Disclaimer: I own nothing.
A/N: Well , this fic garnered more attention than I thought it was going to! Thanks for the reviews. Also, tid-bit of fact: For those of you who loved Luke in the last chapter, his personality and looks were based on my baby brother, Jason (who turns two in August).
"You Zoey Brookes?" a gruff-looking man in a brown jumpsuit knocked on her office door with his clipboard. He was overweight and menacing looking, working a piece of chewing gum around his jaw and looking impatient.
"Yes," Zoey looked up from the document she was proof-reading and gave the man a confused look. "Can I help you?"
"Delivery for you," he motioned behind him to a younger man, obviously the new guy from the look of discontent on his face, who carried in a bouquet of roses. He gave her a shy smile as he placed them on her desk, and backed away quickly, coming to stand behind the man with the clipboard. "Sign here." He walked over to hand her the clipboard, which she signed with the blue highlighter she'd been proof-reading with. The man said nothing, but gave her an exasperated look.
"Come on, Sparky, we've got other deliveries to make," he said, cuffing the younger on the back of the neck and directing him out the door by the scruff of his jumpsuit. How that man ever got a job in human relations is beyond me, Zoey thought, shaking her head.
"So….," the unmistakable excited voice of her co-worker, Susan, reached her ears as she snuck into her office and took up residence in the chair in front of her desk. "Who's it from?"
"Oh, you know…those hoards of secret admirers that send me flowers," Zoey laughed, taking the small envelope off the bouquet and opening it.
"So…Chase?"
"Yes," she said, reading the note.
"That man is head over heels for you," Susan said, squealing with excitement. Obviously, she'd been dabbling in the Harlequins again. She went through spells of reading five or six a week, and then spells of cursing their titles to oblivion. This was clearly a reading week. "What's the note say?"
"Umm…I'm not sure," Zoey said, a confused look on her face. There were two slips of paper, one in a language she didn't recognize, and the other from Chase. She put down the one that was foreign and picked up the one from her boyfriend. Susan went to stand behind her and read the note over her shoulder. When you figure out what the other note says, come find me. I get off work at six. Love you, Chase.
"Ooh, mysterious," Susan said, picking up the other card and glancing at it. "I never pegged Chase for the secretive one."
"He's not, usually," Zoey said, taking back the card from her co-worker and puzzling over it for a moment. "Well, I mean…not anymore. He hid his crush on me for four years, but after that, he wasn't."
"I wonder what it says."
"No idea. I'll look it u—"
"Brookes! Stone!" a head of brown hair, perfectly styled and held together with so much hair spray it would make an environmentalist die of a heart attack appeared suddenly in the doorframe. "Do I pay you to stand around and gossip?"
"Uh…no?" Susan offered helpfully towards Alice, the brunette, while looking helplessly at Zoey. In reality, it wasn't even who paid them. Rather, it was her brother, who owned the company, who managed the payroll.
"Damn straight. Now get back to work, before I fire both of you," a satisfied smirk spread over her face, and a clicking of high heels on linoleum could be heard as she turned and walked down the hall.
"Can she do that?" Susan asked Zoey, looking fearfully toward the door.
"Probably not," Zoey said, moving the bouquet to the small table behind her facing the window. "But I'm not going to stick around to find out."
"Oh, and Ms. Brookes," Alice called. "I'll need that report on my desk by the end of the day."
"Oh, come on," Zoey swore under her breath and glared at the open door. The report had just been put on her desk an hour ago, and was the largest she'd received all year. On average, a report could be done in two to three days, and then turned in. And that was with reports half the size of this one. "Is she trying to kill me?"
"Don't worry, " Susan patted her arm consolingly. "If you die, I promise to avenge your death within an inch of my life. Or my job."
"What's the difference?"
"Good point. With the way Alice runs the show, this job becomes your life, huh?"
"Not if I can help it." Zoey looked at her watch. "I am out of here in two hours, and then Alice holds no sway over what I do."
"Going to meet with Mr. Wonderful after work, hmmm?" Susan teased. The entire floor thought it their prerogative to heckle their friend as much as possible, considering the amount of attention her boyfriend put into making sure she was thoroughly embarrassed at work with endless bouquets of flowers, surprise visits, and notes.
"Possibly. I need to figure out what this note says first."
"Actually, Ms. Brookes, you need to get that report done first." Alice's voice came again.
"How does she do that?!" Susan whispered.
"No idea," Zoey picked up the highlighter again and bent over the stack of papers on her desk.
"Back to work, Ms. Stone!" Alice's voice sounded irritated, and Susan hopped off her perch on Zoey's desk and skittered out the door as if someone had given her a swift kick.
"Bitch," Zoey heard Susan mutter as she closed the door behind her. Zoey smiled and shook her head, before flipping to the next page and skimming through.
An hour later, her mind was a fog of paragraphs and bad grammar. She rubbed her temples, willing the migraine that was forming in the front of her head to go away. Unfortunately, she'd just run out of the aspirin she kept in her front desk drawer for emergencies. Not that it would have helped anyway. When she ran out last week, a check on the expiration date told her that that last time she would have been able to use it for any good it would do was back in high school. No wonder it didn't seem to be helping. She put her head down on her desk and welcomed the darkness that her enfolded arms provided. She had ten more pages to go. She'd done a shoddy job on the rest of the document, but if she spent a good amount of time on it, she'd never get it done on time. From the urgency in Alice's voice, and the way she'd been bugging her all afternoon to finish, Zoey could tell her job was on the line. And while she didn't want to get Alice fired, the prospect was looking really good right now.
Zoey reluctantly left the sanctuary of darkness as the familiar tinny sound of her ring tone reached her ears. Groaning, she grabbed the offending phone from the edge of her desk and flipped it open.
"Hello?"
"So, have you figured out the message yet?" Lola's voice reached her ears, excitedly.
"No, I haven't had the time. Alice is trying to kill me again."
"Oh, darn."
"Wait a minute; I just got the note an hour ago. How did you know about it?"
"Susan called me. She wanted me to bug you to solve it."
"And she couldn't do that herself because…?"
"Your boss apparently scares the crap out of her, and she wants to keep her job."
"Oh."
"Anyway, figure it out! Me, Susan, and Quinn are all dying to know what it says!"
"Figures."
"What figures?"
"You'd tell Quinn." Zoey laughed.
"Well, I couldn't very well keep it from her. Besides, she happened to be standing next to me when Susan called me."
"Ah, I see. Well, I should go. I have to finish proof-reading this report before Alice has my head."
"Okay. Figure it out!"
"Yes, ma'am."
"You'd better!"
"I will!"
"Bye!"
"Bye!"
"I hate her, I hate her, I hate her." Zoey chanted her mantra under her breath as she made her way to Alice's office two and a half hours later. She was supposed to have been able to leave an hour and a half ago, and yet here she was.
"Ah, there you are, Zoey," Alice smiled a sickly-sweet smile that made Zoey's insides churn with disgust. "That report all ready to go?"
"Here," Zoey took the accursed document out from under her arm and all but threw it onto Alice's desk. "All proof-read and corrected."
"Excellent," Alice pulled it toward her and flipped through it excitedly.
"I'm going to head out," Zoey said, tiredly. "If you want anything more done, it will have to wait until tomorrow."
"No, no, you can go," Alice waved her hand at her dismissively. "You've done good work today."
"Thank you." Zoey said, biting the inside of her mouth to keep from cursing her boss to places unknown and undesirable. She turned to walk out, yawning. "Goodnight."
"Goodnight," she heard behind her. "Oh, and Zoey?"
"Yes?" Zoey turned around reluctantly. She really just wanted to get home, change into some comfortable clothes, and figure out what the note said to the sound of cheesy night time sitcoms.
"I'd hold onto the man of yours if I were you," Alice smirked. "He's a keeper."
"I'll keep that in mind," Zoey said. "Goodnight."
"Goodnight."
Zoey's empty apartment had never seemed more inviting, despite it being sweltering, due to the fact that she had shut off the air conditioner before going to work that morning. Muttering a few choice words at the temperature, she quickly flipped the on switch on the air conditioner, and headed towards her bedroom. She quickly stripped out of her uncomfortable work clothes, instead choosing a pair of sweatpants and an old P.C.A. shirt. It may be sweltering, but in a few minutes, her apartment would be about twenty degrees cooler. As she threw her skirt in the hamper, the note from that afternoon fluttered to the floor.
"Alright," she said, picking it up off the floor. "Let's figure out what you say." She flopped heavily down onto her bed and pulled her laptop onto her lap. She frowned at the small piece of paper while the computer started up. She couldn't even recognize what language it was in, much less what it said. Bean mo chroi, ta tu go halainn, An bpósfaidh tú me? Okay, Google was definitely a first stop.
Unfortunately, Google was not a helpful tool. A search of the phrase came up with random web pages about bean farmers and other useless information. She contemplated calling up Quinn for help, but decided against it, knowing Quinn would make her figure it out herself. Sighing, she retired to her keyboard.
"Alright, let's try typing in individual words," she muttered, erasing her original search and entering in a new one. Knowing "bean" would turn up only useless sites, she went to the first word that might possibly yield information. "chroi". Typing it into the search engine, she was delighted to find a multitude of pages that had nothing to do with farming.
"Chroi: an Irish-Gaelic term of endearment that is usually translated as 'darling' or 'my darling,'" Zoey read from the webpage she had clicked. Well, at least she'd narrowed down the language. And from what she knew of Gaelic, it was a dying language, and had many, many different syntaxes. Which meant she wasn't going to be very successful in finding information. She was in for a long night. But, she already had the first part cracked. And she wasn't about to give up now.
"Okay, how about 'halainn'." she typed eagerly, and waited for it to receive the information. "Yes!" A search on that one word had brought up the entire phrase in the middle, and it meant "you are beautiful". The compliment registered vaguely as she moved on to the last part of the message. As she was ready to type in another word, her phone rang. She growled in frustration.
"Hello?"
"Figured it out yet?"
"Wow, de-ja-vu."
"Seriously, Zoey," Lola said.
"Almost."
"Well, what's it say?"
"I've got 'my darling, you are so beautiful'."
"Aw! Wait, he couldn't say that English?"
"Well, I'm not done yet,"
"Well, research, girl!"
"What do you think I'm doing?!"
"Sorry."
"Anyway, I think it's more important than that." Zoey typed "bposfaidh" into the search engine and carefully balanced the phone between her cheek and shoulder. She clicked on a site the looked promising and took hold of the phone again, scrolling down the screen with her touchpad.
"What makes you say that?"
"Well, he said for me to come find him when I figure ou—Oh, my God," Zoey dropped the phone into her lap.
"What? What does it say?!" Lola's voice was distant from the other end of the phone. "Zoey?"
"Oh, my God," Zoey said again, looking at the screen, and then back to the note to make sure the words were exactly the same. Her search on that one word had once again brought up the entire phrase, this one Will you marry me?
"Zoey?" Zoey suddenly jolted back into reality, and she hastily picked up the phone again.
"Lola? Yeah, I'm going to have to call you back,"
"What? Why? Zoey, what does the note say?!"
"I gotta go," with that, Zoey hung up the phone. She sat for another moment in complete shock, before nearly throwing the laptop off her lap and hopping off her bed. She groped under her bed for her sneakers. Finding them beneath an old shirt, she tugged them on and tied them quickly. Adrenaline pounded in her ears as she ran out the door, slamming it loudly behind her.
"Oh, my God," she kept muttering to herself as she ran down the street. She realized as she reached the next street that she'd forgotten her car keys (luckily she hadn't locked her apartment…her house keys were on there, too), and was forced to walk to Chase's. He didn't live very far from where she was, and she didn't trust herself to drive right now anyway. She'd probably crash into a telephone pole in her haste. As it was, her brisk walk had suddenly turned into a jog, and her jog was quickly turning into a full out sprint. In less than five minutes, she reached his house. The lights were on, and the laugh reel from some sitcom could be heard through an open window. She stopped to catch her breath in front of the door, before knocking insistently.
"Oh, hey, Zo—" she cut him off by leaping into his arms and giving him a deep kiss. He seemed shocked at first, but quickly recovered and hugged her tight. After several minutes, they separated, short of breath.
"I take it you figured out what the note said?" he smiled.
"Yes!" she said, kissing him again.
"Yes you translated it, or yes you accept?"
"Both!" she said excitedly, almost coming apart at the seams as he held her. She couldn't believe this was actually happening.
"I was hoping you'd say that," Chase smiled sheepishly, taking a box out of his pocket and flipping it open to reveal a stunning diamond ring. He kissed her tenderly as he took her hand in his and slipped it on. And in that moment, despite wearing grubby sweats, and being dead tired, she felt like the most beautiful woman in the world.