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When I put one foot in front of the other without faceplanting, he grunts approvingly.
Reluctantly accepting their help, I let them lead me to a limo that’s waiting at the curb.
They open the door and deposit me inside. The Impaler climbs in to sit next to me. I catch a faint whiff of his yummy bergamot and citrus scent, and my breathing turns fast and shallow.
I hope I don’t faint. Who knows what could come out of me if I do?
The minion gets behind the wheel and slams the door behind himself.
I clear my suddenly dry throat. “So, you have a chauffeur?”
The Impaler leans over and secures me with a seatbelt—nearly causing my brain to melt in the process. “Ivan is more what you’d call a personal assistant.”
Really? Ivan looks more like a bodyguard, or that mobster guy who wanted to chop the yellow M&M into little bits and sprinkle them on ice cream in that Super Bowl ad.
Ivan’s expression is grim as he turns the key in the ignition.
Could he be the Ivan, as in The Terrible? I can picture it now: The Impaler was feeling lonely, found a man with a name almost as grandiose as his own, turned him, and began a beautiful friendship.
With a squeal of tires, the car torpedoes forward.
“We’re going to Presbyterian, right?” I ask when I swallow my heart back into my chest.
The Impaler closes the partition, separating us from Ivan. “Your friend sounded like she knew what she was talking about.”
As I recall the conversation he’s referring to, a wave of tingling heat hits my face.
Without paying much attention to me, he picks up a laptop from the neighboring seat and pops it open to a page filled with stylish lines of code.
His eyes narrow on the screen, and those lickable fingers dance over the keyboard with the grace of a pianist.
“Give me the phone that’s in Giver mode,” he says without looking up.
As I hand him my work phone, I get an inkling of what he’s doing, and fleetingly debate jumping out of the car.
After a few minutes of typing, he attaches the phone to his laptop’s USB and drums his fingers on the trackpad as he waits for something—my guess is for the app to update.
“Say something if you feel anything,” he says and clicks a button on the screen, confirming my suspicion.
Somewhere inside me, the squirrel comes to life.
“Something!” I redden to boiled lobster levels.
He nods approvingly and clicks something else, putting the squirrel back to sleep.
“You fixed the bug I found,” I say, voicing my earlier theory.
“It was a good find.” He looks right at me as he says this. “Great job.”
My heart flutters pleasantly in my chest. If I were always complimented on my testing like this, I might not want to switch to the development department.
Reddening more, I reach for the phone in his hand. “Let’s stop at the nearest bathroom, and I’ll take care of the rest.”
“No.” He yanks the device out of my reach. “I’ve done some research. You need an X-ray and a doctor’s supervision.”
He did research on things to do when your employee has an object stuck in her fanny?
Someone shoot me. It would be a mercy killing.
