“All you have to do,” Maureen explained excitedly, “is get in the elevator alone with Mr. Lockwood.”
“Yes?” Stephanie could feel the enthusiasm coming from her coworkers in waves. “What will that do?”
“That’s where Mike from maintenance comes into the picture,” Toni explained patiently.
“He’ll flip the switch, and the two of you will be trapped alone together for hours.”
“Isn’t that a marvelous idea?” Barbara said.
“It works in all the best romances.”
“It’s a sure thing.”
“You’re game, aren’t you, Steph?”
Chapter Nine
“No, I’m not game for your crazy schemes,” Stephanie informed her friends primly. It wasn’t that she objected to being alone with Jonas for hours on end—that she would relish—but to plot their meeting this way went against everything she hoped for in their relationship.
Jan, Maureen, Toni and Barbara exchanged an incredulous look.
“But it’s perfect.”
“Jonas and I don’t need it,” Stephanie said, knowing that the best way to appease her friends was with the truth.
“What do you mean, you don’t need it?” Jan asked, her eyes narrowing with suspicion.
“You been holding out on us, girl?” Maureen barked, her hand on her hip.
“I do believe she has,” Barbara said before Stephanie had a chance to answer.
“Let’s just say this,” Stephanie said with a conspiratorial smile. “The romantic relationship between Mr. Lockwood and me is developing nicely.”
“How nicely?” Jan wanted to know. “And put it into terms we understand.”
“Like on a scale of one to ten,” Barbara added.
“What’s a ten?” Stephanie glanced up at her friends, uncertain.
“If you need to ask, we’re in trouble.”
“Right.” Hot color blossomed in Stephanie’s cheeks.
“If he phoned once or twice and showed up at your apartment—that’s a four, a low four.”
“But if you shared a couple of romantic evenings on the town, I’d call that a six.”
“I’d say meeting his family is an eight,” Toni murmured thoughtfully, her index finger pressed against her face. “Maybe a nine.”
The four romantics paused expectantly, waiting for Stephanie to gauge her relationship with Jonas on their makeshift scale. “Well?” Jan coaxed.
“An eight then, maybe a nine,” she admitted softly, waiting for her friends to break into shouts and cheers. Instead, she was greeted with a shocked, dubious silence.
“You’re not teasing, are you!” There was no hint of a question in Barbara’s murmured words. “You really aren’t joking.”
“No. Jonas introduced me to his mother this weekend. She’s a wonderful woman.”
“It’s going to work,” Maureen whispered in awe, her face revealing her surprise. “It’s really going to work!”
“Speaking of work,” Stephanie said pointedly, glancing at her watch. She was relieved not to be subjected to an endless list of questions from her co-workers, but she was so grateful to her romance-loving friends that she wanted them to share some of her happiness.
As though in a daze, Jan, Maureen, Toni and Barbara turned away from her desk. Each walked in short, measured steps, as if in a trance.
“Do you think Mike will give us a refund?” Barbara asked no one in particular as they moved out the door.
“Who cares?” came the reply from the others.
Stephanie’s boss, George Potter, arrived at the office a couple of minutes later, having recently returned from Seattle. They exchanged a few pleasantries, and Mr. Potter handed Stephanie some notes from his briefcase. “If you get the chance, could you type these up and give them to Donald Black?”
He said the name of his counterpart stiffly; Stephanie knew from experience that there was little love lost between the two men. Stephanie couldn’t imagine her amiable boss disliking anyone, and attributed the low-grade hostility to a personality conflict.
“I can type those right away,” she said with a welcoming smile. There was so much to be happy about now and she felt like humming love songs as her fingers flew across the keyboard. She wondered briefly how Jonas’s day was going, her thoughts often wandering to the president of Lockwood Industries, who just happened to be in sole possession of her heart.
The morning whizzed past. Stephanie was so close to finishing typing up her boss’s notes that she skipped her midmorning coffee break. Five minutes after everyone else had deserted her floor, she pulled the last sheet from her typewriter and sighed. The scribbled notes made for dry reading. She neatly stacked the last page with the others and inserted them into a crisp new file folder.
Mr. Potter was in a meeting, so Stephanie walked down the hallway to give the papers to Donald Black, who was the head of the accounting department.
“Good morning, Mr. Black,” she said, knocking politely on his open door. “Mr. Potter asked me to bring these over.”