The Boyfriend Project Read online

  The man had become damn near apoplectic when Daniel strolled in with his Phi Beta Kappa key and Stanford degree, and just as much praise—if not more—than Bryce had garnered. Daniel had never been overly competitive. He didn’t care if the Marine next to him was able to run a more impressive four hundred, or if he wasn’t the fastest at writing code. He’d always been content to just put his head down and focus on his work.

  Bryce was the one who’d made this into a competition, and now Daniel was borderline obsessed with getting the best of him.

  Vegas was the prize. Everyone knew it, and everyone knew what it would mean to whomever was tasked to run it.

  “I have to get it,” he whispered.

  But he wasn’t going to get anything if he didn’t solve his current case.

  He went back inside and caught the elevator up to the twenty-second floor. He cut through the Sales Department, dodging a Texas-shaped stress ball being tossed back and forth by a couple of guys he still didn’t know by name. When he turned the corner, he caught sight of Justin Vail standing at his desk.

  Why was his supervisor waiting at his desk?

  “Hey, Justin,” Daniel said. “Sorry I wasn’t here. I had to run out for a minute—”

  Justin waved him off. “Don’t worry about it. Can you come into my office? I need to ask you something.”

  A weight as heavy as a solid brick of gold settled in Daniel’s stomach.

  Oh shit oh shit oh shit.

  Had he been made?

  He’d been extra diligent about covering his tracks this past week. Yesterday, when he’d had his best opportunity yet to breach the Cybersecurity Department, after he’d found the room’s coded doorlock hadn’t latched completely after the last person entered the room, he’d decided against it. The risk of getting caught had been too high. It turned out to be the right decision. The head of security had walked out just a few seconds later. Daniel had managed to play it off, but maybe he hadn’t been as convincing as he’d thought. Had someone become suspicious?

  By the time they reached Justin’s office, Daniel had chosen the story he would use out of the five he and his team back at FinCEN had devised were someone to make him while on a job.

  “I—” he started.

  “Did you hear about Mike?” Justin cut him off.

  Mike?

  “Yeah, I did,” Daniel said. “Jerry Johnson just told me. Sounds as if Mike’s lucky to be alive.”

  He really needed to figure out who this Mike guy was.

  “I went to the hospital to see him yesterday,” Justin said. “He’s in good spirits, but in a lot of pain.”

  Daniel nodded in sympathy. It would be nice to know what any of this had to do with him. Did Trendsetters have some program for helping injured employees that they wanted him to get some training on like everything else?

  “I’d like you to take Mike’s place on a new project that’s starting up,” Justin said, putting to rest his speculation. “I know the two of you aren’t in the same department, but given the work you did at Four Corners Technologies, I think you’d be a good fit.”

  Daniel did a mental rundown of the various jobs on his résumé. Four Corners Technologies. India. Quality control analyst.

  “What’s the project about?” he asked.

  Justin gestured for him to follow. “Come with me. The new team is getting together for their initial kickoff meeting.”

  Daniel followed him out of the office and into the larger, more traditional conference room. About a dozen people from various departments sat around the table. Justin nodded to John Kim. “He’s agreed to join,” his supervisor said. Then he turned to the others.

  “With Mike out for the duration of this project, I’ve asked Daniel to come on as his replacement. Daniel did Quality Control on a previous project for a defense contract with the DOD. To be honest, even if Mike was available I would still bring Daniel in. He’s a good match for this team.

  “As you all know, this project sprung up quickly, and has a very short, four-week turnaround, so things will move at a pretty good clip. John will serve as co-captain.” Justin paused as the door opened. “And here’s our other co-captain.”

  Daniel’s stomach bottomed out. At the same time his heart skipped a beat.

  Samiah walked into the conference room looking like his favorite daytime fantasy come to life. Her strawberry-red jacket cinched at her waist, and she didn’t have to turn around for him to know that the fabric of her skirt stretched perfectly over her equally perfect ass.

  “Now that Samiah is here, we can get started,” John said. He turned to her. “Good news. Daniel is going to take Mike’s spot. One of us can catch him up to speed once we’re done here, but I’m sure he’ll be able to step right in.”

  “Undoubtedly,” Samiah said. She inclined her head toward Daniel. “Welcome to the team.”

  His heart did that triple-time beating thing again. So much for trying to keep his distance from her while on the job.

  Yet that wasn’t the biggest hiccup when it came to his current situation. Last night, while discussing the near disaster that happened outside of Trendsetters’ Security Department with Quentin, they’d both agreed that instead of breaching security, the smarter move was for Daniel to get placed on the Cybersecurity team. He’d intended to start implementing the plan he’d come up with today by planting a security glitch into a small vulnerability he’d discovered in one of the projects he’d been working on, then bringing the solution to his supervisor. Being put on this new team was an unexpected curveball.

  But what recourse did he have? Because he was new to the company, being placed on a special project team so soon into his new job would be seen as a huge leg up to the average employee. If he wanted to look suspicious, all he had to do was turn down such a prestigious honor.

  He would have to find a workaround. Maybe he could stay late. He could simply say that he didn’t want to leave his other team members in the lurch, so he was putting in some extra hours to cover his work on his other projects.

  “We all know how this works,” John was saying. “It’s full immersion time. Whatever you were working on prior to coming to this meeting, put it out of your head. Other team members on those projects will tackle the workload.”

  Fuck. Was the guy reading his mind?

  “We have a finite number of days to develop, test, and implement this software, and it will require one hundred percent of your time and effort,” Samiah added.

  The sound of her voice alerted Daniel to his most immediate issue, figuring out how he would work so closely with Samiah Brooks without losing his ever-loving mind.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Booyah!”

  Samiah looked up from her laptop and had to clamp her lips together to stifle her laugh.

  If sexy and adorable had a baby together, the result would be Daniel Collins. He sat huddled at the table they’d commandeered in the break room/kitchen area, that zippered Phillies hoodie he loved so much shielding his eyes.

  “Does anyone even use that saying anymore?” she asked.

  “What saying?” His eyes remained on his computer screen.

  She shook her head. “Never mind. I forgot who I was speaking to.” Going by his music taste, his head was probably filled with stale phrases from the nineties.

  Her eyes narrowed as she regarded the excitement dancing in his eyes. “Are you even working over there?” She leaned forward, stretching toward his end of the table. “Will I see a video game on that screen if I come over to your side?”

  “Why would I need to play a video game when working in Kotlin is so much more fun?” He stopped typing and removed the hood. “That has to be the coolest shit ever. What other programming language is this seamless?”

  “You do realize if you say that to anyone outside of this office they’ll look at you as if you’ve grown a second head, right?”

  “People do that already.” A thousand Adderall-addicted butterflies began to dance
in her belly at the sight of his teasing grin.

  Daniel shoved his hand in the brown paper bag filled with house-made potato chips that came with the sandwiches they’d had delivered and popped one in his mouth. Leaning back in his chair, he said, “So, tell me something. When a company comes to Trendsetters with a project like this, that it needs completed in a short amount of time, is there an extra fee for the rush job?”

  “Definitely,” she answered. “A big one.”

  His brow arched. “How big?”

  “Stupid big, to use phrasing you’d understand.”

  His intoxicating grin broadened and Samiah immediately started thinking of other slang she’d heard when binge-watching old episodes of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. If that’s what it took to elicit that smile, she was game.

  “You can get an idea of how big the fee is based on the manpower that’s required. The Leyland Group is paying an obscene amount of money if they have both John and me working as co-captains.” She closed her laptop to preserve the battery as she assumed his pose, leaning back in the chair and crossing her arms over her chest. “And I’m not sure if you were told this, but there will be a bonus for being a part of the team. Trendsetters doesn’t keep all those extra earnings. They spread the wealth to the employees who helped to make it happen.”

  “Just when I think this company can’t impress me more.” He shook his head. “Now I understand why the turnover rate is so low. Once you land a job here, why would you ever want to leave?”

  As they sat there chatting, the pact she’d made with Taylor and London gnawed at her conscience. This was so unfair. How could she have known just one day after that impassioned, hungover speech she’d made in her living room that Daniel Collins would walk through the doors at Trendsetters and become her scrumptious new obsession?

  After the shit she’d been through when it came to dating, how could anyone expect her to turn a blind eye to the undeniable attraction brewing between them?

  It had been hard enough to resist him after their near kiss on the hiking trail. Now that they were working on the same team? Forget it. Resistance was for exercise bands and political activists. Not for a single woman who had to work with this delicious human being day in and day out.

  But, dammit, the fact that she didn’t want to resist him was exactly why she should!

  Her pact with Taylor and London was only the tip of a giant iceberg of reasons why she should absolutely fight this attraction to Daniel. She’d just had a mental debate over whether she had the time to devote to new friends. How much more of her energy would a brand-new relationship cannibalize? And that didn’t take into account the overtime she would have to put in over these next few weeks while working on this new project.

  No. She couldn’t do it. She could not allow herself to get caught up in anything beyond the lighthearted flirting they’d engaged in so far. Anything else would take way too much time away from working on Just Friends. Now that she was done with her feasibility assessment and had moved solidly into the prototype development, every spare moment was precious.

  Of course, when it came to reasons she should absolutely, without a doubt, not even consider dating Daniel Collins, the boyfriend project pact she’d made with Taylor and London, and the time she needed to work on her app, paled in comparison to the big, fat elephant in the room.

  In this actual room. This room where they worked together. As coworkers!

  There was no formal policy prohibiting interoffice relationships, but Samiah got the sense it was frowned upon, especially between supervisors and subordinates. She could recall the gossip floating around Trendsetters not long after she arrived, about a former supervisor who’d started a relationship with a programmer. There was never an official reprimand, but that gossip had lasted for months.

  She wasn’t technically Daniel’s boss, but as team co-captain on the Leyland Group project, it placed her in a position of authority. She could not ignore the potential hit her reputation would take if word got out that she was getting extra friendly with the hot new guy at the office.

  Then again, fuck it. She spent these past few weeks at the center of the juiciest gossip to hit the Trendsetters offices in months. What was a little more?

  Daniel turned his attention back to his computer, but she continued to study him from her side of the table. After several minutes passed, he lifted his head, a wary look in his eyes.

  “What?” Daniel asked.

  She wanted to bring up the near kiss but knew better than to do that while they were both in this big, empty office all alone. Instead, she thought about something else from their time at McKinney Falls.

  “The other day, while we were hiking, you mentioned how quickly I’ve advanced in my career, but the same can be said for you. Based on the office grapevine—”

  “I’m part of the office grapevine?”

  “You’re practically the vineyard. At least among a certain population. The female population,” she clarified. “And according to that grapevine, you were in the military before going to college and graduating at the top of your class from Stanford. Are you some kind of whiz kid or something?”

  “Or something,” he said.

  She tapped her fingers against her lips. “I don’t think so. I think you were the whiz kid. I’ll bet you were one of those brainiacs who graduated from high school at fourteen.”

  “Sixteen.”

  Her eyes widened. “Sixteen?”

  “I never said I wasn’t smart.” He shrugged. “But I don’t think I qualify as a whiz kid. I finished high school a year early and enrolled in Carnegie Mellon. I got a few semesters under my belt before I enlisted, and then transferred to Stanford once I put in my four years with the Marines.”

  “Why the Marines?” She held up a hand. “And please, please, please tell me it’s because you love their uniforms.”

  He grinned. “Those are some sharp threads, aren’t they?”

  “Did you just say sharp threads?” She laughed. “You listen to nineties rap music and talk like someone out of a seventies sitcom.”

  “Hey!” His injured look was cuteness personified.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I think it’s adorable.”

  “Now that’s interesting,” he replied, his voice dipping an octave. “I take it adorable is a good thing in your book?”

  Her gaze dropped to his mouth and the way it curved up ever so slightly at the edge. She pulled her bottom lip between her teeth and nodded. “Adorable is a very good thing.”

  Slow down, girl.

  It may be impossible, but she should at least try to resist him just a little bit longer. Maybe.

  She took a sip of her watered-down iced latte. “So, how does a semi–whiz kid end up in the Marines?”

  “Same way a software engineering genius earns a degree in early childhood education. Family tradition.”

  “Touché,” Samiah said. “How many years were you a Marine?”

  “Once a Marine always a Marine,” he said, sounding like a commercial for the armed forces. “But I officially served for four years, which is certainly not the tradition in my family. Everyone else is career military, from my great-great-grandfather all the way down to my mom and dad.”

  “Your mom?” Samiah slammed both her palms on the table and gasped. “I can’t believe I just asked that. See how deep this patriarchal bullshit runs? Of course your mom was military. Why the hell wouldn’t she be?”

  “Not only is she military, but she has a higher rank than my dad. They met when they were both stationed at a base in South Korea, which is exactly where her grandparents met when my great-grandfather was there fighting in the Korean War.”

  “They met at the same place your mom’s grandparents met? That is too amazing not to be made into a Netflix movie.”

  “That’s nothing. The really crazy part is that my mom grew up two towns away from my dad, but they didn’t start dating until years later, when they were halfway around the world. Even cr
azier? For three years in a row, while they were both in high school, they competed against each other in the statewide science fair.”

  “Stop it. I can’t stand the cuteness of this story.” She put her hands up. “The important question is, who won in the science fair?”

  “My mom. All three times they competed.”

  “Yes,” she said with a fist pump.

  His dimple reappeared, and just like that, she was toast. She shouldn’t even try fighting this attraction. What was the point?

  “When they met again at the base in Korea, my mom had no idea who Dad was, but he remembered her the moment he heard her name. She’d been his nemesis throughout high school, but he’d also had the biggest crush on her.”

  “Oh, my God.” Samiah flattened her palm against her chest. “I love this story so much. The only thing that can make it more perfect is if she still has her science fair trophies and makes him polish them once a month.”

  “No.” He chuckled, shaking his head. “The trophies are long gone, but she loves to tell that story.” He sobered, his amusement mellowing into a reflective wistfulness. “It’s been a while since I saw them. I’m way overdue for a trip back home.”

  “Or maybe you should invite them to come down to Austin?”

  “That’s not a bad idea. It would be a great escape from those Philly winters.”

  She drew curlicues in the condensation that had collected on her cup. “Were they upset when you left the Marines?”

  “Not necessarily because I left.” He looked over at her, a hint of embarrassment in his tone. “My mom didn’t approve of why I left.”

  “Let me guess.” Samiah rolled her eyes. “A girl.”

  He nodded, but didn’t elaborate. She tried to convince herself for a half second that she wouldn’t pry, but who was she kidding?