Not that he’d ever caught Jonah looking his way. No. It was only Sacha who spent all day staring at the glass like a fool.
He opened the email from Flash Gray. It was signed off by Winona. Jonah’s name was nowhere in sight. But somehow Sacha heard his voice in every word he read, and saw his face in every crisp, polished design that filled his screen. Black and pink. Bold. Sexy. Strong. They were perfect. Scrolling through them reminded Sacha why he’d signed up with Blutecc in the first place: to preserve the earnest legacy of the start-up that hadn’t survived.
This is how it was meant to be.
The meeting Sacha had walked away from was still going on. He returned to find Helga fighting for a budget increase to rebrand the entire operation using the concept FG had created. There was enough unique content there for the entire app, the website,anda social media campaign.
But the finance department shook their heads. “We can’t throw more money at this project until we know it can deliver. We’ve covered the design fees. Until we have a proven interface, supported by a functioning website, we can’t authorise any more funds.”
Sacha had already been paid for his services. It had been a stipulation he’d insisted on before he’d arrived, to avoid meetings like this centring around his own renumeration. It shouldn’t have mattered to him that the project was out of budget, he’d do his job regardless. But the notion of leaving unused artwork by the wayside felt so wrong he couldn’t stomach it.
He met Helga’s gaze across the conference table. “Later,” he mouthed.
She glared.
Sacha looked away. He made his excuses and exited the meeting, craving coffee and his long overdue dose of Jonah Gray. Instead he found an empty break room and a coffee machine that hadn’t been refilled since he’d done it himself at dawn.
There were no sweet treats to be found either. Sacha thought about ducking out to rectify it, but he had too much to do. If he was to justify the extra money Blutecc would be paying FG, there wasn’t a moment to lose.
Sacha watched the water drip through the coffee machine, transfixed by the gurgling sounds as his mind strayed to the work he’d abandoned to attend a meeting that had ultimately gone nowhere. Helga’s team had taken over the website, but the structure was still rickety enough that Sacha had to triple check them at every stage.
The app itself wasn’t much better. Even thinking about it gave him a headache. The FG artwork had helped, though. For weeks, they’d worked without a vision that made them care. Now they had one.
“Hey.”
Sacha blinked back to the present. Winona was beside him, helping herself to the coffee he’d neglected to notice had finished brewing. “Hello.”
“Did you get my email?”
“I did. We were in a meeting when it came through so everyone who needed to saw it at the same time.”
“And?”
Sacha reached around Winona and claimed the last clean mug. “We love what you’ve done. All of it. I did not expect so much.”
Winona snorted. “That’s what happens when Jonah gets involved with the creative team. He doesn’t get to do it often, so he overproduces. I didn’t even send you all of it. There’s more.”
“More? How can that be so?”
“He’s a frustrated genius.”
Sacha could believe that. In the rare moments he’d been lucky enough to glimpse Jonah across the shared office space, he was often hovering around his creative team, frowning at their screens, hands thrust into his pockets, lips pursed shut.
It was cute. “We will use as much as we can, even if I have to fund it myself.”
“That’s not good business practice, Sacha.”
Winona’s tone was teasing, but Sacha had left his jovial skin at home. He shot her a dark look. “Nothing about Blutecc is good business practice.”
“So why do you work there? I’ve looked you up. You’re, like, a head hunter’s dream. You could work anywhere. Why here?”
Sacha shrugged. “I liked the app and what it stood for. I did not realise it was so decimated until I got here.”
“But you can fix it, though, right? Helga told me you were smashing it out.”
Sacha snorted. “Helga is kind, but she cannot possibly know that until we reach the end of the build. We have passed no quality control checks yet. We do not even know if the functionality we started with has survived the layers we’ve added.”
Winona’s eyes glazed over. She laughed. “I have no idea what any of that means. And you’re wrong about Helga being kind. She’s pretty mean, so I’d imagine she wouldn’t say nice things about you that weren’t true.”