Love over Tomato Soup, page 1
Love over Tomato Soup
Love over Tomato Soup
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Love over Tomato Soup
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Love over Tomato Soup
Sitting in the office is as common as eating breakfast. Everyone’s doing it. Except Arianna’s new manager, Tom Mayor.
Arianna stared at the white screen that filled the space around the black letters she read a few minutes ago. The latest e-Mail from her new manager. An e-Mail from the latest idiot in a long row of idiots. At least, now she knew why the office was that cold and she still wore her winter anorak and her winter boots, shivering and freezing, instead of changing shoes and hanging up the anorak.
Her chair, normally comfy and soft, felt hard and uncomfortable. She preferably wanted to be at home. How about turning this day into the first day of the weekend? She could stay in bed. Snuggle with her warm blanket. Ignore all thoughts about the office and stupid managers. There was no way this would become a good day. Not with an e-Mail like this to read first thing in the morning. Moreover, Tom hadn’t lost time to implement the changes he wrote about.
Arianna shivered. The heating had been turned down by the facility managers during the weekend, as was common to save money, energy, and officially, for the good of the environment. Working in an Eco-friendly company was always a good idea nowadays. Or at least that’s what marketing was supposed to tell everybody. But her new manager had added to that the order, that the average temperature should be lowered by two degree. To the absolute minimum work laws allowed. Therefore, she didn’t have to wait for the answer of the facility manager on her e-Mail.
Either she would freeze the remaining winter, or she would convince her new manager to increase the office temperature. The dress code didn’t allow warm pullovers.
Monday mornings sucked.
Especially early at seven am when Arianna started her week. Being the manager’s assistant meant, being at work before him and have everything ready for the day. Hopefully the idiot who had started during the weekend would be cute. She needed some compensation for getting another person who didn’t care about the people around.
She sighted and let her eyes drift from the e-Mail on the computer screen to the green, artificial office plant. Whoever had designed this plant clearly had no idea of real plants. The shapes of the leaves alone differed so widely, they could be found on at least four different trees but not on a single one. The only good idea of the predecessor. No more watering plants for her.
Arianna stretched her arms high over her head. The air was fresh after she had opened the windows. She had thought that would change soon. Now she knew better. But no matter what, she would still have to open the windows to get some fresh air.
Still in her winter anorak and boots, she pulled the keyboard closer and read through the e-Mails in her postbox. Too many people worked on the weekends and send tasks, meeting invitations and information to read.
Steps echoed from somewhere down the hall.
Who came in so early? Usually, she was alone for at least two hours on Monday mornings.
Arianna zipped open her winter anorak, pulled her arms out and got up to hang it on one of the wardrobe hooks. She lowered her arms and dusted off her white, soft blouse with quick hands. No need to present herself in even the slightest disorder. It was bad enough that she didn’t have an office for herself or was sharing one with a co-worker. Instead, the walls of her room had been removed long before she had started working here. She sat, with her white desk, practically in a corner of the hall. Open and accessible to everybody walking past her.
She listened.
The rhythm and the sound of the heavy steps didn’t belong to any of her co-workers. Was it the new manager? But hadn’t he just informed her of his absence today?
Arianna checked the still open email on her computer screen.
Yes. Absent on his first day with the task to inform her colleagues about the changes in temperature management and a few requests of documents he wanted everyone to prepare and send in.
The smell of garlic reached her before she could see the person with the heavy steps. Her mouth watered at the thought of hot, creamy tomato soup with oregano, thyme, and lots of roasted garlic. She could see the plate with light yellow spaghetti, a generous heap of tomato soup and lovely decorated slices of fresh cut cherry tomatoes on a bed of deep green oregano leaves sitting in front of her. Yummi. Her favorite dish. She would buy the ingredients on her way home and indulge herself for diner.
The steps came to a stop.
She still couldn’t see anyone.
Arianna held her breath and listened. The water running through the heater sounded like a waterfall in one of the holiday television commercials: Loud and like a promise. A promise of warmth. Warmth her thin blouse couldn’t provide. The last traces of warmth still hung in her winter anorak. Now hanging in the wardrobe. So whoever was up similar early as she herself, stood in the tea kitchen, preparing a hot drink to start the day.
Should she get up and check who was standing in the hall? Maybe have some small talk? Or should she call security?
The steps continued into the office of Hermann Maier. The one right before her openly available desk. The scent of garlic lingered. A male voice started talking, but before she could hear more, the door was closed with a firm clack.
Well. It wasn’t her business who came to talk to Hermann Maier, was it? She had to cancel meetings and find a replacement for her new manager to talk to the manager one level up about the new construction project. Only, Hermann wasn’t in the office. He would come in at around nine AM.
Arianna reminded herself, that she had to start thinking about him using his name: Tom Mayor. A hard task, for she had memorized five manager names in this year alone already.
She sighted and turned to her e-Mail again. She had work to do.
She copied and pasted the instructions from the original e-Mail, added the whole department as receiver and typed in a subject. She clicked send and moved the e-Mail to another folder.
»Good morning«, said a deep male voice next to her.
Arianna looked up. She didn’t know that voice and she hadn’t heard the steps, too focused on the e-Mail. But with the man came the scent of garlic. He was the one who went into Hermann’s office minutes ago.
»Good morning. I’m Arianne Greenfield«, said Arianne and got to her feet, pushing her office chair back to the wall.
She looked at the black, perfect ironed trousers, a white shirt with a tie and into a clean-shaven face. No smile, no extended hand to greet her. He just stood there and gave her a short nod, acknowledging he heard her.
»Who are you? How can I help you?«, asked Arianne, like she always did. The doors were security controlled. She was sure everybody showing up at her desk in the fourth floor was an employee of the company and not a threat in any way.
»I’m Tom Mayor«, said the man. »Call me Tom. Nice to meet you, Arianne.«
»Why are you here?«, asked Arianne and wanted to slap herself instantly. His schedule obviously had changed. »I mean, you wrote me, you would be absent today.«
Tom folded his arms before his chest.
Arianne trailed off. Tom seemed to like garlic and with his piercing blue eyes he seemed to look through her like an X-ray apparatus, but she had managed to annoy him within the first minutes of knowing each other. Fantastic. Her cheeks heated up. At least she didn’t freeze any longer under his laser like gaze.
Tom watched his new assistant make a step back.
Stupid. Never give a predator a chance to hunt. This little step was an invitation to the core of his nature he could hardly control. One of the reasons he changed jobs so often. As an interim-manager he did the reorganizing, the firing and the set-up of new processes. Like upper management requested of him. He was the one everyone hated and who left after completing the task. The next manager just had to say »well, that was put in order before me, let’s see what we can possibly change« and do nothing or very little to get positive feedback and the trust of his people. A game he usually loved to play. He could hunt and didn’t need to think too much about feelings and sensibilities.
But the step back of that cute assistant was the wrong one.
She looked like a doll. Small, rounded in all the right places, and her blouse revealed that she had forgotten her underwear. She was freezing. Lowering the temperature of the general heater, especially in winter was hard on the woman. A task he put in place first to give the successor an easy thing to change and collect bonus points. Aside from that, as far as he had heard from the past, usually increasing the temperature, none reached the level that was common before him. After all, he did decrease temperature and do something for the environment.
But not for the well-being of the woman. Maybe he could warm up this one with an embrace? Inhale her scent and take her home with him?
Tom crossed his arms in front of his chest. He wouldn’t grope her. She was his co-worker and he was responsib
He looked away from her chest and up into her face. Her lips, firmly pressed together nearly lost their pink color. He wanted to caress them, tempt her to relax and open them slightly for a kiss.
Tom balled his hands into fists, keeping his arms crossed. He was here to work, not to seduce his new assistant.
»For most I’ll be absent each day«, said Tom. The faster he got her up to his speed of work the better. »Show me my office, then plan a fifteen-minute talk with each of my new team. Today and tomorrow should be enough. I’m out of office for everyone else.«
He needed to get an overview over who was doing what as fast as possible. Then he would redistribute work. Cancel useless things and fire about twenty percent. That was the goal he had to achieve within the next three months. And to make sure the fired people left before the manager after him started his job. So firing was top of his list.
»Sure. The door to the left«, said Arianne.
She pointed to one of two doors behind him.
»There is a laptop set up for you. Password is on the yellow post-it note. Please destroy it after using it. IT asks you to please change the password after the first log-in.«
He nodded.
»Plan the meetings. Make yours the first in half an hour«, said Tom.
She nodded. Good.
»Anything else?«, asked Arianne.
»Breakfast from the canteen«, said Tom. »When I walked past it, it smelled off hot croissants and fresh fruit salad. Double it, and put it on the department budget. We will eat breakfast together. Bring your laptop though.«
Tom turned around and marched to the indicated door. He did consciously loosen his folded arms and his fists to open the door. He closed it behind him and leaned against the hard, cool wood.
What had happened out there?
He had never invited an assistant to have breakfast with him. Never thought a woman was worth enough to hunt for. Sure, he loved to chase those who stepped back from him. But Arianne was different, and he couldn’t point that feeling. What was sure for him, she influenced his mood, and his habits, already. He would find out in half an hour, when she arrived with his breakfast and her report.
Well, time to work. He had a job to complete and to put up a new entry on the job portals. In three months he would be free again to take on a new challenge.
Tom marched away from the door and stared at that stupid laptop. Time to fight a new battle with IT equipment. He would be surprised if he could do everything he needed before next week. He hadn’t experienced a single company where he had gotten all the right rights from the start.
Arianna stared at the closed door.
What had happened?
She blinked and couldn’t figure it out. First, Tom had seemed like the usual idiot manager, asking for work summaries by e-Mail. Then he had turned out to be in the office despite writing her an absence e-Mail. Strange. And he wanted everyone to come and talk for a quarter-hour over what they were working about. Even stranger. None of the last managers had done that. All of them had held a meeting with the whole department, talking about bad numbers and the need to stop doing unnecessary work. Nothing had changed. They left too fast to even understand what everyone was doing.
Not this time. Tom would know who was doing what and why by tomorrow afternoon. And she had to run to the canteen to get his breakfast. Or rather, their breakfast. She locked the screen of her computer, picked up her purse and walked down the hall. Croissants were the first baked goods which were sold out each day. Somehow, everyone wanted them instead of the simple rolls, but the chef didn’t bake or buy more.
Back with the plates at her desk, she placed them to one side. She had been lucky and got the last two croissants and the last two fruit salads. Now she had a few minutes left to schedule the first batch of meetings. Who was early in the office? She looked at the phone call software, a few colleagues with children would be in by now. The needed to leave punctually to fetch them from kindergarten.
Arianne set up meetings with the parents in the morning, then added some other colleagues in the afternoon. Tom hadn’t said when he wanted to go for lunch. Therefore, she left a gap of two hours, then checked the clock. Time for her meeting. She would schedule the remaining team members afterwards.
She added two glasses of water to the tablet with the plates and knocked at his door.
Her heart beat faster.
He had an attitude that made her want to say stupid things. Like asking for a kiss or what he thought about dinner tonight. Thoughts she quickly pushed away. Stay professional, she thought.
Maybe going to her preferred restaurant, ordering pasta and its delicious tomato sauce was a better option than cooking on her own. The restaurant would be a lot warmer than her kitchen at home. And she needed someplace to warm up. She still felt cold. Even in her winter boots.
»Come in«, said Tom, his voice muffled through the door.
Arianne opened the door with her elbow making sure she didn’t drop the tablet with the food. Here we go. Hopefully, she would think before talking. For once.
The breakfast tablet looked delicious, and the croissants still smelled freshly backed. Tom’s mouth watered at the sight of the food, and his new assistant. Arianne had something to her, that spoke to him on a level he wasn’t used to. Up until before he met her today he would have told every psychologist that the theory about the animal in each human was a stupid idea. Especially the notion of the men as hunters.
He had started his new laptop, changed the password and, miracle, got access to his e-Mails without hassle or delays. A new experience. Like Arianne. If he wasn’t careful he would take her home and would never let her go again. As if he was an ancient warrior of the Stone Age hiding his treasure and his wife in a cave.
A stupid comparison. Especially, when he knew that theory was debunked for years already. Women had hunted and worked as hart as the men back then. Pure necessity of survival. Those who couldn’t find food were useless and died. Survival of the fittest.
Another theory. This time from management and exactly the method he used to decide whom he would fire during his interim-management gigs.
He picked up one croissant, motioned for Arianne to take the other and said: »So, tell me, what are your main tasks every day? What are your most important yearly tasks? What are typical, unplanned tasks? Are you single?«
Arianne looked up from her croissant. She didn’t take her first bite, still held it in her hand. She sat straight on the hard wood visitor chair in the office. Despite her effort, he saw her shiver. Sure, the temperature was a bit low, as requested, but no reason to shiver.
He bit into his croissant. A crispy, fluffy bite. Lots of small, thin, cross-backed parts fell apart and filled his mouth.
He loved that taste of butter and dough that was crisp on the outer border and soft on the inside. Chewing slowly, enjoying the taste, he listened to Arianne answering his questions.
The list was similar to the ones he heard from other assistants many times before.
He watched how her lips formed the syllables of the words. Soft round O’s and firm M’s. Her lips moved a lot and fascinated him more with every minute. Sometimes he saw a few white teeth blink between them.
She stopped a moment after the last question, then added: »Yes.« So she was single.
»How about we go for dinner tonight and talk about your position? I’m traveling a lot and having a personal assistant would be a great help«, said Tom.
Maybe, they could become a couple as well.
»Your assistant for what?«, asked Arianne. »In the office or in the bedroom?«
Tom sat up right. The flexible backrest of his chair creaked from his fast upward movement.
Boy, Arianne was fast on the uptake. Another reason to hire her and yes, convince her to become his partner in the bedroom as well.
»Both. Are you interested?«
He hoped so.
Work as interim-manager would become a lot easier having an assistant for the legwork he couldn’t do thanks to his position. Aside from that, thinking about a relationship, set the urge to hunt and claim her at ease. It was the right decision for him, although he still didn’t understand it. But that didn’t matter.
