A Game of Chance

by Emma Shortt

“Yeah.”

  Gabe let out a low whistle. “It’s going to take days, my friend, if not weeks.”

  “And then some.”

  “We need to think about what we’re going to do once we figure out how much data she has actually stolen,” Gabe said. “And who she stole it from.”

  “We contact her victims,” Chance said quickly. “What other choice do we have?”

  “Victims…” Gabe sighed. “Whatever we do, we’re going to need to think it through carefully, get legal involved.” He snapped his fingers. “We just delete it all. Delete every bit of research that ERQ brought to us.”

  “Our people will still remember some of it,” Chance said. “We’ll still benefit from it.”

  “Job offers, then,” Gabe said. “We bring them all into the fold. Every nerd out there wants to work with us. If we let them develop their work here…”

  Chance started at that. “Develop the Golden Group?”

  Gabe sighed. “Someone is going to do it eventually, Chance. When are you going to realize that?”

  “I do realize it,” Chance said.

  “You don’t accept it, though.”

  Chance rubbed a hand over his face. They might only be three percent into ERQ’s logs, but Chance had seen enough to know that she’d gathered a lot of information on the Golden Group. No wonder X-Tech had made so many inexplicable leaps. “I can’t believe I let this happen.”

  “Too clever for your own good,” Gabe muttered. He took another swig from the can and visibly shuddered. “What about ERQ? Tell me you’re not really planning on shutting her down?”

  “You’d rather I left her to prowl the Web?” Chance asked.

  Gabe grinned. “I’d rather you sat down and worked out where she went wrong, or right, depending on your viewpoint, pull the code out, and see how we can integrate it into some of our other projects. Hell, Chance, I’ll head it up myself.”

  “You really think that’s a good idea?” Chance asked, his tone making it clear what his view was.

  “I think it’s a fantastic idea,” Gabe said. “There’s all kinds of potential here. ERQ could be the thing that kick-starts some of our projects into life.” He paused. “I meant to tell you, I’ve opened back up the driverless car division.”

  Chance couldn’t even find it in himself to get annoyed. He was too exhausted. “That tech—”

  “Yeah, yeah, world changing, but I’ve thought about it,” Gabe said. “And Musk has made a mistake in his design. I’m sure of it. We can do better.”

  “You have to stop this archrival thing with Musk.”

  “Archrival? He wishes.”

  “If you’re heading up that division, you won’t have time for ERQ,” Chance said quickly.

  “I’ll make time,” Gabe said, he tilted his head slightly. “Better yet, why don’t you ask Dr. Marlowe to come in and head it up?”

  Chance shot Gabe a look. “Don’t go there.”

  “How can I not after what I heard earlier?” Gabe asked. “She’s…”

  “What?” Chance demanded. “What is she?”

  “A handful,” Gabe said.

  A handful…Meg was that and then some. And yet, she was in the right in every possible way. Chance had fucked up. Bad. She should be angry. She should be furious. Not only had he stolen her work but he’d deceived her all week long. How was he ever going to fix that?

  “I can’t think about Blue right now,” he said.

  Gabe laughed. “Running scared, Chance?”

  “Seriously? You’re asking me that? I remember the women who used to cry on my shoulder, because not only did you never call them back, but you weren’t man enough to face them.”

  Gabe waved the words away. “Ancient history.”

  “Only because I stopped doing it,” Chance said.

  “You stopped doing it because they friend-zoned you.”

  “Every woman friend-zoned me back then,” Chance said. “I was…a nerd.”

  Gabe scooted his chair along the desk. He grabbed Chance’s flat soda and emptied the contents into his mouth. “We were both nerds. Difference was, I knew women liked it.” He dropped the can back on the desk. “Dr. Marlowe, Meg, Blue, whatever you’re calling her, she likes you. She wouldn’t be so angry with you if she didn’t.”

  “I fucked up,” Chance said.

  “We all fuck up,” Gabe replied. “Question is, how badly?”

  Chance thought of his plan to get Meg on his side. How he had constructed it like he constructed any plan. Stacking up the variables, analyzing their interactions, moving on from there. She’d summed it up perfectly; it really had been input A, output B. Only, he hadn’t realized that where they were concerned it would never work. He hadn’t factored in the variable that was them. He was a fucking idiot.

  “Badly,” he said.

  “Is it fixable?”

  Chance hesitated. “I don’t know.”

  “Do you even want to fix it?”

  There was no hesitation. “Yes.”

  Gabe laughed and gave Chance an approving clasp on the shoulder. “I can tell you this much; you’re not going to fix it from here. My advice? Go to her apartment. Take some flowers. Chocolates even.”

  “Flowers? Chocolates?”

  “Just to get things started,” Gabe said. “Once she’s softened a little, you can give her what she really wants.”

  “And what is that?” Chance demanded.

  “It’s obvious,” Gabe said. “She wants her work recognized. Give her that recognition. Invite her in to head up the Golden Group. To finish her project and any others she likes the look of. She can sort out ERQ while she’s at it.”

  Chance swallowed against the sudden lump in his throat. An image of Meg sitting with him in his office, laughing and smiling as she tapped away at her keyboard, entered his mind and refused to be dislodged. What would it be like to come into work every day knowing she was here? Knowing that she was full of ideas and full of energy.

  Intriguing.

  But Meg would never be satisfied with anything simple. She would want the Golden Group.

  “She’ll solve the problem,” Chance said after a moment. “I looked at the work so far. She’s so close.”

  Gabe sighed. “Chance, you have to stop trying to control everything.”

  “The world isn’t ready,” he said.

  Another sigh. “You don’t get to decide if the world is ready.”

  “Who does then, Gabe?” Chance demanded.

  “The people who make the discoveries,” Gabe said. “You can hide as much of your work as you want. Solve every puzzle in the world and tell no one. That’s fine. That’s your choice. But you don’t get to tell others to do the same thing.”

  “I deleted that code,” Chance said softly.

  “Because no one was close.” Gabe sighed. “Would you have deleted it if they were?” He held up a hand. “You don’t need to answer that. I already know what you’re going to say, even if you don’t.” He paused. “You’re a bit crazy, Chance, I know that. I’ve always known it. It’s the genius thing.”

  “You have it, too.”

  “I’m a quiet genius,” Gabe said, grinning once more. “I’m not the dramatic type like you are.” Another pause. “Dr. Marlowe strikes me as the dramatic type, too. You make a perfect couple.”

  Couple? Was it even possible? Chance hadn’t dared to let himself consider the possibility. There was too much to untangle. Too much to try to figure out. It was all unraveled now, though. Everything was out and in the open. Could he and Meg work their way through it? Did she even want to?

  “I can’t even go and see her until ERQ is under control,” he eventually said.

  Gabe snorted. “That’s days away, maybe even weeks.”

  “She might want those days,” Chance said. “To think things through, I mean.”

  “Want them?” Gabe shook his head. “It’s not about what she wants, my friend, it’s about what she needs. And right now? After everything
that’s happened? She needs you on your knees begging forgiveness.”

  “You think she’ll give it me?”

  “There’s only one way to find out.”

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Meg knew the exact moment that Chance walked into KIT, and not least because it was not first thing in the morning. It was late afternoon. She was making her way down the stairs, surrounded by the members of her Python class. They’d spent the last hour going over the basics again, and they were all in good spirits. Meg was not. She’d been alternatively angry, annoyed, and hurt ever since she’d woken up. Chance turning up so late in the day only made those emotions stronger.

  She came to a halt at the bottom of the stairs and watched as he walked into the store. He wore jeans and his stupid gray sweater. He looked ridiculously attractive. Meg narrowed her eyes on him. Curled up in Kate’s spare room last night, she’d wondered if, now that she knew who he was, her attraction to him would diminish.

  It hadn’t.

  Dammit.

  He made his way across the store, smiling at the women as they passed. Meg was in no way surprised that they smiled back. He halted at Meg’s desk, eyes right on her, the smile changing slightly into something that Meg could only describe as hopeful. A multitude of emotions shot through Meg. Chief among them was a burning kind of anger and a burning kind of desire. It was a horrible combination. Meg was not a fan.

  “Hey, Blue.”

  That stupid nickname! Why had she ever thought it was appealing? She was going to change her hair the moment she got a minute to think. She’d go silver. It had been forever and a day since she’d rocked that color.

  “Jack.”

  His smile slipped into a frown. He moved forward. Meg stalked across the store to meet him. They halted in front of each other. The tension…it was there. Meg knew it would be. The fact that Chance was Jack Richards had not changed that, not for either of them.

  “How are you?” Chance asked.

  “Since you saw me yesterday?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I’m just peachy,” Meg said. “What about you, Jack? I have to say you don’t look great.”

  He shrugged. “I had a late night.”

  She ran her gaze over him. His hair was starting to grow out of the close cut. She could see the curls starting to unfurl. What would Chance look like with Jack Richards’s hair? Meg was extremely annoyed to realize that she wanted to find out. “Playing with ERQ?”

  “Fixing ERQ.”

  Abruptly, Meg remembered offering him a lesson in computer coding. Yep, she’d offered to teach Jack Richards how to make a virtual robot wave his hand. She winced as she crossed her arms. Chance looked down at the action. He visibly swallowed. A new emotion joined the others burning inside Meg. It felt something like triumph. There was a reason that she’d worn a tight, belly-skimming top today. Of course, she’d expected Chance to be waiting outside KIT when she’d arrived for work, not wandering in late in the afternoon!

  “Blue…” he began

  “I’m assuming you’ve come to talk to me about my work,” she snapped.

  He did not take his eyes off her crossed arms. “That’s not the only thing I want to talk to you about.”

  “What else could there possibly be?” Meg asked.

  “I want to talk about us.”

  “Us?”

  Meg shot him a glare even as a traitorous thrill ran through her. It didn’t seem to matter to her body that this was Jack Richards and not Chance. It wanted him regardless. She let out a shaky breath as the memory of what it felt like to be held in his arms practically leaped into her mind.

  He’d lied to her.

  He’d stolen her work.

  He was up to all sorts of things that she didn’t know about. And he was Jack Richards! She shouldn’t still want him in this way…but she did. How the hell was she supposed to handle the situation when it was so clouded by her emotions? But then, it had been that way from the very beginning, hadn’t it?

  “You’ve got nerve,” she eventually said, mostly because she did not know what else to say.

  “Blue—”

  “Are you planning to talk about ‘us’ as Jack Richards or Jack Chance?”

  He shrugged at that. “They’re one and the same.”

  “They’re not even close.”

  She pushed past him and stalked over to her desk. The electric-blue flowers were no more. Meg had thrown them in the trash this morning and replaced them with a huge box of cookies that she and Kate had been steadily working their way through all morning.

  “Cookies?” Chance nudged the box, because, of course, he’d followed her over. Meg could feel him next to her. “You know what you really need?”

  “I’m sure you’re going to tell me.”

  “Lemon cake.”

  Her chest tightened. Meg clenched her fists. “I hate lemon cake.”

  “You do not.”

  “I absolutely do.”

  “I’ll take a lemon cake.”

  Kate’s voice emerged from behind a row of monitors. She stood up, flicking her honey hair behind her, and pushing her glasses up her nose. She had a tentative smile on her face. Meg shot her a warning look. Kate ignored it. She made her way around the monitors and over to Meg’s desk. Chance took full advantage of the situation.

  “I don’t think we’ve been properly introduced,” he said, holding out a hand. “I’m Jack.”

  “I know who you are,” Kate said, her smile widening. “This is so embarrassing. I’m totally fan-girling, but you’re Jack Richards, and it sounds like you’re a total jerk, but you’re Jack Richards.”

  A pained sort of look flashed over Chance’s face. Meg watched it with a reluctant fascination.

  “You get this a lot?” she asked.

  He shrugged again. “Less than I used to.”

  “The beard?”

  “The guns, too.”

  Meg rolled her eyes.

  “I never started a gaming department,” Chance said. “Didn’t want to create my own games. I’d solve the puzzle before I played them. Where’s the fun in that? But,” he added, “I hear that you’ve created something interesting. Maybe X-Tech should take a look at it?”

  “At my work?” Kate breathed.

  “Yeah.”

  “That would be awesome…”

  “Kate!”

  Kate shot Meg a guilty look. Meg sighed. She understood why Kate was fan-girling, she did, but Chance was totally taking advantage of it.

  “He left out the part where he knows about your game because he stalked us,” Meg said.

  “In fairness, we stalked him, too,” Kate said.

  “We couldn’t get into his site!”

  “When he was Jack Richards, I mean,” Kate said. She shot Chance another tentative smile. “Meg used to follow you around the forums when we were younger. She had alerts set up on all your posts.”

  “Kate!”

  “Well, you did.”

  Meg actually felt herself turn red. She mouthed something evil at Kate even as Chance laughed.

  “We should talk about that.”

  “We’re not going to talk about anything!” Meg snapped. Why was she the one on the defensive here? Why was Kate siding with him? Why did she feel so…so…scratchy!

  “We can talk now, or we can talk tomorrow,” Chance said. “Or the day after that or after that. I’ll come back every afternoon until we do.”

  “But will you bring lemon cake?” Kate asked.

  Meg threw up her hands. She realized exactly what Kate was doing. Her best friend had turned into a ridiculous romantic ever since she’d met Will. The crazy woman was actually trying to wring a happy ever after out of this!

  “Fine,” Meg said, and it was through gritted teeth. “We’ll talk now.”

  Chance gestured to the door. Meg shot Kate a look as they passed by. Kate gave her a double thumbs-up. Meg did not return the gesture.

  It was chilly out. Meg regretted the t
iny top when the wind whipped across her skin. She crossed her arms over her body. Chance noticed her do it. He shrugged his sweater off.

  “Take this.”

  It smelled of him. The very same smell that Meg had been surrounded by all weekend. Part of her felt like she shouldn’t put it on, that by doing so she’d be well on the path to forgiving his deceitful ways. But the other part of her, the one that had slept curled up next to him, wanted the fabric around her. She was an idiot.

  “Only because it’s cold,” she said.

  He smiled. “My car’s over here.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “I already brought the lemon cake,” he said.

  “Where is it?”

  “At my place.”

  Meg looked across at him. The wind whipped his thin tee. She could see the outline of those muscles he’d worked so hard to build. Why had he done that? What was it about Jack Richards that he’d tried to run from? She had to find out.

  She got into the car. Chance’s smile remained as he started the car and music started. She looked down, a small cube, an MP3 player—self built by the looks of it—was attached to the grille. Meg recognized the song immediately. It was one of her favorite bands. She sighed. He was not making this easy.

  It took them maybe ten minutes to drive to his apartment. It was in a nondescript building in the very affluent part of the city. Meg followed behind him in silence as he keyed in the building code and one in the elevator. It took them right to the top.

  What did she expect from his apartment? That it would be all Jack Chance or all Jack Richards? Meg didn’t know. The moment she stepped inside, though, her question was answered. It was both of them.

  “This looks like a cross between a monk’s cell and a supervillain’s paradise,” she said as she touched one of the light sabers hanging on the gray wall.

  Chance watched as she wandered around the space. “Not a superhero?”

  Meg eyed the neatly stacked collection of Star Trek and Dr. Who books. Damn him. “You’re a long way from being a superhero right now.”

  “You said you wanted to be the villain.”

  “I was wrong, wasn’t I?” Meg said.

  Chance gestured for her to follow him through one of the doors branching off from the main room. She followed him into an office. He clicked his fingers. The tech, so much tech, came alive. Meg’s mouth dropped open slightly. This was where Jack Richards lived.