If there was one thing Sally Myers hated, it was waiting to use the office restroom.

She had so many things to do, so much stuff to finish. Not a minute should be wasted. And yet here she was, standing impatiently in front of the restroom as the precious minutes ticked away.

It was simply an abomination, Sally thought, that a company of more than twenty employees had only two restroom cubicles, and they were coed. If the company installed, say, maybe two more toilets, she was sure she could probably churn out one more new book each month.

Yes, Sally worked like a maniac, and she knew it.

However, Mrs. Elderberry plainly wouldn't hear of building two other toilets. She said it was because of feng sui. Personally, Sally thought Mrs. Elderberry just wanted to piss her off. She certainly seemed to be the only one in the office who was annoyed by the restroom problem; the others were way to happy to have an excuse to enjoy some little break time.

Case in point was Vienna, a fellow editor, who was using her waiting time quite well by calmly playing Candy Crush (Jelly edition) on her iPhone. Sally huffed. She couldn't understand why her colleagues were so obsessed with their phones. She would much rather use her time to do something more lucrative—such as yoga or stuff like that. Anything would be better than touching her phone.

Which was why she groaned very loudly when John, one of the editors, showed up holding her ringing phone and looking quite awkward.

"Couldn't this wait until I get back? It's not like I'll take three hours to get out of the toilet," Sally demanded.

"I did want to wait, but the same person kept calling again and again, so we figured it must be urgent," John explained, looking nondescript. John was a very nondescript person. Even his name, John Smith, was nondescript. It took Mrs. Elderberry three years to actually remember to call him John and not Joe. Sally was, of course, better at remembering names than Mrs. Elderberry as she was a very meticulous person, but sometimes even she almost found herself having trouble remembering John's face.

"Okay, thanks, John," she said, and sighed as she picked up the phone. "Sally Myers. What can I do for you?"

"It's Nina!" chirped the one and only Nina Rivera.

Sally sighed again. All she wanted to do was focus on her work, forget about the weekend cruise trip, and forget about Nina Rivera. Apparently this was not an option.

"Okay, what do you want, Nina?" Sally asked, with all the patience she could muster.

"I want you to go on a date with my manager!" Nina exclaimed happily.

Sally nearly smacked her forehead against the wall. "Nina, I've got work to do tonight. I won't be getting off work until at least nine. And I'm not interested in dating."

"Why, already seeing someone?"

"Not really," Sally muttered, mentally slapping herself for somehow spilling the fact that she had been single for years to one of the country's most famous celebrities.

"Then come on! Gage would be perfect for you. Don't be so uptight," Nina encouraged.

Sally was about to give Nina a piece of her mind and lecture her on how it wasn't right to call people uptight, even when you were a renowned celebrity, but Vienna interrupted from aside.

"Hey, she's right. You're too uptight. Just say yes and I'll cover your work tonight."

Sally opened her mouth to protest. She would never let Vienna touch her work—she and Vienna wrote like polar opposites. Vienna loved flowery prose, while Sally prefered things to be sensible and straightforward. But before she could complain, emerging from a restroom cubicle was Mr. Farris.

"I agree, just say yes," Mr. Farris said, and winked. From the smell it was anyone's guess what Mr. Farris had been doing in the toilet.

With Mr. Farris squinting at her with his beady eyes and Vienna staring (miraculously, she was still able to play Candy Crush Jelly at the same time), Sally finally gave in to peer pressure.

"Fine, I'll go."

"Perfect! Gage will pick you up at seven," Nina twittered excitedly and hung up.

Now it was Sally's turn to glare at the other two. "Who said you guys could listen in on my phone calls anyway?"

"Not our fault," Mr. Farris raised a hand and explained, "you have that thing on broadcast."

Sally looked down at her phone. She indeed had it on broadcast. She felt like slamming her face into the restroom door.

"Anyway, I think it's an awesome opportunity to get more information," Vienna put in, eyes never leaving her own phone screen. "The manager guy is friends with the owner of the ship, right? Surely he would be able to give you some information about him or her. Maybe we'll be able to figure out something from there. Remember, this will be for the good of our company."

Sally hated to admit it, but Vienna was right; it was a good opportunity to get information.

She only wished it didn't have to involve her going on a date.

"I'll be giving you a makeover," Vienna declared, "after I'm finished you won't even recognize yourself!"

Sally wondered what she had gotten herself into.

–

After Vienna had finished, Sally indeed could not recognize herself. She looked, frankly, terrible.

"My hair looks like I got stricken by lightning," she wailed.

"It's the latest fashion!" Vienna gushed proudly.

"And my eyes... they look like a panda's."

"That's what makes them stand out!" Vienna explained, satisfied with her handiwork.

Sally had to remind herself that she was on a mission to gain info, not to actually go on a date. But even with this comforting reminder, she still found it very hard to concentrate on her work for the rest of the afternoon. Her heavy fake eyelashes, courtesy of Vienna, weren't helping in the least. Her eyes kept closing spontaneously.

At seven o'clock sharp, she took the elevator down to meet Gage, Nina's manager. Vienna had suggested she be fashionably late, preferrably for at least half an hour, but Sally's inner discipline would not allow her to be late for even more than five minutes.

She studied herself in the elevator mirror. She looked completely miserable. She had to chant "for the company, for the company" to remind herself what this was about, but her spirits only lifted slightly.

Then her spirits lifted dramatically when she stepped out of the elevator and was greeted by the most handsome human being she had ever set eyes on. Sally was practical and had her feet firmly on the ground, but this did not mean that she didn't appreciate eye candy.

Gage was every bit the definition of eye candy. His sleekly tailored suit looked great too; it was hand-picked by Nina.

And when he spoke, Sally felt like she was going to melt onto the ground into a puddle of disgusting goo. His voice had a deep, sensual quality that was indescribably moving. He could say "man, I had explosive diarrhea" and women would probably swoon anyway.

Still, Sally was grateful that Gage did not open the conversation with "man, I had explosive diarrhea". Instead, he told her that they were going to an Italian restaurant, and hoped that she liked Italian.

Sally, of course, said she liked Italian, and they went off hand in hand.

–

Behind the two, a group in black silently followed.

No, they weren't kidnappers. They weren't psycho stalkers either.

They were Leonie and Vienna and Tommy, as well as Doug, who got dragged along unwillingly. The last member of their lunch clique, Chekov, was not allowed to come because with his giant bulk he would be spotted too easily. They wanted to make this a top secret operation, and thus even smeared ink over their faces.

In a publishing company, it was surprisingly easy to obtain ink.

"Are you sure we should be stalking them?" Doug whispered. He was new to the job, new to the publishing industry, and also quite new to stalking.

"We're not stalking, Doug," Leonie corrected him, "we're looking out for our colleague. A guy like that can get any girl he wants. Why would he want to date a—no offense to Sally—normal person? I say he has ulterior motives."

"That's why we should be keeping Sally safe," Vienna explained, brandishing her weapon of choice (a banana). After sending Sally off, it had struck Vienna that what they were doing might not be as straightforward as it seemed, and she had therefore alerted the others to come on a stalking mission with her.

"But how do we keep Sally safe if we keep at a distance? We don't even know what the guy might be saying to her," Doug argued.

"I bugged her phone," Tommy said calmly, handing Doug an ear bud. "This is great; the guy sounds really smitten. He's on the verge of proposing, I think."

Doug stifled a laugh at the thought of Sally's mortified face when being proposed to and took the ear bud.

Stalking, he thought, while wrong, could be kind of fun.