28: Fascination

“Mr. Black­wick, sir?”

John start­ed at the sound of Be­lin­da Yaris’ voice be­hind him. He had been so con­sumed with the ideas of how he would ap­proach Brig­it that he had not heard the new girl’s en­trance in­to his of­fice. Look­ing over his shoul­der, John found her stand­ing just in­side the door with the large black ledger she had been so dili­gent­ly record­ing in held against her chest. Her eyes, so very bright blue against the pale skin and raven hair, were trained on him in a wary stare. It seemed the young wom­an al­ways looked at him this way. John couldn’t tell whether it was a look of fear or deep rev­er­ence – or both.

“Miss Yaris,” John cleared his throat and tried to sound as though he were pleas­ant­ly sur­prised to see her. “What can I as­sist you with?”

“I’ve fin­ished with this book,” Be­lin­da de­clared. “I was won­der­ing where I would find a new one.”

“Oh, yes, of course. Over to your right there, Miss Yaris, are the blanks. Com­plet­ed ledgers are stored here on this wall,” John in­struct­ed with a nod of his head to­ward the wall of book­shelves be­hind him.

He stepped aside as Be­lin­da dili­gent­ly marched to the book­shelf and stored the com­plet­ed tome where he had in­di­cat­ed be­fore turn­ing and march­ing back across the room to re­trieve a fresh one. There was some­thing about her that fas­ci­nat­ed John when he had a mo­ment to con­tem­plate the new re­cruit. Yet, as soon as he had a thought to spare for Be­lin­da Yaris, a dif­fer­ent and more press­ing thought would quick­ly fol­low – push­ing any fur­ther mus­ings of Be­lin­da Yaris from his mind.

“Mr. Black­wick?”

John’s at­ten­tion was re­turned to the young wom­an once more.

“Yes?”

“Is there an of­fi­cial pol­icy book for the firm? I mean, you know, some­thing that lays all the rules out?” she asked timid­ly.

“Not re­al­ly. Why do you ask?”

“Oh, no rea­son, I guess,” came the re­ply; but John sus­pect­ed there ac­tu­al­ly was a rea­son be­hind the in­quiry. “I was just won­der­ing if there were rules re­gard­ing work­place re­la­tion­ships.”

John stud­ied her face for a sec­ond as he thought of how to re­spond. She was young enough to be the type to find in­fat­ua­tion with the mys­te­ri­ous, bad boy type. Al­though she had had lim­it­ed in­ter­ac­tion, John quick­ly came to the con­clu­sion that Be­lin­da Yaris may have de­vel­oped a slight crush on Sea­mus Flan­nery. As John con­tin­ued to pon­der the right re­sponse, he no­ticed the newest mem­ber of the firm be­gin­ning to grow ner­vous with the wait.

“Well,” John fi­nal­ly be­gan, “I don’t know that there’s ev­er been a cir­cum­stance that war­rant­ed the cre­ation of a pol­icy re­gard­ing that,” he mused. “How­ev­er, I would have to strong­ly sug­gest that, should it oc­cur, that both par­ties in­volved main­tain their pri­or­ities re­gard­ing the firm and their du­ties as as­signed. I should al­so hope, Miss Yaris, that you will use your bet­ter judg­ment if an op­por­tu­ni­ty should present it­self.”

Be­lin­da on­ly nod­ded in re­sponse be­fore ex­it­ing his of­fice. He hoped she un­der­stood his warn­ing with­out his hav­ing to be over­ly blunt. He re­mem­bered Brig­it’s pre­dic­tion that Sea­mus Flan­nery would one day be­come a prob­lem and even though he tried hard not to dwell on it, John knew even­tu­al­ly her pre­dic­tion would come true. The re­cent chain of events re­vealed the be­gin­nings of that par­tic­ular wor­ry. Con­sid­er­ing the fas­ci­na­tion Be­lin­da had re­vealed with­out know­ing it, John sud­den­ly hoped Sea­mus wouldn’t drag the young wom­an in­to the dra­ma as well. She seemed like a good girl with a good heart. John ab­horred the idea of hav­ing to mete out a dire pun­ish­ment on her be­cause of one bad choice.

Be­lin­da re­turned to her desk and sighed. John had an­swered her ques­tion some­what vague­ly, but she had caught the warn­ing at the end of it. She had the sense that John Black­wick sus­pect­ed the ob­ject of her fas­ci­na­tion, but Be­lin­da was sure he was mis­judg­ing Sea­mus Flan­nery. The Irish­man seemed sweet to­ward her dur­ing their few con­ver­sa­tions, al­most gen­tle, even though he pre­tend­ed to be so very dan­ger­ous.

Be­lin­da opened the fresh ledger and reached for the files Sea­mus had turned in­to her that morn­ing. His quick re­cov­ery from his sick­ness had caused John to set Sea­mus back to work at reap­ing souls al­though they were rel­ative­ly easy ones com­pared to what the Irish Reaper said he was used to. He had lament­ed his bore­dom with the as­sign­ments dur­ing his brief vis­it to her of­fice. Be­lin­da had mere­ly lis­tened, hop­ing he would no­tice that he had her full at­ten­tion.

As she be­gan to record the per­ti­nent in­for­ma­tion, Be­lin­da de­cid­ed they were wrong about the rugged, flame haired Irish­man. They didn’t see what she saw in him. They were wrong about Sea­mus Flan­nery and that was all there was to it.