Having color coded the department folders, sharpened all her pencils and reorganized the files on her PC for the tenth time that day, Elizabeth — call me Beth — Springs tried to stifle a yawn while sneaking a peek at the large round clock on the wall opposite her. *Still 11:43. Only four hours and seventeen minutes to go. Pffft! ‘Only’.*
She propped her elbows on the desk and rested her face in her palms for only a second before realizing it looked less than professional and she was supposed to be working hard on the latest translation. The translation she’d finished the previous day but wasn’t due until Friday. The translation that was the only thing she had to do for work that week. And it was still Wednesday. *How did I get myself into this? Oh yeah! Ran out of ways to avoid it.*
~~~~~*~~~~~
Her mother and step father had been practically begging her to get a job at the latter’s electronics company ever since she finished her business degree, but Beth just couldn’t imagine herself working there. It’s not that Robert Miles was a bad step-dad, the exact opposite in fact. He was much more of a father to Beth than her ‘real dad’, the man who abandoned her and her mother when Beth was only four years old. Robert, a Brit with a cynical streak and a huge heart, showed up out of nowhere a year later and helped her mother through the depression and feelings of unworthiness the divorce had left her with. He never treated Beth as anything less than his own child and never even mentioned the desire for more children, children of his own, to Joy, her mom.
Beth just didn’t want to work for a company where half of the employees had known her since she was a six year old the school bus dropped off at the company at two thirty to finger paint and bug them until Joy got off work at four and picked her up, since Robert never left the office before seven. They were surely always going to treat her as nothing more than ‘that’ kid and she would never be able to prove to them what she was truly worth. Not that the other half of the company would be easier to convince that Beth was a smart professional who earned her position among them by studying really hard and acquiring a post graduate degree in business administration, ‘Magna cum Laude’, and spoke fluent German and Spanish. No, to them too, she would always be the boss’ daughter, and she just didn’t want to deal with that stigma.
Of course the reason she’d gone after that post graduate degree had been more to delay, what at points seemed inevitable, becoming a part of the ‘Miles’ Electronics’ company, than to make her better qualified to enter the world of business. But no one had to know that.
Robert never pressured her to go work for him, unless begging counted as pressure. He helped her seek out every alternative option and even provided the capital and expenses for her to open her own consulting office, dealing with Total Quality Management and offering her services to companies that wanted to restructure their processes and reorganize their departments. The fact that she was only twenty four at the time, however, didn’t help much, as potential clients focused on her inexperience and remained oblivious to the fact that she was brilliant, well educated, and full of original ideas. What her mother now jokingly referred to as ‘Beth’s independent phase’ only lasted a year, and after spending the entire summer looking for a job and failing, she half-heartedly gave in to the joined pleas of Joy and Robert and accepted the only job that was open in his company at that point. A job in the sales department.
Beth hated sales with a fiery passion, kept saying she could never be a sales person because she had a soul, and to his credit, Miles knew that and had her do nothing that included promoting and actual selling. Instead, she stayed at the office and handled translations of user manuals from and to English; something that hardly put her true talents to use.
Her step-dad didn’t intend for her to be buried in that post forever. He wanted the rest of the workforce to come to know and like her before gradually adding to her responsibilities and shifting her through enough of her department’s positions for her to gather knowledge about all the company core processes and then undertake redesigning those processes to increase effectiveness. He couldn’t very well drop his step-daughter into the department as a bomb saying the kid was there to change everything around. She had to earn their respect, and Robert never doubted she would. She was, after all, her mother’s daughter and had inherited her charm and quick wit.
In order to help her become a part of the team, she wasn’t given an office of her own and that was ok with Beth. The first floor of the company offices housed the Sales and IT department in an open L-shaped space. Robert’s office was also on that floor and the only room that was behind closed doors other than the restrooms. The two departments were only held apart by glass separators that didn’t reach from one wall to the next, while desks were placed in two rows, one along the windowed outside wall and one along the inner, facing each other. The lack of cubicles for even department managers also added to enhancing ‘team-work’, as no one could cut themselves off from the rest. All employees were hand-picked by Robert himself, with the assistance of the department managers, to ensure their personalities would fit the family culture he tried to cultivate. Her desk was the smallest one where the sales department ended, right next to the glass that established it apart from IT.
Beth was pleasantly surprised her first day there by how relaxed people in both sales and IT seemed around her. She expected them to be wary, these two were the newest departments in the company — sales and IT had been outsourced until about four years ago — and the employees hadn’t seen her on more than a handful of occasions. During the first week she knew that was because of her step-dad and her respect for the man grew even more when she saw that despite having his own office, he’d spend time helping out with everything and didn’t even let his secretary fetch his coffee for him. People didn’t mind she was the boss’ daughter, because the boss was a ‘cool guy’ to them. *Huh! Miles is a cool guy. Who’d have thought?* Everyone seemed to like her. Well, almost everyone it seemed.
On her second day there, while she read through some paperwork that was supposedly there to help her better grasp what their products really were while wondering why a high tech company would consider using Windows Vista as their operating system, she sensed someone watching her. Raising her eyes to look around, she was met by nothing more than the bland face of Liam, the sales person sitting opposite her. *Now he was born to be a salesman. No soul there.* She chuckled to herself before scanning the rest of the room. Alex, sitting to the right of Liam — her left — was munching on chips while typing something one-handed and seeing her looking, threw her a goofy grin. She returned the smile and knowing the rest of her department was empty as people were out pitching sales, she turned to her right. Everyone seemed fixed on their computer screens, *the IT crowd.* She almost chuckled before she spotted the guy at the far end, a guy who wasn’t there the day before, blatantly staring at her with a pair of eyes so blue they were startling even at that distance and behind a pair of wire-rimmed glasses. She chanced a smile, a flirty one, but the guy’s face seemed set in stone. With a shrug she returned to her reading, muttering to herself that every place had to have at least one weirdo.
A couple of hours later she decided a coffee refill would be necessary if she wanted to make it through the day. Taking her mug in hand, she walked the short distance to the fully stocked kitchenette only to find the ‘weirdo’ there. He was washing his own mug, apparently not noticing her and allowing her to fully notice him. His honey blond curls hid part of his face but not enough for her to miss those razor sharp cheekbones. He was wearing a shaggy t-shirt — the company didn’t insist of formal wear except for the sales force that actually met clients — and a pair of faded blue jeans with a few rips and tears that although baggy, gave a good enough hint of his rounded ass as he leaned forward to scrub the cup with fervor. And that brought her eyes to his well-muscled arms and long fingers. Beth worried her lower lip with her teeth thinking how nice he would probably clean up.
“So do I get the seal of approval?” he asked.
Yeah, too bad the guy was a jerk.
He was looking at her, his eyebrow raised mockingly and she was hard pressed not to reply with a snarky come-back but decided to be a lady instead. She didn’t want anyone to be able to say she was acting like a brat, even if she had every right to be. So ignoring his question, she began to politely introduce herself. “Hi, I’m-”
“The boss’ daughter, yeah, I know.” He left his mug on the drying block and turned to look at her while whipping his hands on a paper towel.
He had a British accent that she loved, but she didn’t dwell on that, or correct him by saying ‘stepdaughter’. “Yeah, that too, but I have a name. It’s Beth.” She held out her hand which he reached for with a smirk.
“Whose mum calls Buffy and who apparently is brilliant and not just another Californian bird.” Taking in her comical widening of the eyes when she heard he knew her nickname from childhood, his smirk turned into a chuckle. “I told you, I know. Rob has been talking about you like you’re the second coming or something. Make sure you don’t disappoint him.”
The last phrase rang as a warning and she frowned. “Well, I’m not about to, Mr.-” She squinted a little as if trying to remember his name and knowing full well he hadn’t mentioned it.
“Will. I’m Will. Head of the IT department and not about to make your life easy just because of your relationship to the big man. Got it?” He said ‘good’ when he saw her nod and left the room without a glance backwards, but not before hearing her muttered ‘got it, asshole’.
She forgot she was there to refill her coffee and just left her mug in the sink to return to her desk, feeling chastised and not knowing what for.
Any interaction she and he had after that had been snarky, whenever he didn’t just ignore her. She would see him looking at her at times, always with something acutely resembling disapproval on his face, and that made her hit the keys on her keyboard that much faster. The worst part about it was that she felt she had to prove to him she could be a great asset to the company, even though she saw no challenge in the work chosen for her. So she just concentrated on doing it as fast as she could.
It’s not that she didn’t like her job, or rather that she didn’t like working there, after all. The environment was great, jokes always found their way into the day, and she got along great with the guys in her department. Being the only woman was a bit awkward at first, as they seemed to always want to impress her, but after telling Alex they couldn’t be more than friends after he asked her out during her second week there, and telling Liam she just wasn’t interested about ten times and in ten different ways, they were treating her as one of the guys.
Still, she was bored to death of doing only translations and typing other people’s business trip reports. She wanted more.
~~~~~*~~~~~
The clock showed seven minutes past noon.
She wanted something that would require her to actually think, but she wasn’t going to get that and knew she was facing more than two days of doing nothing and feeling uncomfortable about it. Deciding she at least had to pretend to be busy, she decided surfing the web would accomplish just that. The moment she opened her Firefox browser, however, her phone rang.
“Hello?”
“Come here for a sec, will you?”
“Huh? Here where?” She already knew it was Will, his voice and accent were too much of a trademark for the man not to be recognized, but she thought it rude that he didn’t identify himself, *or even say ‘hi’, the jerk,* and decided to play dumb. She felt dumb, however when he snorted and said ‘to the desk of any other Brit who isn’t your dad’ before hanging up.
She was bristling when she put the receiver back in its cradle and threw daggers at him while taking her time to stand up, smooth her skirt down at the back and walk to his desk in small steps. By the time she was standing in front of him, she’d managed to plaster a fake grin and a disinterested look on her face. “Want something, Willy?” His jaw clenched and she considered it a personal victory, but he turned the tables on her.
“It’s ‘William’, or ‘Will’. If that is too much for your pretty little head you can call me ‘hey, you’. Got it, Buffy?”
She just nodded and gave him a glare that managed not to transform into a swoon when he folded his arms behind his head stretching the white T against his muscled chest.
“Wanted to pick your brain about something.”
“You mean my pretty little, blonde brain?” she challenged him and he chuckled.
“That one. You never know what you may find among the garbage.” He seemed really pleased with himself when she reddened in fury. “Rob wants me to upgrade the PC’s to MS Office 2007. What do you think?”
She was astonished he’d ask her that, he should know of all the glitches and how XP worked much better till now, but the computer-world always fascinated her. “I think it’ll be a waste of money. We could change to Open Office. It’s free and compatible with all other programs. It will take a while to get used to the new templates, but I don’t see why we’d pay so much money for something that I hear is harder to operate than that.”
He raised an eyebrow and nodded saying ‘That’s what I thought’, but the way he looked at her didn’t let her know if he meant he had the same opinion as her or that what he thought was she didn’t have a valid opinion anyway. When he turned back to his 19’’ monitor she saw it as her cue to leave and saying a sarcastic ‘you’re welcome’, went back to her own desk.
*Now what to surf for?* She had always been into romance novels, it was her secret little indulgence that helped her escape the cynical outlook on life she forced on herself ever since the first guy she ever slept with disappeared from her bed and her life the morning after. The few men she’d known after that turned out to be nothing like the Prince Charming fairytales convinced her to expect. Romance novels were what she read at night after kicking out the occasional one-night stand when her folks were out of town on one of Miles’ business trips in which Joy always followed since she gave up work. Reading them was the only time she permitted herself to hope there was someone out there who could be her other half, her soul mate, not that she’d ever admit that to anyone. To her, true love didn’t exist in the real world, or if it did, it was only for the extremely fortunate like her mom and stepdad who still swooned at each other.
With a deep breath, she took one long look on the Google search bar and typed ‘Does true love exist?’
She gasped at the hundreds of thousands of pages reported as results and had to do a double take of the first entry.
‘Buffy truly loved Spike: A Fanfic Archive’
Maybe it was the fact that her nearly secret nickname was there, or maybe that she’d never heard of a Buffy or Spike, *and what a silly name for a guy,* but she clicked on the link and was directed to a page showing a man and woman in the shadows. The man was the hottest specimen of the male species she’d ever laid eyes on. *Of course she loved him, what’s not to love about the man?* The peroxide hair and tight black outfit, complete with a black leather duster made him look dangerous, but his blue eyes looked strangely, *familiar* as he stared at the woman in his arms with such emotion it was breathtaking. *A bad guy with a soft side. Me likey!* From what little Beth could see of her face, the woman slightly resembled her. *Come on, not slightly, she’s practically my spitting image. Ummm, except I don’t have that funny looking bump in my nose, do I?*
Her name and her face on the page were too much to be a coincidence, and her first thought was that her friend since preschool, Fern, a computer-wiz and aspiring Wiccan,could be playing a practical joke on her, but she couldn’t have known Beth would be browsing for it. Plus, the archive listed so many writers and stories, that if the links to them were genuine no one person could have written all that.
She browsed the fics available by category and came up with a list that showed her there were some ‘canon’ or ‘alternate reality’, whatever that meant. The canon ones were categorized into seasons and from reading the summaries in some, she got that ‘A’, Spike was a vampire and ‘B’, Buffy Summers *how close is that to ‘Springs’???* was a Vampire Slayer. *That certainly explains the problem of falling in love with him.* Wanting to find out more, she opened a second browser and googled for ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’, which was apparently the name of the show the fanfic was based on.
It was a surprise for her that she only found one excerpt with a brief summary of each season. For a show with so many fans she expected a gazillion entries, but then again, she’d never heard about it before either. *Maybe it only aired in Europe? Still google should have come up with something more…*
*So, Spike is a hot British vampire turned by crazy lady Drusilla who is in love with her ‘daddy’ —ewww — Angelus. Angelus gets a soul as a punishment and ends up trying to help the Vampire Slayer Buffy — under the name Angel. Pfft, right, angel my ass. The guy screwed her and screwed her life up in the process because he lost his soul. Before he did, Spike and Drusilla came to town so Spike can cure the mad lady from something and then kill Buffy. He helps her save the world form Angelus then gets dumped by Dru. He gets chipped — behaviorally conditioned — and falls in love with Buffy. She dies and comes back — as IF! She does the nasty with him and kicks him around, drops him and he tries to force her. He travels to Africa and goes through a series of trials to gain his soul back for her. And the BITCH only tells him she loves him when he’s dying, BURNING, to save the world - AGAIN!!! Oh my GOD!*
She returned to the fanfic archive tab and clicked on ‘most recent’. It appeared the latest one had just been updated. *Tailored Encounters by Im_bloody_English, the summary looks promising…*
By Chapter 4 she was entranced by the characters and the writing. As her eyes took in the line, ‘Tilting his head to one side he continued, “Yeah. Figured you'd wanna know what to scream… when the time, hmm… COMES,” he emphasized. He released one wrist and raised his hand, allowing a single finger to drag softly down the curve of her cheek,’ Beth was breathing rapidly. *What is it with me and cocky guys?* Her eyes flickered to William who was busy typing before returning to the screen.
She was feeling her temperature rise and moisture pooling between her own thighs as Spike went down on Buffy in the fic. *"By the time I'm through with you, I'll be so deep in your system you'll crave me… ONLY me." Oh. My. GOD!* She didn’t know about that Buffy chick, but she already craved the guy.
Sparks were flying, the sex was the hottest thing she’d ever read, heck, hotter than anything she’d ever done, and now there would be more cuz Spike had shown up at Buffy’s place dressed as a cop *yippie!!!*
Suddenly William was in front of her desk asking her something.
“Huh? I mean… I didn’t catch what you said.”
“I said I think you should get off now.”
“Excuse me?”
“It’s four thirty, blondie, shouldn’t you be going home? Or is that bad translation giving you trouble?”
“Ah.” *get off work, get a grip woman!* “Umm, no, no biggie. Yeah, I’ll go now. Thanks.”
He gave her a weird look before shrugging and swaggering his way to the stairs, his laptop hanging from one shoulder.
Beth packed up and left, but not before jotting down the site address and that of the particular page she was on before the interruption.
She merely said ‘hi’ to her mom over her shoulder as she ran up the stairs to her room, locked the door behind her, and hurriedly changed into a t-shirt and a pair of shorts before switching on her PC.
“Come on, come on, come on!” The darn thing took ages to connect to the wireless network but she was finally on. She typed in the address of the page, ready for more Spike goodness in the privacy of her own room but only got a white page with an error message for her trouble. She tried the site address again but to no avail. She googled ‘Does true love exist?’ expecting the direct link again, but she was directed to a page titled ‘Never Grow Up: A Tribute to Peter Pan Syndrome.’ Googling the show name came up with no results whatsoever as well.
To say she was freaked would be an understatement, but what she’d read to that point was more than enough to call for a hot shower session. *Now where’s Beth’s little purple helper?* She stuck her hand towards the back of her bottom drawer and pulled out her small purple vibrator. Not the most satisfactory of her toys, size-wise, but definitely the most discreet. Sticking it inside her waistband and pulling her ‘T’ over it, she left her room and entered the bathroom, making sure to lock the door before taking her clothes off.
Tbc.
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