“Okay.” His hand lingers a moment longer than necessary on my desk before he proceeds into his office. He closes the door. The blinds, as always, are also shut. It’s a nice office once you get in there, but out here where I sit, I get none of the benefit of the natural light because of those ugly blinds.
My job as Isaac’s assistant isn’t as lame as it sounds when I tell people what I do, but the longer explanation is boring. I have a masters degree in computer science and programming, and this is the entry level job I got. Isaac—when he’s not figuring out how to “tackle” his schedule or shoving his cock down my throat is also training me via specific tasks to give me more experience in the industry.
He started out as a programmer, but he’s extremely smart and has big ideas. On top of that, he and his former business partner grew this company from the ground up. Polytech, like the ridiculous name implies, does a little bit of everything. Data analytics, development of data products, data automation,workflows, frameworks, and everything else that’s no fun to talk about at parties. We have clients from hospitals to hotels to international shipping companies who hire us to support their large organizations, and we also make about a thousand apps. One day, he might even want to add mine to the list.
Anyway, as shitty of a boss as Isaac might sound like from a human resources perspective, I really like working for him. I’ve learned enough to get a better job at another company by now, which makes Hunter’s offer extremely tempting, but the perks here are nice, and it helps that my boss literally never gets irritated with me. I can do no wrong, and that’s far from the norm in this industry, so I’ll probably stick around until I get my software market-ready or Isaac yells at me. Whichever comes first.
He opens his office door. “Are you coming?”
Still frazzled, I run my hand through my hair and stand, picking up my iPad before walking into the door he holds open for me.
“You sure you’re all right?”
“Yes, I’m fine,” I tell him.
Closing the door, he says, “You look upset.”
I sit down in the chair opposite his. “It’s not a crisis. Just some personal stuff. I promise.”
He hesitates, but then eventually crosses the carpeted room to take his seat. He’s got the schedule pulled up on his monitor, but as I’m not feeling particularly sexy today, I stay put. If he wants me, he can ask. He knows I won’t say no.
He’s staring at me, so I stare back. “What?”
“You can talk to me.”
The people pleaser in me wants to spill just because he’s asking so nicely, but there are lines and there arelines. I like this job, and I need to keep the lines we’ve already established in place. If I start confiding in him, the feelings I like to pretend Idon’t have for him might get harder to ignore, and I can’t afford that when it comes to the most eligible gay bachelor in the Bay Area. Locking in, I give my head a short shake. “I appreciate that, but I’d rather get to work.”
His lips press together, and he sighs. “I only wanted to know if there was any way I could help.”
“My roommate dropped a bomb on me this morning, and I got a little rattled. That’s all I wanna say about it.”
“Okay. Rough morning?—”
“Rough weekend.”
“Ah.” His gaze flicks down, and then he turns toward his computer screen. “Okay. That Power Point you mentioned explaining your software. Is that something you have ready, or you need to put together?”
I hate that he knows me well enough to know I was bluffing about the Power Point. I thought I played it cooler than that. “The issue is more that the software isn’t up and running.”
Isaac shrugs, unbothered. “That hardly matters. It’s in development, and you have a plan, which means it will be working at some point. I assume you know we have teams of people who could help you with it.”
“I want to try to do it on my own.”
His gaze lingers on me a moment longer, then flicks to his computer screen. “Speaking of the teams. Can you put a meeting with Green team on my schedule for tomorrow?”
“Green team?” That’s Deacon’s team. “What’s the meeting for?”
“All the teams, actually. I haven’t touched base with the team leads in a while, and I feel like I should.”
“Worried about the employee survey?” I attempt to joke.
He huffs a laugh. “Something like that.”
“Sure. It might take a couple of weeks to get them all in, though, unless you want to combine them.”
“No. One at a time is how I want it.”
“Yeah.” I make a note.Schedule team meetings with Daddy.“They’ll like that.”
