Level Up Read Free Page A

said. "I had no idea."
    He wished the ground would just swallow him up. "It didn't mean anything," he said. "I just...well, I didn't think that you were interested. You're not interested, are you?"
    "Are you kidding?" Her eyes went round. "I'm completely interested."
    Now it was his turn. He felt his eyes pop wide as he stared at her, speechless for a second. "You...are?"
    "I've wanted this for a long time now," she said.
    "Why didn't you say anything?" Oh, God, what was he supposed to do with this?
    She shrugged, and her amber skin heated with a dusky blush. "I guess we just don't talk that much," she murmured. "Why would you know?"
    "So, since..." He did the math. "February? When you moved in? You were interested then?"
    "Even before then."
    He ran his fingers through his hair, utterly distracted. This could be really, really bad.
    "What?" Her chin went up, and her brown eyes sparkled with anger. "Do you not think I'm good enough?"
    "No! Absolutely not," he said. "I think you're amazing."
    She smiled, a little smile. Kinda a cute smile, he thought, before shoving the thought aside.
    "But I didn't...I mean, I just..." He was slaughtering this. "I didn't know you were interested in me that way."
    She blinked at him. "What?"
    "I mean, I didn't even think you wanted to be my girlfriend."
    Her mouth dropped open. Oh, God. Red alert! Red alert! Danger!
    Then, suddenly, she started laughing.
    "I don't want to be your girlfriend, you idiot," she said, around a chuckle.
    "You don't?"
    "No." She rolled her eyes. "I want Mac's job. I want to be on the engineering team."
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     

 
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     

     
    CHAPTER 2
     
     
    Tessa slowly walked over to Adam's beat up Subaru Outback, sipping at her to-go-cup of coffee thoughtfully. They hadn't really talked since she'd found out about Mac leaving and the engineering position opening up. He'd had a wicked, if unsurprising, hangover the next day, and had spent most of it in bed with an ice pack, groaning. Once he was ambulatory, he hung out in his room with the door shut. She suspected he hadn't grabbed food unless she was in the bathroom and he'd been "sleeping" most of the day.
    If she didn't know better, she would've thought he was deliberately avoiding her.
    But this was Monday morning and they had a good twenty-minute ride into work together. He was a captive audience. If it meant persuading, pleading, or threatening him with a lug wrench, she was going to get an inside track on this job.
    She'd been waiting for them to notice her work. Adam was a producer, a project manager, but he'd started as a coder and shifted over. He knew that she had the skills, and she'd hoped he would put in a good word for her, since he was tight with the engineers. She hadn't gotten the room with Adam for that, naturally; that had just been a convenient and lucky coincidence. She'd never asked him explicitly for help, hadn't pressured, had honestly barely talked to him about anything besides work.
    It was going to be a new year. A new birthday. It looked like new tactics were in order.
    He grunted a good morning and started the car, letting it warm up. She decided a little conversational warming up was necessary, as well.
    "Um. Looks like snow, huh?"
    He glanced at her, then shrugged, and she wondered if he was really awake enough for this conversation--as she recalled, he wasn't really a morning person. The problem was, if she waited until he was up and running, or God forbid until they drove home that night, then everybody else would have had a crack at him all day long. This was her window.
    "Probably no snow for another few days, maybe a week," he finally said, as they pulled out of the driveway.
    Success! Conversation! She took heart. Then, without preamble, she said, "I want that engineering position once Mac's gone . "
    Unfortunately, at that very moment he was also sipping from a to-go-cup and did a spit-take on the steering