'Determined to become useful, are you?'
She stared at Theo whitely, her heart pounding.
With a disapproving quirk of his lips, he said, 'Come, I have a job for you, seeing as how you seem bent upon proving your worth.'
She followed him upstairs to his study, which unlike the rest of the house was very modern.
'Have you ever used a word processor?'
She nodded.
'Excellent! Perhaps you could make a dent in my correspondence. It's there, in that wire basket. If you need to ask me any questions, I'll be downstairs.'
There was a fair bit, but not all that much. It was all pretty well straightforward: letters with suggested replies attached. She went to work. The word processing program was of a type she hadn't used before, but was so similar to those she knew that common sense soon smoothed things out. Within two hours she was done. She was about to print out the replies when she noticed how Theo had organized his files.
'What a mess! Nothing's categorized! Nothing's . . . well, I might as well fix it now.'
An hour later and she ran off copies and duplicates of Theo's correspondence. Once this was accomplished she took a look in his filing cabinet. 'Brand-new and completely unused!' she said to herself in annoyance. She made a mental note that should she be required to do such work for him in future, she would make hard-copy of all the files on his hard drive-
'Still at it- what the devil are you up to?'
She retreated from his naked rage, afraid he was going to hit her. 'I . . . you've made no hard copies, so I was-'
'You're going to have to learn to do just what you're told,' he said, his voice menacing. 'That is, if you wish to stay here under this roof. What . . . what have you done to my files?'
Her hands shaking, she showed him. Then, unable to help herself, she burst into tears and fled to her room.
Still angry, he took the mouse and began examining the small handful of boxes she'd replaced his voluminous menu with.
Pamela got undressed and lay on her bed for some time, trying to regain her composure. Why couldn't she do anything right where Theo was concerned? She should have asked before meddling with his business files. He had a perfect right to be angry. He was probably still trying to put things back into his own sense of order, cursing the day his mother had brought this foolish, interfering girl into his home without so much as consulting him. No doubt, in the morning she would find herself on the first plane back to North America.