Pitch Perfect(92)

“Well, that’s a nice change of pace, anyway. Those adventure games always seem so sexist.” Belatedly, Tony noticed her clipped tone.

David only grinned. “Touché. Actually, I’d always intended to move into some more gender-flexible games, but the Dark Princes plot didn’t lend itself too well to that, and games with male leads are proven to sell better.”

“Why is that?” asked Tony.

“Supposedly women don’t have a problem playing games where they’re presenting themselves as a male character, but men aren’t so happy pretending they’re a female character. A few games have bucked the standard, but with Dark Princes being a new franchise, I decided to play it safe.”

“I see.” Tony paused, evaluating her tone. Had she sounded too snippy? “I guess video games are a man’s world too.” Just like everything else. Yeah, that had sounded a little snippy. She needed to work on that.

David didn’t seem offended. He turned back toward the computer and touched a button. The stick figures came to life, moving into confrontation. “The world is what you make of it.”

Maybe for you. Tony managed to quash that thought before she voiced it aloud. Some people turned everything they touched to gold. Others turned it to mud.

She started to back out of the room, then paused, watching the little stick figures bash each other with stick-figure swords. Their movements were jerky, unrefined, but even at this stage, she could tell the choreography of the battle had been carefully thought out. They just needed clothes. And skin and muscles and, well, faces would be good too. Pictures started to form in her mind of what they might look like, pictures that made the tips of her fingers long to hold a pencil, to work it all out where she could see it.

“What got you interested in this line of work?” she heard herself asking.

He glanced back over his shoulder. “I spent a lot of time in front of video game consoles in high school and college. It seemed like a natural progression.”

“I guess you always were good at math.” Lame, Tony. She really didn’t know what developing computer games involved, though, other than the obvious programming skills.

He chuckled. Even her lamest lameness didn’t seem to faze him much. “I am that. And I can barf up C++ code with both hands tied behind my back, typing with my nose.”

It was an interesting image on numerous levels. “I’d like to see that.”

“I bet you would.” He swiveled his chair so that he faced her more directly. Her eyes caught on the line of his throat, the curve of it as it disappeared behind his collar. His heartbeat pulsed in the groove along the side of his neck, and there was a small spot just under his chin where he hadn’t shaved quite cleanly. “Anyway, I studied computer science in college, where I met Rich, and we decided to take the jump and start marketing our own games.”

“Rich programs too?”

“Yeah, and he has a better eye for art than I do, so he recruited our initial graphic artists. Now we have a department for that, and he runs it. Good artists are hard to find.” His gaze seemed to narrow on her little, as if he were trying to tell her something. She didn’t know what that might be. She certainly didn’t know anything about art for computer games. Sure, she knew her way around Photoshop, but she was going to be an accountant, so it wasn’t really relevant knowledge. Uncomfortable under his attention, she lifted the hand that held the paper.

“Thanks for the paper.”

“Any time.” His smile was warm. She wanted to get away—wanted to move closer. She could almost feel his touch again, the casual, not-quite-accidental tracery of his fingers against her thigh. God, she really needed to get out of here. His gaze weighed heavy on her as she turned and headed back to the guest room.

The bed had grown chilly in her absence, and it took a few minutes for Tony’s body heat to soak the sheets again. With the pile of paper propped in her lap—not exactly steady but steady enough for her use—she began to sketch.

She started doodling; then that mysterious something took over, and she found the lines shaping a horse, a woman on its back, dressed in war gear. She slid out of the warm bed to kneel next to the nightstand, spreading papers out under the light of the lamp. With the wider, harder surface, the picture became more intricate until she had produced something that looked more like a professionally finished product than a doodle.

She moved to another sheet and started another—a dragon in flight against a backdrop of snowcapped mountains. Discussing David’s game must have triggered something in her subconscious. She hadn’t drawn a dragon in years.