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Noah mirrored her body language by crossing his arms and scowling. "It's rude to call me a dog." He shook his head. Nice comeback, Raines. What are you, twelve? He glared at Claire, then looked around the war room. Half the team was ignoring them, while Teresa, Jenny, and Larry grinned like they were anticipating the next volley at a tennis match. The only thing missing was the popcorn.
Being sequestered in the same conference room with Claire had seriously hampered his intention of maintaining a professional distance. He'd tried to sit as far away as possible, but the need to collaborate eventually led to Rick asking him to move closer and stop talking over everyone else. Which meant he now spent hours a day within arm's reach of the one person he was trying very hard not to notice. And failing. Spectacularly.
He scrubbed his face and started again. "Look, originally, we thought we could use the cost center field for each physical location, but it's too small. We have too many regions, areas, and locations worldwide to fit into the allotted four characters. Therefore, we've been working on other pieces of the project until we could figure out how to best handle the site code problem."
Before Claire could say anything, he held up his hands. "And I know you developers can pull this information with your code magic, but it would be better if the users could access it without having to call someone to write a special report. That's the key to pulling it all together. And once we have that special magic formula, we'll get a clear picture of how to make these transfer entries. It's literally the last piece we need to figure out to get going. Your fresh eyes should help."
He held his breath, waiting to see if Claire would accept his explanation or continue to be annoyed with him.
"Okay. Thank you for explaining. That helps."
He breathed out. For such a petite person, she had a stubborn streak a mile wide. But if he were being honest, he couldn't complain. Occasionally, she annoyed him with her need for specifics, but once she understood the particular detail she was after, she grasped the bigger issue.
Claire brushed her hair back, and the smell of her shampoo washed over him. He stiffened in his seat, then decided the to do list on the main whiteboard needed updating. Marking "Explain site codes to CB" off the list gave him an excuse to move. He stretched to grab the dry erase marker lying on the table. His hand collided with Claire's as she reached for her water. It was almost like an electric shock, the zing that ran up his hand at the contact. He jerked back reflexively. He'd almost forgotten the energy between them. Claire stared wide-eyed at him and he coughed an "excuse me" out before standing up and leaving the room. He'd update the board later.
"Noah! Hey, wait up. I have something to show you." Yesterday after putting aside his odd reaction and abrupt departure, she'd done some homework and found a potential solution. She'd checked his calendar, and after seeing he was free, had rushed to catch him before his next meeting. Spotting his wide shoulders at the end of the hall, she'd panicked and shouted to catch his attention.
Noah turned to wait, and she jogged down the hall, balancing her laptop, the locations list, and the bulky data dictionary manual in her hands. "I might have found the answer for the site problem." The manual slipped from her fingers and she tried to catch it without dropping her laptop. "Whoa! Oh, shoot!"
Noah stepped forward and snatched the manual midair before it hit the ground. His other hand caught her elbow, steadying Claire and stopping a headfirst plunge to the floor.
She blinked up at him, momentarily distracted by the woody, leathery scent invading her senses. He said nothing, but raised his eyebrows.
"Th-thanks," she said. "I thought I was about to drop everything." The warmth of his hand holding her arm imbued her body, spreading outward. He maintained his grip as though she were still in danger of falling.
She tried to pull her arm away, and his gaze drifted down to where he held her. He promptly let go and stepped back. The warm, cozy feeling vanished and Claire shivered at the cold seeping in where his hand used to be. She gulped and forced herself to focus.
"Do you have a minute? I think I've figured it out, but need to bounce it off you since you're the expert." When his eyes narrowed, she added, "S-seriously. You'll know quickly if I'm headed down a wrong path, and we can move on."
"All right. My office?" He turned and walked away, carrying her manual. She shifted her weight from one foot to the other before shaking her head and following him back to his office. Focus, girl. She had expected him to brush her off again, but knew this problem with the locations—sites, she reminded herself—weighed on him. That must be why he was giving her his time instead of avoiding her as usual. She shoved the distracting thought aside to be dissected later.
When they entered his office, Noah pulled out a chair for Claire at the small table shoved against the far wall, then sat next to her. Her shoulders tensed at his closeness, and she forced herself not to lean away. Get a grip, Claire. He's just looking at your screen.
"I've got twenty minutes before my next meeting, so show me what you're on about." Noah's back-to-business attitude helped her shake off the awkwardness from the hallway and direct her attention to the reason she tracked him down.
Claire spread out the list of sites from the project documentation and opened her laptop. Following Noah's explanation of the problem yesterday, she'd spent hours searching the database for a way to tag each site as unique. She'd stumbled across the answer after midnight last night. And while a quick scan of the database showed it wasn't being used, she'd followed up this morning with her newest work buddy to verify her assumptions.
"MADS has a feature we're not using. I checked with Randall in accounting and he confirmed they didn't use the MADS reporting module because they use a separate financial reporting system. Anyway, we can use the report codes from this module to tag the regions, areas, etcetera, all the way down to sites."
She navigated to the application window on her screen and showed him the fields. "Look, here's how they work. You can tie these codes to an entity, a general ledger account, a subaccount, or a cost center. They work like tags on other applications so you can have one report code tied to a specific cost center within a specific plant within a specific company and no overlap or confusion."
Noah leaned in and followed her cursor on the screen as she clicked through the fields. She could see him absorbing the implications.
"We'd have to build reports using this module?" he asked.
"No, that's the beauty of it. We set up the codes here and get those relationships into the system, then we can create whatever reports we want externally." She hesitated before explaining further. "I mean, we could use this module, but we don't have to because we can access the data programmatically. Follow?"
She opened the data dictionary to the page she'd marked earlier. "Here are the tables where this data sits in the database. And—here's the awesome part—you can link one report code to another report code. That means you can roll up sites into areas and roll up areas into regions. We can use existing built-in logic to create our hierarchy. We don't have to code anything new. All we have to do is configure it!"
Claire chewed her thumbnail and tapped her foot, her nerves shooting between excitement and dread as Noah studied the book and her screen further. Her breath hitched when he reached across her to tap her keyboard and move through more fields. She forced herself to sit still as Noah leaned into her personal space. While her gut reaction was to lurch away, the heat from his body made her want to lean in. She gulped.
He froze, and his eyes shifted to her. "You okay?" He pulled his hand back and moved away from her.
She met his gaze. "Yeah, I'm just excited." Oh, geez, that sounded bad. "You know, about finding this." She'd thought his eyes were brown, but up close you could see flakes of green and gold in them. She lost herself in his gaze as he watched her. An errant curl fell across her cheek. His hand lifted, and she held her breath, waiting for him to touch her hair.
"You ready?" Rick's voice startled them both as he walked into the room. Noah's hand dropped. Her heart thumped so loudly she was sure the two men could hear it.
Noah's chair screeched as he pushed back and stood. Claire fumbled at gathering her things.
