“You know it,” says Johnny, launching into an explanation of the specs of his machine, which I could frankly care less about.
I’ve never been that kind of tech guy. I just want the stuff to work. I don’t care about the specs. Like I said, I’ve never been a nerd. I just happen to have a mind for programming.
Johnny hunches over in his horrible posture, pulls out his laptop, and says, “Here, this is what I wanted to show you.”
It’s a research paper that’s never been published. It’s by Simmons, the creator of the new algorithm.
“Where’d you get this?” I say.
Johnny just chuckles. “Let’s just say it’d be better not to say.”
“Wow,” says Lily, who’s leaning over to see the machine. Johnny is sitting to the left of me, and I’m extremely aware of Lily’s body as she leans in, approaching me. Her left breast is only a couple inches from my shoulder.
She notices it too, and glances at me sideways for just a fraction of a second. If I wasn’t already looking at her, I never would have noticed it… but I see something in her eyes.
She seems to be holding her breath slightly, aware that my presence makes her breathe harder.
“So,” I say, getting the gist of the article by reading it quickly. “This basically outlines his approach. But then he realized that he could just write the algorithm himself and not publish it, making a lot of money instead of getting academic fame… my kind of guy.”
“Yeah,” says John. “And I think we can reverse engineer his algorithm with this approach. Basically he’s going…”
“Yeah, yeah,” I say. “I get it. He’s basically rewriting the simple shuffle algorithm. But that doesn’t give us quite enough information…”
Johnny gives us all a copy of Simmons’s unpublished research paper on a USB drive. “This isn’t something you email,” he says with a wink.
Another ten minutes go by, with all us on our own computers, trying to figure out how to apply the article to the code we’ve been studying.
“Oh!” says Lily, suddenly sitting up, her eyes looking excited.
I use the moment as another opportunity to take her all in. The curve of her spine, this time, drives me wild, not to mention her breasts, which are pushed forward…
“I’ve got something!” she says.
“Yeah?” says Johnny somewhat dismissively. He’s never been keen on women programmers. He’s one of those guys who doesn’t think they’re as good as men. Me, I just care about results, whoever the programmer is.
Jerry’s asleep in his chair, snoring lightly.
“What do you have?” I say.
Suddenly, an alarm sounds. It’s a vicious, intense noise that seems to drive right through you, making you feel frantic.
“The fire alarm,” I say.
“What’s going on?” says Jerry, waking up.
“It’s probably just a drill,” I say.
“But there’s smoke coming from the hallway,” says Johnny, frantic.
“Probably just a little trash can fire or something,” I say. “Nothing to worry about.”
But people are screaming now out in the rest of the office.
Someone out there shouts, “Not a drill!”
“It’s probably fine,” I say, not looking up from my computer.
“I’m not taking any chances, not since the last time,” says Johnny, rushing out in the hallway, where he disappears into the smoke.
Jerry is next, rushing past him. “Come on!” he calls out after us. “Come on!”
“Looks like we’d better get going,” I say, still calm.
But she’s still staring at her computer, not looking at me or the smoke. She’s completely immersed in her work, and for a moment I’m completely immersed in her beauty.
“No,” I say, snapping out of my little trance. “We’ve really got to go.”
The smoke is denser now, and it’s completely black.
“This looks like it might be serious,” I say.
“But I’ve just figured something out!” she says.
“We can talk about that later.”
“I’m so close, though!”
“Seriously, Lily,” I say. “We’ve really got to go.”
“Fine,” she says, closing her laptop.
Suddenly, she notices the smoke around her. “Oh shit!” she says.
I laugh. “Finally you notice it. Come on.”
I take her by the hand. She won’t leave her laptop there so she carries it with her. Me, I’ve got a hundred laptops, and copies of everything I need.
We rush out of the conference room, into the hallway that has the cubicles where Lily and Jerry usually work.
The smoke is thicker now, and it’s all around us.
I cough involuntarily, and Lily sounds like she’s choking.
The fire alarm is intensely loud out here, so loud I have to shout over it to be heard. Jerry and Johnny are long gone, and so is everyone else. It seems like we’re the only ones left in the office.
“Stay there,” I yell at her. “I’m going to see if we can get through.”
I leave her there, and go further into the smoke, towards the main entrance and exit.
I feel like I’m choking, the black smoke filling my lungs. I can’t breathe properly, not nearly at all.
And it’s hot. Everything around me is incredibly hot, even the floor. This isn’t just some trash can fire.
I can see the flames now. The entire kitchen at the other end of the hallway is in flames, huge flames that lick the celling. The fire has spread, blocking the way to the receptionist’s desk where the entrance is.
I turn around just as I feel like I can’t breathe at all, and rush back to Lily, who’s looking petrified.
Lily
“We can’t go out that way,” shouts Ryan at me. I can barely hear him above the noise of the fire and the alarm.
“What are we going to do?” I say.
“Is there another exit?”
This is his office, and he doesn’t even know the layout. He really doesn’t come to work often.
It’s weird to have this thought in such a crisis situation.
For a moment, I feel calm.
But now I’m panicking again.
It’s a fire! We’re going to burn alive.
Shit, this isn’t the way I wanted to go.
My whole body feels like it’s freezing up.
I haven’t even had sex yet! I can’t die a virgin.
How ironic, if that’s the right use of the word, to die, burnt alive, with the sexiest man in San Francisco, who I rejected just a couple nights ago.
I have a sudden urge, despite my full-body anxiety and panic, to jump his bones right now, to thrust myself onto his rock hard cock.
“Lily! Listen to me, do you know where the exit is?”
He snaps me out of it.
We’re not going to burn alive. There’s another exit!
“There’s another exit!” I finally say. It feels like my brain isn’t working properly, and I don’t know whether it’s thinking about Ryan and his cock that’s distracting me, or the fire.
“Show me,” says Ryan, in an understanding, yet commanding way.
I take him by the hand, finding it strange to be leading this huge man by the hand, and we rush down to the other end of the hallway.
The smoke is a little less dense here, but by the end of the hallway, we’re both coughing almost comfortably.
I feel like I might vomit, and I actually bend over once, thinking that I’m going to puke, but fortunately, nothing comes out. He may be a prick, and this may be a serious fire, but I still don’t want to puke in front of Ryan Hudson. What does that mean? Probably nothing, right?
“We’ve got to get out of here,” says Ryan. There’s urgency in his voice, something I’ve never heard from him, but there isn’t a hint of panic.
“I…” I start to speak, but I start choking again.
All I can do is point
to the other exit, which is hard to find, near one of the back closets. It’s not something Ryan would know about, since apparently he never comes here. I only know about it because I spent so long reading the employee manual, which covers fire escapes very carefully, as well as all other emergency procedures.
I feel like I’m about to pass out, but his strong arms suddenly embrace me and pick me up as easily as if I were a rag doll.
He carries me through the smoke, and I’m barely aware of what’s happening.
There’s smoke and heat, and I’m still coughing intensely, a rough, hurried cough, feeling like I’m on the verge of blacking out.
Next thing I know, we’re standing in the back alley by the rear parking lot. I’m still in Ryan’s arms, which are huge and strong. I can feel his hard muscular chest pressed against me. My breasts are against him, and so is my face. I look up, and see him looking down at me, smiling.
“You survived,” he says, his smile cracking, growing bigger.
I cough right into his face.
“Sorry…” I manage to say.
“I’m just glad we got out of there,” he says.
“My laptop?” I say.
“I’ve got it,” says Ryan. “Tucked into my pants.”
“I thought I must have dropped it…”
“Don’t worry about that right now,” he says.
I take in deep breaths of the fresh air. It’s a strange sensation, being able to breathe properly for the first time… in… I don’t know how long all of that took. It felt like an eternity, trapped in all that smoke. But it probably wasn’t more than a few minutes.
“I think I figured it out…” I say, trying to speak, but my voice is crackly and hoarse.
“It’s OK,” says Ryan. “You can tell me about it later.”
He’s carrying me around the building, walking at a safe distance from it. I can see smoke coming off the building roof. The fire turned out to be much, much worse than we’d thought.
The sound of fire engine sirens is close by, and wailing.
We’re almost around the corner of the building, where even in my state I know that the rest of the office will be waiting, looking at the building in awe, as they watch their workplace burn to the ground. Can the firemen still save it?
Despite what just happened, barely escaping with my life, I feel safe in Ryan’s huge arms. I feel completely protected, and I let my head fall to the side and rest against his chest, feeling his breathing as his chest moves up and down.
He looks down at me, gazing into my eyes without saying anything, and I look back up at him.
We’re around the corner now, and everyone from the office is gathered, just as I thought they would be, standing a safe distance from the burning office building.
There are two huge fire engines parked here, with the firemen in their suits and boots already shooting huge streams of water on the building’s roof. Other firemen are standing by the front door, apparently considering if they should enter or not.
There’s an ambulance by the fire engines, and out of the corner of my eye, I can see someone sitting upright with a blanket around them, inhaling deeply from an oxygen mask. A huge cylindrical oxygen tank is sitting nearby.
“Is she hurt?” says someone, an EMT rushing up to us. He’s outfitted in a navy blue uniform, with all sorts of gear hanging off his belt. He’s got a wide face, close cropped hair, and a bit of a belly.
“I don’t think so,” says Ryan. “She inhaled a lot of smoke.”
“What about you?” says the EMT.
“I’m fine,” says Ryan, his voice deep and powerful. “You’d better check her out. I’ll take her.”
With the EMT trailing behind, Ryan walks me over to the ambulance and sets me down ever so gently.
The EMT starts checking my vitals, hooking up various gadgets to me that I can’t keep track of.
“You’re going to be fine,” says Ryan to me, his voice deep but gentle.
“I didn’t know you were like that,” I say.
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t know.”
I do know, but I don’t want to tell him. I didn’t realize there was another side to him. I thought he was just the douchebag billionaire, the tough alpha, the muscular badass, the guy who didn’t take shit from anyone, who just wanted money and didn’t care about anyone but himself. I didn’t realize there was a, dare I say, tender side to him.
Ryan just shrugs.
“Looks like you’re fine,” says the EMT after several minutes. “But you’d better use this.”
He hands me an oxygen mask that I gratefully take in my hand and breathe in from.
Instantly, my head starts to feel clearer. I didn’t realize how foggy headed I’d become.
I’m grateful that I’m not able to speak without taking the mask away from me, because I don’t want to tell Ryan that I’m seeing this new side of him. I don’t want to tell him that I… have feelings for him.
Do I, though? Maybe it was just all that smoke that I breathed in. Maybe I wasn’t thinking clearly.
But as I watch the firemen and the burning building, I’m actually focused intently out of the corner of my eye on Ryan, staring at the side of his head as he watches his building with folded arms. My head’s clear now, but I still see something in him that I didn’t see before.
The firemen seem to have put out most of the fire. A few of them have entered the building now. I think that means it’s structurally intact to a certain level.
Ryan gives me one final look before walking away, towards the office building.
He doesn’t ask if I’m OK, but I can see it in his eyes. I can see something else… something like caring for me. But that’s absurd, right? He’s the douchebag billionaire, and he doesn’t care about anyone but himself and his money.
Ryan
Somehow she still manages to look incredibly sexy, sitting there hunched over with an oxygen mask over her face. She looks so innocent, but yet her body screams at me at the same time. Her curves draw my gaze towards her, and I have to pull my head away, quite literally, to keep from staring at her. She’s been looking up at me with those beautiful eyes, her long eyelashes flittering down along them. There’s a look of sleepiness or exhaustion in her gaze, but there’s something else too.
“I’m the owner of the building,” I say to the nearest fireman. “Can you tell me what the damages are?”
“Pretty bad,” says the fireman, wiping some black grime off his face.
He’s one of the ones who’s just come out of the building, and he’s covered in black smoke residue.
In one hand, he’s holding a huge fireman’s ax.
“How bad are we talking about? Do you think we’ll be able to use the building again?”
He shakes his head vigorously at me. “There’s no way,” he says. “The structure is holding up for now, but the inside is completely destroyed, and we don’t yet know what kind of damage has been done to the walls, the foundation, and the roof. Except just by looking at it, I know the roof isn’t going to hold up for more than another day.”
“Isn’t it risky going in there now?”
He shrugs. “That’s what we do, though.”
I nod my head. “So the place is basically fried?”
He nods. “In situations like this, usually the whole building has to be razed.”
I nod my head.
This puts a bit of a damper on my plans, but not much. It’s not like the office building was doing me much good, anyway. I’ll have to find a temporary place for the sales team, in case there are any new clients. But as of right now, the potential new clients are probably just waiting to see what happens with the Simmons algorithm, waiting to see whether they should buy that instead of mine when it comes on the market.
The office workers are standing around looking at the burned out building. They see me approaching and look nervous. That’s understandable, since they don’t really know me at all. Many of them I’
ve never seen in my life, and they’ve probably just seen me in the news.
There’s a middle-aged woman who I think is the secretary. She’s biting her lip nervously. Her clothes have a little bit of soot on them.
“Is it Stacey?” I say, approaching her.
“It’s Sheila,” she says, looking up at me. “Are you OK, Mr. Hudson?”
I nod. “I’m fine,” I say. “Is everyone all right?”
She nods. “Everyone got out fine. At first, we didn’t see you or the new employee, Lily, and we thought the worst.”
“We were trapped in there, until Lily pointed out the other exit,” I say. “At first, we didn’t think it was a real fire alarm.”
She nods and continues biting her lip. Her finger nails are painted neon green and if they weren’t, I imagine she’d be biting those too.
“So,” I say. “Do you think you can organize the set up of a new office?”
“Right now?” she says, sounding shocked.
I guess I’m understanding how traumatic an experience like this could be for people. But we’ve got to get back to work. That’s one of the things that helps me make money—staying on track with a laser like focus, no matter what happens.
“Tomorrow,” I say. “It’s going to take me at least a day to lease a new office building.”
She nods at me, but looks worried.
“Why don’t you pick a couple good people in the office that you work well with,” I say. “And you guys can make a little team to organize the distribution and ordering of new office equipment. Here, take this.”
I hand her one of my no-limit credit cards. “I forget how the finances were set up for office materials but you might need a higher limit. Order whatever you had in the old office, or whatever you need. And it goes without saying that it’s not to be used for anything personal.”
“Of course, Mr. Hudson,” she says.
“Great,” I say. “Give me your cell number, and I’ll send you the details. You’ll be responsible for letting the rest of the other employees know the new address. I’m going to get a place with a good conference room so that my small programming team can keep working on our new project.”
“Is everything OK with the… uh… algorithm, Mr. Hudson?” she says.
Her Boss: A Billionaire and Virgin Romance Page 7
