I rolled my eyes. “Look, I did these types of projects all the time at my last job, even though I was a copywriter and a creative person. People like me get stuck doing other people’s work all the damn time.”
He pushed away some chairs and lifted a projector off the floor and placed it on the table. Connecting it to his laptop, he turned it on. It whirred for a few seconds before a beam of light shone on the white wall.
“Well, I don’t know what the standards were at your last job, but you forgot some key assumptions in your projections and budgets. I have a list of them here.” A mirror image of his laptop screen appeared on the wall. Nolan typed in his password and a detailed Excel sheet popped up.
My eyes moved down his spreadsheet, taking in each of his detailed line items. All twenty-three of them.
I had only half of them accounted for, at most.
When I finished scanning, I thought I’d find a smug I told you so expression plastered all over his face, but surprisingly, I didn’t. He leaned in closer. “Do we need to add anything else?”
I pulled up the presentation from the hard drive. “I had two others. One is for music licensing costs. The other one about whether we make an Android version.”
He nodded and added those to his spreadsheet. “Anything else?”
I shook my head and updated the spreadsheet I had used for all the previous calculations. With Nolan’s added caveats, my revenue projections and budgets had changed by 12 percent. Not a huge amount, but enough to probably get fired if we ever had to request additional budget or missed our financial target.
My lips pressed together. It killed me to say it, but not saying something would be wrong. Looking at my laptop keyboard, I mumbled, “Thanks for your help.”
He cleared his throat to get my attention. He had his index finger behind his earlobe when I looked up. “I’m sorry, what did you say? I missed that.”
I pinched my mouth. Damn it, Nolan Fucking MacKenzie.
I exhaled. “Thank. You. For. Your. Help.”
He beamed at me. Arrogant bastard. Leaning back in glory, he nearly fell because his floppy chair back was broken. I burst into a fit of giggles as he skittishly sprang up like a jack-in-the-box.
Feeling bad about my outburst, I asked, “You want to double-check my numbers before we email them over to Ian?”
Tingles of excitement passed through me as Nolan scooted his death-trap chair next to me. With him this close, I could really see how attractive his features were, with his gleaming dark brown eyes, full lips, and powerful, broad shoulders. I found myself subconsciously leaning closer, removing the distance between us. Swallowing hard, I tried to focus on the numbers on the screen and not the heat radiating from his body. Could he hear my heart thudding against my chest? Thud-thud-thud-no-no-no-no-Mel-Mel-Mel . . .
He tapped the down arrow key on my laptop. “I ran into Asher in the hallway. He mentioned that he was at a rehearsal dinner with you yesterday and you both saw me.”
Oh no.
Oh-no-oh-no-oh-no.
Sweat sprouted in the usual places. Forehead. Upper lip. Armpits. My bra underwire area.
He shrugged. “It was the first time I’d tried online dating since I moved to Seattle.”
“Oh, how’d it go?” I swallowed hard and stared at the laptop screen.
“She introduced herself by saying she had just met up with another guy earlier and they’d had too many drinks. And guess what?”
I bit my lip and looked at him.
“After I complained to your officemate about how she was twenty minutes late for our date, that she had already had three drinks and wanted to do shots with me, and then asked me flat out how much money I made, Asher slapped me on the back and asked for her number.”
I laughed so hard it hurt my sides. What a classic Asher move.
He smiled and his gaze shifted from the screen to my face. “Everything checks out.”
“What?”
“The numbers. All the formulas and inputs look good.” Nolan took off his glasses to wipe the lenses with his shirt. When he put them back on, he lowered his head and looked at me through the top of them. “I have to ask, why didn’t you just let me work with you?” His long lashes are so distracting. “It was easier to do it together.”
My face burned with equal parts attraction and embarrassment. “I wanted to prove I knew what I was doing. At my last job I worked my ass off and was rewarded for that.”
He nodded slowly. “Every job and every company is different, though. With new situations, you might need to adapt.”
“Maybe, but it could also be my personality. I’m always butting heads with my parents about my life decisions.” My voice cracked a little. “What can I say, stubbornness runs in the family.”
His grin melted my heart a little. “Does it work? The arguing and standing up to people?”
I shrugged. “I’m a Korean girl working in gaming, against my parents’ wishes. And I haven’t been fired . . . yet. So I guess?”
“Well, you’ve taught me something. I should butt heads with people more, especially my uncle and my parents, so I can live my life more the way I want.” He placed his elbow on the table and rested his chin on the back of his hand. Then, he leaned toward me, nudged my arm gently with his, sending more electric tingles through my entire body. “You’re a good role model.”
Tilting his seat as he leaned over more, his cushion toppled to the side, causing him to collapse into me. In one unfluid motion, he elbowed my ribs as he fell to the floor.
He barked out a nervous laugh. “Sorry about that, boss.”
Right.
I was his boss.
And all these feelings I had? Wrong, wrong, wrong.
Shoving my laptop in my bag, I barked, “There are some important production meetings I need to attend. Send the files to Ian. He’ll be happy because we finished early, so now you can go to the golf tournament with him.”
I scooped up all my shit and took off down the hallway. In the faint distance, I heard Nolan say, “You know, I actually hate golf. With a passion.”
Once I got to my desk, I squeezed my eyes shut and took a deep breath. I felt a little bad about my golf comment, but Nolan was a distraction. He and I couldn’t be together. Period. I was too busy to date anyway.
Asher was out at an off-site meeting, so I closed the office door and drew the blinds. No more disruptions, interruptions, or diversions. Especially from the intern.
Chapter Ten
The fluorescent lights on my side of the floor burned bright the next morning, but the office was eerily silent, like I’d accidentally walked in wearing noise-canceling headphones. I thought I had the place to myself, but Asher sat at his desk, drinking a fucking Starbucks latte. He ignored me, as usual. I couldn’t believe he beat me to the office again. Did he sleep here or something?
Well, I could give him the silent treatment, but that would be awkward since we were the only two people on the entire floor and we still needed to work together on this game launch. So, I went with the olive branch approach. “Good morning,” I said, with as much exuberance as I could muster at 6:15 in the morning.
He looked up. “Oh, sorry, I didn’t see you. Too busy entering hundreds of Jira tickets for your dev team. You know, to build all the hundreds of things you painstakingly listed in your annoying Game Design Document for us to do for your little game?”
Snide jerk. So what if I ran a tight ship when it came to project management, and everyone’s deliverables and tasks were focused and clear? I’d been told by numerous people that my documentation was comprehensive and dummy-proof. Everyone, especially me, had been working long hours, but he was acting particularly whiny, more than his usual entitled self. And that petty shit needed to stop. Pronto.
“First of all, it’s not my little game, it’s Seventeen Studios’ title. I worked till two thirty in the morning, helping YOU with your Jira backlog. If you have a problem with me, say it to my face. Directly.”
His head jerked back as if I’d blown him backward with a gust of wind. His eyes widened and his eyebrows rose so high they almost shot off his forehead. Good! I’d surprised the shit out of him. Yeah, this wasn’t my first asshole rodeo.
“Whoa, holy PMS!” He laughed at his own sexist joke.
I glared and shook my head. “Well, if we want to throw around sexist terms now, okay. Here you go. Can you grow a fucking pair of balls and stop whining? Do your damn job.” This time his eyebrows jumped so high they went up past the brim of his baseball cap. Maybe he’d shut up now and get back to work.
“Whatever. Can you stop assigning stuff so rapid-fire that we have to work through lunch and dinner? Some of us have social lives and like to hang out at work.” Yeah, of course you like people here. They’re just like you.
He snorted and put in his earbuds. I put in mine. No more talking. I tried to log in to my computer to check on all today’s tasks, but my laptop wouldn’t turn on. The power source, the docking station, and the power button all looked functional, but they weren’t. And of course my computer would die way before any of the IT guys I knew came into work. I noticed Asher looking at me with great interest. He disappeared behind his monitor as soon as we made eye contact.
With my laptop tucked under my arm, I walked over to the IT pod. Please, let someone be there. My home computer had died recently, and my work computer was all I had left. I relied on it for everything now: music streaming, online bill pay, Amazon Prime purchases. Please don’t die, laptop!