During The Race Preparations

During the Race preparations....
Leonie — 11 Sep 1998, 12:07 PM

"Who's this?"

"Leonie-Marie meet Mr Chakotay. Mr. Chakotay is the foreman of this ranch.

"A pleasure sir,"

"Miss Peters...."

"Please call me Lee-Marie, or Lee is fine in a crunch."

Miss Kathryn smiled. She had liked Leonie-Marie from the minute she first interviewed her. She was knowledgeable and was able to follow along on her ideas and make one or two good suggestions. She wasn't on the same level as B'Elanna, but she struck Kathryn as more of a "nuts and bolts" type of person. Once you told her what you wanted done, or what idea that you had, she could come up with ways to implement the idea and find any flaws in the plan. She was the perfect choice to help Mr. Chakotay implement the improvement suggestions that they had in mind for the ranch.

"All right, Lee-Marie is going to be working with you on some of the upgrades that we were planning to implement on the ranch. She comes highly recommended from the Alpha Q ranch where she helped them out tremendously."

Chakotay was growing angrier by the minute. Trust Miss Kathryn to do that to him. They had talked about the improvements which she thought would be needed to be made to the ranch, but they hadn't talked about hiring anyone else and now it seemed that Miss Kathryn had taken to do that by herself. Again. He forced his voice to remain calm

"You didn't mention that you were thinking of hiring anyone else to help make the improvements. I thought that I would be doing it with B'Elanna?"

Miss Kathryn's smile seemed to be frozen on her face as she said,

"I thought it over and I thought that it would be best if you had some help. Besides, B'Elanna and Tom are busy getting ready for the big race and we need to begin those improvements right away."

"We could manage to do this without HER" Chakotay found that his voice had risen in anger despite all he did to prevent it.

"Um, excuse me if you would like to discuss this in private I can leave...." Lee-Marie was decidedly uncomfortable. There was a big argument brewing and she didn't think it was right for her to hear it, especially since it was about her.

"No, this will only take a minute" Miss Kathryn replied. "I don't think that we can.", she turned her attention back to Mr. Chakotay. "And since this is my ranch, I'm the one who makes the final decisions around here. Clear!?!"

"Yes Ma'am!!!" was the sound that Mr. Chakotay made through clenched teeth.

"Dismissed."

Mr. Chakotay stormed out of the room.

"Come this way Lee-Marie, I'll show you to your room."

Leonie-Marie Peters was very uncomfortable with what had happened in that initial meeting with Mr Chakotay. She had jumped at this opportunity to work at the Delta Q ranch because she had heard about Miss Kathryn, and how good an owner she was. She did run one of the most profitable ranches outside of Voyager City. Lee-Marie had just finished working on the major improvements made at the Alpha Q ranch and was ready to move on to a new challenge. It was perfect timing and she knew that she was right for the job. At least Miss Kathryn thought so. And she had no doubt that she would be able to convince Mr. Chakotay of that in time.

Leonie sighed and thought to herself. "Great, with such a wonderful beginning, I can see that I'm just going to love it here."

Aloud she said. "Thank you Miss Kathryn."

(Well I had to find someway to get in there. Thanks to Terry for giving me the idea.)