Love is Easy 01: Dresden Problems

Author's Note:

This is a Romance between imperfect people. Everyone will get their happy ending... eventually. This story eludes to violence and regret. Although it is sometimes about the value of cruelty, I tried my very best to write it with love.

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Prologue

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Kate Li read the WeChat log again. The name on one side of the argument was familiar, "Maggie" Zhang, VP of Sales. Maggie was young for her position, not quite forty, all smiles and soft words. Behind the facade Maggie was vindictive, maybe even dangerous.

Only the stupid crossed her.

Kate sighed. Not just the stupid, the naive. If anything, Kate was a cautionary tale. She had tangled with Maggie nearly five years earlier. In retrospect, it had been a stupid gambit, more heart than brains.

Kate was determined to learn from her mistakes.

That's what made this new development so unsettling. She looked at her phone, following the chain of texts. The name on the other side of the argument was unfamiliar. Clark Miller. Sounded British, maybe American.

What worried her was that an unknown like this "Clark Miller" got to Maggie without Kate hearing about him first. Even "exiled" in Europe, Kate should have known. Sloppy. How did she expect to win if she couldn't gather basic information?

She sighed. Those were her father's words. Her dad had tried for years to lure Kate back to China, eventually so desperate he offered her a company to run.

"Love is easy," she told him, "but trust is earned."

Kate had twisted her father's words back at him. If she couldn't squash Maggie Zhang, how could she possibly run one of his companies? Her father loved her but not the decision.

Kate went back to her phone. Maggie's final message to Clark was the real treasure. It said, "If you think you can solve this issue. Then do so." She had washed her hands of the situation. In writing. A rare mistake.

"Hey Amandine!" Kate yelled. She saw one of her "friends" from sales walking through the hallway. "You ever heard of..." Kate double checked the name, Clark Miller?

"Yeah," she said. Amandine occasionally visited the North American Branch. American then, not British.

"Tell me about him," Kate said.

"He's cute," Amandine responded. "Dark hair, tall."

She gave Kate a suggestive wink. Kate was aware of her reputation, friendly with everyone, connections everywhere, but usually with men. It wasn't her fault that outside of Maggie Zhang, men occupied the positions of power.

"That's not what I--" Kate started. "Who is he?"

"I'll tell you for a favor," she said.

"Really? You want to count favors?" Kate said back.

"Fine," she said. They both knew Kate had... not exactly dirt, but curated goodwill within the organization. "He works out of Austin. New, about a year. Some kind of engineer. It wasn't really clear."

"How have I not heard of him?" Kate wondered aloud. His judgment was poor, but the analysis was compelling.

"You must be slipping," Amandine said. "You know he's going to Dresden?"

How was this possible? Kate felt dizzy.

"Who is sales support?" Kate asked. "Werner?"

"Out," Amandine said.

How could they let this American get all the way to Dresden with no support? This account was the anchor for Northern Europe. Maggie should be--

Of course. She wanted him to fail. This new guy called Maggie out on strategy. When he inevitably failed, Clark would be ruined and Maggie vindicated.

Kate clicked her tongue against the roof of her mouth. Maggie was gambling with company money just to crush some young American. There was an angle here. She just had to find it.

What if Clark succeeded? She ran through the scenario. No good. Maggie might take an ego blow but not much more. Nothing that could help Kate.

She kept thinking. Grinding possibilities. What if this Clark Miller not only failed, but self immolated and lost the whole account?

It could work. A small failure was on Clark, but a true debacle would fall on Maggie. If things went bad enough, there would be an investigation...

With Werner out of the picture, Clark would need help, a translator. Kate could step in. A bad translation could destroy everything, and no one would ever know, not even Clark.

Maggie Zhang was ruthless. Kate had to be the same. She had learned the lesson. Now it was time to apply it.

It was unfortunate that she had to ruin this "Clark Miller" along the way. He would never even know what happened. Poor kid thought he was in shallow water, never realizing he swam among the sharks.

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Love is Easy 01: Dresden Problem

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Clark Miller sat in his tiny office on the third floor of the Austin branch of Helios Technologies Inc. His desk was a smattering of printed circuit boards and portable power supplies. The office smelled like burnt wires and electrolytic fluid. No one said it directly, but he knew his colleagues were still annoyed about the whole "exploding capacitor" incident. The smell would go away. Eventually.

Clark typed another message to Maggie Zhang, VP of Sales. He was playing with fire.

Never send an angry message, he reminded himself. Clark deleted his overly long message and simply texted, "Let's have a meeting."

No answer. Again. Fuck.

They were running out of time, and no one seemed to notice. How long until Helios lost real business at the account? Would his career survive?

He took a deep breath and tried to count his blessings. Clark's family made it through the pandemic in good health, but not necessarily unscathed.

Especially Clark.

First the world shut down, and then his business. No travel meant he couldn't get to France, couldn't see Elise. Clark didn't blame her for... cheating. A year is a long time, and in every relationship, one person loves more than the other.

But even if he wasn't angry, Clark couldn't keep running her young company. Every interaction was too painful. He didn't have the heart to fight with her, so Clark walked away.

When he left, Elise lost his expertise and customer relationships. In a way they were even. Clark would never forgive her for breaking his trust, and Elise would never forgive him for breaking her company.

Adding insult to injury was the big "I told you so," he got from his father. His dad owned a small business outside Ames, Iowa that specialized in power analysis. "They can't outsource the grid," he often said, poking at Clark's international aspirations.

Clark sighed.

The pandemic took his job and his girl and his access to the world. He was just into his thirties with an entry level engineering job at Helios Technologies Inc. The only real upside was the offices in China and Poland and Germany-- very close to France.

Clark needed to get back. Not to see Elise again, that relationship was over, but he missed it. Not her. Travel.

And he was never going back to Iowa. Never working for his father.

He heard a knock on his door. "Got a moment?" a male voice said.

Clark looked up from his phone.

Holy shit. It was Carlton Baker, CEO of Helios Technology Inc, a face he had only seen at the Christmas party and in a magazine article.

Mr. Baker was pushing sixty, but as a young man, he had been an engineer, then investor, then disruptor. In the pictures, back when Baker was young, he wore jeans and a polo. After the IPO, he wore designer suits.

Baker had a reputation for being brilliant and... difficult. It had been more than a year since Clark danced with executives, but the trick was pretty simple. Do not waste their time.

Clark jumped to his feet. "Of course," he said. "Sit."

He motioned to his shitty office chair and felt guilty. The astringent burning smell seemed more like a problem now that he had an executive audience.

"Heard we have a problem in Dresden," Baker said.

You may be the only one, Clark thought.

"Yes sir," Clark said.

"I read your analysis," he said.

"Yeah?" Clark sat up. He'd been throwing data at the organization for weeks, hoping someone would notice the approaching storm.

"I liked it. Pretty novel approach," he said. "Can I see the details?"

Clark smiled. He spun his monitor toward Baker, and clicked on The File.

"It takes a minute to load," Clark said.

In his free time, Clark poked at things. Not looking for problems per se, looking for interesting things to learn. Eventually he came across the company's failure log, a database dump of everything that had ever gone wrong. Forty thousand rows of mistakes.

Baker watched The File open on to the last tab, the summary page where Clark tied his analysis together into something understandable by a human.

He clicked over to the "Dresden Problem," as Baker had called it. Chart after chart of analysis. The story wasn't obvious at first, but when you sliced the data just right, there was only one conclusion. Customer cause.

"What were those other pages?" Baker asked.

"I did the same analysis for the other problems," Clark said.

"What other problems?"

Clark smiled. He didn't want to sound glib, but he could tell the truth. "All of them. Sir."

Baker narrowed his eyes and studied Clark. Was he about to call bullshit? It didn't matter. Clark could do this all day.

Even so, why was he nervous? The butterflies in his stomach weren't fear. They were anticipation. This was an opportunity. Finally. Baker stood up.

"Give me a summary of the top twelve problems by Thursday, same presentation format as the Dresden issue," he said.

"Yes sir," Clark said.

"You been to Europe? Have a passport?"

Clark couldn't hide his smile. "Yes sir."

"Book a flight... Frankfurt or Berlin. Get in front of the customer and show them your analysis. Tell them the truth and don't leave until they believe it."

He thought of his dad and smiled. Clark was back in the world again, no longer stuck in one country.

"Oh yeah," Baker said. "One more thing. Germans can be formal. They need to take you seriously. What's your title?"

"Quality--"

"Never mind," Baker said. "Make up a title and get some business cards printed."

"Senior Quality Engineer?"

"Better make it Director," Baker said. "We want them to listen."

"Director of what?" Clark asked.

"You'll think of something," he said.

In fifteen minutes, Clark advanced his career fifteen years. This wasn't going to make his colleagues like him any more.

Who cares, he thought. He didn't plan on being in America much.

Clark booked his flight through Chicago, a few days early. His younger brother Marcus was a wrestler for Iowa State University. That sport had a limited window, and Clark had missed most of it. For the first time in a year, he could stand being in front of his father.

--

His brother Marcus was three inches shorter, ten pounds heavier, and a hell of a lot meaner than Clark, at least on the mat.

The crowd roared when Marcus flipped his opponent up and over his body. The other wrestler fell on his neck, the kind of thing that would paralyze most people. Clark's stomach churned, but the young man scrambled back to his feet, locking up with Marcus immediately.

Clark was relieved. He was rooting for his brother of course, but more than anything he didn't want to see anyone get hurt. By the time the whistle blew, he felt sorry for his brother's opponent.

"That could have been you," his dad said.

In his youth, Chuck Miller had been an elite wrestler. His face wasn't on any banners, but he had been in the room with the men that were, almost good enough to be remembered. Decades later, it was obvious he had been a somebody in this world, even if it wasn't clear exactly who.

The most obvious marker was the cauliflower ear, bulging cartilage in the upper lobe that looked like a mild deformity, but one that real wrestlers wore with pride. The second marker was a kind of graceful swagger, a unique confidence that comes with having world class agility honed into a weapon. Even as an old man, that aura still hung on his dad so thick that strangers knew to give Chuck a wide berth.

Clark sighed. They had done this dance too many times.

"I was never going to be a great--"

"Not true," Chuck said. "You had the talent, but not the--"

"Can we not do this again?"

They both kept their eyes on Marcus, watching him bask in the approval of the crowd.

"Why are you here?" his dad asked.

"I wanted to see Marcus--"

"Before you went to Europe?" his dad finished. He cut his eyes up to Clark, expression demanding that Clark stop trying to "big time" his yokel father.

Clark nodded.

"How is Elise?"

Clark balled his fists. Jaw clenched. He knew, but said it anyway.

"Of course you might have kept her, if you had any fight," Chuck said.

Clark spun to his father. The old man looked up, that unique glint in his eye, the look of a man who waited days and months and years for someone to take a swing. He probably dreamed about it at night.

"Wrestling isn't about fighting out there." Chuck pointed at Marcus, still celebrating his victory. He poked Clark in the chest, at his heart, so hard that it hurt. "It's about learning how to fight in here."

Chuck Miller, the man who had given Clark the tools to hurt people but not the judgment to use them, never seemed bothered by what had happened back in high school, by what Clark had done. To his father, he was a quitter.

Goddammit.

This was a mistake. It was always a mistake. He needed to go find his life somewhere else, far away from his father. "Tell Marcus he did great, and I love him."

"Where ya going?"

"Getting the hell out of this country," Clark said.

"What are you gonna do when you meet a problem you can't run away from--"

--

In the run up to his trip, Clark downloaded language software, German for a French audience. His intention was to do two things at once, practice French while learning German.

When the French woman's soft voice told him to "repeat after her," Clark didn't think about language, he thought of Elise. He still loved her, or at least his memories of her.

Clark loved her green eyes and curly dark hair, loved how she was insecure about her cooking but absolutely confident in her body. Most of all he missed her voice, warm and rich. French was a beautiful language when it rolled off her tongue.

She spoke English, but never during sex. Clark smiled. That was probably where his language fetish started. Long phrases poured from her lips when they made love, describing the feeling of his cock inside of her.

Elise was the only woman he'd ever dated who orgasmed from penetration alone. Foreplay was something Elise would either skip entirely or do solo while he watched. "I only need your cock," she would whisper in French. She never gave him blowjobs, saying that oral sex was "a complete waste of a limited resource."

Clark didn't mind. If his cock was in her mouth, he would miss out on her voice.

After their first time together, Clark started learning French. He could not overstate how quickly that language had come together.

As he prepped to return to Europe, he spent a week listening to a French voice trying to teach him German. When he rolled off the plane in Berlin, he barely spoke a word.

--

Clark had a message waiting for him when he landed. It was from Werner, his sales contact. "With great regret, I am unable to make the meeting in Dresden..."

Not good.

This was something new. He'd never had a sales person not show. Clark had his presentation prepped but not much more.

Fuck.

He could figure this out, but it was going to be--

His phone rang.

"Hello?"

"Clark? This is Kate Li. Werner can't make it. I'm waiting for you outside."

It was a young woman's voice. Her accent was... odd. British and something else. Clark breathed a sigh of relief.

Her picture arrived shortly after. Young Asian woman. Dark hair, dark eyes. Cute.

Trading Werner for a mystery woman was a pleasant bit of good fortune. Clark hoped his luck would continue.

--

He rolled his carry-on to the arrivals line, one of many travelers in a parade looking for loved ones or colleagues. He scanned the throng of people behind the aluminum barrier, looking for Kate, finding the sign first. The words on it read "Helios Technologies Inc."

Kate didn't recognize him, and Clark had a moment of relative privacy to study her. She was tall, maybe five six or five seven. Her posture was a little off, slouched, a hint of Taylor Swift in that posture.

She had brown eyes and delicate features, straight black hair tucked behind her ears, draping down to her shoulders. Kate had on a sleeveless white shirt that hugged her body, framing small breasts and a narrow waist. Long legs, nice legs. Khaki shorts that stopped at mid thigh. Her eyes darted from person to person, looking for him.

"Kate?"

Her eyes shifted from far away to close. Her face lit up in a smile. Very pretty.

"Clark?" It sounded a bit like "Clock."

She rushed around the crowd to meet him, hopping as much as walking.

"This way," she pointed. Her fingernails were a glossy teal color. "I have a car."

Kate wasn't gangly, but she kind of... bounced, like she had too much energy to be graceful.

Her English was good, great even, but odd. British with a hint of something...

Kate studied him while they walked. It wasn't quite awkward, but... Clark decided he liked the way she was looking at him. "What?"

"Nothing," Kate said. She looked away. "Long flight?"

"Not too bad," he said. "Where are you from?"

"China," she said.

"Your accent is... Hong Kong?"

"London," she said.

It was not a direct path to get from China to London. So Kate Li was young and pretty, and one more thing. Rich.

She led him through a maze of parking. Clark tried not to rest his eyes on her long legs and tight ass. He only mostly succeeded.

--

They headed south out of Berlin. Outside of the city, Germany was surprisingly rustic. So much of the country was rolling plains and lightly wooded fields. It always reminded him of Iowa.

"I read your analysis," Kate said. "It's good."

"That makes you and one other person," Clark said.

"Who was the other?"

"Carlton Baker." The enormity of the situation was starting to sink in. Flying across the Atlantic for one meeting added an extra level of importance, but invoking the CEO's name somehow topped it. The next twenty-four hours would determine the next decade of his career.

No pressure. Clark sighed.

"I heard you don't speak German," Kate said.

"I started studying," Clark said.

"Oh?" Kate took her eyes off the road and faced him. She looked alarmed. "How is it going?"

"Not great," Clark said. "That a problem?"

Kate turned back to the road. Her posture relaxed. "No problem," she said. "My German is... reasonable."

Clark didn't like the sound of that. "What happened to Werner?"

She didn't answer at first. Something was wrong. "I uh... there is something you should know. Maggie Zhang wants you to fail. That's what happened to Werner."

"That can't be true," Clark said.

He knew challenging Maggie would create a ripple. It was one thing to argue between departments, but to risk business over something silly like ego was stupid. Toxic.

Kate turned to him, her brown eyes full and clear. She certainly seemed sincere.

Fuck.

"So if I fail, it reflects badly on the both of us?" Clark asked.

More awkward silence. Kate sped up, passing another car.

"Something like that," she said finally.

"Thanks for sticking your neck out," Clark said. "Why are you again?"

"Maybe I want to help?"

"Do you?"

"Of course," she said.

Kate was cute and had a nice smile, but something was off. Was she helping Clark just to spite Maggie? If Maggie made a regular habit of sabotaging her colleagues, then some amount of trouble was inevitable. Clark knew big companies had factions and internal politics, but this was extreme.