Nothing Personal (4 page)

“Hey, Kincaid!” It was the blond guy, shouting from the shade of the nearby picnic table. “Quit flirting and get your ass over here. Because I know you can do better.”

The last bit was uttered more softly, but it still came across to Desiree loud and clear. She felt herself go even redder, if that were possible. And did her best to pretend she hadn’t heard. Again.

“I really need to quit hanging out with him,” the dark guy—Kincaid—muttered. “Thanks for this.” He lifted the hot dog in acknowledgment. “And good luck on the test.”

Alec leaped to the curb
the next morning just ahead of the slow-moving street-sweeping truck, its bristles whirling over the asphalt, and heard the roar recede behind him as he continued on. He’d intended to get a cab back from Debra’s place, but had found himself walking instead. Maybe he’d hit the gym before Joe showed up. Because he was restless. The brisk walk—and the sex—had helped, but his mind kept drifting annoyingly off here and there, instead of focusing on the technical challenges that had had him fired up since the idea for the virtual assistant software had first exploded in his brain during a long afternoon of haying.

Here
being the bombardment of noise, the roar of diesel engines and the ebbing and flowing
whoosh
of traffic, the battering
rat-a-tat-tat
of jackhammers, the blast of horns. And the constant visual stimulation, the rush of people on the sidewalks, the signs and posters and marketing slogans, all calling out to be noticed, clamoring that he pay attention.
The voices, talking to him, talking at him, talking around him. And all the electronics. Texts and emails and phone calls and the ever-present Internet. The sheer level of stimulation that had been battering him ever since he’d come back from Idaho, back from the show.

Which was the
there
, the other place his mind kept returning. To the steady passage of long summer days filled with hard, steady physical labor. The all-too-short nights, drifting into the deep sleep of physical exhaustion with only the sound of the wind, the snores of his loft-mates in his ears. The chance to think his thoughts, even if those thoughts weren’t always pleasant.

He reached the building, entered the cool quiet of the expansive lobby, all soaring space and glossy hard surfaces.

“Hey, Julio.” He nodded to the guy at the reception desk, received a “Good Morning” in return, and swiped his keycard for the elevator, stepping out a few swiftly-moving seconds later into the hushed corridor of the 37
th
floor, the six closed doors of six luxury apartments staring blankly back at him. He’d met most of his neighbors in the month he’d lived here, but nothing beyond a “how are you?” in the elevator. Another single guy, a lawyer, he thought, probably divorced, some retired couples. Nobody around now, though.

Inside his own door, then, and into his apartment, dropping his keys into the blown glass bowl on the hall table, his
jacket onto one of the starkly modern white leather couches. The high gloss of the wide dark floorboards, the white walls, the richly veined marble of the kitchen countertops at one end of the great room, echoed in the darker marble of the dining table with its stainless steel base. And, most of all, the floor-to-ceiling windows lining the best part of two walls, more glass and white concrete in the buildings opposite, all throwing glaring light back at him.

Maybe he should have paid more attention, thought it through better when the decorator was asking him about his preferences. At the time, he’d appreciated her businesslike questions, the ability to get everything set up fast, once he’d closed on the apartment. Modern, clean lines, the best, but nothing fussy. Check, check, check. But it was all kind of . . . bare. Sterile, even. Sometimes he wasn’t sure if he was in a home or an operating room.
Or a morgue.

Because
the quiet, he thought as he headed down the hall into the master bedroom, across the carpet—pale, of course—into the walk-in closet, stripped off his button-down shirt and slacks, dumped them into the pile on the floor and grabbed workout gear from a smoothly sliding lacquered birch drawer, was almost more oppressive than the noise of the street below. No birdsong, no rush of creek water or drip of rain from the eaves, no wind in the pines. Just . . . quiet, unless he was playing music to have something in the background. In the middle of the city, but separated from it by the best insulation in the world. Money.

What was he, a Boy Scout? He’d always been an urban animal, and he still was, he was sure. It was just the transition. He needed a workout, that was all.

“
Six offices along these walls,” Rae pointed out as they stepped inside the vacant space that took up half the twelfth floor of the office building on the narrow alleyway that was Stevenson Street.

“We’ve got this. Give us a few minutes,” she told the realtor when the man would have accompanied them
further, causing Alec to hide a smile. Her looks could very nearly be called fragile, but there was nothing the least bit fragile about her character, it was becoming clear. It was only Tuesday, and she’d already whipped her way through all the office space available south of Market. He had a feeling that he was going to find today’s list pretty extensive, but that she’d be whipping through that too.

“I was going to show you my two
or three best candidates,” she told him as she led him across the cavernous open space, furnished only with industrial carpeting interrupted periodically by rectangular cutouts for electrical outlets, and dust motes that drifted in the occasional shaft of sunlight. “But this one is really head and shoulders above the rest. Best location, best space. And there’s no point wasting your time.”

He
tried—and failed—to ignore the way her hips swayed in the black knit pants, or the way those pants had to stretch to fit over her small but deliciously curvy . . . backside. How the plum-colored sweater hugged her willowy figure, which did have a few more curves to it in exactly the right places. Not to mention the neck that rose above the sweater’s ribbed collar in a vulnerable, too-slender column, a few auburn tendrils escaping at her nape beneath the ruthlessly subdued twist. But he looked around him too, because this was important. When he was programming, he didn’t care too much where he was, but it mattered to other people, he knew. And as much as he hated dealing with operational stuff, it was part of the job.

“Good light, but n
ot much view,” he pointed out, stepping through the doorway of one of the offices lining two sides of the floor. He went to one of the two large windows, looked across the narrow alley at the walls and windows of the building beyond. More hard surfaces. More glass.

“A little better from the corner offices,” she said. “Come see.”

“I thought, this one for you,” she said when they were inside the larger office, which did indeed overlook the plaza across the way with its planter boxes and trees, although the leaves were turning color and falling now. And over there, between two buildings, a single patch of deep autumn blue that was the sky. “We could use the other corner office, which has only building and street views, as a conference room,” she suggested. “Because I noticed you like to see green.”

“You did?” he asked, startled. “When?”

“On Friday, when we were walking back from getting coffee, past that living wall with the water and all the plants,” she explained. “You enjoyed looking at that.”

“I can’t believe you noticed.”

She shrugged. “It’s my job to help you be productive. Relaxed people are more productive, and if you enjoy looking at greenery, it’ll relax you. Let me know which of the other offices should go to Brandon and Joe, if you agree on this space, and I’ll walk them through here too, without you, and present it to them. A fait accompli is better, and that it comes from me and not you.”

“So they can blame you?”

“Also my job,” she pointed out. “To be the bad guy. So who’s next to you? That one’s a little more desirable than the others, has a little more view.”

“Joe,” he said at once. “If we don’t write
code, we don’t have a product, that’s the bottom line. We’ll need to be close. In fact, he’ll need to be in here with me, so we can do paired programming. L-shaped desk. A big one, because I need space. Dual 32-inch monitors, two keyboard trays, two good chairs. I don’t want to have to use the conference room every time, and that should be available anyway, for when the programmers want to work together.”

She made
a note on her phone. “Got it. I’ll be checking with the others about their requirements too, and I need to sit with you and go through yours in more detail. But before we get ahead of ourselves, let me show you the rest of the floor.”

“Good for you?” she asked when they’d finished their tour and she’d called the realtor over at last to answer a few questions.

“Yeah,” Alec said. “Soon as you can do it. And I have to say,” he added, “if the rest of it doesn’t require any more work from me than this, I’m going to think I’ve died and gone to heaven.”

“
You seem surprised. There’s a reason Ron chose me, you know,” she said calmly. “Give me a couple minutes to get the ball rolling on closing this deal, then maybe we can get coffee and go through my list. It’s a long one,” she warned, holding up her phone and surprising him not a bit, “but I’ll keep it moving.”

Alec glance
d at his own phone. “Past eleven-thirty. How about an early lunch instead?”

“I’ve got a lot to do,” she hesitated.

“So? You still need to eat, don’t you? Eat and talk, and go through your list,” he coaxed. “Simple. Efficient. We’ll multitask.”

She smiled reluctantly.
“All right.”

“There’s a
pretty good place right next door,” he said. “La Rochelle.”

“I thought, just grab a salad,” she protested. “Not menus and waiters.”

“I’m still catching up on my diet after my recent grueling experiences,” he said firmly. “I’m not grabbing anything, and if I need to be relaxed to be productive, well, so do you. We’re going to sit down, and somebody’s going to serve us, and before you know it, you’re actually going to be enjoying yourself.”

“Wow.” She opened her eyes wide. “This would be the
Alpha Male CEO.”

He laughed.
“This would be it. How did I do?”

“Pretty good,” sh
e smiled. “I’ll reserve judgment, though, until I see a little more.”

And
if that wasn’t flirting, he’d never seen it.
Which was interesting, wasn’t it?

“Would you like to see the dessert menu?” the waiter asked more than an hour later.

“No, thanks
,” Rae exhaled. “Not for me.”

“I would,” Alec said
. “After all that work getting through your list, I’m feeling faint. I definitely need dessert. And you need a cup of coffee.”

The waiter smiled, handed
over the compact, elegantly bound menus. “Two coffees to start?”

“Sure,”
Rae capitulated, and the waiter nodded and turned away. “I can come up with a few more questions to use the time.”

“Not the way it’s going to be
,” Alec said after a quick glance down the menu. “My turn to ask the questions, Desiree.”

She looked up at him sharply, and he saw the flash of awareness at the use of her full name,
heard her quick intake of breath.

“Why didn’t you tell me that your grandmother is one of my dad’s parishioners?” he demanded. “I talked to my mom on Sunday,” he explained, confused again by the expression on her face. Surprise? Relie
f? What? “And I remembered who your grandmother was. I see her occasionally at church when I’m home,” he explained. “Mrs. Foster, right? Nice lady.”

“Yes,” she said. “She is. And she thinks the world of your dad too. Well,
of both of them. But you go to church when you’re home?”

He had to laugh. “You ask that like it’s a choice.” He looked up as the waiter approached again, bent to set down two porcelain cups of coffee. “Apple
clafouti, please,” he said. “Assuming that’s pie.”

“It’s apple pie, more or less,”
Rae told him.

“I don’t know why they can’t just make pie,” Alec complained as the waiter departed with their dessert menus. “Nothing wrong with pie.”

And then he looked at her again, into the gold-flecked eyes that widened at the arrested expression in his own, and felt a nearly audible
click
as he made the connection.

“
Sno-Cone Girl,” he said. Then instantly regretted it when he saw the wince, followed almost immediately by the stiffening of her posture. Head high, shoulders squared, exactly the way she’d looked back then. And he was twenty years old again, sitting in the diner, watching her feelings being hurt yet another time, and hating it.

“My parents have been bugging me to get a job all summer,” Maryann had complained, sitting back in the red leatherette booth and winding a strand of shiny blonde hair around one manicured finger. Every bit of her still looking brand-new and polished despite a lazy Sunday afternoon of tubing down the Sacramento River. Maybe that was the twenty minutes she’d spent in the restrooms afterwards, and the arsenal of makeup Alec knew she carried in her bag.

Ryan snorted from across the table.
“Must’ve given up by now. It’s August. Nobody’s going to hire you at this point.”

Maryann sighed.
“My dad’s been making me work in his office instead, and it’s
soooo
boring.”

Alec looked up at the waitress who’d come up beside the
roomy booth in the Chico Diner, watched her pull an order pad out of the black apron she wore over her black slacks and flip it open with a practiced motion. The same girl who’d worked at the Snack Shack two years ago, the summer he’d graduated from high school, he realized. He’d seen her a few more times after that first day, clearly working all the hours she could get. Always with her test prep book on the counter, always sweating in the heat.

The
red hair was pulled back tight into a ponytail now, and she was prettier, not quite so skinny anymore. Had grown into her features a little, though the glasses didn’t do anything for her. She’d filled out some too, he couldn’t help but notice. And she was still working, but at least she was doing it in the air-conditioning these days.

Maryann
was continuing with her story as if she hadn’t noticed the waitress’s arrival. “I asked my parents when I was going to get a summer vacation, since I go back to school in three weeks. There’s so much to do to get ready, you know? All that stuff to buy, now that I’m moving out of the dorms. Dishes, and furniture, and pots and pans
.
There’s just so
much
, it’s overwhelming.
But they said since I’m only in the office a few days a week, this
is
my vacation. They just can’t stand to see anyone else having fun, that’s what it is.”

Alec
shifted a little with embarrassment, cleared his throat as the waitress jumped into the pause after Maryann finished speaking.

“What can I get you folks?”

“Chef’s salad, please,” Rhonda said. “And a Diet Coke.”

Alec looked at Maryann. “I can’t decide,” she complained. “Do you have information on calorie counts?” She looked over the laminated card with a critical eye.

“Sorry,” th
e waitress said gravely. Her face was composed, but Alec caught a twitch at the corner of her mouth. “I’m afraid I don’t.”

Maryann sighed. “Chicken salad, then, as long as the chicken’s roasted. How do they prepare it?”

That twitch again. “I’m not sure, but it’s not fried, if that’s your concern.”

“I’ll have that, then. And the dressing on the side,” Maryann instructed.

“And to drink?”

“Diet Coke
.”

The girl nodded,
scribbled the order, looked at Alec.

“Meatloaf plate, please,” he said. “And iced tea.
”

“Ugh,” Maryann complained. “How can you
even eat
that, when it’s so hot?”

“
Easy. Besides, they make great meatloaf here. Don’t they?” he asked the waitress with a grin.

“The best,” she said, a little smile finally appearing. She took Ryan’s order. “I’ll be right back with your drinks,”
she told them, gathering the menus and turning toward the kitchen.

“At least I
don’t have to wear a uniform at work,” Maryann told Rhonda, her eyes on the slim retreating back in its baggy yellow golf shirt, tucked into the black polyester slacks worn over sensible black shoes that wouldn’t be winning any awards during Fashion Week.

“I’ve never had to wear on
e either,” Rhonda agreed. “I’d hate it. How about you guys? Ever wear a paper hat, back in the dim dark days?”

“Not me,” Ryan said. “
Just the green apron, and you know how that turns you on. She sometimes makes me wear it when we go out,” he told the others, “just to show me off. I hate when she objectifies me like that, but what are you gonna do. If you’ve got it,” he sighed, shaking his mop of curly brown hair, “you’ve got it.”

“Oh, yeah,” Rhonda agreed.
“You’re a stud.”

“
You know it. I’m not saying working at Starbucks has exactly been glamorous,” Ryan said as Alec continued to laugh, “but hey, I’ve learned how to make coffee drinks. And no paper hat, at least.”

“Or a shirt with your name on it,
embroidered above the pocket,” Maryann said with a giggle. “That would be the worst.”