It Must Be Love. Nicki Night

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       Chapter 6

      Sterling drove to work with Jewel occupying his mind just like he had for the past few mornings. He was glad he listened to Stephan and decided to go the reunion. Seeing Jewel made it worthwhile. Sterling had also had a few inquiries about his technology service offerings since the reunion. Two meetings had already been set up as a result. His only regret was not taking Jewel’s card. He’d left his with her, but she hadn’t called. Sterling knew how women felt about being the first to call, but assumed Jewel was different. From what he remembered, she was a go-getter and Sterling couldn’t imagine her losing that zeal. He wasn’t concerned. Somehow, he’d find a way to get in front of Jewel. He had to.

      Sterling couldn’t pinpoint it specifically, but there was something about seeing Jewel that piqued his interest in several ways and he was determined to satisfy his curiosities about her. One night out for dinner would do it. He’d be able to determine if his interest in her was from a lingering childhood crush, or something genuinely fresh and new.

      “Mr. Bishop!” The panic in his secretary Ann’s voice snatched him from his thoughts of Jewel. She stood, alarming him with the speed in which she moved. “We have a situation.”

      “Good morning, Ann. Please continue,” Sterling urged as he moved past her into his office.

      “My apologies, sir. Good morning. I tried to call you and Mr. Stephan, but neither of you answered. There’s a problem at our east end server farm.”

      Sterling pulled his phone from his belt and found that he had missed several calls, as well as text and email notifications. He wondered why he hadn’t heard them. “How long ago did this happen?” His jaw clenched when he realized he still had his phone on silent from the board meeting the previous night. It was obvious that he had forgotten to turn the sound back on.

      “Only about ten minutes ago. For some reason one of the backup servers seems to be shorting out. It kicks on but won’t stay on.”

      Sterling rubbed the back of his neck. “Thank you, Ann. Let me get Stephan on the phone.”

      The first ring hadn’t completed before his brother picked up the phone. “I know. I just finished speaking to Phil at the server farm. There was some kind of major outage in the area that was caused by a fire. They’re working on getting the backups running smoothly. It keeps kicking off.”

      Sterling washed his hands down his face. “Steph—”

      “I know.” Stephan’s huff was audible. “I just pulled up. I’ll be inside in a sec.”

      Within the next few minutes every employee on deck had hands in the mix trying to get the situation rectified. Stephan kept in touch with their staff managing the server farm. Sterling was in touch with the utility company regarding the fire that caused electrical transformers to blow and affect their equipment, which housed scores of data from the customers they served. They guaranteed that services would be back up within hours.

      At the server farm, maintenance staff worked hard to keep the backup servers running to avoid any major catastrophes.

      Stephan walked to Sterling’s office and paced. “This is all over the news.”

      “I know.” Sterling pointed at his computer where he was watching the latest report and turned up the volume. Not one, but two major transformers had blown, causing electrical fires to light up electric lines in the area. Homes, businesses and schools in the surrounding area were all out of service. The utility company and local public service authorities were investigating to determine the cause of the problem. Stephan stopped pacing long enough to hear a few moments of the report. Sterling looked at his watch.

      An hour had passed СКАЧАТЬ