One exception to Dane’s habit of standing at meetings extended to developer scrums since he needed his laptop open while the technical lead, Steve Dworkis, projected his desktop on a large screen at one end of the table.
Steve manned the mouse, and the cursor bounced across a Visio diagram. “And as you can see, the original design just isn’t scalable. It’s cheaper and meets our immediate needs, but we’ll end up revising this in a couple of years if too many clients adopt it. Also, I should point out that the maintenance costs will be greater in the long run.”
Dane nodded. “So what would you propose instead?”
“We’ve been discussing shifting the paradigm.”
“Speak English, man.”
This guy was a competent developer, but he was bucking for a promotion to a management position, and he’d started talking like he thought he’d be moving up the corporate ladder any day.
Steve spoke to the rest of the group. “If we’re willing to refactor and retrofit older code, we could—”
Dane shook his head. “No. We’re not going to rewrite the whole system for this project.”
“But hear me out. It would set us up for a whole new set of functionality.”
“And who’s going to pay for this? We have one client asking for it. If we tell them it’s a million-dollar redesign, they’ll go somewhere else. Are we going to eat those costs? Are you going to pay for it, Steve?”
Steve straightened his tie. “It’s good long-term business sense, Dane. You should know that.”
“Why exactly? You think any of us will be doing business like this in ten years? You know we’ll have to redesign the system soon enough anyway. Why do it under the umbrella of a hidden piece of functionality?” Dane actually agreed with Steve, but he’d been around longer, too. “Look, Steve. You win the logical argument, but you’re not going to win this battle. Stick around, and when the pressure comes down to overhaul the whole system, I’ll personally recommend you to manage the project. It will be high profile, and you’ll get all the kudos. You do it now, through the back door, and you’ll sleep well at night knowing you do good work, but if anything goes wrong, you’ll be the scapegoat. You do realize that, right?”
The fight went out of Steve. “Okay, Dane. We can do it as proposed.”
“Great. Then can you get the estimates to me by later today?”
“Sure thing.”
Dane scanned the rest of the developers. “Anything else on the agenda?” Silence.
He shut his laptop, feeling the mild content of having actually done something productive. He should go to more meetings, he decided. Maybe instead of leaving this company, he’d take it over. He could pull a Geraldo. Just buy up all the stock on the sly and push out the actual owners. They never set foot in this region of the country anyway. They might not even realize they’d lost an asset.
Deep in thought, he walked out of the conference room and ran into Noelle who looked immaculate as always. He could smell whatever mix of coconut, ginger, citrus concoction she’d lathered up with that morning, and he pictured her naked under a stream of water. “Good morning, Noelle.”
He tried to walk past her, but she laid a hand on his elbow. “Dane. I was actually looking for you.”
Steve glanced at them as he went past. Dane took a noticeable step back from Noelle for show. “Yes?”
“Can we talk for a minute?” She nodded toward the now empty room.
He held the door and watched her as she entered. She’d always been a beautiful woman. He couldn’t understand how she was still single. She wasn’t a player, but maybe she was working too many hours to commit to someone who wanted a woman at his beck and call. She was the kind of woman Dane would have loved to land—smart, self-possessed, driven. He wouldn’t have minded if their lives had moved around each other like a double helix. As long as their naked bodies could have connected once in a while, he wouldn’t have expected her to wash his underwear.
But she hadn’t wanted that with him.
As Noelle settled into the seat Dane had recently occupied, he slid his hand into his pocket and flipped his phone so he could glance at the screen. A few taps, and the device became a recorder. He cringed a little, but he could delete it if it made him come across too sinister.
Dane considered taking the chair on the opposite side of the table, but instead went for Steve’s former seat at the head of the table and just around the corner. “What’s up?”
“Listen. First of all, I wanted to apologize for last Friday night. I felt awful for giving you the impression I considered it a date, and then I must have made you feel embarrassed when I said what I did.”
Dane had been frustrated but not embarrassed. If he’d been embarrassed, this conversation would not be doing much to change that fact. “It’s not a problem, Noelle. We had a nice dinner. That’s all. You were right. We work together, so we should just keep things professional.”
She ran her finger across her hair. Her hair was perfect, but she always tidied invisible loose strands when she was nervous. It was an endearing habit that had always captivated him.
“I’m glad you understand. It’s been so long since—” Her nose wrinkled. She couldn’t even bring herself to say it out loud.
Since she would have anything to do with Dane. Since she'd almost said yes.
