In other words, I thought every minute was worth the effort.

The cool thing in doing this was that I found Benny wasn’t a hoarder. He just didn’t bother to throw shit away when it should have been thrown away. There were no battles about keeping stuff. He also didn’t get into the project for fifteen minutes, then get sick of it and try to find an excuse to escape. Except for me giving him guff about being a lazy ass and Benny grinning through it, we worked beside each other in harmony.

It was kind of fun.

Domestic bliss, Frankie and Benny style.

So now it was Monday. The Monday after being awed by Benny’s kitchen prowess and gaining another promise from Benny that a life at his side would be good, seeing as I wasn’t buying one with a hoarder or someone who would dump all the crap work on me and go his merry way.

It was also the Monday after I gave Benny what I considered lame birthday payback and he considered it something else entirely. And the something he considered it made me fall even deeper in love with him, because as simple as it was, it was everything to Benny and I liked that. A whole lot.

And last, it was the Monday after I gave a goof gift I expected Ben to laugh at and toss aside and it would be me who tacked it on the wall in the kitchen and wrote stuff on it, but it was very much not.

I liked that it wasn’t. Actually, I liked why it wasn’t.

It was a gift I had a feeling changed both our lives.

Because, unexpectedly, we’d made plans to move in together.

But when I gave him that calendar, we’d made plans to spend the rest of our lives together.

I was down with that. I didn’t think twice about it and I knew I didn’t in a way that I never would.

This was because Benny Bianchi was always going to be a promise at the same time Benny Bianchi was the prize at the end of a crazy life.

So there was no reason to think twice about it.

And I was also never going to feel stupid about my goof gifts again.

Now it was Monday and I had a four o’clock meeting with my boss to ask if there was a possibility the company would consider letting me work from a home office in Chicago starting in October.

I was nervous because I expected the answer to this would be no, since everyone who was management worked from our head office in Indianapolis.

I liked that job. I made great money. My reps (all but one) were awesome. They did good, and in doing it, they made me look good. And I had a great assistant. I didn’t want to lose any of that.

Further, job hunting sucked.

So a lot was riding on this meeting.

If they said no, I still was going to quit. I just was really hoping I wouldn’t have to do that.

“I’m fine,” I answered Tandy on a lie.

“You seem weird,” she noted, walking in, eyes to me. She sat across from me and went on, “I know it’s nosy, and it’s cool if you don’t answer, but Friday you seemed to be in a really good mood. But you went back to your guy this weekend and now you seem, well…not in a good mood.”

She was so sweet.

It would suck if I had to lose her.

Another reason for me not to be okay.

“We’re fine, Tandy,” I assured her, and at least that was the truth, though it was an understatement.

“Okay,” she replied, sounding like she didn’t buy it.

“I just have this meeting with Lloyd on my mind,” I explained. “Once I’ve had the meeting with him, I’ll give you the full story.”

She tipped her head to the side and I didn’t like the look on her face when she did it.

“Should I be worried?” she asked, explaining the look.

“No,” I said quickly, reaching a hand toward her and tapping it stupidly but hopefully comfortingly on my desk. “Absolutely not. It’s not about you.”

She suddenly looked evasive (thus, clearly the desk tapping didn’t work) as she murmured, “I just thought you might have found out…” She trailed off, twisted her neck to look to my wall of window, then back to me, but she said no more.

“Found out what?” I prompted.

“Nothing. It’s stupid. It’s probably not anything,” she stated.

“What’s probably not anything?” I pushed, not getting a good feeling about her manner, which wasn’t like her at all.

She drew in a breath, then rocked her ass in her chair like she was settling in and leaned toward me. When she spoke again, her voice was lower, quiet, conspiratorial.

“It wasn’t a big deal. I told Lloyd and he took care of it, so I really didn’t want to worry you, but Thursday, when you were taking a personal day up in Chicago, Mr. Bierman came and asked me to give him a copy of your schedule. He asked how many times you’d been up to Chicago on company business and how many days off you’ve taken.”

Oh my God.

“Why would he do that?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” she answered. “And I didn’t give it to him. I told him to talk to Lloyd if he had questions about your schedule. He got kind of dicky, as is his way, and Heath saw it happening. He came out and intervened. Mr. Bierman backed down and took off, but Heath told me I should report it to Lloyd and went with me when I did. When I told him, Lloyd looked really pissed off. He promised me he’d take care of it. Then he and Heath were in his office forever and it didn’t look like the conversation was happy. Later, Sandy told me when Heath was in San Francisco last week, Mr. Bierman asked for the same kind of information about him.”

Sandy was Heath’s assistant and Sandy was like Tandy in the sweet, smart, on the ball, and very pretty department.

I also had a feeling Heath was nailing Sandy, which wouldn’t be good, dipping your toe in the company pool with someone who worked under you. But if he was, she wasn’t talking and, obviously, Heath wasn’t. If she was talking, Tandy would tell me.

That said, they had a lot of closed-door meetings where you could see through the windows that they were smiling at each other and laughing a lot. In these times, Heath was not looking at her like he thought she arranged his flights to Seattle so well, it was worthy of a belly laugh but, instead, like he enjoyed having her in his office the same way that he would enjoy sharing a glass of wine with her later and getting a blowjob from her after that.

However, at that moment, I couldn’t think about Heath and Sandy.

I could only think that I was getting pissed at Randy Bierman, resident dick.

“For freak’s sake, why?” I snapped.

Tandy rubbed her lips together uncomfortably, then leaned further toward me and said, “Through the grapevine, he thinks you’re both underperforming.”

“We’re both exceeding our numbers,” I pointed out.

“I know that. Lloyd knows that. Mr. Berger knows that. But the girls have been talking and we actually think it’s not about you and Heath. It’s about Lloyd. He’s targeting you guys to undercut Lloyd.”

I felt my eyes get wide.

“What? Why? Lloyd is awesome.”

This time, she scooted forward on her chair so she was leaning into my desk when she whispered to me, “A while back, after Dr. Gartner was murdered, Lloyd asked for some details about Tenrix that he couldn’t find on the servers, the usual stuff that he as a director should have access to. Important stuff, I guess, though I don’t know what it is. But it wasn’t there. He needs it, seeing as he has to guide you and Heath in guiding your reps to sell the product so he should have access to it. Mr. Bierman told him he’d find it and give it to Lloyd. He didn’t. Lloyd’s asked, like, a million times. Before Miranda took off to production, she told Jennie who told me that she heard Mr. Bierman and Lloyd arguing in one of the back conference rooms, Lloyd telling Mr. Bierman if he didn’t provide that information in twenty-four hours, he was going to Mr. Berger.”

“Did he provide it?”

She nodded. “Yes, but this is where the weird comes in.”

Oh shit.

More weird.

“What weird?” I asked.

“Kathleen said that the dates on the computer files were that day.”

Kathleen was Lloyd’s secretary, but even so, Lloyd got his email directly and confidential documents would not go through her.

“How did she know that?”

Tandy started looking uncomfortable. “She, uh…kinda looked over his shoulder and saw it.”

I let that go and pushed, “This means…?”

“Frankie, those files should have been saved by Dr. Gartner, like, months ago. Some of them years. They were all saved on the same day and that day was that day.”

Oh no.

I had a feeling I knew what that meant and there was no way it was good.

“Someone amended them?” I asked.

She shook her head. “I don’t know. It didn’t escape Lloyd’s attention and Kathleen told me he went to Mr. Bierman about it. Mr. Bierman explained it, but, Frankie, it’s fishy. Everyone thinks so.”

I did too.

What I also thought was that perhaps the assistants were sticking their noses a bit too far into something that might not be real healthy.

So I advised, “You need to be careful, honey.”

She looked to her knees.

“Tandy,” I called and she looked back to me. “You need to be careful. I get he’s a dick, he’s being more than his usual dick, office politics are getting nasty, he’s acting weird, and you guys are curious. But I’m not thinking any of this is good, so whatever you do, you gotta do in a way I can protect you. Lloyd or Bierman or anyone finds out you guys are nosing around this, bottom line, it isn’t any of your business and this information is probably confidential. Because of that, what you’re doing will be hard to explain and might be grounds for, at best, a written warning, at worst, dismissal. It also means, if you’re found out, those are serious transgressions and I can’t protect you.”