LITMIR.BIZ

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sounding more than a little pissed off.

      I look up.

      And...just like that I fall in crush. Is that even a thing? It should be because with one upward glance, my overactive imagination goes crazy. The growler’s face is the perfect cherry on a sextastic sundae. Dark blond hair pulled back in a ponytail reveals cheekbones a sculptor would kill to immortalize. He looks like the guy from The Princess Bride but a thousand times larger, harder and less nice. He stares at me, irritation painting his cranky, gorgeous face. When he shifts beneath me, I confirm he’s all muscle. I take a hopefully discreet sniff. Cologne, my best friend. I’ll have to go to Macy’s and do my research because his scent will haunt my fantasies. God, if he could just never open his mouth, this would be perfect.

      Maple teases me all the time about my crushes. I spot a guy and I fall in love or at least in like from a safe distance. Imagining the possibilities excites me. Once I get to know my crush, however, my feelings fade rapidly. Cinderella probably came to her senses, too, and realized that Prince Charming wasn’t who she’d imagined him to be. Maybe he was better or (more likely) he was worse, but once the distance between them was erased, things changed. I usually solve this problem by avoiding real-life dating and opting for an active fantasy life instead where there’s zero disappointment as long as I’ve remembered to replace the batteries in my battery-operated boyfriend.

      Over the years, I’ve enjoyed a number of memorable crushes. My first was the hot guy who played third trombone in high school competitive band. I spent more time staring at the impressive bulge in his shorts than at my sheet music. Next was a college literature professor for a required freshman seminar—I zoned out once imagining giving him a blow job and rejoined reality with the professor and the entire class staring at me because “I’d been making noises” (I’d dropped that class because there’s no going back after relative strangers know your porn sounds). And then there were plenty of noncontact fantasies that started with sexy emailing and texting and ended abruptly when my correspondent announced the ball is in your court and waited for me to make good on my dirty promises. Actions aren’t my thing—I ghosted those guys.

      “Hello?” Tall, Dark and Cranky frowns at me. We’re nose to nose thanks to my perch on his lap.

      “I—” My heart does a delicious nosedive. Now is the perfect time to snap out something witty, but I’ve got nothing. I’ll just have to make it up later.

      “Never mind.” He tips me off his lap and onto the seat as he gets to his feet in one fluid, panty-melting move, more barbarian than white knight. To be fair, I just crushed his balls with my knee. He straightens his jacket, revealing that my champagne has christened his right sleeve in addition to darkening his shirtfront.

      I give him puppy dog eyes as he strides away. Fortunately, he can’t see, so what’s left of my dignity remains intact. I’m not sure he even looked at my face. He definitely didn’t ask my name. Or tell me his. And there’s nary a business card involved. He’s perfect fantasy fodder.

      Later tonight I’ll relive these moments and remember the way he touched me. The heat of his fingers braceleting my wrists. His scent and the crisp rustle of expensive cotton. I’ll touch myself when I’m alone, imagining what could have happened next.

      Of how he might have kissed me with that sinful mouth.

      Of how I might have bitten that full lower lip just to make him pay attention to me.

      Of how I could have pushed my hands beneath his suit jacket and explored the hard, muscled chest he’d so thoughtlessly hidden from the world. The truth is, I love not knowing who he is. Tall, Dark and Cranky is a mystery. I know only that he’s fit, horrifyingly attractive and—given his presence at this mixer—likely business-minded to a sharkish fault, but everything else about him is just a gorgeous possibility. He’s the ultimate fill-in-the-blank problem where I can pencil in absolutely anything I want and he will never, ever disappoint me since I will never see him again.

       CHAPTER TWO

      Dev

      MONDAY MORNING SHOULD not surprise me. After all, I wrote the agenda for my company’s executive team meeting. When I stroll into King Me’s San Francisco conference room, however, the mood is not jubilant. I closed a major e-commerce deal at the Friday mixer despite crazy chick’s drenching, and that means more stock options, bigger bonuses and the hugest possible gold star. Winner.

      I drop into my chair at the table and eyeball the room. People claim my surfer boy outside in no way matches my CEO insides. That I’m a cranky bastard who routinely demands near-impossible coding heroics from my people. I offer this truth: I make those people money and ergo there are no complaints. Something is up today, however.

      “Explain.” I point to the head of my engineering department. Simon Rand is an excellent software developer. He doesn’t do the bullshit dance around unpleasant truths. This forthrightness saw him let go from two previous start-ups, where the CEO-owner-entrepreneurs preferred team members to blow expensive, happy smoke up their asses while the companies burned through VC capital and made rapid descents into bankruptcy. I prefer making money hand over fist, so I insist on truth-telling.

      Simon makes a sour face. Rather than ask the logical question explain what?, he assumes I’ve acquired telepathy powers over the weekend and already know the what. He plunges into explanations.

      I hold up a hand. “Stop.”

      Simon stops.

      A tense pause follows as the team attempts and fails to get on the mind-reading train to figure out who I’ll fire for this. It’s tempting, because Simon’s news (and it’s news to me) falls into the no-good-very-bad-day bucket. It’s also humiliating, frustrating and makes me see red.

      I recap on the off chance I’ve misheard. I don’t make mistakes but hell could freeze over. “Someone stole our brand-new e-commerce shopping cart code.”

      Simon nods.

      “The exclusive code we’ve presold to twelve major online vendors.”

      Another nod.

      “Exclusive code that is no longer exclusive unless Merriam-Webster has changed the definition of the word.”

      A veritable storm of head-bobbing around the table. We’re all on the same page.

      “Who is the cause of this really big fucking problem?”

      No one moves because the first thing you learn in the corporate world is that moving makes you a target. Simon looks like he might be sick.

      I try again. “How?”

      This one should be easier to answer given the multiple levels of security I’ve instituted. Unfortunately, this question is also met with silence.

      “So essentially we know nothing.” The theft may now be a fact, but revenge remains an option. I build a back door and handy-dandy detonator into our apps. Steal my shit and poof—your e-commerce site sells rubber ducky dildos in fashion colors rather than whatever you’ve really got in your warehouse. And because industrial espionage is rampant and I trust no one outside my immediate circle of friends, I build in that safeguard from day one. I also build in a tracker that alerts when my software goes live on the internet, which must be how Simon knows.

      “Yet,” Simon clarifies. “We don’t know anything yet.”

      Now it’s my turn to nod. “Exactly. All we have to do is figure out the connection between the three seemingly unrelated businesses illegally using our code. We didn’t sell it to them, but they’ve got it. Somehow. There’s a pattern even if we don’t see it yet.”

      Simon leaps to his feet, grabs a dry-erase marker and starts sketching on the whiteboard. While the rest of the room pretends to listen intently to the stream of engineering coming from his mouth, I brainstorm internally.

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