Gigi rolled her eyes at me. “I’m six.”
“And very dramatic,” Delia said. “Like her mommy.” She took the baby from my arms and then looked at me for a long moment. “You’re working too hard, I can see it.”
I shook my head. “I don’t think so.” When she widened her eyes at me in frustration, I smiled and said, “I’m not, I swear!”
“This should help.” She pushed a huge glass of wine into my hand and grabbed a bottle in a chiller, nodding toward the back patio. “Let’s go out.” The girls both followed.
We sat down out back, watching the kids jump and roll around in the grass. It was cool, but the sun had shone all day and there was no breeze to set me shivering. Delia tossed me a blanket, which I wrapped across my shoulders. I sat across from Carl and Delia, noticing the way his hand drifted to her arm, how she leaned her long body toward his when he sat next to her. I could have taken a photograph of this moment and held it up to other people to explain what family looked like to me, what I thought happiness would look like. If I could find a way to articulate this exactly, you could bet your ass it’d be on my list. Every inch of me wanted some part of what they had, some ounce of warm loving familiarity where only my cold lonely apartment currently stood.
“What’s going on?” Delia’s brows furrowed and she leaned forward to peer at me, her dark eyes taking in something I didn’t know I was showing.
I shrugged. “What?” I could never hide a thing from Delia.
She took care of me in many ways, and that hadn’t stopped when she’d aged out three years ahead of me. She had still come to Wednesday dinners at Mama Gi’s house—that’s what we called our foster mom. We were lucky. Our stories weren’t the sad ones you read about, the ones that make you shake your head and curse the unfairness of “the system.” We’d been fed, clothed, cared for, and maybe even loved. Mama Gi had done well for us, and made sure we did well for ourselves. When she died a few years after I’d left for college, it was one of the most difficult times of my life. She was the only mother I’d ever really known, even though I’d been in three foster homes before hers. I still missed her every day, still smelled gardenia when I thought about her hard enough, and she was part of the reason Delia still insisted on weekly dinners. It was Mama Gi’s tradition.
“Let’s see,” Delia said, looking me over critically. “You’re thinner—I can tell because your boobs aren’t as big as usual.”
“Why are you judging my boob size?”
“Don’t pretend we haven’t been doing that since we were twelve.” She gave me a grope and then glanced at her husband, who was covering a dark blush by lifting his wineglass to his face. “And don’t pretend you don’t know that!” she scolded him.
I laughed as Carl shook his head. He was the strong, silent type, which was probably necessary for Delia. She was the opposite of silent, but she had strength in spades.
“So you’re not eating. You’re probably spending way too much time ordering your crazy fancy coffees at work, and then staying late and trying to knock something off that stupid plan of yours. Which number are you on? What number is world domination again?”
“I’m still on number one.”
She shook her head. “You got the job. Time for number two. Where’s the hot man with all the orgasms in his pocket?”
“That’s not number two.”
“What is number two?” Carl asked.
I put down my wineglass after taking a healthy gulp. “I know you guys think it’s stupid, but the plan keeps me focused. And number one is a work in progress. I got the wrong job at the right company. And that’s why I look tired. I’m fixing that.”
“You still didn’t tell me number two,” Carl pointed out as Delia laughed and shook her head.
“Number two is a relationship.”
“That’s pretty nonspecific,” he said. “There’s a site online that Deel likes. You could get into a pretty serious relationship with some of the vibrators she’s picked up. I swear she has one that likes to snuggle after.”
Delia’s long hand slapped down hard on Carl’s forearm, but she was laughing.
“Carl, if Delia is ordering complicated vibrators, do you think it’s a sign you might need to up your game?” I lifted an eyebrow, grinning at him.
Carl’s full lips flattened and his face dropped the humorous expression. “Girl, don’t question my manhood.”
I raised my hands in mock fear. “Never.”
“There’s no problem there, I can tell you,” Delia jumped in, rubbing her hand across Carl’s shoulder. “I just like to practice now and then. And you’re trying to dodge the question. Is there a man in the picture? Want Carl to introduce you to someone?” She nodded eagerly.
“No, there’s not a man in the picture,” I said slowly, thinking of Hale.
“What’s number three?” Carl asked.
“Family,” I replied, looking past them at the girls doing somersaults on the lawn. “But if it takes too much longer to knock number two off the list, I’ll move three up.”
“I think those things have kind of a natural chronology,” Carl said.
Delia shoved his arm hard. “Not anymore,” she told him. “Holland is a modern woman. If she wants a baby, she’ll have one. With or without a man.”
Carl looked confused. “Pretty sure the man is still a requirement,” he said.
My cheeks reddened. “Delia doesn’t think so,” I told him. “She brought me a bunch of brochures from a sperm bank.”
Delia was nodding, looking proud of herself. I’d been surprised when she’d handed all the literature to me, though I’d read it with interest. She knew me well, and she was right—having children might one day move higher on my list than having a relationship or a marriage. A family—however that happened—was the one thing I’d always known I wanted. As a kid I’d watched my friends with their parents in their perfect houses, their rooms decorated with Disney characters and stuffed animals. Mama Gi had done what she could for us, but she wasn’t our mother, and she wasn’t wealthy. She’d been present and stable—but she hadn’t been affectionate, and she couldn’t afford to be frivolous. I wanted everything I never had, and if it came from a sperm bank one day, I’d be okay with that.
“Aha,” Carl said, finally getting it. “The turkey baster route.”
“Hopefully there’ll be an actual man instead,” I said. I still couldn’t put Hale’s full lips and stone-cut jaw out of my mind, and something in me was desperate to talk about him. “And, actually, there kind of is, but he’s part of item number one, not number two. And definitely not number three.”
“Is he hot?” Delia’s grin widened.
“It doesn’t matter. This is a work thing. He might be able to help me develop StrokeStat for baseball—I told you guys about this a couple weeks ago, remember?”
“Think it’s gonna work?” Carl asked. Delia and Carl both worked in sports, and had been really interested in everything I’d told them about Cody Tech’s business. Delia coached track and field at Collin University nearby, and Carl was the athletic director there.
“I think it will,” I told him honestly. “But I need help, and I can’t go to anyone in development at Cody. This guy I met—his name is Hale—he used to work up there and he seems really smart.”
“So what’s the issue?” Delia asked.
“I’m just not sure I can trust him. And the whole situation is a little weird. He keeps showing up at work, hanging around the coffeehouse. But I don’t think he works there anymore.” I’d seen Hale entering or leaving the coffeehouse twice since he’d sat down and offered to help me, though he hadn’t lingered and I hadn’t invited him to.
Delia scrunched her nose but didn’t say anything.
“The barista seems to know him, though…I don’t know what to make of him, really.”
“You didn’t answer the first question,” Carl said. “Is he hot?”
I thought about the dark expressive eyes, the stone c
ut of his jaw, and the way Hale’s muscles challenged the fabric of his shirt. Muscles deep inside me tightened just in response to the thought of him. “Yeah, he’s hot.”
“Perfect,” Delia said. “You can knock out numbers one and two at the same time, then. You love efficiency!” She pointed a long finger at me.
I did love efficiency, but Hale was not part of my plan. I wasn’t sure what he was. “We’ll see,” I said. Whatever he was, he was hard to forget.
—
I wandered into the coffeehouse at six the next day. I’d vowed not to go down there, but I was starving again and tired of the same four cubicle walls upstairs. I ordered my sandwich and my flat white, and then settled in to work at my usual table. I glanced around, expecting to find Hale brooding at a table near the back, but the place was empty of scruffy T-shirt-clad mystery men. I tried to push down a swirl of disappointment. It was for the best.
When the bell above the door chimed an hour later, I was too absorbed to look up. But when the bench next to me depressed and the distinct scent of alcohol hit me, my eyes rose from my screen to find Hale sitting beside me.
“You’re working late again,” he said, his voice scraping something inside me that I wished wouldn’t respond to him at all.
“You smell like the inside of a distillery.” I dropped my eyes back to my screen, willing my heartbeat to slow down, my nerves to stop jumping around. I hated that I responded to him, when it was clear that was exactly what he was used to.
“Had to make a stop to visit a friend.”
“Is your friend named Jack Daniel’s?” Why was I encouraging this conversation?
He laughed, but there was no mirth in the sound. I scooted away from him, feigned extreme focus.
“I’ve been thinking more about your project, about StrokeStat,” he said. I couldn’t help the way my eyes jumped to his face, my interest undoubtedly clear. “I think you’re onto something.”
I blinked hard at him. I still hadn’t decided how to categorize him, or whether I could trust him. I was having trouble accepting that I was going to look for help from a guy who looked like he’d been finding most of his answers in a bottle, but I didn’t have a lot of options. “I already know that,” I told him, pulling my best bitchy tone from somewhere deep inside.
He smiled and for a second I caught a glimpse of pure handsome boyishness, but then the façade dropped back into place. Ambivalence, nonchalance, and arrogance beamed from the dark moody eyes.
I stared at my computer, focused all my energy on the screen before me. The screen where I was still stuck on one niggling aspect of my solution.
He leaned over, close enough that the whiskers of his too-long scruff tickled my cheek before I jumped away. He was peering at my screen, and for a split second, I let him before I slammed it shut. “Seriously?” I said.
“I think I know what you need,” he offered, a tone in his gravelly voice that made me think of things far removed from coffee and computers.
I stole a quick glance up. He’d sure as hell better be talking about my solution—shit, why did my blood rush at the thought that he might be talking about something else? Traitorous body. His eyes danced when I met them, clear for a moment of the darkness they’d held the few times I’d looked into them. “What’s that?”
He shrugged and gave me a cocky half-smile. “You’re not a developer. You’re a statistician. You need to team up if you’re going to sell this, Holland.”
A shock of unbidden pleasure ran through me as he said my name. How did he know I was a statistician? I ran back through our conversations. Had I told him that? “Are we really having this conversation?” I asked, myself as much as him.
“I told you, I can help you.”
I closed the screen and sighed, turning to face him, finally giving him my full attention. “Okay, Hale. What’s your angle?” I’d purposely avoided teaming with anyone in development because most of those guys were linked directly to the guys in my department. I needed to find out if I could really trust this guy.
Hale dropped the cocky smile, and for a split second before he began speaking, he looked sad. “Honestly? I don’t know.”
“I can see why you don’t work in sales.” I wanted to turn back to my screen, keep beating my head against this problem until it was solved, but I couldn’t. I was held by the sadness on Hale’s face, as much as by the sheer magnetism radiating from his broad body as he sat just inches from me.
He chuckled, his eyes holding mine. “I guess I just don’t like to see people struggle.”
I put my elbows on the table in front of me and dropped my head into my hands. Showing this stranger the details of what I was working on could be risky. I still didn’t know exactly how he was connected to the company, but if he was a former developer, he probably could help. Lord knew I needed it. “Okay,” I whispered, the rational voice inside me screaming arguments at the exhausted part that thought maybe it’d be nice to let someone else in for a change.
“Holland,” he said, pulling my gaze back to his. His dark eyes shimmered beneath the lights of the coffeehouse, and I caught flecks of green and gold in the deep rich brown. They were eyes a girl could get lost in. I squeezed my own eyes shut. I didn’t have time to get lost. I just needed help. “Holland,” he said again, and I opened one eye. A smile—a genuine one—spread across the full lips, exposing straight white teeth. I noticed that the front right tooth was chipped in the corner, lending just the right amount of character to an otherwise perfect smile. “You can trust me.”
Under normal circumstances, having a stranger in a coffee shop—one who smelled like he’d touched his pulse points with whiskey—tell me I could trust him wouldn’t carry much weight with me. But I was tired, drained, and feeling a little weepy after Carl and Delia had highlighted how far I was from ever getting to plan item two or three. And part of me wanted to trust this man. It was the pain in his eyes that compelled me.
“Prove it.”
He smiled, that sadness gleaming in the dark eyes again. “Ask Sam.” He nodded toward the barista.
“Okay,” I said, scooting away and carrying my laptop to the counter where Sam was staring intently down at his phone. “Hey,” I whispered, nodding toward the far end of the counter where Hale wouldn’t be able to overhear us.
Sam smiled at me, a question in his eyes as he followed along, waiting for me to explain.
“That guy over there,” I started. “Clearly you know him.”
“Hale?” Sam nodded. “Yeah, I know him.” The words were clear enough. Why did I feel like there were other things he wasn’t saying?
I forged on. “And would you say he’s trustworthy?”
Sam actually laughed, exhaling a single noisy breath before nodding. “Yeah, I’d say so. You don’t need to worry about Hale. He’s definitely been through some shit lately, but he’s a good guy. Heart-of-gold type.” As he said this he nodded at me, as if I’d somehow understand what he was getting at, which I didn’t exactly, but I found myself nodding along.
There was something there Sam wasn’t telling me, but I was too tired to play detective. He sounded absolutely sure. And Sam had been here as long as I had. I trusted him. And if he trusted Hale? I guessed I did, too.
“Fine,” I said, sitting back down. I met Hale’s dark eyes. “You can help.”
He cocked his head to the side with a grin. “I would have expected something more like a thanks.”
“If this were a perfect world, you’d certainly get one,” I said, parroting his arrogant words from the first time we’d met.
A wry smile crossed his full lips.
“I’ll save the gratitude for afterward,” I added. I turned the screen to face us both and watched his eyes as he scanned the amateur schematic I’d been working on.
“The design needs modification,” he said, glancing at me. “This isn’t terrible, though. What can I look at to see the application? What stats are you planning to pull?”
I pulle
d up the sales presentation I’d been working on, demonstrating how measuring the movement of the throwing arm, rather than the ball, could have training applications as well as provide game statistics that could be useful for assessing player performance and for bookmakers looking to set up bets. Hale scanned through my slides, a slow smile taking his lips again. After a minute, he sat back, crossed his arms and looked at me. “Why are you in sales?”
“The only job I could get here,” I told him honestly. I was too tired to evade his questions anymore. Besides, it felt good to have someone to talk to about work. I didn’t have any allies in my own department, that was for sure. “Cody Tech isn’t exactly known for its gender-equal hiring practices.”
Hale’s eyes narrowed at me, and he cocked his head slightly to one side. “What do you mean?”
“When I came out of grad school, I was second in my class. This was the only place I wanted to work. I wanted to do stuff like this.” I pointed to my screen, held up the sheaf of notes where I’d worked out the complex algorithms converting data into numbers that could be compared, analyzed, applied. “This is what I’m good at. But the three statistician positions, as it turned out, had already been promised. To men. One of whom came out of my program at the very bottom.”
Hale’s hands had clenched on the tabletop and his spine had straightened. He looked furious. Was he really that angry on my behalf? “How?” he asked, biting out the word.
“I don’t know.” I shrugged. I was past being angry about it. “Drug deals, family arrangements, whatever. Doesn’t matter now. The bottom line is that sports is a man’s world. All the Title IX funding in the world isn’t going to change that any time soon. And this company exists in that world. So I took the only position I could get here, knowing if I could find a way to prove myself, then I could get the position I want. And deserve.”
“The guy they hired doesn’t have to prove himself,” Hale said through gritted teeth.
“Not in the same way. But he does now. If he doesn’t know what he’s doing, they’ll figure it out. Despite my annoyance about the hiring,” I explained, “I still think this is one of the most interesting companies in the country, and the applications for the tech are insane. They have the potential to change the way people play.”
Mr. Big Page 5
