Her Intern. Anne Marsh

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СКАЧАТЬ fingers are flying over the keyboard before I can respond. Okay, then. Totally lost in thought, she rolls back and forth like a metronome on top of that stupid yoga ball. She must have amazing abs.

      After thirty seconds, I get bored and set the stopwatch on my phone. After ten minutes, I tap the table in front of her. “Earth to Lola.”

      “Oh.” She turns bright pink and promptly loses her balance. I catch her by the elbow. For the count of three, my mouth is by her ear. Her hair brushes my cheek and that’s all it takes for me to learn that she smells like vanilla, like cookies and sugar. Danger.

      I force myself to roll my ball away from hers. “We need to get going here.”

      “Right.” She slides the laptop away with obvious reluctance. “So you start. Tell me about yourself.”

      I haven’t decided how to play this. Threaten her with my lawyer? Present her with a hefty invoice for the software she stole? Or just inform her that her pirated e-commerce system will switch her product to rubber ducky dildos as soon as she goes live because of my anti-theft safeguards? As Inigo Montoya assured Miracle Max: humiliations galore. Making small talk, however, is not part of my revenge plot.

      “You know all about me.” The words come out more growl than nice. Whatever.

      “Uh-huh.” She fidgets with the edge of the laptop. Her gaze flicks to the screen. Back to me. “Well, Lev—”

      “Dev,” I correct.

      She makes a face. “Sorry. I thought I read—”

      “You can’t believe everything you read.” I glance at her laptop as I speak. It’s just code—lines and lines of the stuff in the typical developer environment. Not my code. Not my problem. But the mess on the screen is all wrong. It’s inefficient and poorly organized.

      I nudge her yoga ball abruptly, scooting her out of the way so I can pull the laptop toward me. “This is so wrong. Jesus. Who taught you how to code?”

      She sucks in a pissed-off breath, reaching for the laptop. “That’s mine.”

      I shoot to my feet, balancing the laptop in one hand, typing like a fiend with the other. Delete. Delete. Delete. I scroll down, check a line, scroll back up. There aren’t even any unit tests—does she really believe testing is optional? Lola yanks furiously on my arm, but not only am I much, much taller than her, I also spent a year commuting between San Francisco and Santa Cruz on the train. I’m a master at typing while the world around me sways, lurches and violates my personal space.

      I hit Save at the same moment the laptop flies out of my hand. Lola glares at me from the top of the conference room table she’s climbed so she can repo her hardware. Score one for her. She transfers the glare to her screen and anger morphs into visible outrage. Whatever. I drop back onto my blue ball and smirk up at her.

      “You’re welcome, sweetheart.” Love me, hate me, or plan to bury my body in the alley behind Calla—but I’ve just fixed a major showstopper of a bug in her code. She knows it, too.

      Hippie Chick chooses this moment to stick her head in the conference room door. “Are you done?”

      Not a chance.

      But Lola jumps off the table, laptop clutched to her chest. As she lands, her hip not-so-accidentally checks my shoulder hard enough to rock my ball.

      “You bet,” she tells Hippie Chick.

      “No,” I snap at the same moment.

      I’m supposed to discuss the reasons that brought me here. Read her the riot act. Make her life generally unpleasant and ensure that she never, ever touches anything of mine again without permission. Spank her for being a bad girl.

      “He’s hired,” Lola announces as she strides out of the room. “He’ll start tomorrow.”

      Wait.

      What?

      Hippie Chick fist pumps. “Welcome aboard, new summer intern.”

       CHAPTER FOUR

      Lola

      “ASS,” I HISS under my breath. Exaggerated sibilance sounds way less cool than, say, when a wizard is speaking Parseltongue. Yes, I’m a nerd with a Harry Potter fixation (House Ravenclaw, naturally), and yes, some days it sucks being the girl boss. I’ve worked hard to get where I am, though, so I don’t scream the truth to the rafters of Calla’s amazing three-story loft space. If I did, that truth might deafen the departing ass.

      My newly hired nemesis, Mr. Devlin King. My intern.

      My Friday night crush.

      I’d worked my clit feverishly remembering his muscled thighs and stern face. Even though I apologized for crash-landing on him and his magnificent lap (at least I think I did—the details are fuzzy), he’s holding a grudge. He certainly doesn’t seem to have spent his weekend fantasizing about the mystery woman who gave him a free lap dance.

      He’s still impossibly gorgeous, though. To preserve what remains of my sanity, I retreat to the kitchen and pretend to deep-dive into my code while what I really do is watch Dev walk away from me for the second time: tall, built and still in possession of the most amazing backside I’ve ever ogled. He totally owns his ridiculously expensive suit. He’s also quite possibly the most brilliant programmer I’ve ever met, having solved in seconds what a team of Calla engineers has been wrestling with for a week. Unfortunately, a continental-sized ego and the suave manners of Attila the Hun accompany his stunning good looks and big brain. Working with him will be impossible, but there’s no viable alternative. The man is a genius and he works for peanuts, almost literally. Naturally, I’ve already forgotten whatever was on his résumé—UC Santa Cruz?—but he’s definitely a college student with a willingness to intern for almost nothing. Given Calla’s financial state, personality is negotiable.

      Nellie woofs, poking her square white head out from behind the trash can. Nellie is a scaredy-bear and she hides whenever she spots intruders. She resembles a miniature zeppelin on squat legs. Bringing her to work with me is the perk of being the boss.

      I reach down to stroke the soft fur on top of her head. “The coast is clear.”

      Like me, Nellie prefers to people in small doses. Another surreptitious peek reveals I’ve been overoptimistic in my estimate of Devlin’s leave-taking. He’s still on the premises, talking up Katie, Calla’s receptionist.

      As Nellie eases out to say hello to me, Devlin nods at Katie. Not a smile, nothing pleasant, just a brusque tip of his gorgeous head that makes parts of me long to grab him by that stupid tie and yank his head down to mine. I should look away but I can’t. I blame the way his shoulders stretch his dark suit jacket, framing all those delicious muscles. It’s too bad the man ever has to open his mouth. If he could just work and glower in silence, seen but not heard, he’d be perfect. If he could do that with a Scottish accent and a tartan, I’d come on the spot.

      Katie clearly agrees with me about the pretty boy factor. She stares at Devlin King, her mouth working like a fish. I can СКАЧАТЬ