Page 6 of His Obsession

My stomach did somersaults at his touch. Mr. Jackson was a muscular man and filled his suit out without an inch to spare. His jet-black hair styled a little long on top and shorter on the bottom suited him well. He put his hand in his pocket and gestured for me to sit. A black tattoo covered his visible hand with words that I couldn’t make out.

As everyone took their seats, Becca walked in, handing out water bottles, and placed a tray of cookies that her brother grabbed.

“What?” he said with a mouth full of cookies.

I shook my head and smirked at him.

“Okay, first on the agenda here. There was an attempted breach of our servers brought to my attention two days ago,” Jake announced. “The dip-shit didn’t even try to cover his tracks. We traced his IP back to a stupid teenager playing around on daddy’s computer. He won’t be doing that again.”

Moving my hands across my keyboard at lightning speed, I made little notations to go back and edit later. Just another thing to add to my list today. Although, I could probably push it off until tomorrow.

“Next, we have a large contract that wants to have us run penetration testing on their network and see what vulnerabilities their system has. This will take a small team, so I will get that prepped and underway.”

I glanced over the top of my laptop as I typed and observed Mr. Jackson rotating a pen on the table, looking somewhat disinterested and distracted. Our eyes collided, and my heart quickened. I dropped my gaze back to my laptop. This was ridiculous. It was like playing eye tag.

“Next up,” this time, Mr. Randall spoke, “We will work out of this location for the next couple of months. I’ll need you to get someone to prepare our offices.” He directed towards me.

I was going to have two bosses on site now? This should be good. “We need separate offices. Alek yells while on the phone, so he needs his own door.” I shot my eyes up to Mr. Jackson, his hand still playing with the pen, his other rubbing his jaw. He appeared irritated.

“Okay, I’ll get right on that.” I acknowledged as I made a note on my laptop to call the building maintenance.

“For the time being, you’ll be helping Alek with anything he needs.” My eyes darted to Mr. Jackson and then quickly back to my laptop. I was regretting thinking my job was easy. I’ve jinxed myself.Damn.

I nodded and made a note to order more caffeine—I was going to need it. Mr. Donovan looked stunned, like this was the first he heard about it, and didn’t look all that thrilled.

Mr. Jackson stood. “That’s all we need from you right now, Ms. Keel. Thank you.”

The abrupt change of pace stunned me, and I gathered my things and walked to the door.

“Thanks for your help,” he mumbled as I passed by him.

Yeah. I didn’t understand why I needed to be in the meeting; there was nothing I needed to know that couldn’t have been in an email. I took a seat at my desk and blew out an exasperated breath. I looked at the pile of paperwork and filed it away while the rest got scanned. I dug out my phone and sent a text to Lucy.

Me: Well, I just met my bosses. I’m thinking I’m going to need to take an extended rain check on lunch.

I put my phone on my desk and continued filing in silence. A loud commotion came from the conference room. Mr. Jackson came storming out of the room with Mr. Randall in tow, heading towards the elevator.

“Get it fucking done, Donovan!” Mr. Jackson yelled over his shoulder.

His face was intense with anger as he took long strides to exit as quickly as possible. I shot a look at Becca, and she shook her head, just as bewildered as me. I wondered what had happened as Jake came out with his tray of cookies.

“Pissing people off, Jake?” Becca accused him with a laugh.

“You know it,” he said sarcastically.

I gave a snort of laughter, and my phone dinged. I glanced at the screen; a message waited.

Alek: I need more pens.

How the hell did his name and number get on my phone?

Jake, seeing the confusion on my face, asked, “What’s wrong?”

“Mr. Jackson just sent me a text.”

“A text is a message someone sends with fingers instead of their voice,” Jake said, with sarcasm.

“Ha-Ha, that’s not it. I don’t know how he one—” I held up a finger, “got my number or two—” holding up another finger, finishing my count, “got his phone number on my phone.”