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“Let’s keep this under wraps for now,” Ben said. “The last thing we need is for it to get out that Tutor2Tutor is a rip-off or some overseas company is stealing code from startups. We have to move fast, but I want to make sure the first time Simply Source Code is aware we’re onto them is when they read about it on the internet with the rest of the world.”
Brooke nodded, stepping around her chair and pushing it back to the table. She could keep a secret, no problem. What she couldn’t do was stay in this room until Ben Eisenberg was gone and it was just her and Justin. The plan, as it now stood, was to avoid him at all costs until finally he gave up and realized she was fine with keeping things professional between them.
Even if she wasn’t fine with it, she would be. In time.
10
Everything was coming together. So why did it still feel like his life was in shambles?
Justin paced the length of the conference room a full week later, racking his brain for ideas to get Brooke back. He’d tried texting her, calling her, emailing her… All to no avail. Every time he showed up in her office, she was either on the phone or gone. When he asked Charlie, she said Brooke had been working from home a lot.
That explained it. She was avoiding him by working from home. In the meantime, things seemed to happen without her having to be alone with him. Meetings took place, always with one other person happening to walk through the door at the same time Brooke did. Ben showed up, and Brooke somehow knew to come in two minutes behind him. It was all so carefully choreographed, he’d laugh if the whole thing wasn’t giving him constant digestive upset.
She couldn’t avoid him forever, though. He’d get her alone. Maybe after this big staff meeting-slash-celebration party. The article had launched that morning, and everyone in town seemed to be talking. Brooke—who had managed to send him work-related emails every few hours for the past week—had arranged a big gathering with the development team to thank them for their hard work and discretion as Ben’s friend collected the information they needed to put Simply Source Code on blast.
“Over there.” Brooke’s voice broke through the silence, and Justin turned, his heart suddenly jumping into racing mode at the thought of being alone with her. All the words he’d planned to blurt out froze on his lips, though, when he saw that Brooke wasn’t alone. Not at all. She had three guys with stacks of pizzas and two people from the development team with her.
“Mr. Travers.” Brooke nodded tersely in his direction as she followed the pizza guys across the room.
He was contemplating ways to get the developers to give the two of them alone time without seeming unprofessional when they plopped down at the conference table. “Big day, huh, Mr. T?” one of them asked.
Justin smiled and nodded. Out of the corner of his eye, he watched Brooke as she followed the delivery guys from the room. They stopped outside the door, and she handed them something—a cash tip, he assumed. Maybe he could follow her out there. If she was headed back to her office, he could get her alone on the elevator—
No. She was returning to the conference room. She opened the door and headed directly to the table where the pizzas were. There, she began removing plates and napkins from their packaging.
With another nod at the developers, Justin turned and headed over to that table. Maybe the developers would start talking. Probably not, though. It wasn’t safe to discuss this here.
“Ms. Alexander.”
She stiffened. The developers probably wouldn’t have noticed if they were looking, but Justin definitely saw it. Her entire posture went rigid at the sound of his voice. Or maybe it was the fact that he was closing in on her. They hadn’t been this close to each other since the day they’d met with Ben in the conference room.
“I need to speak with you before everyone gets here.”
Brooke didn’t pause in what she was doing. She may have been tense, but she was doing a great job of setting things up in spite of it. “We can meet on that later.”
Those words were said in her most professional voice, no doubt by design. She didn’t want the developers, who were indeed engaged in conversation and seemingly not even listening to them, to overhear and think something personal was going on.
“There appears to have been a misunderstanding,” he said, speaking in low, even tones, as he would if they were planning social media posts or website conversions.
“No, I understand things completely. Thanks for clearing it all up for me. We have a lot of work to do here, and I’m glad we can refocus on what’s important.”
“That’s exactly what I need to talk to you about. What’s important.” He looked over at the developers, who had gotten quiet all of a sudden. They were awkwardly staring down at the table. They could very well have been listening to every word. “Come with me.”
It was a gutsy move. He was pretty much pulling rank to get her alone with him. If she said “no,” he’d have to honor that.
Surprisingly, she set down the stack of napkins she’d been holding and turned to face him. “Let’s go.”
It didn’t escape his attention that she looked like she was walking toward her eventual doom. She wasthatsure he was about to give her some sort of speech, he guessed. Maybe awe have to keep this professionalsort of thing or an apology for kissing her when he was very clearly…what? In a relationship with Charlie? A womanizer who just hit on every woman he met? He wasn’t sure what the storyline was supposed to be here.
The problem with glass walls was that there was nowhere to go when you wanted to have a private conversation. He paused for a second, then headed straight for the one place he knew they could have at least a small amount of privacy.
“This is the women’s restroom,” she commented. As if he didn’t know.
“Do you think someone’s going to need it?”
She thought about that for a second. Yes, she was processing it the same way he had a few seconds earlier. Silicon Valley itself was mostly male, and this building was even more so, especially now that he’d laid off most of the staff. They’d had a woman on the development team, but she’d left for a hefty raise just a few months before the layoffs. That meant there hadn’t been many women to keep on board when he was deciding which employees to terminate.
“You haven’t let me explain,” he blurted before she could manage to halt the discussion somehow. He had to get this out. “What you saw was a comforting hug.”
