A New Year Marriage Proposal. Kate Hardy

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СКАЧАТЬ she corrected. ‘Thank you for taking on the project. I’ll make sure your invoice is processed promptly.’

      ‘You haven’t asked my hourly rate yet,’ he said.

      ‘I’m sure it will be in line with the market rate.’

      Meaning that she’d make him feel guilty and he’d cut his rate if it was too high. He was about to agree, but his mouth went freelance on him again. ‘Make me some more of that cake and we’ll call tonight’s meeting a freebie.’

      ‘Deal,’ she said.

      And when he shook her hand, his palm actually tingled.

      Not good.

      This was business. And she was his neighbour. And you most definitely didn’t mix any of those things with anything else, not if you wanted a quiet life where you could just get on with your work without your heart being tied up in knots all the time.

      ‘Tomorrow,’ he said, and left before he did anything stupid. Like turning her hand over and kissing her wrist. Letting his mouth linger on her pulse point. And asking her for a date.

      * * *

      What Carissa had learned about Quinn O’Neill: he was bright. He liked chocolate. He had a good heart. And he was definitely smart as well as sexy.

      But she’d just involved him in the project she’d been working on for years. Something she couldn’t afford to go wrong, because it was way too important to her. In her experience, getting involved meant getting out of her depth. Getting hurt. She’d only just managed to paper over the cracks post-Justin; the glue still needed time to dry, time to help her form a shell to keep her heart safe. So having any kind of involvement with Quinn other than a business relationship—even if he was smart, sexy and sensitive—would be a very bad idea.

      ‘He’s off limits,’ she told herself. Out loud, just to make sure she’d got the message.

      But she still couldn’t quite get him out of her head.

      She worked through her lunch hour the next day so she’d be home in time to make brownies before the meeting. And at precisely seven she rang Quinn’s doorbell.

      ‘Punctual. Good. Come in.’ He glanced at the cake tin. ‘Last night’s fee?’

      ‘Last night’s fee,’ she confirmed.

      ‘Good. Thank you.’ He took the tin from her. ‘Coffee?’

      ‘Thanks. Milk, no sugar,’ she said.

      ‘Come up.’

      The layout of Quinn’s house was very similar to her own; she remembered it from visiting Maddie and Jack. Like her, he had a table in the kitchen where he could eat—or work maybe. He gestured to her to sit down, and switched on the kettle.

      Like her, she noticed, he had no clutter on the worktops. But it didn’t feel like a cook’s kitchen. Though maybe she was being unfair. He’d only moved in two days before. He’d barely had time to unpack—and she’d noticed a few cardboard boxes by the door to the living room. It made her flush with guilt; he’d hardly even moved in, and she’d already inveigled him into working extra hours on her project, fitting it around whatever work he already had on, knowing that freelancers rarely said no because they couldn’t afford to pass up a project in case it left them with a gap in their schedule—and their finances.

      Before she could apologise for being pushy, Quinn put a mug of coffee in front of her. He opened the lid of the cake tin but didn’t put the brownies on a plate. ‘Help yourself,’ he said. ‘Right. I’ve been thinking about how your system could work.’

      Guilt flooded over her. ‘I’m sorry for dumping extra work on you,’ she said in a rush.

      He scoffed. ‘What you wanted isn’t rocket science. Well, it might’ve been if you’d insisted on a life-size virtual Santa. This is easy and it took me about five minutes to work it all out. What you need is a simple video link. We’ll avoid microphone noise by getting Santa to wear a wire—and the person at the children’s ward who takes the tablet round to the kids also needs to wear a wire.’

      ‘That would be me. And they’re going to see if I’m wearing a microphone or headset. I guess you can hide Santa’s in his hat or beard, but...’ She grimaced. ‘I don’t want them to see mine.’

      ‘They’re not going to see anything,’ he said. ‘When I say wearing a wire, I don’t mean a physical wire—it’s not like the kind of thing you saw on cop shows twenty years ago, where someone had a microphone taped to his chest and attached to a recording device worn round his waist. I mean having an app on the tablet and doing the “wire” through software. The audio quality’s better than an old-fashioned wire or a headset.’

      She blinked. ‘You can do that?’

      ‘It’s not new technology,’ he informed her. ‘And it’s not as if we need to miniaturise anything or hide it in something tiny in a way that means it’ll get past any detection equipment.’

      Which sounded as if he did that sort of thing all the time.

      ‘You’re carrying a tablet so the kids can see Santa and talk to him. The app runs unobtrusively in the background.’

      ‘I feel a bit stupid,’ she admitted.

      ‘Unless you work in the area, how are you meant to know the technology exists?’ he asked.

      Carissa mentally added ‘kind’ to Quinn’s list of attributes. And tried very hard not to think about ‘Smart Is the New Sexy’. Justin had been sexy, too. Smart. And he’d been the biggest mistake of her life. She couldn’t risk getting things wrong like that again.

      ‘So. The app broadcasts the audio—not just to Santa, but through headphones to the support team. You tell us the patient’s name just before you take the tablet over to the child, so Santa can get the name right and do the “magic” bit by greeting the kid by name.

      ‘The team picks up what the child wants as a gift and organises it with your supplier on another line—they’ll be able to hear you clearly, but you won’t be able to hear anyone except Santa on the tablet. And your team will work on collaborative software with a database so they all know who’s ordered what and from where—that way, nothing gets missed or duplicated.’

      ‘And you have this collaborative software?’ she asked.

      ‘Yes, and I can tweak it to suit your needs. I can train your team on it so they’ll be perfect within about half an hour.’

      She looked at him. ‘I don’t know what to say. Except I’m impressed.’

      ‘It’s really not rocket science,’ he said again. ‘It’s just putting a couple of systems together.’

      ‘Have you actually worked in rocket science, then?’ The question came out before she could stop it.

      Quinn wrinkled his nose, and Carissa had to tell herself not to notice how cute it made him look. ‘I can’t answer that,’ he said.

      She blew out a breath. ‘OK. Timings СКАЧАТЬ