The Principal's Office by Jasmine Haynes Page B

not knowing what to expect. Hopefully tonight he would take her all the way. So far, they hadn’t done much touching beyond that kiss. But what a kiss. Remembering, she melted all over again. He’d rubbed his semen all over her abdomen and breasts, but
he
hadn’t made her come yet.
    She was just logging out of her email when a scuffle out in the factory caught her attention.
    “You idiot.” Steve.
    “It wasn’t my fault.” Matt.
    “Then whose fault was it, kid?”
    “I’m not a kid.”
    “No, you’re a punk.”
    What the…?
With her office door facing the entry to manufacturing, Rachel could hear the yelling as if they were standing right in front of her.
    Erin and Dominic were gone for two days, Yvonne was out for the afternoon, taking her daughter to the obstetrician, and Bree’s door was closed. That left only Rachel, and Erin had told her to hold the fort while they were away. Of course, Yvonne hadn’t liked that since she had seniority, but that didn’t stop Rachel from taking her duty seriously.
    “You shouldn’t have—”
    “I didn’t—”
    They were yelling over each other. Rachel marched out of her office and through the big arch into manufacturing. Steve was jabbing his finger at Matt’s nose, and Matt’s face was red enough to explode like an overripe melon.
    The rest of the five-man manufacturing crew—though one of them was a woman—had made themselves scarce, either running down between the inventory shelves pretending they needed parts or out through the roll-up door at the back. Which was open, while the overhead heaters were blazing, wasting all that energy.
    “What’s going on?”
    Neither of them listened to her. Honestly, they were like two big kids fighting on the playground, right in each other’s faces. Matt was taller, but he was fifteen years younger and probably a hundred pounds lighter. Steve, whose bald head, stocky, muscled build, and tattoos screamed
motorcycle gang
, could have flattened Matt. Steve could flatten her, too.
    But Erin had left her in charge. “Hey,” she shouted over them. “If you two don’t stop right this minute, I’m sending you to your rooms without dinner. Do you hear me?”
    Matt pulled back, his lanky hair falling into his eyes, and looked at her. “What?”
    “Do I need to repeat myself?”
    Steve tilted his head, like a pit bull finally noticing the little pussycat. “Did you just tell me to go to my room?”
    She stood taller. In her high heels, she was almost as tall as him. “Yes. Unless you both want to tell me what’s going on.” She glared at them. “Without yelling.”
    She thought she saw the wink of Steve’s gold tooth before he cut off any hint of a smile. He stabbed a finger in Matt’s direction. “This little asshole—”
    “Language,” she warned. If they wanted to be treated like kids, that’s exactly what she’d do.
    Steve’s gold tooth flashed again, but this time he grimaced.“This little miscreant put the wrong part numbers on all the transducers.”
    Rachel knew their products somewhat. Put simply, the way Erin had described it to her, the transducers were the probes used to make the ultrasonic measurements that the gauges recorded. “So put the right numbers on them.”
    Steve’s jaw worked. He was their quality control technician, inspecting the parts before they were either shipped or put into inventory. Matt, she knew, had taken over the manufacturing of the transducers, which, until recently, had been outsourced.
    “It is not my job to fix his mistakes.”
    “I didn’t make a mistake,” Matt jumped in. “We just had so many to get out today that I asked Fred”—their shipping and receiving clerk—“to put the part numbers on for me.”
    “So you’re blaming Fred?” Steve got up in his face again.
    Matt wasn’t backing off like a sensible kid. “No, I—”
    “I said stop.” Rachel got right between them, pushing them apart with two hands like she was pressing weights. “Or I