“Yes. It’s even better than my staff or I expected. Everyone has been so pleased the last few days and the installation and transfer of the old system’s information took no time at all.”
“I’m so happy you’re pleased. Now, let me remind you of a few things. You are in violation of our signed contract. Final payment was due two days ago when we completed the installation and as I told you, I expect it in less than an hour. The five percent penalty fee goes into effect tomorrow. You’ve been running my software on your system for two days without a license to do so. Now, you have less than fifty minutes to make your payment, or I pull the software. If there wasn’t a lawyer sitting right next to me, I might threaten to hack into your system and drop a really nasty virus that will shut your entire system down in a matter of minutes. But there is a lawyer beside me, so I’ll only say that I expect to hear from my accounting department in an hour that payment has been received or my lawyers will start breathing down your neck. Do I make myself clear?”
“I’ll send it,” he quickly assured her. “Still, it’s too bad we can’t get together. Everything I’ve heard about you intrigues me. I’ve tried to get an invitation to the benefit at the end of the month, so I can meet you. Your voice alone is enough to keep me up at night,” he admitted, and she cringed. “Apparently, it’s impossible. You should be pleased that you’ve created quite a stir. Your business is about to explode.”
“Remember that when the software I completed for you needs to be upgraded in another year. Six million will look like a bargain when you find out what I’m going to charge you for the upgrade. You should have negotiated that into the original contract, and you shouldn’t have tried to cheat me on the final payment. Give me your word that the money will be sent today and I may overlook your adolescent behavior.”
“It is on its way as we speak.”
“Very good. Thank you, Tom.” She hung up and dialed Abby back.
“Abby, Mr. Larson will make the transfer. Tell legal to verify with accounting the payment is received, then have the licensing agreement sent over. Let me know if there are any more problems with Mr. Larson. I might have to unleash Fido on him if he doesn’t make the payment.”
“Well, now I hope he doesn’t make the payment.”
“You’re really twisted, Abby. I’ll talk to you later.”
“Enjoy your date with Luke!”
Sarah hung up and smiled at the man smiling back at her.
Chapter Seventeen
Sarah stared at Luke and just took him in. God, he was so handsome. He wore the same jeans and black T-shirt from earlier, but he’d put on one of his favorite flannels. Faded from washing, it looked really warm and comfortable. Exhausted after another long day, she wanted to rest her head on his chest and wrap her arms around his strong back and hold on to him. She wanted to borrow some of his strength and feel his warmth wrapped around her.
“Will you light the fire?” She stood as he did. “I’ll get the food out of the cooler.”
Before she moved, he wrapped her in a hug and pressed a soft kiss on her hair. “I’m so glad you came tonight.” She let go of all the tension in her neck and shoulders, burrowed into him, and held on tight. She closed her eyes and sighed.
He rubbed his hands up and down her back. “Are you finally starting to relax?”
“If I relax any more, I’ll be asleep.” Snuggled up against him seemed like a great place to rest and recharge.
“I’d say I’ll take you inside and put you to bed, but if I get you anywhere near a bed you won’t be sleeping.”
She leaned back and stared up at him, amusement at his bluntness making her smile. “Is that right?”
He traced a finger along the side of her face. “You’ve been haunting my dreams. I know I’ve been really stupid, demanding explanations for things I never bothered to simply ask you about. I broke my promise to your boys. I’m sorry. I’m going to fix that. I really love having all of you here. I want you to spend more time here, so I can show the boys the ranch and you and I can be together.”
She pushed away, but her hands held his waist and his remained on her shoulders. “I’d like that.”
“From the moment I met you, and despite my completely wrong impression of you, I saw and felt something growing between us. I can’t deny the strong, deep feelings I have for you. Missing you these last many days has shown me that not having you here made me miserable. Ask anyone in my office or down at the stables, I’ve been impossible to be around.” The honest admissions touched her and showed her that he really meant everything he’d said.
Every time she’d tried to concentrate on work the past week and a half, she’d only get distracted and think of him. The boys had begged her to take them back to the ranch so they could hang out with Luke. They liked him. But she held back, not wanting to throw herself and the boys at Luke if he didn’t want to see them.
But he did. And that was the best news she’d received in a long time.
“I’ve missed you, too,” she admitted. “I have strong feelings for you, Luke, but I also have two boys to think about, and so do you. It’s not just me you’re asking to come into your life. They come with me. I told you before, I don’t get involved with men. So if you’re in, I need to know it’s not some casual thing, because with you, I want more. And if you’re in, I’ll expect it.” It wasn’t easy to put herself out there like this, but she wanted to start over with Luke, so they had a real shot at what she hoped they both wanted.
“I’m in. All the way. I’ve got four weeks to convince you. And I will.”
“Then let’s start with dinner and conversation and see where we go from there.”
Luke relaxed and he brushed his fingers through the side of her hair. “I’m relieved to hear you say that. I was afraid I’d lose you before I ever had you.”
“I’m too tired for you to have me now. Ha. Ha.”
“I bet I could change your mind.” He kissed her again, blanking out her thoughts and making her press into his strong, tempting body. He ended the kiss and pressed his forehead to hers. “But I don’t want to skip ahead and rush things. I want to know you, Sarah. What you want. What you need. What makes you happy. Everything.”
Her stomach rumbled. She’d gotten lost in work and missed lunch. Again.
Luke leaned back and smiled. “Sounds like you need dinner.”
“Start the fire. The boys will be home soon, and I need to be there to put them to bed.”
Luke released her and kneeled by the firepit. “What’d you bring for dinner? I’m curious to see what a five-star chef taught you to make for a cookout.”
“It’s a surprise. The table and flowers are lovely. You didn’t have to do all of this for me. Paper plates would have been fine.”
“You know what I like about you? You just chewed out a guy for not paying you a million two and you’re okay eating off paper plates.”
“I grew up alone with nothing, Luke. Fine china and fancy restaurants are nice, but dinner by a fire with someone I care about is better. At least, I think so.”
Luke sat back on his heels. “I just want to spend time with you. Dinner is a bonus.”
She appreciated the sweet sentiment and the honesty behind it so much. “Then let’s spend time together.”
Chapter Eighteen
Luke lit the fire and peeked under the cooler lid Sarah opened and saw a couple bottles of his favorite beer and several foil packets of food.
“So, what did you make? All I see is foil, salsa, and tortillas. Tacos?”
“Just wait. Put the foil packets on the grill grate. Everything is cooked. It only needs to heat.”
She reached in and pulled out a beer for each of them. She cracked one open and handed it to him and did the same with another for herself. She clinked her bottle neck to his and took a long swallow of the cold beer and let out a satisfied sigh. “God, that’s good. Do you know how long it’s been since I had a beer in the great outdoors?”
“Too long to remember how good it is.” He took a sip of his beer and sat in the chair beside hers. “So, this is what you like to do when you have free time?”
“What? Oh no. Well, yes. But this is all for you. Here’s what I do when I have free time.”
She grabbed her purse and took out a bottle of bloodred nail polish. She kicked off her shoes, pulled off her sock, and put her foot up on the end of the chair and painted her toenails. “This is the best invention ever. Nail polish that dries in less than two minutes.” She wiggled her toes to help them dry.
“Are you telling me that the only thing you do for yourself when you have free time is paint your toes? And the most amount of time you actually take for yourself is, what, two, maybe three minutes?”
She swiped her pinkie toe, then closed up the nail polish bottle. “Welcome to my world.”
He turned his head toward her. “Tell me about your world. What’s a typical day like for you?”
“Let’s see. I get up at seven with the boys. Camille, our nanny and housekeeper, who is amazing and the boys love her, arrives at the same time. She makes the kids breakfast and gets them ready for school while I shower and get ready for work. I usually take at least one call during this time depending on the clients I’m dealing with and what time zone they’re in. I drive the boys to school at eight and head into my office. I take care of whatever meetings I have for the day—board meetings, client meetings, conference calls, etcetera. At noon I pick up Nick from preschool and take him home to Camille, who’s already made our lunch. Nick and I eat together. It’s our one-on-one time. Then I go back to work. My office can have more than twenty laptops going, representing each of the projects I’m solely responsible for. At three I pick up Jack and take him home. We do homework for half an hour and I go back to work again. I work on projects and deal with whatever calls or meetings come up. At six I pack up however many laptops I’ll need for the night. Camille cooks dinner most nights. Sometimes I pick something up or we order pizza. The kids and I eat together. Camille goes home. The boys and I spend time playing, then I give them their baths, and put them to bed by eight. Then I work until three, maybe four in the morning, sleep, and do it all again the next day at seven.”
“You put in a twenty-hour day, five days a week. Are you crazy? No wonder you look like you’re exhausted all the time.”
“Since I’ve been here, I haven’t gone to bed before five. I’ve been sneaking into your stables at night. Remember? That’s why I’m so tired.”
He gave her a disapproving scowl and used tongs to take the food off the grill. She wrapped the tortillas in foil and tossed them on the grill to warm. “I suppose you catch up on sleep on the weekend.”
“I wish. Sometimes, if I’m really lucky, the boys sleep in until seven-thirty. I spend the day with the boys. But once they go down at eight, I’m back to work until the early morning again.”
“Now I want to take you to bed for a whole other reason. I just want to watch you sleep for a full eight hours.”
She laughed. “I haven’t slept eight hours straight in, I don’t know, ten years.”
“You kept these kinds of hours even when Sean was alive and running the company?”
“Yes and no. Yes, I kept these hours, but instead of taking several hours a day to play with the kids, I worked all those hours. In the beginning, we were trying to get the company going, and then we took the company public, in addition to the fact that I gave birth to two boys. Then, Sean was gone and there was only me to make sure the company stayed open. I had stockholders and employees to consider.” She shrugged one shoulder like it was nothing. “I just do it. Over the past two years, I’ve grown the business considerably and expanded into other areas. We used to handle small jobs, but now I take on projects worth millions, as you heard on the last call I took. The Knox Project that I’m doing now is worth over twenty million.”
He was impressed. “What’s the Knox Project? Are you working for Fort Knox?”
She gave him a crooked smile while she took the tortillas from the grill. She opened all the foil packages and made him a burrito of chorizo and eggs, cheese, and salsa. She gave him a big scoop of fried potatoes and onions and handed him his plate.
“Hey, this is my favorite breakfast when I go camping. How did you know?”
“Jerry. He knows all kinds of wonderful things about you. I love breakfast for dinner, so I threw this together. Not exactly five-star-chef, but really good all the same.”
Luke’s grin made her stomach tingle. “So you asked about me, did you?”
She smiled and his eyes warmed as they watched her. Instead of answering that loaded question, she steered the conversation to an easier topic, her work.
“Every project I take on I give a name. It gets tedious referring to the projects by the company they belong to, or the person who hired us to do the job. I try to pick a name that’s both fun and describes the project. Most recently, I had the Petticoat Project. That one was for a lingerie chain. The Knox Project is for a financial and investment firm. It’s the largest and most demanding project I’ve ever taken. The company hired me to secure their systems. I’ve worked on several smaller companies’ security programs, but this is like securing Fort Knox. Hence the name. Once the installation goes through and the company goes live with my product, it will be the newest and most secure security program available. The encryption and safeguards can’t be matched.”
“I had no idea you were such an expert. The way Margaret spoke, she made it seem like Sean had tutored you through school, and you were just going along for the ride with the company. That isn’t true, is it.”
More lies Sean told. “I graduated MIT with honors. On my own. Growing up the way I did, I learned an important lesson. You can’t depend on anyone else to do things for you.” It made her angry to think anyone would think of her as some helpless female. She worked hard to get through the challenging school, where so many failed or burned out.
“Instead of going with one of the many lucrative job offers we received at graduation, Sean wanted to build our own company. Sean had big dreams. He sold me on the idea and the life we’d have together once the company hit big. At first, we shared the workload. But about a year into it, Sean burned out on the time-consuming and technical coding and shifted his focus from the projects to bringing in clients.”
“Sounds like a good balance. But let me guess, it wasn’t for you.”
“Don’t get me wrong, convincing people to take a chance on a brand-new startup took time and effort. Sean excelled at wining and dining potential clients. And we started winning a lot of bids.”
“But doing the actual work was a lot more time-consuming and demanding than what he did.”
“Eight-to-ten-hour days turned into fourteen-to-eighteen-hour days. While Sean was schmoozing people, taking meetings, and attending conferences, I delivered the product and slowly became more and less important to Sean.”
Luke held her gaze. “Work became more important than your personal relationship.”
“When I voiced my concerns, tried to pull back on work so we’d have more time together, he was all about the company. I became just an employee.”
“I’m sorry, Sarah. That had to hurt.”
“I got lost in Sean’s dream. I tried so hard to make him happy.”
Luke put his hand on her knee. “But you weren’t happy.”
“I wanted a home and family. But having the boys didn’t give me the home I wanted for us. And then Sean was gone and everything fell to me.”
“And you’re still doing the bulk of the projects,” he pointed out.
“Not exactly. We have nearly two hundred people at the company. Most of the programmers handle the meat and potatoes. Web design, data processing programs, system security, networking, that kind of thing. We’re a comprehensive software company.”
“So if that’s the basis of the business, what’s your focus?”
“I work on the big-ticket, c
omplex projects that take a high-level, expert programmer. It’s kind of my thing.”
“How did you even get into programming?”
“When I went to live with my dad, he hired a full-time tutor because I was so far behind in school. He got me a laptop to do my schoolwork. I’d never used a computer. So I started asking questions about how it worked. I got basic answers from him, a bit more from my tutor, but I wanted more, so the tutor found me a couple online computer classes to do on my own.”
“And you were hooked.”
“It just made sense to me. Since I spent so much time alone as a kid, spending hours on a computer seemed like a great job to me. Getting the computer to do what I wanted it to do . . . I loved it.”
“But you can’t keep up this kind of pace. Believe me, I know. It’s why I backed off from my law practice. Don’t you want more balance in your life?”
“With the business growing so rapidly, I simply haven’t had time to hire programmers who are at my level. I’ve hired some key staff under me to take care of implementation and testing once the software’s written, but I haven’t had the time to interview or search for the talent that I need to do the projects like I do. I have a few software developers who take on pieces of the coding, but it’s just the basic stuff.
“The Knox Project is completely new territory. Once it goes live, my company is never going to be the same, and my life will change, drastically. As it is, the press is hounding Abby and the rest of the board of directors trying to get to me.”
“Don’t you do interviews?”
She shook her head. “Not my thing. I like my privacy. Whenever there’s a press conference or some kind of public engagement that requires someone from the company to speak, I send Evan. He’s co-CEO and loves the limelight and being the face of the company. But it’s the same thing that happened with Sean. People aren’t satisfied with talking to a figurehead. They want to talk to the person generating the success.
Lost and Found Family Page 13