“You don’t have time to rewrite your program. Dinner is here.”
“Rewrite? Do you think I just started programming?” She sent him a disgusted look. “The Harker Barker-Meter reads a text file. All I have to do is add”—she began typing—“this line and it’s done. It’s modified for your new Barkerism.”
“That’s not funny.” He did not bark at her. “And I’ll still make sure you lose.”
“Wanna bet?”
“I do.” Now, he was very interested in this game. He was extremely competitive. His eyes wandered over her, loving how her face flushed. She no longer saw him as a non-sexual male. “What kind of bet did you have in mind?”
“Not the kind you’re thinking.”
“Shame. That’s the only kind worth taking.” And the only kind he was interested in winning.
CHAPTER 13: Alison
“There are other things we can bet on besides what you have in mind.” But Alison had to admit, that betting on things to do in bed did have its appeal.
“There are, but none of them are as much fun.” Harker held out his hand. “We can talk about our bet while we eat.”
The roughness in his voice made her wonder if they’d make it through dinner before they had sex. She had a lot of work to do but she could spare an hour. She needed to exercise more and sex with Harker was a workout, a lovely sweating bout of the most pleasurable calisthenics she’d ever…The computer beeped, snapping her out of her fantasy.
“Ignore it.”
“It’s done already?” She opened the log file, browsing through the contents. “This is amazing. It ran faster than I anticipated. I need to test—”
“It can wait.”
She forced her gaze away from the computer. “Oh…right. Dinner. Sorry.” Her eyes darted back to the screen. “But this is amazing. I never expected it to work so fast. I still have to—”
“Come with me and eat dinner.”
“Right.” She knew Harker. He was a bear if she didn’t eat with him. She had no idea why he cared because they both spent most of the time working, but it made him happy, or at least less grumpy. “Okay, but give me one minute. I need to get the next batch loaded and—”
“Five minutes. That’s it.”
“It won’t take that long.” She turned back to the computer.
“I mean it, Alison. Five minutes.”
“All I have to do is change this to point to the source and then change this”—her fingers danced across the keyboard—“and there. Done.” She closed her laptop and glanced up, but the doorway was empty. “He could’ve waited. I told him it’d only be a minute.”
She grabbed her laptop and the cord. She’d spend the rest of the evening on the couch working while Harker worked on his laptop in the chair across from her. It wasn’t as comfortable as her desk but one time, a few weeks after she’d started working for him, she’d gone back to her office after dinner and Harker had grumbled about it for days.
She walked into the living room. He stood by the couch pulling containers out of a brown paper bag. Her eyes roamed over his wide shoulders and down to his lean hips. Damn, the man was built, and those jeans hugged his ass, making her want to squeeze that tushy and then give it a nip. Later. She needed food and then work and then sex. She put her laptop on the computer table near the couch.
“I got Chinese food.” He turned. “Why do you have your computer?”
“I always bring my laptop when we eat.” She opened her laptop before grabbing the cord and plugging it into the wall.
“We’re having dinner, not working.” He sat in his chair.
“We always eat and work.” She dropped onto the couch. “Where’s your computer?”
“In my office where it belongs. Tonight, we’re having dinner and talking like normal people not staring at a computer.”
“Uhm…I think most people stare at their phones or the TV or something.”
“Then we’re going to be better than normal people.” He handed her a carton and gave her a quick kiss. “We’re going to talk.”
