steaming mug of Earl Grey to my lips—after a sleepless night with copays on the brain, I needed the hit of caffeine—when Jackson Jones sauntered into the communal kitchen, all long legs and athletic grace. I was glad I hadn’t drunk it yet; I wasn’t yet used to the wallop of seeing those soft, pink lips nestled into that dark beard, and the tea would’ve ended up on my blouse.
His lips weren’t crooked up in a smile, not like when I’d met him yesterday before he knew I was replacing him as the team lead. They were set in a flat line. Gripping a green smoothie in a clear plastic cup with the straw still capped by the top of its wrapper, he approached to stand so close to me I had to crane my neck up to look him in the eye. Had he done it to intimidate me? If so, it wouldn’t work.
“Morning, Jackson.” I set down my mug and crossed my arms.
“Morning,” he muttered.
My stomach curled into itself. I hadn’t felt this way since middle school, when I’d gathered up every scrap of courage I could find to ask my crush, Ian Cameron, to the Sadie Hawkins dance, and he’d turned me down flat in front of the entire math class, saying he didn’t date nerds.
Apparently, Jackson Jones ascribed to the same philosophy.
Checking that we were still alone in the kitchen, I jutted out my chin. “Don’t worry. I’m not going to ask you out again. If I’d known who you were when we met, I wouldn’t have done it in the first place.”
I stood there, arms crossed, waiting for him to apologize for not telling me then that he was Synergy’s cofounder. Or to say anything.
He tipped his chin at the counter behind me. “Mind if I—?”
I closed my eyes, wishing I could make myself invisible. I scooted away from the coffee machine. “Go ahead.”
My cheeks tingled with heat. Fine. I was glad he’d turned me down. And I was glad he was acting like a jerk now. I’d remember this moment instead of staring at those kissable lips. No! They weren’t kissable. They were just lips, slightly pouty at the corners. Used for talking. And frowning. I wouldn’t be going anywhere near them.
I smoothed the wrinkles out of my skirt. “See you at the stand-up. Eight-thirty sharp.”
“We always did them at nine. A little more humane, don’t you think?”
I gave him a simpering smile. “But far less productive.” I turned toward the door.
“Alicia.”
I froze. People called me that all day. Why did I turn to jelly only when he said it?
“You forgot your…your tea?” He held it out to me, wrinkling his nose.
“Thank you.” I snatched the cup and strode out.
The entire floor was open, and a line of potted trees separated our collaboration space from the rest of the office. Wide windows provided natural light. Three long, two-person desks arrayed with large monitors were arranged in a square with one side open.
Four of the seats were occupied. I tested myself on their names: Amit and Gary, the two senior developers; Kevin, the funny one; and Tyler, the junior developer. They faced the center of the open rectangle, which held a grouping of colorful, squashy pouf chairs. But we wouldn’t have time to laze around in them. Much more useful was the whiteboard wall striped with swimlanes. My fingers itched for a pad of sticky notes.
“Morning, everyone.” I set my bags on the empty center table. After turning my phone to vibrate, I tossed it into my purse and set it in the drawer. I pulled out my Synergy-issued laptop and connected it to the docking station. Tyler, to my left, peered around the side of my large monitor.
“That’s it?” he said. “No knick-knacks? No pictures?” He gestured at his own workspace, where a collection of Star Wars figurines surrounded the base of his monitor.
“No.” I’d learned long ago not to put pictures of Noah on my desk. Women with families got passed over. Only women who hid their life outside work ever got ahead in tech.
“So no kids?” Tyler swigged from a can of Mountain Dew.
I grimaced. “I do enough babysitting at work.”
Tyler laughed. So did Kevin, who sat on the other side of him.
Jackson, who’d come around the corner, didn’t. He stilled, his face a mask. Then he stalked around us to the seat on my other side. He didn’t sit, and his knuckles whitened around his mug.
Shit, did he think I’d meant he needed a babysitter? It was only a joke, but now I wished I hadn’t said it.
Jackson cleared his throat. “Shouldn’t we start the stand-up, boss? Eight-thirty. Sharp.”
The back of my neck burned like I was standing on asphalt at noon. But I’d never let him see he’d pricked me. “Absolutely.”
I stood and circled the desks to the whiteboard, where the guys joined me. Good; I was glad that was one practice I didn’t have to introduce.
Cooper emerged from the nearby stairwell, clutching a green smoothie. I didn’t miss the way he scanned our group clustered around the whiteboard. Glad we’d started on time, I nodded at him. He returned my nod and lifted his smoothie to Jackson at the other end of the line. It seemed they’d made up. Good for them.
I dragged my attention from the guy who’d hired me to my team. “Before we start, I’d like to say a couple of words. First, I’m so excited to be working with you all. I know we’ll do great things together.”
Stepping up to the task board and its collection of colored sticky notes, I led them through a review of the backlog of work. Before we launched into a discussion of who would do what, I said, “I understand you’re familiar with pair programming. I’d like to try that, at least on this first sprint. I know it’s not the most efficient way to code, but it’ll save us time in the end because the code will be higher quality. Okay? Now—”
“No.”
All eyes swiveled to Jackson, who’d said it.
“No?” I raised my eyebrows.
“I code best on my own. I don’t care if everyone else partners up”—he shrugged, hands in his pockets—“but it’s not for me.”
I took a deep breath through my nose. Was he resisting me because of the babysitting comment? “Jackson, I’d like everyone to try this. If it doesn’t work, we can try something else for next sprint. Besides, we have an even number of people on the team. It’ll work out well.”
He hesitated, not even for a full second, but it was long enough for me to take back the reins. “Now, who’s going to run with this first task?”
In the end, the other programmers paired up obediently. Only Jackson stubbornly refused to join up with anyone else. The words didn’t want to come out, but I forced them to sound cheerful. “I guess that means you’re with me, Jackson. All right, everyone, let’s start.”
The other guys rearranged themselves into pairs, but Jackson and I, already at the same desk, returned to our seats.
I unzipped my laptop bag and pulled out his folded, gray shirt.
“I got the blood out,” I muttered, sliding it to him across the table.
“Thanks.” His fingers brushed against mine for less than a second, but goosebumps still rose on my arm. I rubbed them away. None of that.
“Hey, Alicia?” Tyler’s face hovered over the tops of our screens.
Had he seen me hand Jackson his shirt? I tried to smile at him, but the corners of my mouth wouldn’t rise. “What’s up?”
Jackson turned to his monitor and banged on his keyboard. The clacks of the keys rang out like crackling thunder.
Tyler asked a question about one of his tasks. I answered it, scanning his brown-green eyes for any hint of suspicion. His gaze flicked over to Jackson. Was it fanboy adulation, or did he think something inappropriate was going on between us? As a woman on a team of men, I’d been suspected before of secret relationships, of favoritism. I sent him off with a touch more vinegar than the question had merited.
After he went back to his desk, I logged into the Synergy network. Beside me, Jackson clacked away at his keyboard, but his stiff posture radiated tension. I wished I’d never said what I had to Tyler. We had to work together, damn it. And I needed to act like a leader, not one of the crew.
Softly, I said, “I’m sorry. About that comment I made. It was an attempt at a joke.”
“A joke.” The chill in Jackson’s voice made me shiver. “Maybe you’d better leave those to me. I was always the class clown.”
His tone was light, but the pain in those bottomless eyes twisted my stomach. “I meant it about me and my job, not about you.”
Silence stretched between us. At last, he said, “Let’s try to focus on the work.” He turned to his keyboard.
Work. He was right. We were here to do work. Not to make friends. I’d apologized, and that was all I could do.
“Would you like to drive, or should I?”
“Hmm?” The bangs coming from his keyboard were so loud he might not have heard me. Listening to that all day would make me want to stab out my own eye with one of Tyler’s action figures.
“We’re a pair. How about I do the code entry—drive—and you navigate, by which I mean watch and comment?”
His fingers stilled, and he turned those dark brown eyes on me. They weren’t melted-chocolate soft like they’d been yesterday but hard like polished mahogany. Quietly, he said, “I know what pair programming is. But I work best on my own. I’m not much of a team player, so I think we’ll go faster if you do your work and I do mine.”
My throat tightened. “Everyone can benefit from partnering up. We can learn from each other. Help each other.”
He gave me a tight smile that only made his eyes seem harder. “I doubt you need help from someone like me.”
Encouraging. “I guess that means I’ll drive.” I logged onto the coding interface and started typing. After a minute, he rolled his chair an inch or two closer, looming in my peripheral vision. The hairs on my arms rose again. He smelled. Like. Heaven.
Expensive leather. Something woodsy, like pine. Rick had smelled like the fragrance counter at Walgreens. But this didn’t smell like it came from a bottle. He smelled like he could’ve ridden a horse through a forest earlier that day. He hadn’t, had he? I sneaked a glance at his hands. Pale across the back except for a semicircle right below the wrist, and tanned fingers. All wrong for riding gloves, and callus-free, so probably not.
I shook my head. It didn’t matter how great he smelled. We were colleagues. And not even friendly ones. Not even after my apology.
A few minutes later, he interrupted me. “I think we have some code for that method. You should call it.”
“Oh.” I searched the utility repository and found it. “Thanks.”
“And maybe if you—”
“If I?”
He suggested a different way to organize the code. Unorthodox, but efficient. Grudgingly, I keyed it in.
“It’ll compile a ton faster that way.”
I shrugged. “Maybe you’re right.” He was definitely right. Damn him and his coding smarts. Would I ever reach his level?
He crossed his arms. He wore a Black Sabbath T-shirt that showed off his defined biceps and forearms and made me forget all about his brain. What would it feel like if I trailed a finger across his skin? Down over those strong wrists and—I swallowed—powerful fingers? I balled my hands into fists. I wouldn’t be finding out.
Coding. I was here to code. I turned my face to the screen and started typing.
For most of the morning, we worked in silence, broken only by his suggestions for improvement. And although he’d said he worked best on his own, he acted more like a coach than a critic, making brilliant suggestions for how to make the code more efficient, more elegant. I felt like a clueless freshman around him, and I wondered again why I was there. Jackson could’ve coded the module we were working on with one hand tied behind his back while asleep.
Lunch by myself at a nearby deli was a welcome respite from Jackson’s physical energy and intoxicating smell. I’d hoped for a few more minutes of peace when I returned, but no such luck. He was already there, his fingers clacking across the keyboard. My keyboard. Pair programming? Worst idea ever.
But I was the one who’d committed to it for at least the next two weeks, so I tucked my purse into the desk drawer and rolled my chair far enough away from him that I could sit down.
“I think we can finish this module today,” he said. “You don’t mind working after five, do you?”
“Actually, I have to leave by four. Every Tuesday and Thursday.”
His fingers stilled, and he looked at me for the first time since the stand-up this morning. “You have another gig? Aren’t we paying you enough?”
They were paying me plenty, more than double my hourly rate at my previous job, and I barely kept myself from snorting. “This is my only job. I quit my previous employer last month, when I’d saved up enough, when I’d done enough planning to go out on my own.”
“So this is your first solo gig?”
Shit. I kept my wince on the inside. I’d revealed a weakness. “It is. But I’ve been planning this move for three years. It’s always been my dream to be my own boss. You must know what that’s like.”
A flicker of something—pain?—narrowed his eyes. “I guess Synergy’s recommendation will mean a lot to your business.”
Was that sabotage lurking behind those flinty eyes? Regardless, I couldn’t lie. Not even to someone who disregarded me as much as Jackson Jones did. “It will.”
“And still, you’re leaving work early two days a week?”
“When and why I leave work is no business of yours as long as I get the work done. You’ll get your money’s worth while I’m here.”
He grunted. At least he didn’t make another disparaging comment.
“Mind if I drive?” I indicated the keyboard.
He held up both hands. “Go for it.”
We worked for half an hour or so as we had before lunch, me typing and him advising me in a way that made me wince at my own clumsiness. After a while, he asked, “Where’d you learn to code, anyway?”
“High school, and after that, UT.”
“You’re originally from Texas?”
“From Austin. I grew up just a few miles from here.” I wasn’t about to share that I lived in the same house where I’d grown up. With my mother.
“You’ve never left the state?”
“I didn’t say that.” My fingers stilled on the keyboard. “But no.”
“No Disney World? No middle-school trip to D.C.? Graduation weekend in Paris?”
“Nope. We were more of a camping family.”
“Camping’s okay.” He shrugged. “One summer, Cooper and I cycled through Europe.”
Europe. It’d been my dream all through high school and college. But with money scarce, I’d put it off. And by the time I’d paid off my college loans, I had Noah and his college savings to build. No Europe for me. Though if Weber Technology Consulting took off, maybe we could finally take that trip I’d always dreamed of.
“And you’ve been working in Austin since you graduated?” He stretched his long legs under the desk, and his boots creaked.
“A lot of software companies are based here. I worked for several before I left and started my own business.” It still gave me goosebumps to be able to say that. My own business.
“How about I drive for a while?”
“What?” Was all the small talk a distraction to lull me into a false sense of security?
“It’ll be faster if I type.”
“No, I’ve got this.” If I let him drive, he’d leave me in the dust. And for the next two months, I’d be running behind him, trying to wrest back control. I wasn’t about to let Jackson Jones and his noisy, flying fingers snatch this project away from me.