The Boyfriend Project Read online

  She grabbed her coffee mug from underneath the espresso spout and started for her office. She dipped her head down to blow the hot coffee and nearly crashed into a firm chest covered with an oatmeal-colored vest.

  “Whoa.” Two strong hands gripped her upper arms, steadying her.

  Samiah looked up and had to remind herself to take a breath. Who’d ordered this midmorning snack in khakis and loafers?

  “You okay?” he asked.

  His eyes were the prettiest shade of brown. Almost like honey. Or was that considered hazel?

  Stop staring.

  “Yes, yes. I’m fine,” Samiah said with a shake of her head. “Sorry about that.”

  “No apology necessary. I ran into you too.” He held a hand out. “I’m Daniel, by the way. I started in R&D today.”

  Ah. She remembered hearing something about a new hire. “Welcome to the team.” She shook his hand. “I’m Samiah.”

  His eyes widened for the barest second, but it was long enough for her to catch it.

  She narrowed her gaze, then with irritation said, “You heard about the video.”

  He hunched his shoulders apologetically. “Pretty hard not to. It’s kind of the talk of the office.”

  Dammit! Could she have one fucking moment when that stupid video wasn’t at the center of everything?

  “I haven’t seen it,” Daniel quickly added. “But I hear you put on quite a show.”

  Great. So this is what she would be forever known for. Not for single-handedly debugging Trendsetters’ signature utilities software just months after she started, or launching their annual Thanksgiving donation drive last year, but for cursing Craig Walters out in a sushi bar. Her grad school advisor would be so proud.

  Samiah put a hand up before he could ask an intrusive, asinine question. “Please don’t say anything else. I don’t want to talk about that video.”

  “That’s fair,” he said. “But I was only going to ask if you were okay. Are you?”

  She blinked several times, unsure if she’d heard him correctly. “I’m sorry?”

  “I asked if you were okay.” His shoulder lifted again in a slight hunch. “I’ve never had anything like that happen to me, but I can imagine it sucks to be put on display for everyone to see.”

  Oh, God. It sucked so much. How did he know?

  “It does,” she said with a vigorous nod, her hand tightening on the mug. She was so overwhelmed by what appeared to be genuine concern in his eyes that she nearly wept.

  He was the first person to ask about her well-being. Her other coworkers hadn’t given a damn about how she was doing. They were all too caught up in the glamour and hype of knowing someone at the center of a viral video.

  “Having the entire world witness the most humiliating moment of your life and judge you for it sucks like you wouldn’t believe. And it makes me question my judgment about pretty much everything.”

  “Don’t.” He made a move, as if he were about to reach for her. But then he backed off, slipping his hands into the pockets of his pressed khakis. “Don’t blame yourself for what happened. It sounds like that guy was a pro. It says nothing about you.”

  She nodded, the sudden emotion welling in her throat making it hard to speak.

  “Thank you for that,” she finally managed to get out. “It means a lot to hear it put that way.” Samiah swallowed, then continued. “I’m just hoping it will eventually all blow over. Hopefully someone will record their cat playing Beethoven on the piano and that video with Craig will become a distant memory.”

  Daniel snapped his fingers in a gosh-darn kind of way. “I knew I should have gotten a cat. I’m more of a dog person, but those videos don’t catch on as well as the cat ones.”

  He smiled and, for a moment, Samiah forgot that she’d said just yesterday that she was putting men on the back burner.

  It’s just a smile. Calm the hell down.

  It was a nice smile, but still just a smile.

  “Samiah?” she heard her name a second before John Kim, a member of her Implementation team, walked up to them. “Oh, sorry,” John said. “I didn’t mean to interrupt, but I was hoping we could go over the presentation before today’s meeting.”

  “I’m sorry?” She frowned. It took her a moment to remember she was at work. “I mean of course,” Samiah said with a breathy laugh. What the hell? She never got flustered.

  She turned to John. “Yes, of course. Grab Katie and meet me in my office. I’ll be there in a sec.”

  John nodded to Daniel and held out his hand. “You’re the new hire in R&D, right?”

  “Daniel Collins,” he answered.

  “I’m John. I’ll be the one bugging you when it’s time to work on the regression testing for the new CRM software.”

  “I look forward to it,” Daniel said with a smile.

  Good Lord, the man had dimples. He had outrageously gorgeous cheekbones and freaking dimples. So not fair.

  John left them standing at the coffee bar. An awkward silence stretched between them.

  No! No! No! No!

  Why did this feel so awkward? There should be no awkwardness here. He was just her coworker.

  Samiah cleared her throat and held up her coffee mug. It was probably cold now, but she wouldn’t dare stick around to brew another cup. “I should finish this in my office. I have a presentation to give at noon.”

  “I heard,” he said, pitching his chin toward where John had just left. He stepped aside, giving her ample room to pass. She slid past him, ignoring the quiver in her stomach.

  “Hey, Samiah?” Daniel called after she’d taken a couple of steps.

  She coaxed herself into showing a bit of restraint by turning slowly. “Yes?”

  “Don’t sweat all the attention that video is getting. You did what you had to do.”

  Her heart lifted with a rush of gratitude that nearly brought tears to her eyes.

  “Thank you,” she said. “I really needed to hear that.” Then she raced for the sanctuary of her office.

  Chapter Five

  She couldn’t hear it, but she felt it. The methodic ticktock of her internal clock as the seconds quickly ticked away. It was getting closer. Closer.

  Samiah reached for her phone and extended the time on the alarm before it had the chance to blare with the annoying sound that was the bane of her existence. She’d set the alarm to go off at seven thirty, determined to leave the office, whether her work was done or not.

  Yeah, that wasn’t happening.

  She’d moved the goalpost three times already. The first was a promise not to stay past dusk. When the sun started to dip below the pinkish horizon, she changed it to leaving before seven. After gauging the amount of work she still had to complete before she uploaded a draft report of Monday’s presentation for her team’s review, she knew she wasn’t making it out of here before eight o’clock. And that was if she was lucky.

  It’s a good thing she’d emptied her DVR a couple of weekends ago, after Craig canceled their date at a club near the University of Texas that she hadn’t wanted to go to anyway. She couldn’t remember the excuse he’d given her. No doubt it had been a lie.

  “Asshole.”

  The urge to pick up the phone and curse him out gnawed at her, but she resisted. Allowing that sack of wasted skin to consume any more of her energy would serve no purpose. It was time to move past the Craig Walters episode of The Life and Times of Samiah Brooks.

  Of course, doing so would be a lot easier if interest in that inane viral video decreased, but any hope of that happening dwindled with every hour that passed. It continued to rack up views in the tens of thousands per hour.

  She just didn’t get it. The video wasn’t that entertaining. Men were called out for being lying, cheating jerks all the time. Yet, between the thousands of comments on YouTube, the memes on Twitter, and people constantly tagging her on Facebook, it was obvious that the public remained obsessed with the thing.

  Samiah hadn’t realized
just how obsessed people still were until she had received a call from a local news station earlier today, seeking to interview her for a story. After emphatically stating that she had nothing more to say about the incident with Craig, she’d texted both Taylor and London. Sure enough, they both had been contacted.

  Just as she reached for her phone to reply to their group text, it dinged with the arrival of a text message. It was from Taylor. She’d sent a meme about an actual catfish that had been catfished by a shark, accompanied by Taylor’s commentary, At least we’re in good company.

  She replied with three laughing-crying emojis before setting the phone back on her desk and returning to her computer. She stared at her report for a solid three minutes before pushing her chair away. She couldn’t concentrate on work right now, not with the tug-of-war taking place inside her head.

  She couldn’t deny that having Taylor and London with her as she faced this Craig mess had made the experience easier than having to deal with it on her own. But the swiftness with which this friendship had developed unnerved her. She didn’t have room for new friends right now. Friends required time and effort. FaceTiming and group texts. Meeting up for drinks and dinner and shopping. Having to reply with an actual response to Facebook posts instead of getting away with a simple Like or smiley face. The overall plan for this particular stage of her life left very little room for cultivating relationships.

  Establish a career.

  Buy a home.

  Find a man.

  That was the plan. Sure, she’d backed away from that final item in the heat of the moment on Sunday, but after thinking it over, Samiah had started having second thoughts. Why should she allow one scheming con man to derail her from accomplishing those goals she’d set for herself years ago?

  And even if she did have time for new friends, she wasn’t sure inviting London and Taylor into her life was the best move. The two were irrevocably intertwined with this Craig debacle, and Samiah wanted to distance herself from that entire episode.

  It was a task she was beginning to think would be impossible. Case in point: She’d dipped into the cute shop across the street that sold gourmet olive oils and vinegars to pick up a gift for her high school librarian who she still sent a birthday gift to every year. When another shopper recognized her from the video, Samiah had nearly dropped the bottle of white grape balsamic she’d been holding.

  If a random stranger could identify her in her work attire, how much more of a spectacle would she, London, and Taylor be out together on a Friday night?

  She’d contemplated ghosting them more than once in the five days since they’d met. It would be easy enough to do. She could make up an excuse for skipping their get-together this coming Friday, and simply start ignoring their texts. They were both smart women. They would take the hint once she started to pull away.

  Yet every time she considered it, a surprising realization stopped her. She wasn’t ready to give them up.

  The intuition she tenaciously relied on warned her that she didn’t have space for Taylor and London in her life, but something equally powerful told her that she needed them. She didn’t have any close female friends. She didn’t have any close friends. Period. Her existence consisted of her work with a few hours dedicated each week to checking off the final item on her current checklist. If not for Denise and Bradley, she wouldn’t have meaningful contact with anyone outside of her office.

  But her sister and brother-in-law were about to be swept up in the trappings of new parenthood. Samiah had shied away from thinking about the adverse changes that would result from the blessing of her future niece’s arrival.

  She would be alone.

  Having friends she could turn to, vent to, friends to just be there for her because they understood what she was going through—was that something she wanted to just toss away? No one else could relate to the week she’d had the way those two could.

  More than that, she liked them. She adored Taylor’s quirky sense of humor and London’s wry wit. It had been so long since she’d had true girlfriends—not since high school—that she’d forgotten just how cathartic it could be. Although the thought of veering away from her well-laid plans gave her heart palpitations, maybe she could try to be at least a little flexible.

  Maybe it was time she revisit her master plan, toss aside those items that seemed hell-bent on giving her angina, and replace them with something that would make her the talk of the Internet for a different reason.

  Like my app.

  “Give it a rest,” Samiah told herself with an exasperated sigh.

  Ever since Taylor had put the question to her on Sunday, asking whether there was something she’d always wanted to do that she hadn’t done yet, thoughts of the app she began developing soon after she moved to Austin niggled at her conscience like an annoying, persistent gnat. It wasn’t the first time the idea had tried to worm its way onto her checklist, but Samiah was determined to keep it on the back burner until she checked off the items on her initial plan.

  Except now she wasn’t so sure she wanted to stick with that plan. There was something about having her most humiliating experience broadcasted for the world to see that made her want to rethink everything.

  What if she’d devoted some of the time she’d wasted swiping through profiles of guys who never seemed to live up to their online personas to working on her app? Where would things stand right now? Would people be using her app at this very moment, making connections with other like-minded people in cities all around the country? Around the globe?

  How much of her own potential had she sabotaged by sticking so doggedly to her master plan? She was halfway through her checklist; what did she have to show for it? Sitting at her desk in a deserted office building, eating a granola bar for dinner as she worked on a project that listed her as one on a team of six?

  Becoming one of those workaholics who threw everything into her job while the best years of her life flew by had never been a part of the plan. So why was she here?

  Samiah shut down her computer, locked her desk, and left the office. An hour later, she was showered and dressed in dark blue jeans, an off-the-shoulder mohair sweater, and boots. A half hour after that, she was sitting at a small round table, listening to the first set of the blues band that was playing at the club where she and Craig were supposed to have their date this past weekend.

  Maybe it was time she accepted that plans changed. And sometimes they changed for the better.

  Chapter Six

  Claude Sanderson. Forty-eight. Divorced. Father of three. Still pissed over leaving his former business partner just before the software they created together hit big. Was a member of the initial WiMax rollout team.

  Mia Palmer. Twenty-four. Mensa member. Top of her class at MIT. Clinically on the autism spectrum but does an excellent job of utilizing social tools. Played a key role in setting up Trendsetters’ security system. Definitely knows all the ways to bypass it. Doesn’t seem to have a sinister bone in her body.

  Jake Gorge. Thirty. Cheated his way through college. A classic bullshitter who pretends to work. Probably scared as hell that he’ll one day get found out. Would likely sell out his own grandmother to get ahead if the opportunity arose. Definitely someone to keep an eye on.

  As he stood against the glass-paneled wall, Daniel mentally cataloged the people around him. They had all been called to the Collaboration Room. Unlike a normal conference room, there was no long table surrounded by a dozen rolling desk chairs. Instead, the room was interspersed with numerous beanbags and gaming rockers that sat low to the floor. A cluster of rolling standing desks occupied one side and three state-of-the-art treadmill desks dominated the other. On his initial tour of the office, Owen explained that the setup fostered an atmosphere of synergy and engagement, but Daniel wasn’t sold on that yet.

  The room was filled to capacity for the multidepartment meeting. It was only his fourth day on the job, and he still wasn’t sure why he’d been asked to attend or w
hat was expected of him. But it did give him the opportunity to be a fly on the wall and observe several of his new coworkers.

  From the corner of his eye he caught sight of luminous brown skin and shiny, chin-length hair approaching the room.

  Samiah Brooks. Thirty. Undergraduate studies at Rice University. University of Texas for grad school. Made a name for herself when she found a bug in a new software program, saving the company’s reputation. Had rocketed up Trendsetters’ ladder of success in the three years since she was hired.

  The very definition of gorgeous.

  Prior to Monday, Daniel hadn’t paid much attention to the dossier on Samiah Brooks. He’d noted that she’d amassed an impressive reputation for getting the job done, but she was considered an ancillary subject to his current project. The only significant detail regarding her was that, at one time, two years ago, she’d worked in Trendsetters’ Cybersecurity Department. But her tenure had ended well before the suspicious activity surrounding Hughes Hospitality had surfaced.

  Yet for the past three nights he’d spent more time researching her than anyone else on the company’s roster. He’d watched the video that had been the talk of the office more times than he would ever admit. But not for the spectacle of it. He didn’t give two shits about that Craig guy. Every time he watched, he focused entirely on Samiah.

  He’d never witnessed anything so outstanding in all his life. Seeing the way she handed that guy his ass? It was breathtaking. And badass. The combination enthralled him.

  She opted to stand at one of the pub tables, opposite and just to the right of where Daniel stood. He could watch her out of the corner of his eye without cluing her in to the fact that he couldn’t go longer than a few seconds without staring at her when she was near. He would need to work on that.

  His new best friend, Owen, entered with his signature so-bright-it-bordered-on-creepy grin. He flipped a switch and the conference room’s transparent walls immediately changed to frosted glass.