“Okay, done. I entered it in twice.”
Being so close, Liv noticed the color of his eyes when he looked back up at her. Blue with long lashes. She must have been staring at him too long, because he cocked his head as if to ask a question. She stopped hovering and stood up. Most of the guys she knew—and again, she couldn’t help comparing him—weren’t keyed into even the most basic social cues. She could have stared at them for ages when they were at a computer screen and they wouldn’t have noticed. She’d have to grope their crotch or something before they’d stir. And even then it was a maybe.
“So how did you end up being a consultant?” she asked, to get her mind off his dark blue eyes—and groping his crotch. “Or are you a novelist or actor or something trying to make ends meet?”
“No. Nothing as lofty as that. I got my master’s in corporate theory and that’s about as high as I go in terms of aspirations. No big purpose to it or anything, but it pays the bills and I do like it. I was actually an admin myself while I was getting my degree, believe it or not. Women executives seem to like having a guy for their secretary.”
“Fancy that,” she muttered. One who looked like him, for sure.
“So, for now, give me whatever you would give your secretary to do. We’ll interact on that level while I evaluate. You’d be amazed how often a corporate bureaucracy is structured to foster myths that don’t suit it anymore. You know what I mean?”
She smiled slightly. “Not really, but I’ll leave the management theory to you. I will point out that, unless your number crunching will occupy you all day, you might want to bring a book here, or your iPod, or whatever. Or plan to surf a lot.”
“Hmmm.”
She wondered what he made of that, a little worried.
“I tend to hold off on interviewing a subject until I’ve been in place long enough to achieve optimal use of both our times, but just as a primer, what is it exactly that you do? Miss Sealy said you were some kind of genius and were developing ‘something’ that was going to make ‘somebody’ invest a lot of money in the company.”
“Jen’s my biggest fan. A bit of an exaggeration though. I’m just working on prototypes.”
He cocked his head to the side again. “Okay, enough said. But if it works out, I wouldn’t object to stock options as part of my eventual consulting arrangement. A lot of folks at Google are hanging out now on yachts. That kind of thing.”
She laughed. “Is that your master plan?”
He leaned back, relaxed, stretching his long legs out. He had running shoes on. Bright green Nikes with black stripes. She knew once Jen tore her eyes off his handsome face and hot bod, she’d be correcting the footwear.
“I don’t have any big plan,” he said easily. “Just getting along.”
She wasn’t sure she even knew any guys who weren’t driven toward some grand purpose, in one sense or another. If not monetary then academic at the very least. Of course, she didn’t exactly know many guys these days, especially in the biblical sense. Or any.
“You don’t approve?” he asked.
“Of what?”
“Not having a plan.”
She shrugged. “No. That’s fine. It’s not my place to approve or disapprove anyway. I’m not used to it, that’s all.”
He glanced around the plush corporate space. “I don’t have to ask whether you have one. You’re doing pretty well for yourself for, what…thirty?”
The fact he’d guessed she was older than she really was shot a flare of irritation through her, which it shouldn’t have. Looking too young wasn’t a plus for a woman’s career path. But she couldn’t help the frown. “I’ve always been pretty serious,” she admitted.
That was an understatement. Concentrating on school and then on work, on what she could do with her mind, had been a welcome distraction from a home life structured, such as it was, by a single mother who didn’t know the meaning of structure. For as long as she could remember, Liv had gotten herself up for school—and checked in on her mom who was more likely than not passed out from rum and sleeping soundly. Any extracurricular activities Liv made it to back then were thanks to a ride from Jen’s mom, her own being too scattered to get around to it.
Not that this hot consultant needed to hear all about her personal baggage on the very first day. Or ever. Only Jen knew how Liv had grown up. Maybe that was why she cherished her old friend so much. Jen knew the whole of her, not just the supposedly successful young go-getter. If it wasn’t for scholarships, and a dedicated high school counselor’s insistence on her pursuing them, Liv probably wouldn’t have even gone to college.