(hello, dirty librarian fantasy). And since she wears no visible makeup, including no nail polish on her bare feet, my brain—both the big one and the smaller, temporarily in charge one below my Gucci belt—fixates on one thing. She’s wearing pajamas.
And yet even half-dressed, she radiates confidence as if she knows this is her space and she completely owns it. I admire that assuredness, even though it’s probably the reason she thinks she can get away with pirating my software. For those of you who’ve ever contemplated doing that: don’t. Like many things in life, software is worth what you pay for it.
Despite my reputation as a bastard, I try to stay friends with karma. I buy flowers for my dates, I routinely spot the panhandler on the corner five bucks and I donate generously to animal charities. I can’t and won’t, however, let people steal from me. It’s like sex and marriage. Why buy the cow if the milk is free? Why pay my premium subscription fees if you can just download what you want from a mirror site in Asia?
Oblivious, my sexy thief pads to a halt. She looks stunned, but only for a brief second. “You.”
“Me,” I agree.
“God,” she groans. “This is so embarrassing.”
Pink creeps up her chest and over her cheeks as she looks at me. She’s staring, but I stare right back. I won every staring contest growing up.
Yes, you sat on my lap.
Yes, you felt me through your dress.
Yes, I know you weren’t wearing any panties.
She has a heart-shaped face with high cheekbones and that distracting spray of freckles beneath a pair of melting brown eyes. A crinkle grows between those eyes as she frowns. I imagine kissing away that little look of confusion. She doesn’t look impressed by who I am. Or scared. Or even, ever so slightly, wowed. It’s more the embarrassed kind of look when you’ve just bitten into the last doughnut and realize you were expected to share. Perhaps Friday night’s crash landing was an accident after all and she wasn’t a founder hounder trying to meet and marry a tech billionaire.
She abruptly shoves a hand at me. “Perhaps we can start over? Lola Jones.”
Ballsy but nice.
“Devlin King, but the jury’s out on the second chance.” I wrap my fingers around hers. Smooth and delicate, her hand would feel better wrapped around my dick. No polish, no rings, short nails, but that’s okay. She can scream my name instead of digging her nails into my back.
She purses her lips as she reclaims her hand, skepticism written all over her pretty face. She rocks back on her heels. “You’ve never screwed up and needed a do-over?”
“I don’t make mistakes.” I lead off all my interviews this way, but my trademark quote doesn’t appear to ring any bells.
Instead, she snorts. “Despite your unhuman good looks, I’m certain you’re Homo sapiens. Ergo, mistakes happen. Crap.” She slaps a hand over her mouth. “Let’s pretend I never said that.”
“It might be hard.” Something about her makes me want to break my rules and flirt shamelessly. Her touch is electric, making my body burn, my hands itch to touch her more.
“Come with me.” She’s already turning, and anticipation hums through me.
Happily.
I follow her toward the fishbowl. I assumed she knew who I was on Friday night. Founder hounders are common on the Silicon Valley social scene, looking to strike it rich and score a start-up-wealthy mate. The demand is great; the supply is low; and I’m Grade A billionaire material. My company’s grown to stratospheric levels and I have the cash and lack of a personal life to prove it. And although I’ve also got the racing cars, private jets and oceanfront property, the kicker is that I’m top five on the Billionaire Bachelors app.
Yes, there’s an app for spotting tech billionaires. My best friend Max O’Reilly launched it three years ago and his dating algorithm made him a fortune when he IPO’d. Fork over your hard-earned cash and you unlock dozens of extra date-finding features, but the one that rakes in the biggest bucks is his signature Billionaire Bachelors List. For the price of a cup of coffee and a quick download of the Happily Ever After app, he’ll push you a monthly hot list of Silicon Valley’s top bachelors and bachelorettes—complete with rankings, pictures and favorite stomping grounds so that you, too, can hunt the elusive wealthy mate in native territory. I’ve topped the list for the last two years.
Lola drops onto a yellow yoga ball and waves a hand at me. “Sit.”
Normal chairs of any type do not appear to be available. When in Rome, right? I choose a blue ball because I enjoy symbolism, roll it over and sit down. I don’t rush into explanations or accusations. I just watch her. People rush to fill up silence. You learn a lot that way, plus it makes the other person nervous and confess misdeeds.
This time, the silence stretches on and on until the soft skin between Lola’s eyes crinkles as if she’s thinking about something tricky. The frown deepens, so probably not thoughts of me naked.
She darts a longing look—at the laptop on the table. “Give me a moment?”
Her fingers are flying over the keyboard before I can respond. Okay, then. Totally lost in thought, she rolls back and forth like a metronome on top of that stupid yoga ball. She must have amazing abs.
After thirty seconds, I get bored and set the stopwatch on my phone. After ten minutes, I tap the table in front of her. “Earth to Lola.”
“Oh.” She turns bright pink and promptly loses her balance. I catch her by the elbow. For the count of three, my mouth is by her ear. Her hair brushes my cheek and that’s all it takes for me to learn that she smells like vanilla, like cookies and sugar. Danger.
I force myself to roll my ball away from hers. “We need to get going here.”
“Right.” She slides the laptop away with obvious reluctance. “So you start. Tell me about yourself.”
I haven’t decided how to play this. Threaten her with my lawyer? Present her with a hefty invoice for the software she stole? Or just inform her that her pirated e-commerce system will switch her product to rubber ducky dildos as soon as she goes live because of my anti-theft safeguards? As Inigo Montoya assured Miracle Max: humiliations galore. Making small talk, however, is not part of my revenge plot.
“You know all about me.” The words come out more growl than nice. Whatever.
“Uh-huh.” She fidgets with the edge of the laptop. Her gaze flicks to the screen. Back to me. “Well, Lev—”
“Dev,” I correct.
She makes a face. “Sorry. I thought I read—”
“You can’t believe everything you read.” I glance at her laptop as I speak. It’s just code—lines and lines of the stuff in the typical developer environment. Not my code. Not my problem. But the mess on the screen is all wrong. It’s inefficient and poorly organized.
I nudge her yoga ball abruptly, scooting her out of the way so I can pull the laptop toward me. “This is so wrong. Jesus. Who taught you how to code?”
She sucks in a pissed-off breath, reaching for the laptop. “That’s mine.”
I shoot to my feet, balancing the laptop in one hand, typing like a fiend with the other. Delete. Delete. Delete. I scroll down, check a line, scroll back up. There aren’t even any unit tests—does she really believe testing is optional? Lola yanks furiously on my arm, but not only am I much, much taller than her, I also spent a year commuting between San Francisco and Santa Cruz on the train. I’m a master at typing while the world around me sways, lurches and violates my personal space.
I hit Save at the same moment the laptop flies out of my hand. Lola glares at me from the top of the conference room table she’s climbed so she can repo her hardware.