. It was a huge publicity stunt, and in the end it was all a sham.

  “Brian could get you in,” Bev said.

  Carly eyed her friend and grinned. Of course. Brian Shanahan, one of their programmers barely out of college, who prided himself for his hacking skills. And he was pretty good, too. Heck, knowing Brian, he’d probably already hacked into the database just to see everyone’s answers.

  “I don’t know if I trust him to keep his mouth shut, though,” Bev warned.

  Good point, but Carly remained unfazed. “I’ll take my chances.”

  “Really, Carly, you need to think twice about this. You could get in serious trouble.”

  “If I have to sit back and watch Matt walk away with both this project and a promotion, I’m not sure I want this job anyway.”

  “You say that now because you’re angry, but think about your house and your family. Is it really worth the risk?”

  One side of Carly would say no, but the other side wasn’t about to get stomped on out of fear. Security was one thing, getting passed over for jobs she deserved called for taking a stand, no matter how she had to do it.

  “I can’t let this happen without putting up a fair fight. If Mr. Hall had Matt in mind for the project, he should have just assigned Matt a partner instead of dreaming up this stupid survey idea. And if I could say so to Mr. Hall without jeopardizing you, I’d do it.”

  Bev gasped. “Oh, you can’t tell Hall what you know. He’d trail it right back to Patty in a heartbeat.”

  “Of course I won’t. But that means I’ve got to even the stakes my own way, because if I don’t, if I keep sitting around letting them choose Matt over me, I’ll never get anywhere in this company. And if I’m in a dead-end job, then I’m not risking much, am I?”

  “I just worry what they’d do if they knew you tampered with the results. They went to great lengths to make sure everyone answered honestly. Remember that speech Hall gave about people comparing answers?”

  Carly remembered it, though it seemed pretty hypocritical given what she knew now. Taking
a deep breath, she elbowed her friend affectionately, Bev’s warnings heeded but her decision made. “Then I’ll just have to make sure I don’t get caught.”

  3

  CARLY OPENED THE door to a ringing phone. Hoping to catch it, she dropped her purse and take-out dinner on her entryway table, rushed to the kitchen and grabbed the cordless from the counter.

  She’d had a private conversation with Brian Shanahan this afternoon, and he was all but certain he could get her the survey answers she wanted. If this was him calling already, he was better than she thought.

  “Hello?”

  “Hi, honey, it’s Mom.”

  She dropped her shoulders. “Hey, Mom, what’s up?”

  “I just got Jodi’s softball camp information in the mail.”

  “That’s great. So we got her signed up in time.”

  As a sixth-grade-graduation gift, Carly had paid for her younger sister to attend a weeklong softball camp. It was, in a way, a gift to both Jodi and their mother, Jodi having dreamed of going all year, and their mother needing a break between working full-time, taking night courses at the JC and raising a daughter alone. As she’d had to scrape together the cost, Carly had just made the payment under the wire, so it was a relief to get the printed confirmation of Jodi’s enrollment.

  “Yeah, and she’s thrilled. She’s making you a special thank-you present for when you come over Friday.”

  Carly smiled. “That’s sweet.”

  “But I was wondering if you could do me one more favor.” Her mother sighed. “The strap on Jodi’s backpack broke and there’s no way to fix it.”

  “Does she need a new pack?”

  “I remembered you’d said you were going to the outlet mall. Could you look for a purple backpack? I checked Deal-Mart but they didn’t have purple, and I don’t have the time to run around town looking for one.”

  “Sure, I can look around,” Carly said.

  “Would you do that for me? There’s no rush. She can do with her old one for a while, but I’ve got finals—”

  “Mom, it’s no problem. I’ll find Jodi a purple backpack.”

  “You’re my saving grace, sweetheart. Listen, I’ve got to get dinner going before her practice, but we’ll see you for Jodi’s game Friday, right?”

  “I’ll be there.”

  “Love you, hon,” her mother said before the phone went dead.

  Carly pressed the off button, then placed the phone on its cradle and sighed. A purple backpack at the end of the school season. No problem.

  Moving back to the entryway to fetch her dinner, she now wished she’d skipped the burrito and made something at home. She could use her seven dollars back. Not that she didn’t make a good living at Hall Technologies. It was just that she had steep goals for her finances.

  Carly insisted ten percent of her income went into a retirement fund. Add to that the two-bedroom bungalow she’d purchased last year, payments on her student loans, an unexpected transmission overhaul on her 2001 Grand Prix, and it was no wonder at the end of each pay period she was down to her last dollar. It didn’t help that her mother and sister were barely scraping by thanks to a father who considered child support optional.

  It was a constant struggle for Carly, trying to help her family on one hand yet still protect herself from ending up like her mother—unskilled, unsupported and still in love with a man who’d never learned to care for anyone but himself.

  Not as hungry as she’d been a moment ago, she picked up the paper sack and carried it into her pale pink kitchen. If things kept going the way they were, she’d have to live with the previous owner’s decor longer than she’d hoped—a fact that could likely cause her to go insane.

  Though the house had come with a good-size yard and solid bones, cosmetically it was like living inside a giant bottle of Pepto Bismol. To say the former owners liked pink was an understatement. Every room had been painted, floored and tiled in some various shade of fuchsia, and though Carly had made progress in some rooms, ripping up carpet and priming walls, the kitchen and lone bathroom still thrived in their pristine bubblegum state. Only one corner of her eat-in kitchen had seen the threat of demolition, and that was where Bev had tried to tear off a loose corner of wallpaper, only to discover that beyond that four-inch square, the cheery pink teapots with the pale violet flowers were virtually cemented to the drywall, destined to rival the ancient pyramids in their time-tested strength.

  But that was okay. Carly owned the home, and that was all that mattered. She’d qualified for the mortgage with her salary alone and, in the process, bought a slice of land in an old but desirable Marin County neighborhood. It was the security she’d never had growing up, and once she doubled the value with her pink-extinguishing transformation, it would be the bank account she’d never had, as well.

  She unrolled the burrito from the foil paper and plopped it on a plate. The rustling in the kitchen was like a dinner bell for her cat, Mr. Doodles, who didn’t waste time jumping up on the counter to see what she’d prepared.

  Carly pushed the cat to the floor and spat, “Bad kitty!” but her efforts to train the cat had long become futile. Mr. Doodles—the name given the gray tabby by her little sister Jodi—was a horribly ill-behaved cat who roamed the house as if he owned it and did as he pleased. Carly had no idea how to correct his behavior, none of the advice she’d been given making any lasting progress. So she’d begun to accept the fact that Mr. Doodles wouldn’t change and she’d have to love him despite his faults.

  Moving to the fridge to fetch him his own dinner, her phone rang again, and Carly assumed her mother had forgotten to mention something else.

  “Hello?” she asked, crinkling the foil in one hand and dropping it in the wastebasket.

  “I’m in.”

  She paused for a moment, not immediately recognizing the voice.

  “Brian?”

  “I amaze even myself sometimes.”

  Yes! she thought. She hadn’t wanted to get her hopes up even though Brian had assured her he could get to the Singles Inc. database where they’d input their answers. With his frat-boy immaturity, she sometimes suspected Brian overstated his abilities.

  “You’ve got Matt’s answers to the survey?”

  “I’ve got everyone’s answers to the survey. They’ve used a special code to isolate ours from the main population.”

  Her excitement was tempered by a flush of heat to her cheeks. It hadn’t occurred to her that by asking Brian to get Matt’s survey answers he’d end up privy to all of them—including hers.

  Oh, to heck with it. If Brian wanted a thrill over her answers, he could have it. Getting on this project was worth whatever he might end up thinking about her and her sexual outlook.

  “There’s just one problem.”

  “Problem?”

  “Do you have Matt’s code name?”

  “Code name?”

  “Remember the code names Hall gave us to protect our privacy? That’s the only identifying information attached to each person’s survey. I couldn’t decipher individual workstation IDs—which is actually impressive. Singles Inc. has some pretty decent security considering they designed this in-house. I don’t usually see homegrown applications this good.”

  “So what does that mean?”

  “It means unless you know what code name Matt was given, we can only guess which one is his.”

  Carly’s mind raced in search of a solution. There had to be a way to figure out which survey was Matt’s.

  “How many people have filled out the survey so far?”

  “Sixteen, which is two short of the people we have on staff. I’m guessing that’s Holly and Paul.”

  The number didn’t surprise her. She’d asked around this afternoon, and though the survey had been optional, everyone had decided to fill it out, curious to be included in the results. Even though a few weren’t terribly interested in the project, everyone wanted to know who they most closely matched at Hall Technologies, if just for
the fun of it.

  “Now, we could eliminate some through logic,” Brian added. “I know mine, you know yours, and I can obviously separate the men and women based on the code names.” Since Carly was given the code name Gidget, she guessed Brian was right. “But that’s still leaving you with almost ten men. You’ll have to find a way to get his name without raising suspicion.”

  She stared at her pink linoleum floor, disappointed but not defeated. Though she had no idea how, sometime between now and Thursday she’d get Matt’s code name. Already several ideas spun through her brain—all of them bad, but ideas nonetheless. She’d simply have to give it more thought, maybe consult with a trusted friend or two, but some way she’d figure it out. This was her career, her financial stability and her future at stake, all three of those things definitely worth it.

  Two days to get one silly little code? No problem.

  MATT LOOKED UP from his computer screen to see a pair of beautiful aqua-blue eyes staring back at him over the cubicle wall.

  The sight gave him a start. Carly Abrams had never paid him a visit, nor had those dark coral lips ever been curved in a smile while pointed in his direction. Which meant he’d either fallen asleep at his desk and was dreaming or something strange was up.

  She circled around and stepped into his cube, giving him a close-up view of his very favorite shirt—a low-slung wraparound that hugged her curves and accentuated her breasts in a way that should be outlawed in the workplace. The whole thing was held together by a simple bow at the waist, a bow that taunted him with the knowledge that just one tug could expose the delightful presents inside.

  He dragged his eyes away and looked up at her smile. “Carly,” he said, the word raspy from a mouth that had just gone dry. He cleared his throat and straightened in his chair. “What can I do for you?”

  “I was wondering if you were through with my book. I need to take a look at it.”

  “I put it back on your shelf yesterday.”

  Her brows arched and those soft lips formed an O, the way they did in the fantasy he hadn’t been able to shake since he’d seen those two blasted survey answers yesterday. Except, in his dream it was the look she had after he drizzled caramel syrup on her breasts and topped his Carly sundae with a dollop of whipped cream.