Lucky Charm by Valerie Douglas

maintaining the servers, he knew little about the software Ariel was about to set up and less about finance.
    She could have given a dozen answers – frustrating and terrifying among them – but that would only have led to more questions. For which she didn’t have answers. So she kept it simple. Of the morning, well…that she would hold in memory.
    Instead she answered with part of the truth, the real reason she was here – work. As a software consultant for Titan Communications, she traveled all over the country installing and training the new software in their client’s offices. It had been a big coup for Titan to get this contract. Her contract. Her first major sale, a company with offices across the country. The commission was more money than she’d made in one month, much less a week. She was under a lot of pressure to get it right.
    “The program installed fine, no major problems. I had to tweak a few things, that’s all, and will probably tweak it more. Everything should be up and ready to go this morning, though. Did you get your end done?”
    Something in his expression looked strange – almost as if he was somehow relieved – but he didn’t say anything, instead he simply answered her question. “Yes, we should be good to go.”
    “Okay, so training will be our test. Whatever problems we run into, we can solve as we go.”
    “I’ll leave that up to you,” he said, with relief, “you’re the expert.”
    She grinned. “So they tell me.”
    It was what she’d worked so hard to achieve. Not for her the assistance of doting parents like so many of her classmates in college, the money simply hadn’t been there. Instead, she’d worked, taking night and weekend courses. One job had led to the next, each building her résumé. She’d changed course a little to concentrate on software rather than hardware. That had carried her to her last job and led to this one. Now she was the financial software guru for Titan. It was her job to make sure everything was installed and working properly.
    The only way to be certain, though, was to test it thoroughly, which you could never really do. Every company was different, with different hardware, different software already installed and possibly conflicting with theirs. Added to that was the certainty that the software would change every sixteen months.
    Titan had solved the problem by combining the duties of a tech and a trainer into one job. It was twice the headache but Ariel had learned that the training sessions helped her find a lot of the bugs. Especially the first day – today – which would only make it more all the more trying.
    With a sigh, she walked to the room assigned to her for training and looked around at the windowless space. Long tables with computer workstations were set at regular intervals. The only decoration was an OSHA poster and a long whiteboard. Other than that it was painted institutional beige, featureless and empty. Her home away from home for the next few days.
    The employees filed into the room. She smiled at each of them as they sat until the last to get there had to take the seats up front. She perched a hip on the edge of the desk at the front of the room once everyone was settled.
    “Hi, I’m Ariel O’Donnell and I’m a consultant with Titan Communications – the provider of your new software program,” she said and launched into her spiel with well-practiced ease.
    She’d installed and trained this software so many times she could practically do it in her sleep. Once, after a particularly difficult install, she very nearly had. She had the bad and good jokes timed well enough apart to keep the trainees awake and learned from the first few offices which part of the program they would love and which they would disliked, so she could hit the ones they’d love hard and soft-pedal the ones they would probably hate.
    The perfect software system had never been written that she knew of. No matter what the people at