Read Online Lucky Charm by Valerie Douglas - Free Book Online Page A

Paul asked.
    He didn’t really want to know, that was between her and the Help Desk.
    “Of course,” she agreed. “Would you transfer me to Luke?”
    As it was, it was late before she returned to the hotel and the problem still wasn’t resolved.
    Even Luke, their long-haired, long-bearded resident guru, was baffled, although it seemed some ancillary software installed at Titan was causing the problem. He was going to contact the other vendor in the morning to see if there was a solution. Worse, Ariel had missed dinner as well as lunch, but by the time she reached her motel she wasn’t hungry anyway. Instead, she pushed aside some of the furniture to do some yoga. Matthew Morrison had superseded her morning exercise but she thought she’d certainly exercised some muscles then.
    The thought of him sent a wave of warmth through her. His green eyes haunted her.
    In a way, she was sorry she’d never see him again. Even in the very brief time they’d been together there was something about him she’d liked.
    In another way, though, she was glad.
    She didn’t need it. Didn’t need her heart broken. And those green eyes and that face were made for breaking hearts.
    Hers had been battered enough.
    Old grief moved through her. Even the thought of facing that kind of pain again terrified her. The circumstances of their meeting alone promised nothing but more of the same.
    Pushing the thought away, she concentrated on the yoga movements. Sun salute, upward facing dog to plank, then pushing back into downward facing dog, each stretch done slowly, her breathing precise.
    Something else nagged at her – the discrepancies.
    They didn’t make sense. No matter which way she looked at it, the numbers should have added up and they didn’t. The other thing that bothered her was the number of employees whose background wasn’t in finance but in sales. That didn’t make sense, except that with the economy so many in sales didn’t have jobs.
    She’d been in the trade long enough to know the ins and outs or else she couldn’t do her job. She’d spent plenty of time trying to get the books to balance. No one at the other Marathon offices seemed concerned and she dared not make too much of an issue of it or they might blame the software when she knew that wasn’t what was at fault.
    Finally she flipped open her laptop, determined to solve the puzzle. It would also keep her mind occupied.
    Hours later, she closed her laptop again, no closer to solving the discrepancies than before.
    Exhausted, she stumbled to bed.
    Housekeeping hadn’t changed the sheets.
    Ariel knew it the moment her head touched the pillow. It shouldn’t have surprised her in a motel this cheap.
    She could still smell Matthew’s scent, the tantalizing aroma of his body. She didn’t need the reminder and yet she found herself curled up around the pillow he’d used, breathing in the scent of him. For the first time in years, she felt a yearning for solace. She forced it away.
    Dragging herself out of bed the next morning, she took a chance on getting into the office early enough to try to resolve that nagging error.
    Five minutes before her students arrived, it suddenly came to her what the problem was. She tried her own fix.
    No more error message.
    She pumped her fist, hissed a triumphant “Yes!”
    For all the headaches, finding the solution to problems was one of the things she did like about this job.
    This time she’d even outdone the guru. Luke wouldn’t mind, though, especially as the fix was simpler than the ones they’d tried. She sent him a quick e-mail detailing the answer.
    She faced the rest of the day with some satisfaction as her trainees filed into the room. The morning session went better than she’d expected, adding another high note to the day.
    “So, Ariel, are you coming to lunch with us?” a voice asked from the doorway as her trainees gathered their things for lunch.
    Looking back over her shoulder, Ariel saw Miriam’s dark head