“See you there.”
He grabbed his bottle and walked out, and I absolutely did not watch the way his shoulders moved under that T-shirt. Not even a little.
When the door shut behind him, I pressed my hand to my forehead. “Kyle Ashbrook lives in my building. I amsoscrewed.”
The worst part? I didn’t mind one bit.
3
KYLE
The conference room at Ultra Bright wasn’t what I expected. Smaller. Sleeker. Too clean. A glass table, two leather chairs, a massive monitor on the wall… It felt less like a tech empire’s headquarters and more like a high-end interrogation room.
I’d come in at nine sharp, ready for battle. I was expecting a firing squad of lawyers and senior devs, armed with NDAs and jargon thick enough to choke a man.
Instead, I got Avery.
She was standing by the monitor, tablet in hand, wearing a navy skirt suit that shouldn’t have been a weapon but was. Her blonde hair was pulled back in a no-nonsense ponytail, but those blue eyes? All nonsense. One look and I forgot every carefully rehearsed line I’d planned to start with.
“Mr. Ashbrook.” She smiled, professional and warm. “Thanks for coming.”
I glanced around the empty room. “Where’s everyone else?”
Her smile faltered slightly. “Mr. Baxter had an emergency this morning—something about a supplier issue in Singapore. And our legal team is available by phone if we need them, but Ithought…” She hesitated. “I thought it might be more productive if we kept this technical. Just us.”
Just us.
The words hung in the air, loaded with implications neither of us acknowledged.
“Reed stood me up again,” I said flatly.
“He didn’t stand you up. He’s just?—”
“Sending a message.” I set my briefcase down and shrugged off my coat. “That he doesn’t take this seriously.”
Avery’s jaw tightened. “I take it seriously.”
“I know you do.”
And I did. That was the problem. If she’d been some vapid corporate puppet, this would’ve been easy. But she wasn’t. She was sharp and capable and so damn beautiful it was starting to interfere with my ability to think like a rational human being.
“We can reschedule,” she offered. “If you’d prefer to meet with Mr. Baxter directly?—”
“No.” The word came out faster than I intended. “We’re here. Let’s do this.”
Something flickered in her expression—relief maybe, or satisfaction—and she nodded. “Okay. Have a seat.”
I sat. She moved to the monitor, pulling up a presentation that was clearly hers—clean, organized, and color-coded in a way that made sense. Not some generic corporate deck.
“Let’s start with the hardware,” she said, and launched into an explanation of ClimaGlow’s sensor array that was so detailed, so precise, I forgot to be suspicious.
She knew this system inside and out. Every component, every line of code, every decision the development team had made. And when I asked questions—hard questions, the kind designed to trip up someone who didn’t actually understand what they were talking about—she didn’t stumble. She metevery challenge head-on, explaining, clarifying, and occasionally pulling up additional documentation to prove her point.
Twenty minutes in, I had to admit that she was right. ClimaGlow didn’t violate my patent. The architecture was too different, the approach too distinct. Similar outcomes, completely different methods.
I should’ve been relieved. Instead, I was disappointed that I’d just lost my excuse to keep seeing her.
“So.” Avery turned away from the monitor, crossing her arms. The movement pushed her tits upward, and I had to force my gaze back to her face. “Any other questions about the code?”
