LITMIR.BIZ

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Armand scoffed, wounded by the accusation. “Mon Dieu—”

      “English, please.”

      “No.”

      “Is it because she’s young?” Jonathon asked.

      “How old is she?”

      “I didn’t ask. We’re not allowed to these days.”

      Armand looked to the ceiling and muttered.

      “En Anglais, s’il vous plaît,” said Jonathon.

      “You understood every word.”

      Jonathon grinned. “Mid-twenties, I’d say. The age of blissful ignorance and creative hubris. An advantage in her line of work. While you, five years older at most, bear the weight of the entire world on your well-bred shoulders.”

      Not any more, Armand thought, tipping the last drop of Scotch onto his tongue before putting the glass on the desk.

      “How did it come about on your daily train trips, morning and night, across the aisle and three rows down, you came to think her not clever?”

      Armand merely slanted him a look.

      “Save it for another time, then. Until then I assure you—Evie Croft is special.”

      Armand railed against the thought as the embers inside him flared. But he listened, as the mountain of paperwork—legal documents, in-house communications, news articles, company reports—Jonathon had foisted on him had not yet yielded results.

      Jonathon went on. “One of my guys picked up on her chatter online a couple of years back. Tough talk about cracking one of our most complicated games. Turned out it wasn’t just talk. The last company she worked for was a lumbering dinosaur, a house of cards waiting to tumble, but her work therein was inspired. I’d go so far as saying she’s a prodigy.”

      Armand ran a hand down his face. He knew that look in Jonathon’s eye. The gleam. For Jonathon was no longer pulling his leg.

      “If it’s not because she’s a woman,” said Jonathon, “and it’s not because she’s young, and now you know she can do the work, do we still have a problem here?”

      Armand wanted to say no problem. To accept the inevitable. For all he wanted was to fix Jonathon’s problem and go home. Back to the familiar, the safe. But for some reason he couldn’t say the words.

      “It’s the dewy-eyed naïf thing, isn’t it?”

      Armand dropped his face into his palm and laughed, the sound hollow, humourless. “I knew that would come back to haunt me.”

      “I’d go as far as to say that’s exactly why Ms Croft got under your skin just now. You are worried when you bump into her in the hall she might spark some proof of life within you. You didn’t die that day, my friend, no matter how it might sometimes feel you did...”

      Armand shook his head. Just once. But it was enough. Enough for his old friend to know he’d hit the edge of that which Armand would accept.

      “What are we to do?” Jonathon asked. “I will not launch my very expensive, very important program until you assure me it is safe. If you believe you don’t need Ms Croft and her special skills in order to make that happen then I’ll tell Imogen to send her home right now. It’s completely up to you.”

      With his high-level contacts, hands-on experience tracking the worst kinds of men, even his very name, Armand could chase down public information and private conversations, money and mayhem, promises made in huts and boardrooms. He had blown open drug deals, illegal gun sales, fraud rings and worse. He could speak five languages and understand many more.

      But when it came to the inner workings of computer code, he was at a loss.

      And yet Armand’s nostrils flared as he fought against the overwhelming need to make the call that meant not having to deal with the likes of Evie Croft. Those big dark eyes that hid nothing of what she felt. The tip-tilted mouth with the full bottom lip she nibbled on more than could possibly be necessary. That constant frisson of energy that crackled around her. Those odd knitted hats. The woman was a magnet for trouble.

      Armand breathed deep, only to find himself enveloped in a lingering cloud of feminine perfume. Or perhaps it was shampoo. It smelled like cherries, of all things.

      The women of his experience wore designer scents. They did not smell like fruit. Or wear pom-poms on their headwear. Or have cartoon characters printed on their backpacks. They did not have backpacks at all.

      He pictured Evie Croft leaning towards him, hands on hips, lips pressed together, dark eyes flashing, making fun of his suits, his haircut. All while in the midst of a job interview.

      She might be dangerously naïve, she might even be a bit of a head case, but she had fortitude. He had to give her that.

      Then, before he saw it coming, her image was replaced with another—little black dresses, diamonds and pearls, pale blue eyes filled with judgement, the swing of a neat blonde ponytail heading out the door.

      Armand wiped a hand down his face.

      At least he could be sure Jonathon had it wrong on one score—Evie Croft was as far from his type as it was possible to be.

      “Give her a shot,” Armand said. Hearing the rawness of his voice, he took a moment to swallow. “But she is on trial.”

      “Why do you think I put her on contract? Now go forth. Find out why my perfect program is glitching so that I can launch the damn thing. Knowing nothing that happens between you and Ms Croft will concern HR.”

      Armand opened his mouth to vehemently deny the accusation.

      “Read my lips,” said Jonathon. “I Do Not Care. Now that’s settled, why did you come storming in? You wanted me to look at something.”

      Armand searched back through the quagmire of the past ten minutes for the answer then remembered the piece of paper. He found it scrunched up on the floor near his feet. He pressed it open, saw the lines of code he’d hoped Jonathon could explain to him, before folding it neatly and putting it back in his pocket.

      Jonathon laughed. “Something for your new workmate to sort out tomorrow, then?”

      “So it would seem.” Armand pulled himself out of the chair and ambled to the door, pausing with his hand on the frame. “You know what made that whole debacle worth it?”

      “I can’t wait to hear.”

      “‘Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.’”

      Jonathon’s face fell to his desk, landing with a thud. “I felt like a dinosaur.”

      “Serves you right. Sir.”

      Armand shut the door behind him with a soft click and moved to the railing to look out over that which the staff called the Bullpen.

      He took a step back when he saw a rainbow-coloured pom-pom bobbing through the space.

      Used as he was to working with serious men—men who in another era would be warriors and guerrillas and pirates and Vikings, men with scars covering every inch of their bodies, inside and out—working around the kids down below in their running shoes and cheap deodorant had been a stretch.

      And now he’d been lumbered with the Girl Who Sang to Herself.

      He told himself he did not find her whimsy charming. That it was to her detriment. But the truth was he hadn’t only kept an eye on her to make sure no one robbed her blind while she listened to music with her eyes closed.

      The moment he first set eyes on her he’d not been able to look away. The way she smiled, the way she laughed—she had surely been lit from within. Making the train trips home in the chill Melbourne evenings feel not so dark at a time when he’d thought he’d never feel warm again.

      When a man had lived with

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