Chapter Five

After picking himself up from the floor, Chance had, somehow, managed to limp his way along the lobby and back to his head developer’s office. His code had finished running, had returned pages and pages of search results with documents attached, but Chance didn’t even look at them. He unplugged his flash drive, the ache in his stomach burning, and made his way gingerly back to his own office.

Once there, he had spent a good half hour breathing deeply, willing the pain in his gut to subside. Only once it had could Chance get back to work. He didn’t look through the search results, even though he’d spent a good ten minutes writing the code necessary to find them. Instead, he logged into an online community that he was a sporadic member of and asked one question and one question only.

Who is Blue?

He spent the better part of the night finding out, and with each new snippet of information, each new record found, Chance built a plan.

That plan found him wandering around the big retail area down by the river the very next morning. It had been a very long time since Chance had done any kind of shopping that didn’t involve a mouse click, and the experience of having to navigate his way between shoppers was not one he enjoyed. But it was necessary, and as midday approached, he arrived at the location he’d Googled and memorized the night before.

KIT was a computer repair store. Of course it was. It took up a couple of floors of the development that included coffee shops, sandwich bars, and an upmarket travel agent. It was an odd place for such a store. Chance didn’t know a whole lot about property values, but he knew enough to know that KIT sat in prime real estate. He also knew that the development belonged to Will Thornton, a local property millionaire, and the man who was dating Kate Kelly, Blue’s best friend.

Yep, Chance had been busy, and he was also fucking nervous.

He clutched a bunch of electric-blue flowers in his hand as he approached the store. It had taken him ages to find them, and it was also the first time he’d ever bought flowers for a woman. He wasn’t entirely sure what that said about him, but he decided not to think about that.

What he did think about was how important the next few minutes were going to be. He’d scared Blue last night. And, sure, she’d given as good as she’d got, but Chance needed to apologize for that. The flowers were meant to do that. They were also, if he was honest, a way to soften her up. Now that he knew exactly who Blue was, and why she’d snuck her way into X-Tech, it was very important that he get her on his side.

He took a deep breath as he pushed open the front door of the store. A theme tune sounded. Star Trek. Classic Star Trek. Chance had watched every single episode, more than once. Had Blue watched them?

He looked around the store. There were only two people inside. Kate Kelly and the woman he’d gone to all this trouble for. Chance swallowed unsteadily as he looked over both women. Kate looked exactly like the pictures he’d found of her online suggested she would look. Skinny jeans, a Space Invaders tee, and bright orange Converse. The uniform of geeks. Pretty much everyone in X-Tech dressed the same way.

Blue though… Chance swallowed again. How could he not? She looked like she’d just stepped out of a video game. Tight red leggings covered her shapely legs. A tiny, white corset cinched her waist but somehow managed to show off most of her lower stomach and wide hips. Black inkings ran along both sides of those hips and disappeared God-knew-where. Her hair was in some kind of lop-sided electric-blue beehive, with red polka-dot ribbons wrapped round it, and she wore the highest red heels that Chance had ever seen.

She was stunning.

There was no other word for it.

And Chance was hard before he even took another breath.

“What the hell?”

“Good afternoon, Blue.”

The women looked across at him. They both had very different expressions on their faces. Kate was glaring. Blue was simply open-mouthed and wide-eyed.

Chance moved through the store, his hand clenched around the flowers so tightly that he almost severed their stems. He was ridiculously nervous. He’d known he would be. So much rested on this. But as he looked at Blue, at that corset, at the way she spilled out of it, he knew those nerves were not just about the situation they now found themselves in.

How far down do those tattoos go?

Chance gritted his teeth. Willing his thoughts from the direction they seemed intent on taking. Trouble was, Blue was so much prettier in real life than her online images had suggested. Maybe because she’d had so many different hair colors in them, so many different outfits, it was like viewing several different women.

Which one was real?

Chance was desperately eager to find out.

He gave himself an inward shake—that was not what he was here for!—and came to a halt right in front of Blue. She smelled of strawberries. He held the flowers out, smiling in what he hoped was a winning way.

“For you.”

Blue looked from the flowers to him—once and then again. “Flowers?”

“Blue?”

That came from Kate. She had her hands on her hips, her gaze darting between them.

“Blue?”

That one word seemed to shake Blue from whatever state of shock she’d been in. She snatched the flowers from Chance’s hand, shot them a look he couldn’t decipher, before dropping them on the desk beside her.

“It’s…I…” She glowered at him. “I told you not to call me that.”

Chance tried to give what he hoped was a nonchalant shrug. It was necessary for the role he was planning on playing here. “I prefer it to Megan.”

“It’s Meg.” She glowered some more. “And excuse me if I don’t care that you prefer your stupid nickname to the name my parents gave me.” She paused. “And how did you even find out my name?”

“It’s on the company directory.”

“How did you find out which company I work for?”

Another shrug. “I asked around.”

“Asked around who?”

“The nerds in this city are fairly close-knit,” Chance said. “And talkative, if they’re animated enough. It didn’t take long to find out who you were…not with the description.”

“Description?”

“You’re a very memorable woman, Blue,” Chance said.

“This is…” Kate’s soft words fell between them. She no longer had her hands on her hips but was pulling an Android from the pocket of her skinny jeans. “This is not good…” She shot him a look. “You’re the burglar. The black hat.”

Her words only confirmed what Chance had found out about these women the night before, about their expertise. The plan he’d come up with, the ruse, ran through his mind. He had to be very, very careful.

“Technically,” he said.

Kate shook her head. “There is no ‘technically’ about it.” She looked across at her friend. “I’m calling Will.”

“Not yet, Kate,” Blue said. “Not yet.”

She tilted her head, as if taking him all in. Chance found himself wondering what it was that she could see. No, what she thought about what she could see. Chance wasn’t an idiot. He knew what he looked like. Hell, he’d spent hundreds of hours in the gym so that he could look like this, rather than the skinny nerd he had once been. But what did Blue think about it? Did she prefer skinny nerds? That was her world, after all.

She shot a look at the electric-blue flowers. Chance followed her gaze. What was she thinking? He was shocked by how badly he wanted to know, but even as those thoughts raced through his mind, Chance knew that they shouldn’t be there. He wasn’t here to ask her out on a date! He was here because he needed her help. He had to remember that. Focus on it. This was important.

“What do you want?” she eventually asked, crossing her arms.

Chance’s resolve weakened as quickly as it had formed. His cock thickened beneath the denim of his pants. He tried his very best to ignore it, but even as he did he couldn’t help wonder: was he doomed for her to make him ache?

“We need to talk.”

“We said plenty last night.”

“You put a stop to our conversation before we got to the part we needed to get to,” Chance said.

Blue looked down. He cursed inwardly the moment she did. He did not need her looking there. He sat down on the edge of the desk. It was a bad move. Her laptop was open. His own image, his old image, looked back at him. Chance almost sighed even as a trickle of panic ran through him. He missed that gray sweater.

“And what part would that be?” Blue asked.

Chance shifted so that he blocked the screen from view, before saying the words that he had come here to say. “The part where we figure out how X-Tech stole your work.”