“Me?” Grace’s green eyes widened, but then she nodded. “Absolutely. I’d be thrilled to try.”
“Great. Meet me in my office in a couple of hours.”
“See you then.”
Of course, Alex was only asking because he knew how good Grace’s work and problem-solving skills were. Yet some part of him, a part he was trying his best to ignore, found her attractive.
That was his own fault. He didn’t have time to date, yet he worked at a company that was all about dating. And he spent all his time here, so it wasn’t like he had a chance to meet people. It was natural that romance was on his mind—not that he’d ever act on it. Grace was his employee, so it wouldn’t be appropriate. This was a purely professional arrangement.
Still, he found himself waiting a little impatiently for Grace to come by. He’d finally managed to lose himself in a particularly difficult problem when his assistant, Louisa, appeared in the doorway.
“I have a Grace Boden here to see you,” she said with her usual bright smile.
“Thanks, Louisa. She can come in.”
“Of course, Mr. Medson.” Louisa smiled again, tossed her blond curls over her shoulder, and returned to her seat outside the office.
Grace stepped into the office, her laptop under her arm.
“What can I help with?” she asked, setting her laptop down on the table. She tucked her short brown hair behind her ear, and the light caught faint natural highlights among the strands.
Alex never noticed things like that. He needed to stop noticing these kinds of things and focus on work, which was usually not a problem for him.
“There’s a bug here,” he explained. “The fetch times are usually great, but every once in a while, something goes wrong.”
“Let me see the source code. Please.” Grace pulled up a chair beside him and sat. Alex showed her the lines of code, and she leaned forward, biting her lip.
“Okay,” she said after a moment. “Now, tell me what you’ve tried already.”
Alex talked her through all the steps he’d tried, and Grace nodded along slowly. Then she let out a sigh.
“I want to have a great solution for you, but honestly, I’m just as stumped as you are. Can I have this part of the code on my laptop to work on?”
“Sorry,” Alex said. “All the compiled code has to stay on my laptop alone. It’s the only way to keep it truly safe from competitors.”
“Are you really that worried about people stealing your work?”
Alex nodded.
“Why?”
“Back in college, when I started MatchupNow, my roommate wanted to help me. He wasn’t a great coder, but I think he saw the value in the company right away and wanted in. I gave him a few tasks to do, and he seemed happy to help out, even in a small way. The app started to take off, just at our college at first, then it spread. Then one day, I realized he’d taken the app’s code off the laptop and tried to sell it. The loss set me way back—and meant that a rival app had all of the hard work I’d done to improve the functions.”
“I’m sorry.” Grace bit her lip again. “I guess I can see how that would make you untrusting. Keeping all the code on one laptop still seems like a long way to go to keep things secure, though. You must have to do a huge amount of work yourself to keep everything in one place.”
“I do,” Alex agreed. “But it’s worth it. That’s why I can’t give you those lines on your laptop. But I can lend you this one if you want to work on it. You just have to sign it out and back in when you’re done.”
“Easy.” Grace put her name and details in the log and took the laptop. “But now I’m scared I’m going to drop it or something.” She widened her eyes comically.
“Please don’t.” Alex grinned. “That would set us back weeks, if not months.”
“I’ll be careful, I promise.” Grace paused. “On second thought, maybe I should stay close by.”
“You can sit right there, if you’d like,” Alex said, gesturing to the end of his desk. “I have plenty of room.”
“Thanks.” Grace sat, crossed her legs on the chair beneath her, and flashed Alex a quick smile. Then she turned her focus to the computer. She tapped at the keys, stared at the screen for several long minutes, then tapped again.
For a while, Alex found Grace’s presence distracting. He was aware of each time she reached for the keyboard or adjusted her hair or stifled a yawn. After a while, though, he got back into the stream of his work, using his desktop computer. He was so focused that he barely noticed the time slipping by.
