Putting It to the Test

Lowering back to her chair, she told herself not to let it bother her. Matt was only trying to push her buttons, probably bent over the fact that the Singles Inc. account wasn’t being handed to him on a platter like all the other top projects. In fact, now that she thought about it, the whole puzzle fit.

Since when had he ever left his corner of the floor to fraternize with the other designers? His desk was right outside the executive suite, which allowed him to continually buddy up to the bosses without having to cross paths with anyone else. Yet today he’d decided to stop by. And why? Because management had duped him on this latest assignment. Not only were they insisting a man and a woman work together on this one—Singles Inc. wanting to assure the new site appealed to both sexes—but to get the project Matt would have to show some sort of compatibility with a woman on the team.

And to match up with a woman he’d have to bother getting to know one.

Ha, she thought. Mr. High and Mighty didn’t have a chance, and he knew it. So instead of filling out the survey and taking his chances, like everyone else, he was out trolling to compare answers. Why else would he have made reading her computer screen his first order of business?

Giving him a glare she hoped looked evil, she asked, “Why are you here?”

His bemused smile said her evil glare was about as threatening as a cream puff.

“Your Ultimate HTML Guide. I’d like to borrow it, if you don’t mind. I took mine home and forgot to bring it back.”

She poked her cheek with her tongue. “Are you sure about that?”

“Come again?”

“This must kill you, having to compete for a spot on the Singles Inc. project like everyone else.”

“It’s not a competition. It’s about compatibility.”

“Exactly, and it’s probably only now occurred to you that you don’t know a thing about the staff. Your odds of striking the highest match with anyone are slim at best.”

He folded his arms across his chest and frowned, a stance that made him look deliciously menacing, and Carly had to will away a half dozen inopportune thoughts. The man was handsome to distraction, the kind of sexual magnet that jerked heads and caused women to walk into walls.

Tall, with a strong, square jaw, Matt Jacobs was about as close as they came to physical perfection, and no matter how badly Carly wanted to ignore him, she couldn’t deny her attraction. He was the epitome of her ideal sex toy, dark and serious, strong and silent, yet still capable of flashing a grin that could turn the most pent-up woman into mush.

A layer of stubble hardened what might otherwise be a too-pretty face. He kept his dark, wavy hair cut just below the ears—short enough for the workplace but long enough to sink your fingers in—and when he smiled, a faint dimple sank into one cheek, softening those hard lines and warming everything around him.

His silver eyes had a habit of revealing his thoughts—this particular one screaming loud and clear annoyance—but despite his bone-melting nearness and disgruntled glare, Carly worked hard to keep the upper hand. This was the first time she’d ever confronted him with her opinion, and she wouldn’t let a little temptation to fondle those biceps stop the momentum.

He stared at her for a moment, then feigned looking aghast. “You think I’m here to compare answers with you?”

“This would be the first major project you’re not part of. Are you trying to tell me you’d leave the results up to fate?” Shaking her head, she huffed. “No way.”

He looked at her as though she were insane, but she suspected it was a cover, that underneath the facade he was mortified she’d read him so easily.

“I’ll just borrow your book now and go, if you don’t mind,” he said, reaching over her shoulder and pulling the manual from her overhead shelf.

She pushed back a smirk. “Keep it as long as you’d like.”

And when he turned and left her cubicle, she smiled with satisfaction. Finally, after spending two years being backstage to Matt Jacobs, she was about to shine.

Granted, she wasn’t guaranteed a spot on the team any more than he was. However, the simple fact that the Singles Inc. account would be handed out based on something other than Matt’s ability to suck up to the boss left her feeling that justice had rightfully returned to Brayton Hall Technologies.

And if, by some chance, she got the project over Matt, well, that would be the ultimate icing on the cake.

“WHY DO I LET HER get to me?”

Matt picked up the plastic bottle of ketchup, squeezed it over his fries, then passed it to his coworker, Adam, his closest friend at Hall Technologies.

The two men had connected last year when Adam discovered Matt had played AA ball for the Anaheim Nationals. Since the center of Adam’s life was his men’s softball team, he’d been itching to sign Matt up ever since learning of his past. Unfortunately for Adam, Matt wasn’t about to step back into a dugout, and though Adam rechecked that status on a regular basis, he’d learned to accept Matt as nothing more than a lunch companion.

Their normal routine involved ducking out for deli sandwiches they brought back to their desks, using the quick stroll around the corner to stretch their legs and talk about sports. Matt’s encounter with Carly this morning had him suggesting they dine out, and “burgers at Quimbly’s,” a nearby fifties-style diner, was all Adam needed to hear to agree.

“Because she’s hot,” Adam said. He squeezed a dollop of ketchup on his bacon cheeseburger and set the red plastic bottle back in the caddy next to its yellow-mustard mate.

Matt shook his head. “Lots of women are hot and none of them drive me crazy. Carly Abrams drives me crazy.”

“They always say love exists on the edge of insanity.”

Ignoring the comment—because he refused to grace that stupidity with an answer—he pointed a crinkle-cut fry toward Adam. “She actually thought I’d come over to her desk to look at her answers to the survey.” Scoffing, he added, “That is one twisted woman.”

Though, granted, he had looked at her answers. Not just the one about being into wild, kinky sex but the one before it, as well, the one that said she was most definitely not conservative in bed. He genuinely hadn’t come over prying for info on her survey, but he couldn’t deny what he’d seen haunted him.

And the more he thought about it, the less he believed her story about toying with Old Man Hall. It was a nice try, but Matt couldn’t shake the suspicion that Carly Abrams really did have a wild side in bed.

And he’d been semierect ever since.

“You have to admit, this is the first time you weren’t given the big project,” Adam said. “There have been rumblings over how you’re dealing with that.”

“I couldn’t care less about Singles Inc. I’ve already spent two years proving myself to Hall. I don’t need another big project to showcase my abilities.”

And it was true. Matt hadn’t come to Hall Technologies just to do more Web design. He’d come to learn the ropes from Brayton Hall, the man who was about to blow the lid off the traditional Web-design and electronic-advertising firms. Hall had spent two decades at IBM, being in on the ground floor of Internet technology back when the public barely knew what a dot-com was. He’d learned the rules from one of the industry leaders, then set out on his own to break them.

With the larger firms building corporate structures that turned them into slow-moving barges, Hall Technologies stayed nimble, hiring some of the brightest independent Web designers, who were accustomed to coming up with innovative ideas and delivering them fast. To the big players they were barely a blip on the radar, but Matt knew that was all about to change and he had every intention of being the guy to Hall’s right when it happened.

“Not when there’s a management position hitting the rumor mill, huh, pal?” Adam asked.

Matt was about to take a bite of his double cheeseburger when he stopped. “You heard about that?”

“Word’s slowly getting around. I don’t know how much truth there is to it, but we’ve got over a dozen designers in the department and the company keeps growing. Hiring another manager seems to fit.”

“So what have you heard?”

Adam casually glanced around the room, making sure people with the wrong ears hadn’t stepped into the restaurant, before answering.

“Only that he’s looking to start up a specialized project team. Hall wants to go after some of the bigger clients and he’s got ideas on how to do that without turning into another corporate slug. What those ideas are, I don’t know, but I’ve heard he wants someone to take the lead on it so he can continue to focus on acquisitions.”

“Yeah,” Matt said. “That’s what I heard, too.” And the thought left him salivating. This was exactly the kind of thing he’d been waiting for, the precise reason he’d left his cushy job to prove himself all over again to Brayton Hall. The man was brilliant, and Matt wanted to be the recipient of that wisdom to someday maybe make partner or rival Hall with his own design firm.

Either way, it was a win-win situation, and instead of bothering himself with Singles Inc., he’d rather sniff out what he had to do to land that new position.

And when he got it, he’d be glad nothing had ever come of him and Carly. Despite her disdain for him, she was one of the sharpest minds at Hall Technologies. If Matt was to land this job, she’d be the first one he’d ask for. Granted, there was a chance she’d laugh in his face at the offer. He knew she’d resented him since the day he’d been hired, and his visit to her cube this morning had been yet another attempt on his part to chat it up and maybe broach a truce.

But, as always, he’d opened his mouth, said the wrong thing and started the downward spiral that only solidified her contempt for the ground he walked on. He hadn’t meant to make the crack about the survey. He’d just seen her answers, turned hard as a rock and blurted out the first thing that popped into his mind—that her answer couldn’t be true.

Because he needed it not to be true.