Silicon Valley, California

“Don’t work too late, Nicole,” he said, punctuating his words with a wink.

That fucking bastard, she thought, but lifted her hand to wag her index finger at him.

A grin swept over his smug, selfish, smoking hot face. Ryan Malone was taunting her, putting Nicole in her place as his subordinate. He did this all the time, as if it was fine for her to keep working at one-thirty in the morning until she was bleary-eyed and too exhausted to have a social life herself while she covered for his incompetence. And he treated her this way just so he could get to the bar down the street to make last call. A drink.

A few drinks.

She let out an aggravated sigh that lifted her long, brown hair off her forehead for a second. It had happened again. She’d let that prick drown her in work—his work—so he could pick up some woman waiting at the bar for the last guy possible, get good and laid, and then drink his sorry ass into the next afternoon, on most weekdays. Now, it was Friday night, so that meant the son of a bitch could start his weekend early. She thought she was being a team player for agreeing to it the first time. Good old Nicole showing she was just as good as the other programmers. Okay, she’d helped out more than once. Twice was maybe a little naïve, but night after night throughout this entire eighteen-month project?

She gritted her teeth together. “You’re the biggest fucking idiot,” she muttered as she gripped the computer mouse as if they were Ryan’s balls in a vice.

This stint in software development at the Silicon Valley head office of Terratech Incorporated was only supposed to be a ten-month gig for Nicole. However, Ryan liked her work so much he extended her contract for another ten months. She should have turned him down, but she loved the work here in the San Francisco area and participating in projects that meant something and made a tangible contribution. Terratech was a software and hardware tech firm, handling military technology contract work exclusively for the military departments of the United States government.

Nicole had graduated from college at the top of her class. Because she had enough extra hours in computer programming, she fast-tracked through a master’s degree in record time. She could have had her choice of many top firms through the country and abroad, but, of course, being an Air Force brat, she knew the calling toward government work would eventually be too loud to ignore. Her father, retired US Air Force Brigadier General Harlan Hunt, could have made a few calls, pulled a few strings to help her get a job at the Pentagon, but Nicole struck out on her own, landing this contract with Terratech. The work was perfectly suited to her training and prior experience, and the money was damn good.

Not that she ever got the time to spend any of it, but whatever.

From her workstation, she lifted her eyes and tilted her head to watch Ryan’s tight, sexy ass as he stood waiting for the elevator. She blinked hard, trying to imagine what he’d look like without those well-fit jeans on, but her computer beeped at her, bringing her back to the fact that he had a life and she did not.

She sighed again and started moving her fingers over the keyboard. Even getting to check out Ryan’s fine piece of ass every day wasn’t worth this. Her own tasks on the project were challenging enough, but adding his duties on top of hers, well, it was just one big headache. Her days ran into each other with the long hours, shitty meals from crap restaurants and fast food places, shifting priorities, tight timelines, no lag time, and damn near becoming one with her office chair as she constantly stared at what felt like miles and miles of code scrolling across her monitor. Now, she had to deal with this arrogant, lazy, sexy bastard of a project manager.

He might have his choice of women at the bar tonight—any night—while Nicole didn’t even have the energy to muster up a quickie with her dildo when she got home.

Ding.

Nicole shook off the image of her lack of sex, even with herself, as Ryan stepped onto the elevator. She watched him turn to hit the button that would take him to his prime parking spot in the underground lot. Before the doors closed, he lifted his hand and blew her a kiss.

Well, fuck me.

That man could manipulate, and as usual, Nicole fell for it. It was another late night, pushing close to their deadline, and now she had to handle the rest alone. She pressed on, telling herself she’d only stay for another two hours.

Nicole pored over lines and lines of code, rewriting and calculating, toggling from one screen to the other. Keeping busy like this was good for her because it kept her mind off her personal life—or her lack of one—and the fact that she hadn’t spoken to her father in over a month. Her relationship with her father became strained after Nicole’s mother died twelve years ago. Nicole was not quite twelve herself when her mother died. Her father was still active military then, so Nicole was mostly alone since then. Whenever her father was around, their interaction was strained and… unnatural. The love and affection in their household always stemmed from her mother,.

A day didn’t pass by without a memory of her mother’s ivory face and dark hair. Every time Nicole looked in the mirror, her mother’s eyes always stared back. Maybe that was why her father was so withdrawn from her over the last decade. She looked so much like her mother. Or maybe it was because Nicole knew the truth…

“God, don’t go there,” Nicole spat out at herself, her words echoing throughout the empty office suite.

She jammed her fingers into her loose hair and rubbed her aching skull. Two hours turned into five before she even realized it. All that time was a waste, considering that she’d been consumed with a few hundred lines of code that at the moment, kicked her ass into submission. Glancing at her clock didn’t help, and only contributed to a longer, more ragged release of air with a low groan. The morning sun was coming up, casting a golden hue of glare on her monitor.

Time to wrap up and go.

With a few flicks of her wrist and fingers in synchrony that only comes from habit, she logged out of her workstation, stood up, and stretched. She looked out over the cubicles in her section, and not a single head bobbed in front of any of the computer monitors. She was usually in before anyone else, but this being a Saturday morning, no one would be arriving anytime soon. Even though they were so close to the project’s deadline, no one had opted to come in yet over the weekend to put in some extra hours. Unlike her, they were either asleep in their beds, or in someone else’s bed, with said person, each of them fucking the other’s brains out. Hell, Ryan Malone was probably doing the latter. She shook her head, trying to rid herself of the image, as well as the ache in her stomach that reminded her how much she missed being touched by a man in all the right places, and reached for her water bottle.

She stared at the curly pink letters on the container that read ‘Janine’s Bride Tribe – Nicole’, a useful and non-dick decorated keepsake from her friend, Janine’s bachelorette party in Haight-Ashbury six months ago. Janine certainly wasn’t missing a man’s touch. In fact, she was already three months pregnant.

Nicole let out another sigh, realizing she was absolutely parched and needed to rehydrate before making the twenty-minute walk to her loft apartment. It was a cute rental she’d snagged from an online site and was great for the short-term period of her contract with an easy month-to-month option. She’d love to find something permanent—apartment, job… man—and really make a commitment to the San Francisco Bay area, but having lived the roaming life of a military brat, shorter assignments and brief contracts were best right now.

As she made her way toward the lunch room and the perfectly cold water cooler humming just inside the door, she spotted her image in the reflection of the shiny supply cabinet. Her long, brown hair was a bit of a mess, but still framed her face nicely. At five-foot-six, she was fit, but not too skinny, athletic, but not overly muscled. People told her she was pretty, although she never really understood comments like that.

So what’s the damn problem?

She stared at herself and wondered.

What was wrong with her? Did she not deserve happiness? A social life? Sex? God forbid… love? She’d had a few short-term relationships in college, but nothing serious or lasting and certainly nothing here in the Silicon Valley since she started working here at Terratech. Was she holding herself back too much? Was her affair with the programming job taking her away from having a real life?

This was asinine. She shouldn’t be doing this to herself. She was smart, had a good job, and made a decent salary. Everything would come in due time. She needed to get over her anxiousness and anxiety. These swirling thoughts were simply a result of overwork and lack of sleep.

Nicole continued down the hallway through the maze of cubicles. Since no one else was here, she thought she’d take a shortcut to the water cooler by cutting through the corridor to the executive boardroom near the back entrance to the kitchen.

She filled the personalized water bottle and drained it in short, quick gulps, enjoying the feel of the cold liquid sliding down her throat. As she refilled the bottle, Nicole paused, thinking she heard voices. She snickered to herself at the small victory of someone else actually coming into work. As she sipped her water, though, it didn’t exactly sound like another programmer from the team or even one of the managers.

She poked her head out into the hallway only to hear the voices—more than one—rise a bit. It wasn’t uncommon to hear the odd person on the phone or a small team using the board room to do a brainstorming session. However, to hear what sounded like a formal board meeting at this time on a Saturday morning was definitely out of the ordinary.