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She nearly bumped into Nora as she stepped out into the hallway. “Oops.”
“You need to watch where you’re going.”
“Yep. Sorry about that.” Aria stepped around her and made her way back to the computer at her desk.
As she sat down, she frowned when she glanced at the monitor. The order she’d printed off had disappeared from the screen. She brought up the website again and clicked on the basket, her heart sinking when she saw it was empty. Leaving it the way she had, the order shouldn’t have disappeared like that. Was it a deliberate action or a glitch in the system?
Aria glanced down the hallway. Had Nora done something? It seemed unlikely. So far, the woman had just been all talk and no action. But who else would have done it? Janessa certainly wouldn’t have, and Aria doubted that Gareth would have either. Since she’d been with Jay when the order had disappeared, she knew he hadn’t touched her computer.
Rather than dwell too much on the irritation of the moment, she got to work remaking the order.
“Still working?”
She looked up to see that Gareth stood next to the desk, now without his white coat on. “Just finishing up an order for supplies.”
He came and sat down on the other chair at the reception desk. “Did Jay give you any hassles?”
“Nope. He signed off on it and everything,” she said, pointing to the scribbled signature on the paper.
Gareth leaned back in the chair and stretched his legs out, crossing them at the ankle. Aria turned her attention back to the screen where she was trying to input the items again, though she was acutely aware of Gareth’s nearness.
“Didn’t you already input the order?” Gareth asked.
She glanced at him, then back to the monitor. “I did, and then I printed it off to take to Jay. Something must have happened since when I came back, the order form was blank.”
“Like a glitch or something?”
She nodded. “Most likely. I don’t know why else it would have disappeared. So now I’m having to input it all again.”
When Gareth didn’t reply, Aria looked over at him. He had a frown on his face as he stared in the direction of the hallway. She wondered if he might suspect what she did.
“I’ve never heard anyone complain about issues with ordering supplies, but maybe Jay knows more.”
Aria shrugged as she typed in the amount for tongue dispensers. “It’s not a big deal. It should only take me a few minutes to get it inputted again. I just won’t leave the order up on the screen next time, in case there’s something that automatically happens when you do that.”
“Ask Janessa if she’s ever had that happen. She was doing the orders before, so she would know.”
“I will,” Aria said, though if Janessa said that nothing like that had happened before, she might also get suspicious. The last thing Aria wanted was more conflict with Nora, and that would inevitably happen if anyone confronted her about it.
For now, she just wanted to get the order done and off her plate. Thankfully, it wasn’t a daily or weekly event, so whatever had happened wouldn’t have the chance to happen again for another couple of weeks. She only had three more rows to input, and she’d be done… for the second time.
“Would you be interested in going out for dinner sometime?”
Aria froze, then turned her chair to face him, heat rising in her cheeks. “Out for dinner? With you? Just you?”
Gareth grinned. “Yes. Yes. And yes.”
Butterflies erupted in Aria’s stomach as she realized that Charli and Janessa had been right. At least, she assumed he was talking about a date. Maybe he was just talking about taking her out so that he could get to know her better as an employee or a friend.
She wasn’t opposed to that. Honestly, she wasn’t opposed to the date idea either, but that was a lot scarier for her. And if word got back to Nora that she’d gone out for dinner with Gareth—whether or not it was a date—she would probably lose her mind and make Aria’s life miserable.
Would Gareth step in to make sure that didn’t happen?
When Gareth said, “You don’t have to let me know right now. And there’s absolutely no pressure for you to go if you don’t want to,” Aria realized that she’d hesitated too long.
“It’s not that I don’t want to,” she told him.
“Are you worried that it might make things awkward here at work?” Gareth asked, his expression turning serious.
