“Because they are stealing from you.”
Harold was no long smiling, and he wanted to know immediately what it was that she was talking about. He didn’t like the idea of someone that worked for him taking money from him, but that had to be true. He finally did read the report, because he had worked with Sarah only a week or so, and she was so thorough that he believed her. The report was just as well made as all of the rest of them, showing him clearly where his payroll head was taking more money, a second paycheck actually, and it wasn’t hers to have. Harold was livid and Sarah smiled, disarming him once again. How could she do that? How could she dampen his temper with just a look? No one else had been able to before.
“Yes, well, I will definitely be taking that into consideration.”
“You’re not going to fire her?”
She was surprised, but he assured her that he was. “She will be lucky if a firing is all she gets. She has been with me for years. We could be considered family by all accounts.”
Sarah looked at him with sympathy and Harold looked away. He didn’t want to see that. Sympathy wasn’t going to get him anywhere, and it wasn’t going to take away the fact that one of his own was stealing from him. It was a betrayal of the highest mark, but none of that seemed to matter. Harold knew what he was going to do. His blood was boiling just thinking about it.
He shooed Sarah off, and he was short with her. Harold usually didn’t care what sort of a reaction he got, but when Sarah put that lip out and got upset, he wanted to apologize and take it all back. He didn’t, of course, unable to show even the slightest bit of weakness, but he wanted to. He wanted to let her know that he appreciated her and what she had found out. Harold knew better, though. He knew that it was easier to keep his distance and leave it how it was. She was just going to have to get used to him. Everyone else did.
Chapter 15
Sarah
Katie kept calling and pissing Harold off. He was pretty vile at times, and after he got off the phone with Katie, he was the worst. Sarah didn’t know who she was, but it had to be someone close to him. Harold didn’t take mess from anyone else. He wasn’t one to argue and no one really argued with him. Harold was formidable, so whoever kept calling and winding him up, must have known that they had nothing to fear from him.
Sarah didn’t know who it was, but it certainly made her wonder. She didn’t know much about Harold, even after working with him in close quarters for the last couple of weeks. It was hard to focus when he was around, but his moods were up and down, and she had learned to steer clear of him when he was so volatile, which was quite a bit of the time.
She also noticed that while he was short and rude with her as well, he was worse to pretty much anyone else. She could hear his meeting and she had witnessed him fire several people. He was cold, calculating, and didn’t seem to have any remorse for any of it. Sarah was terrified of him in some ways. She didn’t know what to think of how he was, but she was grateful that he wasn’t that way with her. She didn’t know why he wasn’t, but was thankful just the same.
Sarah didn’t know how others felt about Harold, but she had a pretty good idea. She wasn’t able to mix with the rest of the employees for the reasons that he had told her. It was probably already common knowledge that she had found two embezzlers and another employee that hadn’t actually been to work on a Friday afternoon in all of the years that he had worked there. The man had another employee that would clock him in and out and then get a few bucks kicked his way for his effort. The place was rife with schemes of all kinds, just like Sarah had suspected. She was supposed to be dealing with inefficiencies, but a lot of them had to do with the people that worked there, and they were the ones that had to be dealt with, not the systems that were in place.
The job wasn’t at all what Sarah had thought it would be. It was so much more. The only thing that didn’t completely blow her expectations out of the park was Harold himself. He had been so nice to her when they had first met, but she was learning that it was a ploy. Harold was really rude, short, and just generally cantankerous. He was very expressive and still seemed to read her mind, but it was used for other things, like picking up when she had something to tell him that she didn’t necessarily want to say to him. He would just know and pull it out of her, whether she was ready to fully report the incident or not. It was uncanny how right he was. Sarah was convinced that Harold had some kind of power and that was possibly why he was so good at business. He could literally see what was coming around the corners.
Harold was in a particularly foul mood when Sarah walked in. He was once again talking sternly to the woman that always riled him up for some reason. Katie was the name on his lips when she knocked softly and heard his guttural command to come in. She wasn’t going to mesh words and knew that he would get off of the phone with her presence. It was the best thing that could happen. Sarah didn’t know who that woman was, but she knew she was trouble. That was easy enough to see.
He slammed the phone down onto his desk and Sarah waited for him to pull his temper under control. He was extra snappy. Sarah wasn’t sure that she had picked the right day for her invite, but she couldn’t put her mother off, anymore. Sarah was told that she wasn’t to come home that evening, without her new boss.
“I was wondering if you would like to come over for dinner tonight. Nothing fancy, but a home cooked dinner, and my mom is pretty good at it. I have taken several calls for your reservations, so I think it is safe to say that you are due a good meal.”
Harold frowned and said something about how he wasn’t always eating at restaurants.
“Four nights last week.”
“You kept up?”
Sarah blushed, realizing that she probably didn’t want him knowing how much she thought about him and paid attention to everything that he did. Harold didn’t need to know how she really felt about him. It was bad enough, hard enough to feel the way she did. Sarah didn’t need the humiliation of Harold knowing it. He already saw too much as far as she was concerned.
“Yeah, I just can’t help it sometimes. You are a bit loud.”
He didn’t show any shame, just shrugged, and said that he was never taught to be quiet. Sarah could believe that. He was always so boisterous at work. She knew also though, that Harold had another side to him, a gentler, sweeter side that she wanted to come out. It was all she could think about, the other Harold, the one that had tracked her down at a conference. That was the man that she wanted to see again. They’d had a great conversation and Sarah missed it. Working for him wasn’t near as good because she didn’t get to see the other side of him at work. Maybe, if she took him out of work, he would be a bit more like that.
Sarah knew that inviting him was a chance, but her mother had been driving her crazy with all of the requests to bring him home so that she could meet him. Sarah didn’t know why she was so interested in him. What was it that made Carolyn want to see who her boss was? Did Sarah talk about him that much? She didn’t feel like she did, though she could have been wrong. Harold was certainly on her mind enough.
“So, are you going to come or not?”
Harold acted like he was thinking about it for a minute, and he agreed that he would. Sarah smiled wide and she wasn’t sure what to say after that. All she could hope was that her mother didn’t get the Harold that the rest of the company got. Sarah could do without him at home. She was hoping beyond hope that he would be the pleasant and articulate one that she had met before. Sarah was convinced that he was the real Harold. The one that she worked with, barking orders, and scaring everyone, that was just an illusion that he thought he needed to get things done. No one could say that it didn’t work. It did, fairly well, too.
“Good, I will see you around seven. I will give you the address before I leave today.”
Sarah was nervous as she left his office. It was easier to breathe when she got out into the hall, but that didn’t help all that much. Sarah knew that she was going to have a hard day, anticipating how it was all going to go. She wanted that connection back with Harold, and Sarah was bound and determined to get it.
She could blame her mother all she wanted, but Sarah knew that it was only part of the reason, a very small part.
Chapter 16
