Taming Graeme (Taming the Billionaire) (31 page)

 
“There’s no proposing about it, Mr. O’Rourke. I’m here to
institute
these changes.”

 
“I’m the Department Head. I make the decisions about how this office is run.”

 
“And I’m the efficient dragon lady your
new owners
have sent to Belfast to clean up the mess your old owners allowed to fester.

 
“No, Mr. O’Rourke, I’m afraid that in this matter, the decision to replace your reporting system was made at Head Office, and I’m the unlucky person they sent over to integrate you into the twenty-first century.”

 
“Oh, that’s a very firm tone of voice, for such a beautiful lady. So I’m stuck with these new procedures, whether I like it or not?”

 
“Afraid so. The powers that be have spoken. No need for you to worry about them, though. I’m training Danny to do the paperwork and all the reporting. You’re far too busy trading and supervising your staff to have to deal with the minutia that Head Office Accounting requires.”

 
“Ah, so these changes, they’re just to bring us into line with the new owner’s systems, eh?

 
“That, and get the Trading Department into Compliance, Mr. O’Rourke. This Bank had a Ten Thousand Pound fine last week because of non-compliance with reporting, the
fourth
fine your department has incurred this year. Mr. Browning will not tolerate that. From the look of it, you didn’t deserve this last fine, but the paperwork was so badly submitted, it appeared that the Bank’s short positions exceeding the limits. I’ll sort it out, but it won’t happen again.”

 
“But you’ll get us all sorted out, eh?”

 
“I will. Mr. Taylor, the Head of Trading for the entire Browning Group told me an hour ago he’s coming over Friday for the day. He and I will decide at that point how much of the computer system has to be replaced. I’ve already sent him my suggestions, and I am sure he’s going to agree with me. You don’t have nearly enough capacity to run at the speed you should. You work with PC’s, which is alright, but two of them are on archaic systems with no capacity at all...Roland’s crashes regularly he tells me. I’ll have you all upgraded to touch screens with lots of speed and memory by the end of next week. You’ll all be on a network, and linked to our mainframe. Bad reporting will be a thing of the past.”

 
“You must have some pull, to recommend that and have it implemented.”

 
“I’m very familiar with what the Department needs, Mr. O’Rourke, to integrate the operating systems with Head Office. And very familiar with what we have to do to bring your operation into Compliance. I’ve been through this exercise before.”

 
“And I’m thinking I’d like to get very familiar with you, Olivia Stone. Where are you staying? I’ll pick you up at seven for dinner, shall I?”

 
Olivia looked at him coolly. “I’m being picked up here at five, Mr. O’Rourke. I have other commitments for dinner.”

 
“Tim, I’m Tim. We’re very casual here in Belfast.”

 
“Well, we’re not at Head Office,” she told him, giving him her best impression of Graeme’s “
get lost, minion
” look, picked up her new designer handbag, and walked out of the office.

 
“You didn’t mention where you’re staying,” he called after her, laughing.

 
Olivia ignored him.

 
James was waiting for her, and opened the rear door of the Rolls for her.   Tim O’Rourke and Danny Boyle were not far behind her.

 
“I wonder if she’s part of the Browning family, Danny,” said Tim.

 
“Well, Tim, she got a call on her mobile when we sat down to lunch, and she called the person at the other end Graeme. That might be Graeme Browning, eh? And her voice seemed pretty intimate when she spoke to him, as if she knows him very well. She paid for our lunch with a black American Express Card. I think you have to spend over a hundred thousand a year with them to deserve a black card. Her clothes are massively expensive. I know that jacket must be by some fancy designer. My wife would die for a jacket like that. I think I saw an Armani label on it when she hung it on the back of her chair this afternoon.”

 
“Well, they’ve laid on the Rolls for her, so she must be somebody important.”

 
“Yeah, she isn’t just the junior trader like they told us. Junior traders don’t have the authority to order the computer system to be totally overhauled, or deal with Compliance issues,” agreed Danny.

 
“The way she spoke to Compliance, you’d think she’d done it before. She knew who to ask for, didn’t she?

 
“Junior traders don’t take one look at reporting forms, sniff and say,
“That’s rubbish, that’s gone…”
I wonder who she really is.” Tim’s look was very calculating.

 
“She’s a very nice person, Tim. I had a great lunch with her, and she really knows the job. She’s setting up the reporting system so it’s failsafe, giving me so many checks and balances that I can’t help but do a good job. She’s simplifying the whole procedure. I’ll even be able to go back and straighten out the past records.”

 
“Oh, will you now?” said Tim mildly. But his eyes narrowed. Straightening out past records was not on his agenda at all.

 
“And Tim, she discussed the pay scale for the job with me over lunchtime. I’m getting a very nice raise, yes I am. I didn’t realize the Browning Group pays so much better than our old owners.”

 
“Hmmm....I’d better have lunch with her tomorrow, Danny. Maybe she can get me a raise as well. Beautiful girl, isn’t she? I’d like to raise her skirts, I would. Raise her skirts and give her a bad case of bed hair…”

 
Mrs. Green was as pleased to have Olivia return as her husband had been. She’d made an Irish stew for her, and soda bread, and the meal was delicious. She promised Olivia a different traditional Irish dinner each night of her stay.

 
Olivia spent two hours on her course after her dinner, and then headed upstairs. In the bedroom were two dozen pink roses. The card was signed simply
Think of me, Graeme
. Tears welled in her eyes. As if she could not think of him!

 
While Olivia was studying diligentl
y
, Tim and his three traders were sitting in a pub, analysing the situation.

 
“She says we’re having all the forms revamped, whether we like it or not,” Tim told them. “And she says Danny will be over all the old records to straighten them out as well.”

 
Gavin took a swig of beer. “Well, we’ll cut Danny in on the deal when she’s gone back to London. Don’t have to give him much, just a few hundred a month. He’ll be easy to convince to join our little party.”

 
“Yeah, Gavin, that’s what I thought as well,” agreed Tim.

 
“So, I think you should make friends with Danny, Tim, good friends, don’t you?” continued Gavin.

 
“I will, Gav, good thought.”

 
“So is this going to end our own trading then?” asked Roland.

 
“Heavens no,” said Tim. “Gav and I will figure it out between the two of us.”

 
“I think we could fake a few trades tomorrow, losses, and siphon half a million or so into that dummy account, Tim.” Gavin thought another minute.   “If we do that every day this week, while the markets are swinging around the way they are, we can build our own trading fund, instead of just using the Bank’s and getting caught by this bitch.”

 
“Why don’t we use the money in the dummy account now?” asked Flynn.   “How much is in there, anyway?”

 
“Two point three million,” said Tim. “Remember, we paid out half a million each two months ago.”

 
“I thought it should be more?” said Gavin. “I thought we were up to five million gains. What happened to the other seven hundred grand?”

 
Tim’s eyes flickered for a minute, and Gavin saw that. But he said nothing, waiting for Tim’s explanation.

 
“Your calculations are wrong, Gav. The total’s correct.”

 
Gavin’s eyes narrowed for just a second. Tim was lying. He knew Tim was lying. The stupid bugger was double-crossing them. He’d get on the computer in the morning, before Tim swaggered in, and cross check all the trades for the last nineteen months. If he got in at seven, he could print off that private file only he knew about, and then check the deposits into the dummy account that Tim had set up to funnel their gains into. He could check all the electronic withdrawals from that account, and see if Tim was shunting some of the money off to another account that they didn’t know about.

 
Tim was a stupid, greedy idiot. This whole caper had been dreamed up by Gavin, orchestrated by Gavin, and he’d only included Tim and the others in it when he became aware that the two old idiots who owned the Bank were going to sell, so that he could step up the activity and clean up before the gig was closed down. At the time, he’d thought they only had six months or so, but it had dragged and they were able to carry on for nineteen months, until The Browning Banking Group bought them out.

 
He knew they’d made nearly ten million over that time. Tim had paid out six, and there was only two point three left? Wonder if Tim had a Swiss bank account, like he did?  Wonder if Tim was stupid enough to have record of that bank account on his work computer. All Gavin would have to do would be to check Tim’s ‘Favourites’ and see what popped up on the list...

 
Tim finished off their meeting be telling everybody to keep their distance from Olivia. Gavin snorted to himself. Stupid idiot! Smartest thing to do would be to make friends with the woman and learn what she was finding, if anything. Instead, Tim was being quite annoying towards her, with all the sexual innuendos, and smarmy leers...

 
Olivia undressed and spent some time admiring her pink rose
s
, smiling at them with such delight.

 
“Think of him” she smirked. “How can I not think of him? I’m so sore from what he did to me over the weekend, just as he intended me to be. I can’t get him out of my mind...”

 
Her mobile rang. It was only ten, surely too early for it to be Graeme?

 
It was Linda.

 
“Hi, Olivia. I just wanted to tell you how great Graeme was as our instructor tonight. We had a session on showing proper respect to our Doms. Boy is he strict! But I’m sure you know that first hand,” she giggled.

 
“You know I do,” smiled Olivia. “What did he teach you tonight?”

 
“He taught us about posture, and respectful positions and correct terms of address, and how we should kneel, and when to look at a Dom and when to lower our eyes...and when we made a mistake, we knew about it!

 
“Michael had gone over all that at the beginning of the course, the girls said, but they said Graeme is so much stricter, and he certainly used his riding crop a lot more than Michael does…”

 
“Just like at the Bank, eh, Linda. Long as you behave, all is well, but if you are foolish or rude, all hell breaks loose...”

 
“I’ll say. He walked around the classroom with that riding crop in his hand, and any time our posture was less than perfect or our attitude less than most respectful, we felt it, really felt it!”

 
“But did you learn?”

 
“Oh, yes, we learned. Michael sat at the back, looking very amused.”

 
“Are you waiting for Michael now?”

 
“Yes, he and Graeme are just inspecting the work that was done today on the extension, and then Michael and I are going home. He takes me home with him most nights now, for more training...and I love it! In fact, most of my clothes are there now, and I hardly ever see my flat mates any more.

“Graeme said he can hardly wait to get home and soak in his bath. So I guess you’ll see him soon.”

  “No...Didn’t he tell you? I flew back to Belfast this morning to deal with a mess at that Bank they just bought. I guess since they bought it, they’ve had a team of efficiency experts crawling all over the place, and they reported to Graeme and his uncle last Monday morning.

 
“Their Currency Trading Department Reporting and Compliance were in a worse state that ours was when I was transferred into the department, so they’ve sent me over here to sort it out. I’ll probably be here two weeks by the look of things today. I’m a little shocked because I’m so junior, but Graeme said both he and Mr. Taylor are impressed and relieved at the job I did on the reporting procedure in London, which of course greatly affects the Compliance status, so they’ve sent me over to do the same thing here.”