Free Secrets of the Apple by Paula Hiatt Page A

throat. “But with more established competition across the whole continent and the complicated bureaucracy, we won’t see those kinds of results for a long time, at least not in Brazil.” He paused. “I thought you weren’t a businesswoman.”
    “I can read reports, and if I understand your method, I can be better prepared. And yesterday I started to worry that you weren’t going to get out of here on time.” It gratified Ryoki to see her take his deadline seriously, a sign that she might be a team player.
    She was a right-hander who wore her watch on her right wrist, though she always pulled it off before they started working in earnest, setting it on the desk before opening her laptop. She pressed the power button and immediately began fiddling with the keys “to loosen up the board,” she said. She should have used a company computer and he couldn’t understand why she insisted on using her own with its finicky keyboard, which tended to skip letters, highlight or stick on all caps for no apparent reason. But they’d already had that discussion and she’d remained immoveable on the grounds that she wanted hers close by and didn’t care to drag two. Her argument made no sense, but he stopped forcing the issue once he recognized her to be a technophobe. When the project concluded he intended to give her a fountain pen as a parting shot, or better yet, a quill and a bottle of ink.
    She bumped her watch and it slid to the floor.
    “Eventually you’re going to lose that,” he warned her.
    “I can’t stand the way it rubs on the keyboard. I don’t really like things on my wrists,” she said, bending to pick it up.
    “Not even bracelets?” He had yet to meet a woman who didn’t enjoy a pretty bracelet, especially if it sparkled.
    “Inconvenient,” she said, tapping at her keys.
    Ryoki was about to ask how convenient it was to wear a yard of pearls to the office, but then he remembered he was supposed to be brisk and said nothing. They worked at his desk for the better part of the morning, including a discussion of the specifics of his strategy. She frankly explained her strengths and weaknesses, and together they refined her role. By the end of the day he started to feel, not relief exactly, but the possibility of survival. It was the first ray of hope he’d felt since arriving in San Francisco.
    By the end of the second week, he privately considered Kate a godsend. They worked together with a natural ease and efficiency that, had they known it, echoed the pleasant and profitable working relationship between Hiroshi Tanaka and Brian Porter. She spent so much time working on the other side of his desk that when she finally moved into her hidden cubicle in the corner of his office, he actually saw her less.
    For the first four hours he remembered she was there, despite the high dividers, because she had just clattered her things into her new desk and apparently every paperclip had to be moved at least twice. For the next three hours he was aware of her presence because her red trench coat had swung around the coat rack and caught on the paneling, snagging the corner of his eye like red paint splashed on dark wood. But in the early evening he strode in from the outer office engrossed in the report in his hands and failed to lean to the right as required before dropping into his temperamental chair. Arms and legs flailing, papers sailing in every direction, he swore with the profound length and creativity of a Shakespeare.
    “Are you all right?” she called cheerily.
    He froze.
    “No. Yes, I’m fine, thank you, just getting comfortable.” His voice sounded squeaky and uneven, like a choirboy about to lose the soprano solo.
    “It must be hard to sit on that stick all day.” She spoke so impassively he had actually retrieved all his papers before realizing she was not referring to his chair.
    “Wait, what—”
    There was a small thump and a stack of binders slid off Kate’s desk, a suspiciously