A Worthy Man

by Jaime Reese

  Drayton hoped the magic potion was nonexistent in all the soups he tried. He wouldn’t deny he liked having this much attention directed at him.

  It wasn’t attention. Not really. He couldn’t place it. No one had ever really bothered to care for him. His father was never around, and his mother, well, she didn’t have a maternal bone in her body. With no other family around, he never really had that caring connection with anyone…other than Vann.

  The one constant.

  The one person who always seemed to put him first, above and beyond anything and everything. To be there when he needed him. To support him. Even when he wasn’t there, physically, all those years. The words he had ingrained in Drayton’s mind were a constant reminder of his unwavering support and presence. Vann was a part of his soul. There was a shadow of him in every decision Drayton made and every plan he had formulated.

  “C’mon,” Vann said, helping Drayton stand.

  He was more than capable of holding up his own body, but he wouldn’t fight Vann’s innate nurturing need. “Where are we going?” He slung his arm over Vann’s shoulders, resting his weight against the solid wall of muscles, sighing at the always-present warmth that radiated from him.

  “I ran a bath for you.”

  “I use the shower.”

  “You have a huge tub in your bathroom and you’re using it today. I’ve already set it up. I bought some bubble bath stuff for you.”

  “Bubble bath stuff?” Drayton asked, hiding a grin.

  “Oh, cut the crap. You know you’re eating this shit up. I already know you’re better.”

  “I’ll get in the bath if you come with me.”

  “See? You’re feeling better and you’re back to being horny again,” Vann reprimanded but couldn’t hide the faint smile that tugged at his lips. “C’mon. I’ll jump in with you and rub your back.”

  “Just my back?”

  Vann stopped in the hallway and crossed his arms. He narrowed his eyes and pursed his lips. “No sex until I know you’re completely fine. I refuse to tire you out.”

  “That…sucks,” Drayton grumbled.

  “You need to take care of yourself. You’re wearing yourself out at work, and I sure as hell am not going to wear you out at home.”

  A swell of emotions rose in Drayton’s chest.

  Vann frowned, taking a step closer to Drayton. “What’s wrong?” He flattened the back of his hand against Drayton’s forehead. “Shit. I don’t even know what the hell I’m feeling for here.”

  “I’m not running a fever. I’m fine.” He grabbed both of Vann’s hands and held them to his chest. “You said ‘home’ a second ago.”

  “Was that wrong?” Vann chewed his lip and ducked his head.

  Drayton pulled him into an embrace and held him tight. “No.” He pressed a kiss to the side of Vann’s head and breathed him in. “That was probably the most romantic thing you’ve ever said.”

  “Get your ass in the tub so I can rub your back.”

  Vann glanced up from his workspace over to Sean. The man spent entirely too much time on the phone or looking at a computer screen rather than his drawing board. Something wasn’t right. Not to mention the fucker was an insolent son of a bitch who tried to use his management position to keep everyone in check, occasionally exiting his office and barking out a few orders like a temperamental Chihuahua.

  Vann had learned quite a bit during the last two weeks and seemed to get along with the others in the department, all of them rock stars in their own right. Drayton had a solid team, and all of them wanted to make sure the company succeeded. Vann’s focus strayed to Li, sitting behind her wall of computers.

  She had taken the initiative and pulled a few modifications from the archive, rendering some sketches Ty Calloway had designed the prior year for aesthetic upgrades. If the renderings passed that test, then she coded all the dimensions and calculations in a file for Zoe to input into her clay monster machine. The computer would then automatically carve the rendering out of a chunk of clay that held the form, density, and every detail of a final piece, but in clay. Zoe would finish off the details and add them to the clay version of the existing car model, for a true, life-size version of the car with the projected change. Milo then analyzed every aspect for functionality or usability that would need to be addressed in a revision.

  They had followed this process with ten different possible modifications. Only two had survived the process and were considered ready for production if Sean couldn’t come up with a new model.

  The entire department had done this without Sean’s knowledge or direction. The team had worked on things, and the clay beast was a noisy fucking machine, but the man kept himself locked away in his glass cave, without even bothering to ask what they were doing. These people were working to help the company. To help Dray. To ensure he wouldn’t fail. Not that fucker in the glass office.

  Asshole.

  Vann rose from his seat and walked over to Li’s desk, casually stealing glances over to Sean’s office to ensure he wouldn’t interfere. He knelt by her desk, hidden from view. “Hey, you got a few minutes.”

  “For you, my dragon slayer, I will always make time,” she said, holding back a grin.

  “Smartass. I have a pic. I need your opinion on a couple of things.”

  “Sure.”

  Vann pulled out his new smartphone and tapped his finger on the screen and swiped. He still couldn’t believe how a phone could be like a mini computer. He brought up the gallery and swiped until he found the photo he wanted. “I have a pic of a model sketch. I need to see if the model can be tweaked.”

  “This is one of Sean’s designs,” she said in a low voice.

  Vann nodded. He had taken a photograph of the sketch from one of the folders in Drayton’s office. “You have the dimensions of the motor, right? Good,” he responded, when Li nodded. “How tough would it be to widen the body style on this same sketch to fit the dimensions of the new motor? I don’t know…stretch it. Or is it more complicated than that?”

  “He had me render that one already.” Li pulled her graphics tablet in front of her workstation. Within minutes, she had located the wireframe rendering of Sean’s sketch. “How much do you want to widen it?”

  “Just three inches.”

  She held down buttons on the tablet and slashed the pen back and forth across the surface. “Won’t work.”

  “Tell me why?” Vann asked, resting his elbow on the edge of her desk and his chin in his palm.

  She pointed to her monitor and looked over to him. “The way he has the fenders. The wing shape of it. Widening the model to fit the motor would cause the fenders to exceed the legal width permitted for lane sizes. So the car wouldn’t be street legal.”

  Vann frowned. The fender curve was part of Sean’s signature style and appeared in every sketch he had seen. That was why Sean couldn’t produce a sketch that would accommodate the motor. Widening it, as is, wouldn’t work, and narrowing the winged fenders would give it one hell of an awkward shape, definitely not elegant, high-speed exotic but more like funky clown circus. The only thing missing would be the little horn. And Sean obviously couldn’t stray from his style stamp—or chose not to—in order to make this work. He’d had a full year to try that route.

  Vann blew out a frustrated breath. No fucking pressure. “Do you have any of his other sketches rendered?”

  Li brought up another window and browsed to the file directory. She quickly called up another wireframe model bearing a slightly different door design. Yet, it shared the same modern, oddly shaped fenders… Sean’s obvious signature. “Same problem.”

  “Try adjusting that part of the frame.” He pointed to a segment of the wireframe, and Li tweaked the detail as requested. That didn’t work either. They pulled up a different wireframe of another of Sean’s concepts, and repeated the process, trying to modify different elements of each design to accommodate the motor dimensions. They even attempted to place the motor in the rear o
f the car, but nothing worked. None of his models would work with Drayton’s new motor.

  Sean was never going to have a working prototype designed unless he abandoned his “signature style.” Vann rubbed his forehead and glanced up at Sean, watching the fucker talk on the phone while leaning back in his chair. That temperamental dragon would never abandon his style for the greater good. And Drayton was pushing himself too damn much, trying to find a solution to this issue and a plan to offset the corporate disaster of not having a prototype for another year. Vann had to do something, but the worry and fear kept him in check.

  “What are you thinking?” Li asked.

  Vann reached for his phone and tapped the screen, pulling up another photograph from the gallery. “Can you do your magic computer thing with this one?”

  Li’s eyes rounded. “This is definitely not his. Where did you get this?” she leaned in to whisper.

  I drew it in my brand spanking new art studio at home. He scowled. “Don’t ask.”

  “Well, I want to know. It’s pretty badass and looks like a damn monster ready to eat up the road.” She cocked her eyebrow and gave him a sideways glance. She took his phone and pressed a few buttons until the sketch appeared in a message on her computer. “Tell me my dragon slayer drew this.”

  “Just…do your computer thing,” he grumbled. He liked Li. She was quick to read people and pick up on tiny details most people missed.

  “It’ll be a rough rendering, but it’ll be good enough to run a few numbers.” She pressed her buttons and used her stylus across the surface, all the while biting back a smirk as she gave him a sideways glance. Within a few minutes, his design was on her screen in wireframe mode. He inhaled sharply. It looked so…professional. Damn. I did that?

  She tapped in a few numbers, zoomed in to an insane percentage, and took a few measurements with the program’s tools. “It works.” She turned to face him, a ridiculously wide grin spreading on her face. “And all of the battery tech fits along the bottom of this model. We’ll need to tweak the height for ground clearance to adjust for the thickness of the batteries, but this will definitely work.”

  He nodded, not really sure what to do yet. He wished he didn’t have this fear twisting in his stomach at the thought of taking control and failing.

  “What are you guys doing?” Zoe whispered loudly from her spot in the corner. “That’s the biggest smile I’ve seen on Li’s face since we’ve worked together.”

  “We’re watching funny cat videos,” Li whisper-yelled across the room. She immediately closed the files on her screen. “I swear, if they start emailing me cat videos on a daily basis because of this, I’m going to scream.”

  Vann covered his mouth to hide a grin. He knew exactly what he was going to do the second he got back to his desk.

  She crossed her arms and turned toward him, speaking softly enough so the others wouldn’t hear a single word. “I’m guessing you want me to keep this quiet for now?”

  “Please.”

  She nodded. “Do you have any more?”

  He hesitated for a moment but finally answered. “Yeah.”

  “Bring them in. We’ll work behind the scenes to get things on schedule.”

  Vann scowled. He wasn’t ready for this. Not yet. He hadn’t learned enough to ease this hesitation, and Sean had a lot more experience under his belt.

  “He won’t change. You know that.”

  He glanced up at Li, hating to admit she was right.

  “Answer one question for me.” She leaned back in her chair, waiting for his nod to continue. “Did you draw that sketch?”

  He didn’t respond; he didn’t need to. A subtle smile curled the edge of her mouth.

  “How long have you guys been together?”

  “Shit, Li. You’re freaking me the hell out here.” He speared his fingers through his short hair.

  She leaned in close, only a whisper away. “Shaw, your first name is the same as Drayton’s last name. That’s a hint. But after seeing this sketch. It’s no coincidence that this drawing has the same style lines as the released model.” She prompted with a raised eyebrow. “I want to win the office bet and have my dragon slayer take over. So what do you need to make that happen?”

  He stared at her, unable to do anything but blink. If she had figured it out, then it was likely others might have too. Or maybe it was because she had seen the sketch.

  “You’ve worked with Sean for two weeks. He’s not making progress.”

  He rubbed his eyes hard enough to practically pop them out of their sockets if he didn’t stop. Drayton was counting on him. He needed to put his bullshit aside and focus on being there for him and helping him in the one way he knew he could. “I need an honest answer. Is a prototype doable? I know the schedule is creeping up on us.”

  Her eyes were going to burn a hole in his brain. She glanced over to Sean’s office for a moment before returning her attention to Vann. “I’ve been working on some new technology. I can cut down prototype development time by a few weeks.”

  “How?”

  She glanced up at the others, ensuring their conversation remained private. “It’ll cut out extra steps. Right now, I render and code the script for Zoe’s machine. She creates the model and Milo troubleshoots it. Then, we have to do it again. I have to re-render with the changes, and Zoe creates another clay model. We have to do this over and over until it’s right.”

  “What’s the new technology?”

  Li nodded. “Hologram. I can project an actual-size rendering so Milo can troubleshoot the basics using the projection. That will cut down on at least one to two cycles of clay models.”

  She’d kept this quiet. In all the files and documents he had read during the last two weeks, there wasn’t a single mention of holograms being used during the prototype stage in the company.

  “Shaw, I’m not a gambler and I refuse to bet on something I won’t win.”

  He ducked his head and chuckled.

  “You can do this.” She leaned in closer. “We can do this. I know we can. But we can’t with him leading the team. Something’s…not right.” Her lips thinned as her eyes slid toward Sean’s office.

  “I need to think on it a little more.”

  “Bring me the other drawings while you’re thinking on things. Your lines are more freehand than his, so the wireframe renderings will take me a little bit longer so they’re precise.”

  “Should I use a straight edge or—”

  “No. You keep doing it the way you’re doing it. If they all look like this one, don’t you dare change a damn thing.”

  He chuckled. “Yes, ma’am.”

  “It’s really good, Shaw. I think this one’s better than the first model. Definitely more attitude.”

  He stared at her for a moment before nodding in acknowledgment. He slowly rose from his kneeling position and casually worked his way back to his corner. He hated this hesitation and doubt. He wasn’t ready. Yet.

  He couldn’t risk failing the company, the team, or Drayton.

  Vann stepped out of the elevator and tugged the collar of his polo shirt. Even after two weeks of random visits to Drayton’s office since starting his internship, he still felt naked and out of place walking around the executive floor without his mail cart. He waved back at a few employees who spotted him on his way to Mia’s desk and made a mental note to check in with them on how their kids did during finals week and how Val was doing with her physical therapy sessions.

  “Hi, Mia.”

  “Hi, Shaw.” She crossed her arms on the desk. “We all miss having you stop by every day.”

  He wouldn’t deny he liked knowing he’d left an impression with the staff. A positive impression, especially since he liked them all so much. “Sean’s riding my ass in the department. It’s tough to get away.” He shoved his hands in his dress slacks and offered a smile. “Is he busy?”

  “He just finished a two-hour meeting and has a conference call scheduled to start in about five
minutes. I’m sure he’d love to see you. Go on in.”

  “Thanks.” He strolled down the short hall to Drayton’s office and knocked.

  “Come in.”

  He walked through the doorway and shut the door behind him.

  Drayton glanced up from the papers on his desk, a tired smile spreading across his face. “Are you really standing there right now?”

  Vann crossed his arms and subtly flexed his muscles the way he knew piqued Drayton’s interest. “Why don’t you come over here and find out?”

  It obviously didn’t take much of a nudge to get Drayton out of his chair.

  Vann licked his lips, imagining the flex of Drayton’s thighs under those dress slacks as he approached. He closed his eyes when Drayton’s hands possessively ran along his biceps then down to cup his ass. Vann gasped and uncrossed his arms when he was pulled forward, flush against a wall of lean muscle.

  Fuck, he loved it when Drayton showed that dominant, demanding side.

  Vann gripped Drayton’s square jaw and pulled him into a fierce kiss, refusing to hold back an ounce of want or need. A growl rumbled deep within his chest when Drayton responded with equal desire, exploring his mouth with the same feral desperation.

  Drayton pulled away from the kiss, releasing Vann’s bottom lip from between his teeth before he finally spoke. “We can’t start something we can’t finish.”

  Vann licked his swollen lips, still savoring the lingering taste of the kiss.

  They pressed their foreheads together, their breaths mingling with each heavy exhale. He wanted nothing more than to lose himself in that moment and ignore everything around them. He fisted his hand in Drayton’s shirt, needing a little balance as he tried to settle his heartbeat.