“She wasn’t talking about me, she was talking about the app.”
“Was she?”
Winona left her question hanging and left the room with her coffee mug. Sacha watched her float across the FG space and disappear into Jonah’s office. She shut the door, and envy hit Sacha so hard his hand shook.
He set the empty coffee jug on the counter. Picked up his mug. Changed his mind and put it down again. Dropped it, actually, sending it clattering to the floor.
The handle splintered off.
Cursing, Sacha crouched to retrieve the pieces, frustration boiling over in his gut until he feared he might vomit.You are a fool. If you were his friend, you could go in his office too, but you told him you weren’t. That all you had was sex. And now this—a working relationship that’s awkward as hell because you don’t know how you’re going to pay him.
You’re a fool, Ivanov.
“What are you doing down there?”
Sacha closed his eyes, bracing himself, then opened them again as he turned to face the new voice in the room. The smooth, gentle voice that belonged to the only person on earth who could rattle him so. “Tying my shoelace, Jonah Gray.”
Jonah raised a brow. “You don’t have any laces in those boots.”
“Clearly. I don’t have a full coffee cup in my hand either, it’s in pieces on the floor, no? So what I’m doing is fucking obvious.”
“Wow.”
“What?”
“I heard you were in a bad mood.”
“Who told you that?”
“Everyone in your office.”
“What were you doing in this fictitious office of mine?”
“I meant the Blutecc office.”
Sacha suppressed a heavy sigh and collected the fragments of his mug. Then he rose and dumped them into the bin. “I’m not in a bad mood. In fact, the email Winona sent me this morning made my day. I like your work. It is perfect for the project.”
“Really? I wasn’t sure if we’d hit the mark, given that no one on your team except Helga seemed to know what your app actually was.”
“They do not care,” Sacha admitted. “Blutecc is company that harvests the bad fortune of others. The content is not important.”
“How does that work?”
“You do not know? Flash Gray has shared office space with Blutecc for three years.”
“And we’ve mostly ignored each other. It was a dynamic that worked until you came along. You’re more social than you give yourself credit for, Ivanov.”
“Not true.”
“It is, but I don’t want to waste time arguing with you about it.”
“Whatdoyou want?”
“I want to know how a company can develop an app without having a vested interest in the content.”
“Yes,” Sacha countered. “Butwhydo you want to know?”
“Because it’s hard to create a brand without emotion.”