Chapter 6
CHAPTER SIX
Tate counted to ten as he breathed out. Last night’s ‘stress relief’ session with Lys had been amazing, but the world kept turning during and after.
If anything, the one thing it did for him was give him a painfully erotic fantasy to slide into every time he remembered how she tasted, her scent, her soft lips wrapped around his cock.
“Did you see the news about the animal shelter?” His assistant, Alan’s voice floated from the speaker phone.
Tate shook the images away. He wouldn’t let the question get to him—the implication that the news report last night was anything more than an irritating splash in the media pool. There was a solution, he just had to keep his cool. He spoke into his speaker phone. “I did.”
“Do we need to worry about backlash?” Alan’s voice was hollow, echoing through the Tate’s office. “They’re not live yet. Are we sure this is a good pilot group for us? If people buy into the hype, and that spreads onto us for supporting them… We look like we’re backing animal abuse.”
Tate choked back a snarl. This was why he’d hired Alan.
Why the guy made such a great assistant.
He thought of these things, and he didn’t keep the thoughts to himself.
But damn it, this wasn’t what Tate needed to hear right now.
The bad press wouldn’t be an issue. He already knew Lys would be able to stop the rumors before they became an issue, and this wasn’t just business, it was a good cause.
“They’re going live. We won’t have any problems.”
“Right. I’ll update the time line to show they’ll be live by tomorrow night.”
Tate tossed a few instructions out about meetings that afternoon, and disconnected the call. He rubbed his face, but it didn’t push away his gnawing tension. He’d already ignored the email from his mother reminding him how easy it would be for Alyssia to make this go away.
He needed to step back, do his job, and let the rest roll off. He’d make sure it all worked out. This business venture, and his test user, meant too much to him to let anything go astray.
A knock drew his attention, and he dragged his gaze to the doorway.
“Lunch?” Mikki—Jared’s fiancée and the company’s top developer, was leaning against the frame.
Her black hair had a violent blue streak through it that week, and she’d pinned the locks back from her face with butterfly-shaped barrettes.
While he still struggled to understand the attraction between her chaos and his best friend’s unyielding order, he knew she was the best thing to ever happen to Jared.
That kind of relationship was a once in a generation kind of fluke, like a sappy movie or something.
The idea made his brain twitch. Something unfamiliar and completely unpleasant surged inside and he obliterated it, focusing on Mikki instead.
“I just have to be back by two.” Alyssia was coming in to record the voice-overs for her promo video.
The name summoned every positive and negative emotion he’d just stuffed inside.
He needed to get a handle on that before she showed up. “I’ll meet you there.”
“Epic.” She was already spinning away. “Microbrewery off one-forty-one.”
He rolled his eyes and let out a short laugh. “Got it.” Almost a year in Atlanta and she didn’t care to learn the names of anywhere they regularly went. Said the world was too transient for things like proper nouns on buildings.
The moment she was gone, he sank back in his chair.
The two conversations had summoned the one name and image he’d been trying to keep from his mind all morning.
Or rather, the memories of last night. He could still taste Alyssia, like a phantom tingle on the tip of his tongue.
Every exquisite inch. The woman he’d seen almost every single day since she was a kid, and now just her name made his cock twitch.
He swallowed the lust. The inching desire to figure out what else they could get up to if there were no strings. He had lunch to get this out of his system. No big deal. He was a big boy, and flings were his specialty. He could handle this.
He finished replying to a couple more emails, suppressed any lingering fantasy from the night before, grabbed his sunglasses, and headed out the door.
Fifteen minutes later, Tate strolled through the front door of the pub.
The drive had been enough to clear his head, and he felt like his mind was working again.
Never pausing, he nodded at the host and cleared the corner to head into the dining area.
His friends would probably be at the same table they were always at, near the back of the room.
They were exactly where he expected, but instead of three heads he counted four.
He hesitated, and then forced himself to keep walking at a normal gait.
Instead of the standard one table they usually sat at, two tables had been pushed together because Alyssia had joined them.
No big deal; she dropped by for lunch all the time when she was working night shift.
So why were Jared and Mikki sitting across from each other, Mikki by Alyssia, and Jared by Vivian?
“I don’t get the point,” Jared said as Tate drew within earshot.
The table between him and Mikki was clear. She flicked a sugar packet across the smooth surface, where it glided to a stop just short of Jared’s edge, half on, half off the table. “If it lands like that, you score a point.” Mikki explained.
“Of course.” Instead of tucking the sugar packet away, like he would have six months ago, Jared flipped it back.
Mikki met Tate’s gaze for just a moment before returning her attention to the game. “Look who we found.”
Tate didn’t have to look. Every time he tried to pull his gaze from Lys, it drifted back to the heat and doubt in her eyes.
“I dropped by to say hi to Jared before our recording session,” Alyssia said.
Of course she had. Tate hid his grimace under a wide smile.
“Awesome.” His skin buzzed with memories of the night before, every nerve ending dancing to life in anticipation just from the way she caught her bottom lip between her teeth.
That wasn’t good. Apparently his rambling thoughts weren’t under control.
He took the empty seat next to Vivian, rather than continuing to stand there and gape.
Vivian was the director of operations for Skriddie Bust Media, and Mikki’s boss.
She, Jared, and Tate had clashed when she joined the company several years ago.
However, a handful of crises that pushed them together, proved the three clicked on a whole new level when it came to problem solving, and they’d become solid friends.
Jared was closer to her than Tate, but Tate still had nothing but respect and admiration for her skills. And she played a mean hand of poker.
When V raised her brows in question, he scrambled for the first excuse he could find that wasn’t, “If I sit next to Lys, I’m going to spend all of lunch with a hard on.” “I have a question for you about St. Louis.”
He didn’t mean the city. Before they hired Mikki, her former employer, NSS had used her skill without her knowledge to violate the Skriddie corporate network.
Jared and Mikki had spent several months pulling together enough information to file a civil suit for the infraction.
But the violation itself had already done damage to Skriddie’s public image.
St Louis was their code name for the PR campaign Tate was spearheading to update their image.
“What’s up?” Vivian asked.
Shit. Now he had to come up with something. A long series of questions ran through his head in a millisecond. “How often does operations re-certify developers?”
“Every six months or as operating systems update, whichever comes first.”
Jared jerked his attention from the makeshift sugar-football game. “Speaking of, we got a document discover request from Vicker today about intellectual property No clue how they found out we’d even done that.”
Damon Vicker was the attorney defending NSS in the civil suit Skriddie had filed against them.
Tate was good—great even—with this line of conversation. It was boring, it was dry, and it would keep him distracted. “We all know there are other ears inside the company.” It was part of the reason they called their PR project St. Louis instead of Fuck-NSS-Over-Publicly.
“Send me a list of what Vicker wants, and I’ll grab you the documentation this weekend.
” Technically, Tate was balancing two jobs.
He still held his senior VP of sales job at Skriddie, but was also president of the new venture.
The extra work would be worth it, though, to get his sites off the ground.
“If everyone’s here, are y’all ready to order?
” The waitress’s pleasant southern lilt drew Tate’s attention.
Her nametag said she was Brittany. Large blonde curls framed her face, and her lipstick was just bright enough to draw attention without being too gaudy.
Her lips didn’t look as kissable as Lys’s, though.
And Brittany probably didn’t make the same guttural moans—
He shook the thoughts away. He wouldn’t compare her to Alyssia. He’d grab her number instead, to remind himself how much he enjoyed having the option of hooking up with a different woman every night.
“I’m not sure, Brittany.” He met her gaze, never breaking eye contact, and let his own drawl slide in.
A trick he usually either saved to irritate his mother, or to give him that boy next door sound.
Even though he’d grown up in Georgia, he’d never had the accent by default.
His mother had taught him. She’d said when it was used at the right time, it could shape all sorts of impressions.
He never had to use it around Lys. Which didn’t matter because he wasn’t thinking about her.
Brittany moved to his side, and rested a hand on his arm. “What can I do for you, sugar?”