Michael's Love The Office Surprise 1 (An Interracial Romance) *COMPLETE*

A Promotion and a Date

Over the next few months Watts Research won the contract with VanderHolt, Inc. Due to the conflict of interest Greg recused himself from the contract which added more friction between Ashley and Laura.

But more than that, Watts Research did a joint partnership with Applied Research. This brought Tina back into the picture. Tina attempted to smooth over the waters with Laura, and they are at least on speaking terms at the present time.

That joint partnership caused Watts research to grow much faster than anticipated. Laura hired two new workers. A hot shot 20 year old male right out of college and a 19 year old Masters degree student on an internship. They called themselves “Laura’s geek squad.” A tag that Laura recognized irritated Micheal. She guessed that he didn’t like being referred to either as a “geek” nor as “Laura’s”. never really liked, since he was one of Laura’s geek squad. But whenever there was a problem you call in Laura’s nerds and the job gets done.

Laura figured out that Ashley and Micheal moved into the same apartment complex. It worried Laura for she feared that it might affect their relationship, both work and pleasure. Laura would stop by periodically for some extracurricular activity every once in a while. She did notice that Micheal had stopped returning the favor by stopping by her apartment.

Which brings us to Greg and Laura. Greg and Laura were now dating about 1 or 2 nights a week. Laura thought that Greg was getting pretty serious. She was surprised that Greg gave up his interest in the lucrative contract so that he could date her without any issues. But Laura still was not “all in” as she struggled with her desires for Micheal.

It was a Tuesday morning conference meeting and Dr. Stevens called in the whole crew for a big pow-wow. The conference room had Carol, Laura, Micheal, Ashley, the rest of the Geek Squad, as well as the 2 people who were in the office from VanderHolt and 4 people from Applied Research, including Tina Simmons.

Dr. Stevens began speaking, “It has been a long time since we brought everybody in here. I wanted to announce that the company is expanding much faster than I anticipated. And we need to expand, and expand fast. The first thing I want to announce is that effective immediately Micheal and Laura are to become directors. Both will report to me. And both will have a staff under them that they will hire in consultation with Ashley. Ashley will continue to report directly to me. The Geek…er…Um I mean Laura’s staff will continue to report to her.”

Micheal smiled from ear to ear.

“Let’s give both Laura and Micheal a hand for work well done.” Everyone in the room clapped.

“Are there any questions about that.” Dr. Stevens asked.

“Laura already reported directly to you. What is the change?” One of the Geek Squad asked.

“Laura’s title and pay grade will show a big difference.” They laughed, “Really this is a long time coming, she has done such great work that I felt like we needed to acknowledge it.” Dr. Stevens continued.

Micheal asked, “Now I don’t have any staff, how many can we bring in?”

“If you know anybody, let Ashley know. You and Ashley will work very closely in manning up. I need your team to have 2 more people in the next couple of months so it will be the same size as Laura’s squad.” Dr. Stevens said.

Laura attempted to interpret the body language between Laura and Ashley knowing that they will have a lot of long days going through resumes together. She also was worried that the work of her and Micheal will no longer overlap as much as it had in the past.

“OK, if there are no more questions, we will go on to other matters.” Dr. Stevens said. The meeting continued for 30 minutes. Laura couldn’t really think as the realization came to her that it was their close work relationship (hers and Micheal’s) that opened the door for the extracurricular activities that she was presently enjoying.