Page 65 of Season of Gifts

Wade pushed up from the table and tossed his reading glasses onto the spec sheets.“Great, because my eyes are about to go on strike.Like you said, there’s nothing here.”He tapped the back of her hard hat on his way past.“Good thinking.I’ll get us an admin login from Adam.If he whines about operational security, I’ll have him send a data person down to monitor us.”

Twenty minutes later, Wade was back and not happy.The company didn’t have an in-house expert on the software.The control package came from another outfit, and the operators were only trained to input data, not read the underlying code.Probably part of the cost efficiencies Adam had bragged about at dinner last night.

Hunched over the terminal, she scanned line after line for the glitch that had to be there.The tightness gathered in her shoulders.She could use a massage from Jay tonight, a room check they’d both be missing this week, but the best she could hope for was the limitless hot water in the hotel shower.

From the screen to the operator’s printed manual to the spec sheet for the current order and back, again and again.Wade poked his head in just after five, and she pleaded to push quitting time to five-thirty.He backed off and let her work.The answer was here, something, somewhere—

There.

She scrolled three lines back and deciphered the instructions buried in the nested brackets and the operator’s input.“Ha!”Pushing with her feet, she shoved the rolling desk chair away and pointed finger guns at the screen.“Got you!”

Wade swung through the door, his hand on the frame.“You sound happy.We good?”

She waved him toward the terminal.“That’s their fucking problem—the control system parameters are set too wide by a decimal point!The operator cued in the wrong variance, and the system didn’t flag it as an error.They’re lucky it was small enough to offset the timing just a little.Could’ve been ten times worse with their setup.”

Wade called upstairs while she celebrated with vending machine iced tea.Sweeter than she liked it.Jay always did the best doctoring on her tea.Still, she swigged it down and arched her back, trying to work the cramp from her shoulders.

“The woman of the hour!”Adam swept in with a grin and clapped her on the shoulder.“And it only took two full days to find the problem.”

She swallowed the curse word forming on her lips.“Too bad you didn’t call in the software company first.Like I figured, my team does quality work after all.”

“Still smarting about that?”Rolling his eyes at her, Adam wagged a finger.“All right, let me make it up to you with dinner out.Congratulations are in order, assuming your solution works, which we won’t know until we get the team in for a test run.”

“Actually”—Wade pulled the same shoulder move on Adam, but smacked him three times for good measure—“I’ll need to have a working dinner with Alice to review her conduct on this project, but we appreciate the invitation.Another time.But about tomorrow—once that test confirms Alice’s find, I’d like to have a sit-down with your executive team to talk about how we can prevent errors like this one.Robust on-site safeguards and personnel training would be much more efficient than assuming a design flaw and footing the service costs for our little jaunt out here.”

Did Adam get paler, or was that just wishful thinking?Either way, she’d take it.Although reviewing her effort didn’t sound entirely positive, either.If she’d done something to get on Wade’s shitlist, that was news to her.But she projected a bland smile at Adam—of the many things Wade had told her about his job in the last three days, one was to always show a united front when the client was around.Questions could wait for privacy.

Despite her hard-hat hair, they headed straight for dinner after parting with Adam in the parking lot.At the first red light, Wade turned down the blower for the heat, dropping the noise by half.“I hope I didn’t overstep, but something just feels off to me about that guy.I get that you know each other from college”—he side-eyed her before the light changed—“and that’s fine, but managing potential HR crises is part of the supervisor gig too.”The car crunched and spun for a second on the snow before pulling forward.“Not that you seem like the type to deck someone.”

Jay’s sister flashed in front of her, with her smug smirk and her hateful lies.“Hitting someone is satisfying for about five seconds, and then utterly horrifying as you remember all of the repercussions coming your way.”

That earned her a sharper glance.“Now that sounds like a lesson you learned firsthand.”

And not a story she wanted to share.“Don’t worry, it’s one I learned well the first time.If you’re thinking you need to review HR rules with me—”

“Ah, hell, no, sorry about that.I just wanted Adam there to thinkpersonnel issueand run himself off home.”The turn signal ticked as they waited for an opening in traffic.Angling toward her, one arm across the steering wheel, Wade raised his eyebrows and leveled his gaze.“Your review is that you’ve done a phenomenal job, and your effort went beyond the scope of the project.”

Her fingers tingled with a rush of heat.She’d earned that accolade.The recognition sank way deeper than a pizza party for the whole team’s effort.Dad used to single her out like that, agreat job!and a high-five when she helped him pack the car for a family camping trip or the first time he’d let her climb the ladder and string the Christmas lights along the roof.An embarrassing knot stuck in her throat.“Thank you.That means a lot.”

“You’re a hard worker—a smart worker—and a team player with leadership potential, Alice.A real problem-solver.”

“Well, you know, that’s…” Henry called her his problem-solver.He was neck-deep in a problem now, and she hadn’t done squat to solve it.Although he’d also been adamant about not wanting them up there.Interpreting his mood and meaning was difficult enough when she had the man in front of her.Reading between the lines of his messages was nearly impossible.Her whole body ached for just ten minutes in person to hold him, to rest with him, to be a team of three working on a single problem: getting his mom healthy.“It’s been an interesting challenge.”

Laughing, Wade sent them down the street toward their hotel and a cluster of restaurants.“Which could be code for ‘give me more of this’ or ‘hell no, I don’t want this assignment ever again.’”

She joined the laughter.Apparently she could be as mysterious as Henry.

“In all seriousness, though.”Wade tapped his thumbs on the wheel.“We’re stuck here another day.Your part should be done by lunch, I’d bet—just walk his guys through the issue, stay for the test run, and confirm how they should be setting up the machine going forward.After that, it’ll be meetings with the execs and probably dinner out with them.Both of which you can skip, unless this side of project management is where you see your career heading.”

“Nooo, no no no.”She flagged her hands in front of her in the universal sign fordon’t bring that anywhere near me.“This has been a great learning experience for me.I have problem-solving energy, not people energy.I want to stay firmly in design—and close to home.”

Close to Henry and Jay, her real home.But if Wade didn’t need her tomorrow afternoon, and she couldn’t fly back to Boston until Friday—her stomach churned, more nerves than hunger.Mom and Dad were only an hour away.

“You can be sure I’ll put in a good word for you on that, Alice.Have you given any thought to shifting from industrial-mechanical to aerospace-mechanical?”

“Me?”

Slowing, then stopping, he waited patiently for someone backing into traffic before taking their parking space outside a steakhouse.“You have the smarts for it, and you like a challenge.And—” The engine hum fell silent.“It’s a direction the company wants to aggressively expand in.Lots of potential for growth there.They’re forming a new team next year.Not sure you’d make lead, not without the background, but…” He splayed his hands.“Something to think about.”

---