He looked surprised. “It’s your idea, Jenny, and it’s a great one.”
“Yeah, but—”
“Don’t be dumb,” he said and dropped the sketches onto her desk. “Sean’s in Mike’s office. You can pitch it to both of them at the same time. The sooner you get this to them the better. Programmers will need more time to set up the extra layers.”
“I know, but—”
Dave chuckled a little. “Since when are you shy? Come on, take your idea to the bosses, impress the hell out of ’em.”
Still shaking his head, he wandered off to check on a couple of the other artists. Jenny watched him go, then dropped her gaze to the Wise Woman sketches. It was a good idea, damn it. And if she and Mike weren’t...she didn’t know what they were exactly, but if they weren’t in such a weird space, she’d have no trouble at all taking her ideas to the Ryan brothers. They were always open to the employees coming to them with suggestions.
She was the head artist now, so she shouldn’t be wary of facing her bosses. This was her job, and hadn’t she made a point out of telling Mike that nothing was going to stop her from doing her job?
Nodding to herself, she gathered up her sketches and headed out of the office.
Mike and Sean were going over the figures sent by the collectibles company. “The licensing fee is good, but did you take a look at their latest batch of figurines based on that kids’ movie?”
“Yeah,” Sean said with a wince. “I admit, they’re not great.”
Mike snorted. “‘Not great’ covers a lot of territory. This can be narrowed down to crappy.”
“Okay, yeah.” Sean tossed the pictures back on his brother’s desk. “If they couldn’t get the talking frog and the Princess Knight right...”
“Exactly,” Mike agreed. “Those are easy. What’ll they do to our banshees, warlocks and Irish warriors?” Shaking his head, he continued, “Brady and I both went along with this idea of yours, Sean. But if this is what the collectibles are going to look like, I don’t know if it’s a good thing.”
“True.” Sean crossed his legs, propping one ankle on his knee. “There are other companies we could try.”
“Is it worth it?”
“I think so,” Sean countered. “If we get into the collectibles market, it’s going to push our name recognition even higher and affect game sales. We could pull in gamers who haven’t tried us yet.”
Mike frowned and tapped his fingertips against the desk. It was hard to keep his mind on business. Even now, while his brother continued to talk about his plan, Mike’s mind drifted to the woman working on the floor above him.
Three days since his night with Jenny and he’d hardly been able to shake thoughts of her for five minutes at a stretch. He’d convinced himself that spending the night with her had been a wise choice. A way to not only ease the ache for her but a chance to push away the memories of that one night in Phoenix.
Well, that had worked, but now it was memories of a night in Long Beach that tormented him. Rather than getting her out of his mind, that night had only entrenched her there.
“Are you listening to me?” Sean demanded.
“What?” Mike scowled and shot his brother a hard look. “Yeah. Sure.”
“Uh-huh.” Sean smirked at him. “What did I just say?”
“Collectibles. Gamers. Blah, blah. Pretty much what you’ve been saying for months.”
“Right. So what’s going on with you?”
“Nothing,” Mike said, picking up a pen and twirling it idly between his fingers. “I’m busy.”
“Yeah,” Sean said, “me, too. So what’s going on?”
“Who’re you all of a sudden?” Mike asked. “Mom?”
“Hah. If I was Mom I’d get an answer to my question.”
True. Peggy Ryan was tough and had a way of getting her family to confess all. Which, Mike reminded himself, wasn’t always a good thing. She’d once pried truths out of her husband that had changed the way Mike felt about his father forever. It was the day that Mike learned how much damage liars and cheats could do.
And that thought steeled his spine and firmed his resolve to get past whatever it was he was feeling for Jenny. Liars had no place in his life and damned if he’d forget that.
As if his thoughts had conjured her, a perfunctory knock on the open door announced her presence. Mike looked at her, his gaze locking with hers, and he felt a fast jolt of awareness tangled up with a bone-deep need that just never seemed to drain away. “What is it?”