Gaming Grace

by Piper J. Drake

  “Didn’t have assignments?” She was pressing the issue.

  Anger started to rise up, out of proportion with the line of conversation, but he couldn’t help it. He didn’t like examining himself, especially not beside her. She was everything he admired. “I didn’t finish my projects. Why bother if they weren’t ever going to be as impressive as the ones my brothers had done before me?”

  “Because they were yours.” There was so much caring in those words.

  When Grace spoke to him, it was because she was focused on him and not his family. When she addressed him, it was for who he was separate from his siblings. He stared at his plate. “Siblings aren’t kind to each other, sometimes. We weren’t terrible, but we had our moments. Whenever a project really mattered to me, one of my siblings would tease and do something to trip me up or wreck the work I was doing. Even if they didn’t do irreversible damage, I’d get so frustrated, I’d make a mess of the project myself. So I never finished. I’d always get credit for the concept even if I didn’t see it through. I’d never fail.”

  Grace reached across the table, using her fork to pull together the shredded beef and top it with the savory pepper and drizzled olive oil. When she lifted her fork to his mouth, she’d assembled a perfect bite of piled beef carpaccio. “There’s a chance to demonstrate amazing talent in resurrecting a project people think is beyond saving. Being able to do damage control and mitigate issues plaguing a project in the red is a formidable skill set. Rather than taking a brilliant idea as far as it can go before too many risks threaten it, maybe it would be worthwhile to take this one as far as it can possibly go.”

  He took the offered bite and chewed slowly, savoring the subtle flavors as he regarded this beautiful woman. “You have such pure conviction. How do you manage to spin everything in a positive light?”

  She huffed out a laugh. “It’s easier to make constructive suggestions for other people. At work, I’m part of the Learning and Development team. I’m responsible for design, development, and maintenance of face to face and virtual instructor-led training in support of existing and new systems at my company. Positive energy is a must to keep people engaged long enough to accept that the way they do their day to day work is going to change. In some cases, new systems could radically change the way people work and people do not embrace those changes readily.”

  He snorted. “I remember everyone in my father’s company freaking out when the website went through a redesign. It was better, but they couldn’t find anything.

  She nodded. “That was just a website. Imagine whatever computer system people do all their work in or the system they use to check their email or schedule their days. The grumble, they complain, they kvetch, and if you can’t turn that around to something positive, they never accept the change and avoid using the new system. It can have terrible repercussions for any company.”

  “So you do what you do and you insist on doing it well because…”

  “Because I like to see people embrace change for the better.” She was positively beaming.

  “What if it’s not better?” The kind of conviction she had could end up misguided so easily. He was such a bastard for looking for the negative side.

  She wasn’t even fazed. “That’s what feedback is for. It’s an important part of training. I get the most honest feedback because people pop up with it in training before they have time to filter it into something they think their managers want to hear. It gives me an opportunity to feed back to the IT group to help plan for improvements in future releases. No system is perfect at Go Live. You’d be surprised how much needs to be improved over the course of multiple iterations.”

  “You’re saying it doesn’t have to be perfect.” He stared at her.

  She sipped her sparkling water. “Basically. What matters is that you finish developing your app and have a plan in place to evolve it as you get feedback. Sometimes it’s more impressive to bring a problematic project to completion, salvaging what’s possible from the lessons learned from each mistake and making the best of what’s left. Sometimes the result is way better than anything that went perfectly from conception to completion.”

  He waited as the waiters cleared their plates away and placed the pasta course in front of them. “So you’re going to hold me accountable for finishing this app.”

  She nodded emphatically. So much energy in Grace. He wanted to gather her into his arms and hold her to him. Her desire to see him finish the app meant she wanted to continue to be in his life even after this cruise, whether she realized she admitted that yet or not.

  He lifted his glass, careful not to shout out to the entire room how elated he was. “Let’s do this.”

  12

  “Good food, glorious view, and free WiFi,” Grace let out a happy sigh. “This is perfect.”

  Bryan chuckled and pushed the basket of golden fried conch fritters toward her. “You do seem to have developed a taste for these.”

  She reached for one with no hesitation. “They’re really good. I grew up eating a lot of seafood, but it was mostly steamed or grilled fish. Sometimes my parents would steam blue crab or lobster, even clams, but they didn’t have anything like this.”

  “You seem to like them better than rum cake.” Bryan tapped the package of rum cakes he’d carried for her after she’d bought some to take into the office when she returned.

  Of course, it was slightly questionable since the rum cake was soaked in actual rum, but she thought it’d be fine in her office. The company had its policies, but they weren’t crazy strict, and they’d been known to break open a bottle of champagne in the office kitchen to celebrate big milestones now and then. A bit of rum cake wasn’t a bad thing and she’d gotten a box of island candies for those who might want to avoid alcohol for personal reasons.

  But she didn’t want to think too hard about when she got back. It meant this cruise would be over and she was having a hell of a time imagining what it would be like to return to the rhythm of her life before she’d set foot on this ship. She reached up and touched her new pendant with her fingertips.

  Bryan’s gaze fell to the real pirate coin set as a pendant, hanging from the flat gold link necklace he’d insisted on buying for her. “Do you like it?”

  “I love it,” she said without hesitation. “It has a story to it.”

  They’d gone on a walking tour through the island’s vibrant downtown area, eating their way through the colorful streets and discussing the impact of colonialism on the culture of today. There’d been local chefs to speak to, artists with unique work to admire, and all sorts of businesses set up to catch the eye of passers by.

  She’d wandered into a rare coins collector’s shop. Rare coins hadn’t ever interested her before but there’d been something about that shop. The local had been a man who’d seen a lot of years, his dark skin weathered with age and exposure to sun and sea. He hadn’t smiled when she’d entered with Bryan close behind her, but when she’d readily admitted how little she knew about rare coins in general, he’d smiled and his whole demeanor had changed.

  Let me tell you a story, he’d said. And he had. He’d had a small case tucked in a corner of his shop of coins that weren’t necessarily valuable to coin collectors, but had value because of the stories behind each coin. He’d placed each one in her hands and told her the story, going through three before she’d been so enchanted with one, she’d asked the cost.

  It’d been a coin from a shipwreck, an actual pirate coin. But the ship had carried ladies traveling to the islands to meet their new husbands. One lady had found a lover on the ship and planned to change her life’s path to be with him, but a storm sank the ship before they reached their destination. She’d thought it was a tragedy, but the shop owner had touched two fingers to the inside of her wrist and told her more. The coin hadn’t been discovered in the shipwreck. It’d been found on land, on a small island, and traced back to the ship. It was very possible someone, maybe even the lady and her lover, h
ad made it to the island and lived out their lives.

  It was possible.

  Grace couldn’t wait to get back to the ship and talk to her friends about it. It was a great feeling, having reconnected with them, knowing she could go back to them and talk to them without feeling awkward and guilty for not having kept in better touch over the years. But Kendall wouldn’t be there.

  She met Bryan’s patient gaze. He’d been sitting quietly, waiting for her to come back to him from the labyrinth of her thoughts. “I’m worried about Kendall.”

  He nodded, reaching out and offering his hand, palm up.

  She laid her hand in his. “She had to go home and it’d only stress her more to reach out to her right now, but I want to be there to help her when she has a chance to catch her breath and stop doing everything for everyone else and things catch up to her. She’s going to need someone to catch her when it’s time.”

  “What about the guy she met on the ship?” Bryan jerked his head in the direction of the ship. It was within view and would only take a few minutes to get back to when it came time to board.

  Grace shook her head. “I don’t know. Kendall didn’t say anything about him in the note but...”

  Kendall had been really into Alex. Grace was sure of it.

  “...I hope he’ll reach out to her. She smiled, really smiled, when she was with him.”

  “If he knows how to value your friend properly, he’ll reach out.” Bryan sounded so sure. “It could take a little while. People go a little crazy when they’re in love.”

  She stared at him. “You think they were in love?”

  He held his hands up. “I don’t know enough. But it’d be nice if they were. I’m a romantic that way.”

  “Hmm.” She considered all the times she’d seen Kendall and Alex together. It was possible. Maybe? She wasn’t sure she’d recognize love, even if it was right in front of her.

  Bryan leaned over, then, and kissed her. It was the kind of kiss to make her melt into him. Swoon-worthy. For a few minutes, the entire world faded away and when he ended the kiss, there was a question in the air.

  She wasn’t sure she knew how to answer it. Not yet.

  “Anyway,” Bryan set his phone down on the table between them. “Let me check my emails while we’ve got the faster WiFi going on here. The ship’s internet connectivity is slow enough to drive any good person insane.”

  “Do you have email capability directly from your app.” She rose out of her chair slightly to look at his phone screen, where it lay on the table. “It’d be nice to be able to email pictures out to the group rather than have them local to just one person’s phone.”

  Bryan swiped the screen. “No, but that’s a good idea. I’ll make a note in the next second. I’m checking my normal email.”

  As he opened the app for his email, several emails with subject lines in all caps popped up.

  SECURITY BREACH

  Bryan locked down the rush of adrenaline as soon as it hit his system, or at least he tried to. It’d do no good to panic until he saw what the details were.

  He opened the first email.

  “It’s about my app.”

  Grace eased away. “I can...”

  “No, it’s fine.” He slipped an arm around her waist and encouraged her to stay near. “Well, it might not be fine, but I don’t mind you knowing what’s going on while I look into it. You’re practically a partner after all the testing you’ve helped do.”

  Plus, she’d given a huge amount of constructive feedback.

  He went through each email, noting the updates in reverse order. “Looks to be a security breach on the files saved by the app, uploaded to servers on the cloud when the phone is connected to WiFi.”

  Grace stiffened next to him. “I didn’t realize you were uploading them to the internet.”

  “Secure cloud storage space,” he corrected, continuing to read through emails.

  “Obviously not that secure if you’ve had a breach.” Her tone had taken on a sharp edge he’d never heard from her before.

  He shook his head. “You’re right. If there’s a breach this big, it might not be worth continuing to develop the app. The breach of privacy for people is too big a risk.”

  She stood up, pulling completely away from him.

  He looked up at her. “Grace?”

  She was staring at him. “We were still in port when you captured the video of me. You knew the phone was uploading back up copies to the cloud. Was deleting it locally just for show? Did you consider you might have a backup copy on the server?”

  A new wave of adrenaline hit him and his vision blurred for a split second. “No. I...”

  She reached over and clicked on a new email. This one had links in it to online articles, giving early, unapproved reviews of his new project—this app. She tapped a link. The headline claimed breaking news about him working on a new mystery project and theorizing as to the identity of this mystery woman. There in the content of the post, was an embedded video of Grace, sans pants.

  “Oh no,” she whispered.

  “This was a mistake. I didn’t...”

  She slashed her hand through the air, cutting him off. “It’s out there, on the internet. It’s forever. There’s a half dozen of those links. If each of them doesn’t contain a link to this video, there are pictures of me in every one of those articles. It’s so unprofessional. It’s not just the promotion I was going for, I could be fired for this.”

  Her entire body was tense. He reached for her but she jerked away, out of his reach. “Don’t touch me.”

  “Grace...”

  She shook her head. “Don’t talk to me. Definitely don’t try to say anything to make me feel better because it won’t help, at best, and might be an outright lie, at worst. So don’t. Just. Don’t.”

  “I’ll shut down the project. I won’t launch the app.” He stood at the table, trying to figure out something, anything to keep her from walking away.

  She snapped her head around and glared at him. “You’re just going to give up on this project? That’s what you think will make me feel better? It won’t help me in any way and I won’t be another thing you give up on when something goes wrong.”

  He stood there, hands at his sides. He didn’t know what else to do.

  She stood there too, maybe waiting, maybe trying to figure out what to say too. For the first time since he’d met her, he didn’t know how to read the litany of emotions playing across her face or projecting from her posture.

  “I need space.” She grabbed her tote bag and walked out of the restaurant, pausing to pay as she left.

  He sat down. It wouldn’t do any good to go after her, not when he had no idea what he could say to keep her. And Grace insisting on paying for the meal was an elegant Fuck You. He recognized the gesture and damn if he was going to go groveling after her at this very moment.

  He needed to figure out how far-reaching all this was and how to fix it, if fixing it was even possible.

  13

  The last two days at sea had been torture. It was a massive boat—sorry, ship—but everywhere she turned there were people laughing, partying, and enjoying each other. Being surrounded by all of that hurt Grace in multiple ways because, on one hand, she resented them for all that revelry when her life was basically going to come crashing down around her after she'd indulged herself like they were and finally let loose like her friends had been hoping she would. On the other hand, she was berating herself for those unfair thoughts because none of what was happening to her was anyone's fault but her own. She had made her own choices from day one.

  She had been daring and impulsive, even a little spontaneous, and she had enjoyed every damn minute.

  Since walking away from Bryan in port on the last island, she’d been miserable. Her heart didn’t just ache. Something had ripped a hole in her chest.

  She could have talked it out with her friends. For the first time in years, all the people she felt most able to share
emotions and personal life chaos with were in one place with her. But again, it was a massive ship and finding anyone when they weren’t explicitly planning to meet was a challenge.

  Dinners had been a fail. She hadn’t been hungry anyway, only eating for nutrition and no longer enjoying the array of choices at the buffet or the entrees in the dinner service. Kendall had left the ship and Grace was definitely not going to burden her friend with romantic agony when Kendall was facing a family emergency. Aubrey had left the ship too and Grace wasn’t going to further hurt Aubrey while Aubrey was dealing with emotional pain of her own. Liv and Benjamin were still aboard but also tightly wrapped up in their own romantic situations.

  Grace didn’t want to ruin the last night for anyone. So even though she could talk to the people in her life most likely to understand her and help her through this, she didn’t think she should.

  To be honest, she wasn’t sure she’d follow their advice anyway. After all, following their advice was what had gotten her into this mess in the first place. She’d been right to guard her career so carefully over the years.

  “What are you doing up here, Grace?” A male voice asked.

  Grace’s heart leaped into her throat, but it wasn’t Bryan. The male voice belonged to Benjamin, one of the friends she very deliberately hadn’t dumped all her problems on over the last two days.

  She pulled her game face together and dredged up a small smile. “Enjoying the moonlight over the water. The waves are huge. So big, you can tell they’re big even when there’s nothing but night and ocean for as far as we can see.”

  Benjamin joined her at the railing. “This deck does offer some spectacular viewpoints. There’s a tropical storm and I think the ship’s captain is trying to outrun it, so we’re moving fast over the water too.”

  “I didn’t feel the waves for most of the week.” Then again, Grace had been distracted while Bryan basically rocked her world. Her entire universe, really.