Her Intern / Double Dare You

“He’s useful.” I pick the spinach off my shirt, consider eating it, but opt for the mature route and instead deposit it in the trash can. “He organized the kitchen last week. He owns a label maker—do you think he qualifies as a psychopath?”

He’d tackled the kitchen because he was bored. Unfortunately, he had good reason to be. I’d code-checked the code he’d written for Calla and he could have sold it on the open market. He’d also finished in forty-three hours. When I’d questioned how he’d found the time, he’d yawned and said he had chronic insomnia and therefore more than enough spare time to knock out my stupid project. Then he’d proceeded to explain—in unnecessary detail—why my original request was flawed, which had led to yet another flaming row between us.

Maple groans. “Neither of you is crazy, okay? He’s just super organized and you’re—not.”

“I could learn to be.” My jaw is sending distress signals to my brain, demanding we go on chewing strike. I give up on the salad and make a mental note to hit the taco truck.

Maple snorts. “Or you could just keep driving him nuts.”

I eye her doubtfully. “I either babble or go mute when he shows up. I don’t think he’s exactly struck dumb with lust by my sexy person.”

Maple pats my shoulder. “Just sit on his lap again and it’ll all work out.”

Dev

Two weeks into my “internship,” I have a workable morning routine. I get up at the crack of dawn and power through whatever King Me requires before heading over to Calla. I’ve been putting out feelers, doing the social engineering thing, but so far none of my new office mates seem aware that their e-commerce software is pirated. And since their network is lamentably unsecure, I’ve had a few opportunities to poke around in their files—and yet I’ve turned up nothing. No clues. No answers. I suspect I need to get my hands on Lola’s laptop to uncover the truth.

Frankly, anyone who knows me as the billionaire boy genius would be horrified that I’m presently an administrative assistant and low-level code monkey, fetching coffee and contributing the odd line of entirely redundant code. Lola mumbled something about bikes and training wheels before darting off when I demanded better job opportunities, but she just doesn’t want anyone else touching her code.

I get it.

I suck at sharing, too, but after five years running King Me, I’ve learned some important lessons. As much as I hate giving up control, I also can’t do everything myself—and there are some tasks (accounting, payroll and cleaning the restrooms come to mind) that I refuse outright to do. I pay people well to do what I won’t. Lola, however, is everywhere at Calla, doing everything. She’s here constantly.

I sort of envy her her passion. I’ve considered selling King Me at the end of the year because I’m bored. Which probably explains why I’m here undercover at Calla rather than working in my posh office in downtown San Francisco. Yes, I named my company after the first game I ever won. I demolished my brothers at checkers and this way they can’t ever forget. It was too easy after a while, rather like King Me. I’m still not sure what I’ll do next. Sitting around on the beach and surfing all day isn’t enough.

Today, I stick to what I’ve dubbed The Routine. I chat briefly with the receptionist because establishing goodwill with Cerberus is smart. You never know when you might need to escape hell quickly. After a minute of witty repartee, I hole up with my laptop and check email. Next, I fetch coffee. I’ve coded a coffee app that lets my temporary office mates weigh in and change their minds a half dozen times without my having to kill them.

Lola has yet to use the app since her phone is always buried at the bottom of the ginormous tote bag she hauls around. I’ve already suggested using a tile, a pocket, or her bra strap to keep track of her phone, but she shot me down on all three counts.

I step into Lola’s office without knocking. Since her office has no doors and the wall between her and the main floor is glass, knocking is superfluous. Plus, her fat white dog makes a teakettle noise whenever I approach. She’s sitting on top of her yoga ball, half staring off into space, half frowning at her screen. She puffs her cheeks out and exhales. In an instant, I’m imagining what that small breath would feel like skating over my skin. It’s a stupid thought. It’s not like she’s even noticed that I’m here. Based on previous encounters, she’ll ignore me unless she’s decided to give me shit.

I saunter toward her, coffee tray expertly balanced in one hand. Time to effect some changes. This time when I slide her drink in front of her, I slide her laptop away at the same time. It’s a well-timed move, rather like turning the TV off on one of Max’s nephews. Her eyes widen in outrage, and like the nephews, she’s seconds away from vocal protests unless I provide her with a better option or break out the voice of God.

I squat down beside her yoga ball, pop the top off the cup and make a show of wafting cardamom and cinnamon-scented fumes toward her. The dog materializes seemingly out of nowhere, waddling toward me. As the bearer of treats, I’m allowed temporary access to her domain.

“You know you want it.”

Work inappropriate? Sure, but watch this. Lola just nods her head and grabs the cup. She’s challenged in the dirty innuendo department. Pretty much everyone here at Calla has a Lola story about some spectacularly funny moment where our boss failed to grasp the subtext. But those same people really like her. Lola might be annoyingly vague and slow to get a joke, but she’s painstakingly fair. She goes out of her way to be helpful, and where other people grant second chances, she’s willing to go up to imaginary numbers. Last week Lola hired a random old lady from the Chinese market down the street to translate when the twenty-two-year-old director of shipping lost Calla’s entire product inventory somewhere on the Chinese mainland.

Which makes it harder and harder to believe that Lola knowingly pirated my software.

After two weeks in her office, I’ve also learned that Lola needs more people time. While she might be introverted, she chats the ear off everyone she encounters, oversharing an unintentionally blunt stream of consciousness series of observations. Rideshare drivers are scared to come near our building. I appear to be the one exception to her nonstop talk fest because she promptly clams up whenever she sees me.

I wink at her. “Reporting for duty, sir.”

After my “interview” at Calla, I haven’t worn a suit again. I switched to jeans, a leather jacket, boots and a crisp button-up shirt. And a tie. I never forget the tie. A tie guarantees you attention.

Watch.

I adjust the knot, stroking my hand down the silky length, straightening it out. It’s a 1920s-style brown-and-blue-checked tie.

My boss’s hazel eyes zero in on my hands. It’s like waving a string in front of a kitten.

“Nice tie.” She drags her eyes back up to my face with remarkable willpower and I bite back a smile. Still got it.

A small frown crinkles her forehead. “Exactly how many ties do you own? You’ve been here two weeks and I’ve never seen the same one twice.”

See? She notices me.

“Last Monday—plum with pink dots. Tuesday—yellow polka dots. Wednesday—gray silk. Thursday and Friday—skinny black tie, navy blue black tie. That’s five ties in one week.”

She ticks my tie wardrobe off on her fingers. Lola likes to count.

“Maybe I’m a tie model in my spare time and get paid in ties.” I lean in. Her hair smells amazing.

Oblivious as always to my proximity, Lola sets her cup down and starts fixing her hair. The twisty-thing she does with it rarely lasts more than a few hours, necessitating repairs right about when I deliver her coffee. She wriggles and stretches, forcing her hair into an updo that looks like a double-scoop ice cream cone. Her arm brushes my shoulder. “You’re what, twenty? What normal college guy owns an entire business wardrobe?”

Danger.

“Wait.” She holds up a hand. She has a thinking pose like Rodin. “Don’t answer that. I’m pretty sure it’s an HR violation.”

Saved by the rule book. “Are you sexually harassing me?”

“What?” Her face turns a fabulous shade of bright pink.

Has she thought about me in HR-inappropriate ways?

“Feel free to lie to me if it’ll make me feel better.” When the pink deepens, I help her out and change the topic. “I do have an awesome tie collection.”

She frowns. “I’m not good with jokes. Is there an allusion hidden in there?”

“Do you want there to be?” I’m not ashamed to admit (to myself only and never to Jack or Max) that I’ve replayed our conversations in my head more than once over the last few weeks. I’ve also had more than one porn-worthy fantasy starring my boss, so I can’t help noticing that she’s staring at my mouth.

Does she...have a crush on me?

She sounds distracted, her eyes a little dreamy as she looks through me—again. I’m finding it hard to focus, too. I’ve never really noticed how pretty she is. We don’t spend much time together like this—usually she drops by my desk, we fight over my interpretation of my most recent assignment and then she flits off to do whatever it is she does. I’ve looked at her ass, her tits and all my other favorite parts, but it’s like I’ve never really seen the whole Lola.

I lean toward her without conscious thought, one hand resting on the side of her yoga ball. For balance. Not because it puts my fingers closer to her ass. Her leg brushes my hand.

She takes a hasty sip of her drink and chokes on it, spraying chai everywhere. I feel a small smile tug at my mouth, which I quickly hide as I whip out a handkerchief from my back pocket and start mopping up the mess.

Lola waves me off, producing a wad of paper towels from her bag. “Are you eighty? Who owns a handkerchief?”

“No, and this guy.” I touch my handkerchief to the corner of her mouth. “You have a spot right here.”

I don’t miss the way her lips part.

I think she does like me.

Or parts of me.

She abruptly rolls her yoga ball backward, putting some space between us. “We need to discuss the rebrand of our packaging.”

Right. She’d given me some dumb-ass to-do about researching “cute little pouches women can tuck a spare tampon in.” I pull out my phone and look at her.

“You realize I’m a software engineer and not a graphic designer, right?”

She raises a brow. “Scared?”

I text her the list of options I’ve come up with. Hazel suggested I look on Pinterest for inspiration, and she’s a genius.

Drawstring bag (pineapples, llamas, dogs)

Velvet pouch (crazy cats)

Anything with pom-poms

Bag with stupid inspiration quote

Anything Kate Spade

I also have a spreadsheet, product cost per piece and production times. I nailed it. Packaging isn’t hard—it’s mostly point, click, shop.

She sets her phone down. “Wow.”

“Fuzzy bunnies, puppies, baby seals—cute sells to women. You can’t help yourself. Big eyes, chubby cheeks and squishy bodies activate your mesocorticolimbic system and give you a major high. The more that high gets triggered, the more you seek it out.”

“You think our tampon packaging should be addictive,” she says dryly and then ostentatiously taps the trash can icon on her screen. “You need a do-over. The African artisans creating our pouches encountered technical issues ordering supplies. They have two thousand units of pink beads we have to incorporate.”

“So now we have to redo the packaging to match. It’s like making the drapes match the carpet.”

Her face colors. “You’re disgusting.”

Okay, false alert.

My boss does pick up on some innuendos—and she doesn’t like me.

At all.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Dev

AT SEVEN IN the morning on a Saturday, San Francisco’s Mission District is torn between waking up and getting the day started and going back to bed to shake the Friday night hangover. When I park in front of Calla for some covert investigation, I spot two drunks passed out in nearby doorways. The snack vendors trundling their carts up the street bob and weave around them. Even the cinnamon scent of fresh churros can’t erase the stink of days-old alcohol and piss.

Lola gave me the alarm codes for the door on my second day of work. This might have been a gesture of good faith, or it might have been insurance against a repeat of what happened after I accidentally set the alarms off when I arrived at 6:30 a.m. on my first day of work. I’ve never needed much sleep—a good thing given my chronic insomnia—and I like an early start.

Just in case I run into anyone, I’m wearing my usual work uniform of jeans, a button-up shirt and a tie. Today’s neckwear selection is the horny prep school special—a big, bold, look-at-me-or-better-yet-look-down-and-admire-my-awesome-hugeness number with pink-and-maroon stripes. No one’s around to appreciate it, however, when I enter.

The building is quiet, the lights off. Sunlight filters through the skylights and ricochets off the stupid disco ball hanging from the ceiling. It’s immediately clear people have once again failed to clean up after themselves. In some start-ups, engineer ego and the bro-culture keeps trash lying around. Calla’s engineers are simply oblivious, pushing code and driving toward launch while their dirty coffee cups overflow the kitchen sink, spawning mold and mutant germs.

I rearm the door and wage brief but effective war on the kitchen. The sink takes heavy casualties—a Hello Kitty mug that resembles a petri dish and various fossilized Tupperwares. Once I’ve got clean coffee cups lined up by size to dry, I place an online order for disposable coffee cups—the organic, compostable, made-by-some-worthy-charity cups that Lola prefers. Order coffee cups is probably on her to-do list, but her action items list is long and she refuses help.

OCD temporarily placated, I prowl my workplace, looking for magically delicious clues. It’s really freaking quiet, despite the occasional siren or car horn burst from the outside world. Everyone seems to have dutifully taken her laptop home for the weekend. My spying plans were stupid anyhow and hanging around Calla is a colossal waste of time. I should turn the theft over to my lawyer, except I sort of like my ringside seat for the Lola show. I’m not sure what, if anything, is happening between us, but for the first time in a long time, I’m not bored.

Wait.

Maybe not everyone has taken her hardware home.

Light glows dimly from the far side of the workspace. I follow it straight to Lola’s office.

And...wow.

Lola is truly hard core. Or dead. She’s curled up underneath her desk in a ball. It must be more comfortable than it looks because when I check, she’s not dead—just sound asleep on a yoga mat, head pillowed on her arm.

It feels like eternity while I watch her sleep, staring at the soft curve of her cheek. Her lips part ever so slightly, Sleeping Beauty waiting for a kiss, although I prefer Anne Rice’s dirty version to the happy cartoon princess story. I itch to crawl under the desk with her, wrap my arms around her and kiss her awake.

Peel back the cardigan she’s draped over herself like a blanket and taste her from those perfect lips to her bare toes. There are so many places I could start. All I have to do is reach out, to begin. I’ve thought about it more than I’ll ever admit. What I don’t know, though, is if she thinks about me. I think she might have a crush on my body, but I could be nothing more than her intern.

The strap of her tank top slips down one strong, toned arm when she shifts. Lola may not make time to go home, but she definitely makes time to work out. There are sculpted muscles beneath the soft skin. Somehow she feels almost naked, as if sleeping Lola is magically more vulnerable than awake, working Lola.

I don’t need Jack to tell me this staring thing is wrong. You don’t creep on a sleeping woman, and if you do, a restraining order and a long talk with Officer Not-So-Friendly are just a few of the well-deserved presents Santa Claus will deliver for Christmas.

So I force myself to walk away and pull out my phone. Not to take pictures—although I’m tempted—but to call for reinforcements. Ten minutes later, I’m armed with a chai latte courtesy of Uber Eats and ready to poke Sleeping Beauty.

In the sweeter versions of the fairy tale, the prince awakens Sleeping Beauty with a kiss. Anne Rice’s prince gets straight to the screwing, crossing all dubious consent lines. My beauty is asleep, though, and that limits my options. As much as I’d like to kiss her awake, she hasn’t told me yes. Yet. I thump the door frame with my free hand.

“Room service,” I bark at her comatose figure.

Lola wakes in a rush, shooting upright and banging her head on the desk. Ouch. Fortunately, the enormous hair bun she rocks cushions the impact.

Patting the bun back into its orbit, she mutters something in Russian. Per office gossip, she spent a summer at a Moscow software start-up and learned more than curse words. The same gossip suggests we may be under intensive FBI scrutiny as a result. Color me skeptical. Tampons aren’t terrorist weapons unless it’s five minutes before midnight, the store is closing and you’ve forgotten which kind you were sent to fetch.

“What are you doing here?” She squints at me from her desk cave, pulling her cardigan around her.

I pluck her glasses off the top of her desk and extend them to her. With my other hand, I extend the coffee cup to her. “Getting a head start on my Monday to-do list.”

She pops the glasses onto her nose and grabs the cup. She’s remarkably composed for someone busted sleeping on the floor. “A for effort, Mr. King.”

“Are you coming out?”

I shove my hand at her. It’s reflex, a vestigial trace of gentlemanliness instilled by my mother, and honestly, I expect Lola to ignore me. It isn’t easy being a girl boss and I hate that Silicon Valley so often put its women entrepreneurs through the wringer. Women have to play harder, fight dirtier and put up with stupid male shit because some of the most successful guys I know haven’t progressed beyond dirty jokes and hoping to score. To my surprise, though, she places her fingers into mine.

It’s the first time she’s touched me intentionally. She crash-landed on me and we shook hands at my interview, but those don’t count. We’ve also bumped shoulders, brushed arms. But this is different because she’s chosen to put her hand in mine when touching isn’t forced by gravity or dictated by good manners.

This is deliberate.

The heat from her fingers scorches my skin. Why do I want this woman? My brain yells that it’s a very bad idea, that I should step back, walk away, walk out of this building and Lola’s life and away from whatever it is I think I’m doing here.

Which is making a mistake. Making the worst possible, horribly awful, so-wrong-it’s-good mistake.

I tighten my grip anyhow. She’s my boss, or thinks she is. We’re in the office, and offices are officially a sex-free zone. But the seconds tick away, my fingers holding hers, and she says nothing. Or maybe like me, she doesn’t know what to say. Because my whole body’s tight, on full alert and begging for more. She just breathes harder, or maybe that’s my imagination.

I stroke my thumb against the palm of her hand as I pull her forward and up onto her knees. Her hand twitches in mine. She’s waiting for me to do more, and I’m waiting for her to stop me. To drop my hand, to tell me to go away, to leave and to never come back. I’m bigger, larger and standing over her. She’s shorter, smaller and kneeling in front of me. I take the decent half step back although I hate retreating. Sounds filter in from the outside world—the whir of pigeons sounding off and the Spanish bark of the snack vendors trundling their carts up and down the street. There’s no air in here. Just heat and each of us waiting for the other to make a move because there’s too much at stake to be the first.

“Sometime today, Mr. King.” Her firm voice breaks our standoff. She looks up at me, and I have no idea what she sees.

Heart pounding, I pull her up slowly. Lola’s on the tall side for a woman, maybe five feet seven inches, and she’s got a few curves. She says nothing about the helping hand even though she’s spent the last two weeks roasting my balls about not being a team player. Or maybe it’s because she almost-not-quite brushes said balls in her upward trajectory. Or maybe I’m just an asshole. But whatever the reason, my dick makes like the Grinch’s heart having a Christmas revelation and grows three sizes.

Lola’s chest rises and falls rapidly and she stumbles as she comes to her feet. And then somehow she manages to lose her balance entirely and crash-lands on my chest. It’s not my fault because I’m off balance, too, not expecting her to fall. But she does and my brain promptly goes off-line. If I had to pick a word, it would be soft. She’s got great tits and she’s not wearing a bra—just two layers of soft, fluffy fabric.

She barks something. It might be Russian or back off, King. I hesitate, however, to let go of her hand and her waist—somehow, yes, I’m groping the waistband of her leggings—because letting go means she definitely falls and her LZ will be me or the floor. And part of me wants to let her go, let her fall, and then I’ll fall with her and take her right there on the floor.

“What are you doing?” She slaps her hands behind her, bracing herself against the desktop. There’s too little space between us. Our thighs bump, our knees brush.

“Saving your ass.”

I set my own hand beside her hip and my thumb brushes black cotton. I still want to fight with her, but now I want to strip her down, too. Make her admit that she wants me, too. My balls tighten. My finger traces her hip, finding the line of her hips but no panties beneath the cotton. Is she commando? Dirty, dirty girl.

She hasn’t said no.

She hasn’t said go.

Her eyes lock on to mine. “Do you have a white knight complex?”

I smirk. “Knights were supposed to be chaste, Ms. Jones.”

Angry color flags her cheeks. “You suck.”

“An interesting professional assessment. I’ll give you mine. Your problem is that you think you like to be in charge. That you have to tell other people what to do or you won’t like the results. Here’s some free advice for you. Independence has teeth and it likes to bite people in the ass.”

Her eyes narrow. “Really, Mr. King?”

“Why, yes, Ms. Jones.” I snap my teeth at her.

“Because based on your work here, you very much prefer to work alone.”

“I’ve finished both of my projects.”

“They were group projects,” she hisses, pulling off her glasses. “You were supposed to be collaborating with other members of the Calla team. Instead, you just went ahead and did them yourself.”

“They’re done.” Point. Made.

Her pretty mouth tightens. “Perhaps your coworkers would have had valuable insights.”

“I knew exactly how to handle those projects,” I tell her. “You know it. I know it. You should be grateful to get that kind of work for twenty bucks an hour.”

“You are an intern.” She glares at me, trying to set my hair on fire with her eyes. “You are supposed to be learning.”

“And I am.” In the past two weeks, I’ve learned that fetching coffee sucks, that I dislike taking orders even more than I thought I would (which is a lot) and that working two jobs is exhausting (so my hat’s off to all of you who are doing it). Oh, and that I can program circles around anyone here at Calla.

She leans forward. “Name one thing that you’ve learned.”

I wink at her. “That I’m the best programmer you have. You should promote me now.”

Her eyebrows practically marry her hairline. “Are you serious?”