He grabs one of the pictures and turns around with it in his hand. “You look really happy in this one. Celebrating something?”
I take the picture frame from his hand and smile looking down at it. The memory is flooding back to me like it was yesterday.
“That’s me and my best friend, Eslin,” I say. “We’d just passed a final together and the only reason she passed is because she cheated off me. That class was brutal. We were honestly just relieved to survive it.”
He smiles and I notice the dimples in his cheeks instantly. Deep ones. Yummy ones.
Thank goodness I’m a professional. “Let me guess,” he says. “Professor Sherman’s Advanced Cryptography and Network Defense?”
My eyes widen. “Yes! How did you know?”
He laughs. “Because I had to take it twice. Word was, only a handful of people ever passed it on the first try.”
I groan. “Yeah. We barely scraped by and got separated during lectures more than once. The class was hard, but we also barely paid attention when we were supposed to.”
He chuckles again, dimples flashing. “You two sound like trouble.”
There is a purr that happens deep down in my panties.
The vaginal neglect I’ve been experiencing is beginning to kick into overdrive since Nyles only allowed me to sleep when I was at his house last night. No sex.
I clear my throat. “Something like that and I’m headed to a conference with her next week.”
“The two bandits getting back together, huh?”
I laugh nervously, taking the picture and placing it back on the shelf so I can get back to myself.
“I’ve got a meeting in twenty minutes. Let’s get to business, shall we?”
“You don’t have to run from me, Ms. Palmer.”
I round the corner of my desk and sit. “Trust me, Reese, I don’t run from anything. I strategically keep everything in its rightful place.”
He arches a brow. “And my place is?”
“On the other side of that desk, telling me what the hell I need to know about these hackers and then out of my office.”
He smiles. “Touché, boss. Touché.”
That’s enough to snap his attention back where it belongs and yank my thoughts out of the gutter. His pants are tight, we just hired a new HR director, and I am clinging to my professionalism—and mydon’t-sleep-with-the-helpstreak—with everything I’ve got.
Still, by the end of our meeting, we’re no closer to figuring out who is behind the attempted breaches we’ve been experiencing. So we set up a honeytrap for the next time they try, and then Reese heads out of my office.
I glance at the time on my monitor. One minute before my next meeting. Perfect. I’ve been looking forward to this one all week.
The camera clicks on, and I join the link at the exact same moment she does.
Eslin grins. “Hey, best friend!”
“Hey, best friend!” I shoot back.
I’ve been so slammed lately that scheduling calls during the workday is the only way I get any real face time with my best friend.
“How have you been?” she asks, her whole face lighting up.
“Girl, how do you think?” I say. “I just got back from the BlacksNTech Conference in Colorado, where I presented new MatchSense features, I’m entertaining a board seat for a start-up Timantha might invest in, and breaking news, I have to schedule meetings just to see my best friend’s face.”
She lets out a long sigh. “That is a lot. And the board seat sounds like overkill with everything you already have going on. Are you actually considering it?”
