Page 13 of Working for the Mountain Man

"Hugo."

I look up to see that she’s frowning at the screen, scrolling between two windows. "The crew hours on SB-1 don't match the invoice dates," she says. "Your log shows work completed across four days in March. The materials invoice shows delivery on a fifth day that isn't logged anywhere."

I come around to look and see that she’s right. There is a gap, a full day of invoiced material with no corresponding crew hours.

"That'll get flagged," she says. "An inspector’s going to ask why you paid for materials on a day nobody was recorded as working."

"There's an explanation. Storm delay, the crew got rerouted to an emergency culvert repair, and the south bridge materials sat at the site an extra day before we used them."

"Okay. So, we note that. Materials delivered ahead of scheduled work due to weather rerouting, crew hours logged starting the following day." She is already typing. "That's not a problem if it's explained. It's only a problem if it looks like nobody's watching the money."

I look at the screen, then at her. "Good catch," I say.

"Careful," she says, not looking up, "that almost sounded like approval."

"It was."

She stops typing for half a second. "Oh," she says.

I go find out who the visitor is before I can watch what her face does next. I need to put some distance between us.

Her phone buzzes on the desk; she glances at it, flips it face down without reading it, and keeps typing. It buzzes again, but this time her hands go still on the keyboard for one beat too long and then she picks the phone up, looks at it, and sets it back down, face up this time, like it doesn’t matter.

It’s close enough that I can see part of the screen from where I am standing; just a name, Daniel.

I can also make out a line of a message that I shouldn’t be reading, but I am anyway.

Heard you're playing mountain girl now.

I look away because it’s not mine to see. "Problem?" I ask anyway.

"No."

I don’t believe her.

"It's personal," she says. "I have it handled."

I should leave it there. It’s not my business who’s texting her or why her face just drained of color. I have no claim on her, no right to ask, and no good reason to care beyond the basic fact that she works in my office. I don’t like watching someone get hurt and pretend they’re not.

"If someone's bothering you," I say, "you can say that."

Her head comes up fast. "I don't need you to rescue me, Hugo."

"I didn't say you did."

"Your face said it."

My lips twitch at her words, even upset she’s hilarious. "My face does a lot of things, apparently, that I'm not aware of."

"It does." She is still gripping the phone. "I don't need rescuing. I need to finish this folder."

"Fine."

She goes back to typing, harder than necessary. I let it sit for a minute. Then I say, because I cannot quite leave it alone, "Whoever it is, they don't get to keep doing that from a distance."

She laughs, short and not happy. "My ex has a hobby. It's making me feel stupid from a distance. He's very good at it. Lots of practice."

"Doesn't make you stupid."