2 - At the Office (1)

“Hmph! That was impressively fast,” Clara smiles to herself. 

She got a good look when she stared “Peeping Tom” down and learned her assumption was correct. He was the President of Navio International, Sebastian Colfer. 

Who wouldn’t recognize him, he was in every business magazine in the country. She also realized that he was still staring at her, very intently and with a sinister smile on his face.

She ignored him too and went about her business. 

As she stuck the last RFID inside the room, she noticed a pair of feet right in front of her. 

‘Here’s another pervert. Do I need to take care of you too?’ she wondered. 

Looking at the man’s shoe size, he was probably around 6 feet tall. It will be a bit harder to ward him off because of his height, but she knows she can easily block his advances.

“What was that sticker for?” The man asks. 

She looks up from the floor. ‘Dammit, it’s the President.’

“Sir, we’ve explained the process in the docket that Max handed to you this morning. We will finish the installation in two hours, and it would be better if I showed you what our technology does in your office than explain it here.” 

Clara stands up and looks around the room. “I didn’t think you’d want everybody here to know what it does, for security purposes. Am I right?” she asked with eyebrows raised. 

When he didn’t answer she continued. “I know you are tech-savvy and all, but it will be worth your while if you can hold off until we reach your office. The visuals are very nice,’ Clara explained.

“I have all the visuals I need here.” His gaze raked its way from the toes of her feet to the top of her head. 

“Plus, I doubt you’d finish in 2 hours. You and your 2 guys have been here since 8 am, and for the last 2 hours, you haven’t even finished half of this floor. I think you should have brought in more people so you could finish faster.”

Clara held her breath, ‘One… two… three…’ she counted to calm herself down.

“Are you even capable of providing the security equipment for our shipping company?” He mocked, trying to rile Clara up. 

Sebastian heard about her reputation for having a very short temper, and he wanted to test it out. 

“If you hired us to do the entire building, then I would have brought in more people, but as you stipulated, you only required us to cover the two main floors. We will finish in two hours, but if you leave now, we might even finish faster.” 

She clenched her jaw, willing herself to relax and hold her tongue. ‘Relax, Clara! You need this project.’

Clara, Max, and Jeremy should not be here today, but their assistant mistakenly double-booked their technicians, and now they were the only ones left. 

They built this technology and software from scratch, and there was no doubt they could do it themselves, so they came. Plus, Clara was here because she enjoyed being on-site for the initial installation. 

The last thing she wanted to do was to get all sweaty and grimy when they had hired hands available, but since the situation called for it, she wasn’t one to back down from a challenge. 

As it turns out, it looks like they were meant to handle this installation after all. 

Mr. Colfer was proving to be a difficult customer and it would be better for the top executives to answer his questions directly. 

This didn’t change the fact that she felt uncomfortable talking to him while currently hunched down on her knees. She was already short enough that people usually disregarded her stature in the company.

Clara was in charge and knew what she was doing but still had to bribe Max and Jeremy to come with her today for support.

After learning about the mistake last night. This was not how they had expected to spend their Friday, but she told them that dinner was on her, at the most expensive restaurant in town, and they gladly agreed. Food always motivated these two, and she knew how to manipulate them.

They finished 30 minutes before 12 and took a much-deserved break. Clara has forgotten how much work it took to install their systems. 

The good thing was that she shaved thirty minutes off of the installation time. Otherwise, they might have missed the promised deadline. 

Clara had to compose herself and pretend that she enjoyed being here after the morning she had. 

Talking to people was not her cup of tea. They had Max for that. He was a genius when it came to sweet-talking their clients. But being the President meant she had to be cordial and charismatic from time to time or when the situation called for it. She preferred working with computers over people, but she was here today as an act of solidarity.

As promised, they arrived at Sebastian’s office at noon. Max showed him how to operate the cameras from his laptop, tablet, and cell phone. One of the conference rooms was not in use, and it was the perfect place to test the night vision mode of the cameras they just installed. 

Sebastian was nodding. But he didn’t seem to be too interested in what Max was saying because he kept stealing angry glances at Clara, or that was what she thought.

She could feel him throwing daggers in her direction, but she was busy ignoring him. 

Clara was biting her lower lip to prevent herself from laughing or even smiling. The whole scenario was amusing to her, and she didn’t even know why. 

‘I guess we’re going to find out soon enough. Sebastian Colfer seems to be playing a game, and I’m not sure I want to be part of it,’ she thought.

Shaking her head, she went back to setting up for the demonstration. Half of her attention was on Max, so she wouldn’t lose her cue. 

The advanced RFID mapping system she had set up was very impressive, and she wanted to wow him, so he wouldn’t say no to signing up with them in the future.

Jeremy, living with Clara all his life, knew when she was up to something. She bit her lower lip when she was either amused or angry. And right now, she was not frowning, so it couldn’t be the latter. 

He looked at this silent exchange between her and the President and wondered what was happening.