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She thought about her conversation with Taylor when she should have been focusing on solving the tablet issue. No one on their team had made headway. When she suggested to Jayson they should scrap the update, he nearly blew his stack.
We can’t let this beat us, G. Those improvements are vital to the survival of this tablet. If we give up now, we’re signing its death warrant.
That made her think of them, their marriage. Had they given up rather than improve?
The longer she sat in the same room with him, the more irresistible he became. That same old familiarity smacked between them, here in their former shared house. Even when they weren’t having sex, she felt the sizzle of attraction. Even with the unromantic pizza box on the coffee table, what was left of their dinner having congealed into a rock-hard mass of cheese and olives.
It was important for her to define boundaries not only for Jay, but for herself. She shouldn’t have continued kissing him this morning. She should have marched upstairs and dressed for work, and kept her cool. That lengthy physical interaction with him made it harder for her to bury those thoughts about their marriage and the mistakes that were made. In short, it’d made it harder for her to continue moving forward.
She was stuck. On the damn tablet issue, and on Jayson.
With a sigh, she restarted the tablet for the nine-hundredth time and began poking around. As expected, it powered down before she’d had a chance to—
“Oh my God,” she muttered. While part of her mind had been turning over her current situation, the processing part had shoved two puzzle pieces together. She knew exactly what to do to fix this update.
Jay swiveled in his chair, barely reined-in excitement in his eyes. “That sounded promising.”
She had to smile. He knew her Eureka! voice.
She rushed to the desk, physically moved his hand from the mouse, and clicked out of what he was working on. A few clicks and keystrokes later, she knew she had it. A zap of intuition told her that she’d tripped upon exactly the right code.
She was a superhero.
“That’s it. The fix. I know it. I know it, I know it...” Heart racing, she stood over the desk staring down at Jayson, her chest rising and falling with each truncated breath.
“Why am I not surprised?” His slow blink communicated that he was proud. His approval, while dangerous to covet, was oh-so welcome.
“Hand it over. I’ll update the software and we’ll do a test. We’ll see if you just won the bet. Or if I have another shot at winning it myself.”
Right. The bet. She hadn’t been thinking about that. Her thoughts had narrowed to fixating on him and finding the glitch.
What felt like years later, but was more like fifteen minutes, she chewed on the side of her thumb and paced from kitchen to living room.
Finally, she heard the telltale chime of the tablet firing up. She raced over to watch as his blunt fingers tapped from screen to screen. He powered down and glanced up at her, warmth in his blue eyes. While her breath stalled in her lungs, he powered up the tablet one more time and tapped on the screen.
“It didn’t crash. Yet.” His lips curved. “The shutdown typically occurs immediately. Just to make sure, have at it.” He handed over the tablet and instructed her to test it for herself. “I’ll do the same with mine.”
Jayson opened one webpage and another, and then another. He opened a social media app. He uploaded a game, played it for a few minutes, and then closed it and opened a documents file.
No crashing. Not a whisper that anything hadn’t been operating before.
She did it. She did it!
He was thrilled and awed by her brilliant mind. He was also disappointed for not discovering the fix himself. Had it been his stroke of genius that fixed the tablet, they’d be naked by now, her under him, moaning his name.
Not that he was giving up.
“Anything bad happen yet?” he asked.
“Not yet.” She showed him her screen. “Other than a new addiction to Candy Blaster. I’m on level thirteen already. You know what that means?”
“You can blast candy with the best of them?”
“Har-har. It means I am owed a homemade pasta dinner.” Her grin was contagious. Once upon a time she’d called that recipe a “panty dropper.”
No, he wasn’t giving up on getting her into bed yet.
He rose and walked to the sofa. “You should be proud. An issue that stumped the best minds at ThomKnox didn’t stand a chance against yours.”
