AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Maybe she should have some of the pack up here for dinner sometime? She scrolled through social media, contemplating different ways to enhance her space and leave her short stint of solitude, when the phone vibrated in her hands.
“Mind if we make this a group call?” Graham’s rich, familiar voice echoed out of the receiver.
“Not at all,” Delilah said cheerfully.
Immediately, Jude’s voice joined their conversation. “Hey, doll,” Jude said. “How’s your day gone?”
Lately, Jude had taken to calling her “doll.” She was a bit put off by it at first, but she’d grown to like it as she had him. The confusing thing was she felt the same for the alpha, too.
“Oh, it’s been fine, you know,” Delilah answered, absentmindedly. “Just a lot of moving stuff.”
“Yeah?” Jude asked. “And how’s the move going?”
“I can show you some pictures, if you like,” Delilah offered. “It’s still pretty empty.”
She snapped a few pictures, first of the empty living room. Then she moved on to the kitchen, which had a microwave, fridge, and knife set. Besides that, she snapped a picture of the laundry area, which had been furnished by the apartment complex.
There was a long hall next to the living room which led into two adjacent bedrooms, both of which were empty, save for her bed. The bathroom had been furnished with a few ocean-themed items, a seahorse night light, a set of ocean-themed towels, a beach-themed toilet seat cover, and a blue rug with bath pearls for decoration.
When she was done, she sent the pictures to both of them via the special messaging app Fang Tech had developed. It was a bit clunky still, but she was glad to support the company.
“Dang,” Graham said. “It’s a great space, but it looks like you could use some furniture.”
“I’ve got Miranda helping me with that, actually,” Delilah let them know.
“Well, if you need a couple more pairs of hands, I’m sure either of us would be glad to help you.” Graham offered and Jude agreed.
“Thank you!” Delilah said. “But you still haven’t told me about either of your days. What’s the big secret?”
At first, Jude and Graham seemed to think she might not be interested. But after some insistence, they both launched into the details of their days.
Graham was dealing with some struggles in some of his tech teams because a couple of senior programmers had left. He explained they had been going through some restructuring, moving people between teams to meet release schedules, and it had left a few of his employees unhappy.
He wasn’t sure if they were going to hit their game and product deadlines. Jude reassured him that they would, and that he needn’t worry. But Graham explained that he still didn’t know how they were going to release the new Evenlore game on time.
Delilah couldn’t absorb every detail, and she didn’t understand all of it. She hadn’t come from the same technical background they had, but what was sexy to her was the passion Graham had for his job… the way he was so able to effortlessly juggle deadlines and employee tasks, stepping in wherever he was needed. She also loved the sound of his voice, the way words fell so cleanly off of his tongue, and hung in her ear. Every word left her wanting more.
Jude’s day had gone quite a bit differently. Rather than dealing with deadlines and gaming, he worked one-on-one with several employees and managed the backend development of Fang Tech’s websites and apps.
Kieron Dotson was one of their best backend coders, but he wasn’t punctual or reliable. He and Sienna Lin, a coding prodigy who contributed something to nearly every coding team, had motivated each other through a sometimes-toxic rivalry, undermining and even berating each other’s code. Jude had recognized that their rivalry was ultimately beneficial, but it also dragged down other members of the team, who were distracted by their constant fighting.
Jude had also focused one of his teams on improving some of the clunkiness in their code. Something was slowing down the server significantly which resulted in bad performance for multiple apps and websites.
The difficulty was that none of their code had been well-organized or annotated. Going back over old code to find what wasn’t working had been quite tedious, and everybody on that team had started to protest that they were better off contributing to new projects.
On the other hand, Jude was impressed by some of the ideas research and development had come up with and was excited to get new teams on them. When Graham asked him for specifics, he just said he’d have to “wait and see when they pitch them to you.”
What Delilah loved about Jude was how relatable he was when he expressed everything. He didn’t use too much technical jargon, and when she had a question, he slowed down and explained it better for her. He was much more approachable and warmer than she was used to.
“Well,” Delilah said. “Sounds like you’ve both been a lot busier than I have. I can tell you about my back pain from moving the couch but not much else.”
“Bah,” Jude disagreed. “It’s your day off. Nobody expects you to work.”
“And moving is a whole lot anyway,” Graham said. “Big changes are coming your way. Any plans for later tonight, now that you’re settling in?” Graham added. “I was wondering if the two of you wanted to come over to my place…?”
“Well… you won’t believe this, but in the couple of weeks since some brute scared me out of the grocery store, I haven’t been back,” Delilah deadpanned. Jude chuckled while Graham said nothing. “So, I was thinking maybe I’d go back and get some food for my fridge.”
Graham’s silence sent a sudden chill through her. She imagined him reacting like Clark would have, furious at her messing around. She genuinely didn’t mean to upset him, and had only been kidding.
