Sold Short (Sidelined Book 3)

by Ainslie Paton

  “Never.”

  “With a meal, a weekend away, with jewelry or a promise? Pretty sure you cook women into bed.”

  He sat up straighter as Reid took the chair beside him. “It’s not the same and you don’t know what you’re talking about. You’ve had one girlfriend, and she—”

  “Be careful what you say next. She’s a pole dancer, not a stripper and not a prostitute but it wouldn’t matter to me if she was.”

  “That can’t be true.”

  “You know your problem, Dev. You’ve been in love with Sarina for years but you’ve never done anything about it and now she’s made a move you’re all pissed as fuck.”

  “I’m not in love with her. That’s insanity. I’m blindsided by this. I think she’s doing the wrong thing and I can’t believe you don’t see that. Who chooses to be a single mom?”

  “Any intelligent, well-resourced woman who’s on a timeline, doesn’t have a partner she trusts and understands her options. Hot take, Dev. Women don’t need us anymore. We’re redundant tech.”

  “That’s not. It’s not. I can’t accept that.” He shook his head. Reid had no idea how relationships worked. “Not for Sarina and not for a child. Parenting is hard going, doing it alone by choice is a bad decision.”

  “Because you’re currently fucked in the head I’m going to ignore that you just invalidated my whole childhood. Cara’s too, probably several hundred of our employees. Men have been voluntarily removing themselves from the parenting equation for so long, women have worked out how to do without us.”

  It was one thing for Reid to always be right about their work. Dev had to look away because he resented Reid might well be right about this. “I wouldn’t have chosen this for her.”

  “You need to step up or shut up, Dev.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Reid gave him a look he couldn’t interpret. “What?”

  “She won’t be doing it alone. She’s close with her family. She has Owen and me, our girls will be all over it, and when you stop being a jackass, Sarina has you too. Future baby Gallo is in danger of being overdosed on care.”

  He looked over Reid’s head. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky, but pressure like an extreme weather event hung around his shoulders. “It’s not enough. I want for her what you have with Zarley. What Owen has with Cara.”

  “Yeah, I want that for her too, but she’s talking about having a kid, not resigning from the human race.”

  He gripped the arms of the chair, fingertips finding no give in the tough plastic. “I’m scared for her, Reid. This is a no return, no refund decision.”

  “So talk to her, man, and fucking well listen to what she’s saying before you spin out.”

  “We all spun out.”

  “We all flipped but you totally lost it, Dev. You need to talk to her.”

  He could see himself in the meeting room. He’d shouted at Sarina, pulled away from her and she’d been concerned about him. But for the first time ever she was the last person he wanted to talk to. He just wanted to bury himself in his office. He pushed up from the chair but Reid was quicker and stood in his way.

  “Not now, dickhead, but don’t wait too long either. She put her heart out there to tell us this and you told her you wouldn’t support her. You need to cool down.”

  Coming from Reid, the biggest hothead of them all, that was saying something. “I just don’t understand.” He and Sarina didn’t tell each other everything but this was so huge it felt like a betrayal. “She took advice from some random guy who sells sex for a living.”

  “When did Sarina ever do anything not well researched, not conscious of the consequences and backed by her gut?”

  Never, so what did it mean that she’d cut him out. “Why didn’t she talk to me?”

  “And what would you have said?”

  “That . . . she’ll.” Meet someone? In all these years she hadn’t. That she could wait? For a while, but not indefinitely. That she didn’t have his support? That’s what he’d said so far.

  “Yeah, that’s what I thought.” Reid made for the stairs. “You’ve got nothing she needs.”

  FIVE

  Sarina let Owen wrap her in a hug. He seemed to need it as much as she did. “I thought that went . . . God donut, Sarina, are you all right?”

  She hadn’t expected it to be a sing-along, but Dev had never gone full-on operatic diva on her either. “Dev was—”

  “Out of line.”

  He’d lost his temper and she’d only seen him do that once before with a group of male employees who were deliberately sabotaging a female programmer’s work. “Do you think Reid is going to hurt him?”

  Owen released her and sat on the meeting room table. “Do you care?”

  She wouldn’t be averse to Reid roughing Dev up a little. She felt ragged around the edges. Dev had shouted and he’d avoided her eyes and her touch and it was disorienting how much that hurt. She’d expected him to be put out she hadn’t told him first, but nothing like that.

  “He didn’t mean you couldn’t count on him. Reid will talk him down or beat him up and he’ll come around.”

  That was a lot of choreography, but of course Dev would calm down. Calm was his dominant operating model and Dev had never let her down. “I should’ve told him first.” Hindsight. She needed an app for that.

  “Why didn’t you?”

  “Because I knew he wouldn’t like it.” She’d chosen not to tell Dev about this for the same reason she didn’t tell him about Colby, because he wouldn’t approve and he’d try to talk her around and he’d promise her things he couldn’t deliver without saying a word. Just by being with her, he’d promise to be there forever and that wasn’t going to happen.

  If he’d wanted more from their friendship he’d have said, done something years ago, and he was already moving away, finding his more with Shush. She didn’t want to make him feel guilty about that or pull on his responsible do the decent caring thing always strings.

  Instead she’d hurt him by hiding an essential truth about herself from him.

  “Are you square with me when you say you’ll be part of this. I’m not saying diapers at dawn, but you’ll be around?”

  “I’ll be diapers at dawn. I’ll be teething at whenever that happens, and whatever else it is that kids do before Little League, and so will Reid, though that might be more trouble than it’s worth. Dev will come round, Sarina, and if you don’t want anything at Plus to change, then it won’t.”

  “And if I’m just too stupidly naive about that and being a mom does change things?”

  “Then we’ll work it out when we know what the issue is. We got through sacking and reinstating Reid, we got through my drug addiction, you pregnant should be a breeze in comparison and good news for once. You’re sure you want to do the sperm donor thing?”

  It was a better option than bar hopping, internet dating, swiping right, one-night standing with the hope of a for better or worse result. “No, but I’m sure I don’t want to make the wrong call by getting involved with someone I don’t care enough about to get pregnant. That’s a horror story. I know what I want and the thought of dating for years in the hope that I find a suitable partner seems like a lottery. I’d never be sure I wasn’t settling or trapping someone. I want to be a mom more than I want to be some unknown person’s partner. Does that make me too out there for you?”

  “Hardly. I get it. Fidelity wasn’t a big thing in my family. My brother Frank’s been married twice and keeps mistresses, rarely sees his kids, but craps on about family as if it’s his driving force. My dad is the same. Cara’s family is her dad and her brothers and a network of host families she lived with when she was training as a gymnast. As far as I’m concerned, you build the best family you can and if you want me to be part of that, I’m in, all the way.”

  That’s what she’d thought he’d say. But she’d needed to hear it and it meant more given Dev’s reaction, and how she’d brought that on herself.

 
; “You know Reid is going to want to ride the sperm selection train with you all the way through the tunnel.” Owen covered his face when he realized the implication of what he’d said.

  She laughed because Reid would get off on the statistical part of the selection process; he’d be an asset to her thinking, taking the emotion out. It would be weird and then not because it would be all about the genetic science to him and nothing about the turkey baster sexing part.

  No surprise, the man himself was waiting for her when she got back to her office. Reid closed the sliding door when she walked in, which made Christopher, her assistant, do the thing where he pretended Reid wasn’t there, but secretly jonesed on the idea of some Reid-based office scandal about to break.

  “Christopher thinks you’ve harassed someone again,” she said.

  Reid waggled his brows. “If only Christopher knew what you were hatching, he’d think I was a saint.”

  She frowned. “Is that your way of telling me you think this is wrong?”

  “Oh hell no.” He lay down full-length on her couch, head propped under one arm and his feet stuck out over the opposite end. “Not wrong. I was shocked but I’m over that now. It makes perfect sense. You work in the soft sciences, but there’s nothing soft about you personally.”

  “Thank you so much.” Nothing like a roundabout Reid compliment.

  “I mean, you’re as much a logical person as I am when it gets down to it, though we disagree on the whole subtlety thing.”

  “We don’t disagree. You don’t do it.”

  He thumbed his cell screen. “You’ll never convince me it’s useful.”

  “How quickly you forget the trouble a dick pic got you into.”

  He sat and glared at her, his cell forgotten.

  She shrugged. He was never living down his panic over sending Zarley a dick pic when they’d first met. “My subtlety must be on the fritz.”

  “As I was saying, it makes sense. You want a baby, you go get one. No trial and error, no beta version, no pending upgrade requirement, straight to production, ship that sucker.”

  “How does Zarley handle the sheer poetry of you?”

  He lay back down again with an eat dirt expression. “It’s not my poetry she’s interested in handling.”

  “If you make a dick joke I’m throwing you out of my office. I don’t know why you’re here anyway.”

  He laughed. “Yes you do. Sperm shopping. Let’s go.”

  She groaned. “What is it with you and this need to be the most inappropriate person in the world?”

  “It’s a rare talent. What’s the plan?”

  She rocked back in her chair and looked at the ceiling above her desk. The tiles were pockmarked with stab wounds from the time she and Dev had a competition to see who could get the most sharpened pencils to stick there, like Mulder in The X-Files. The plan was to talk to her family and then . . . hmm.

  “I need a project plan that’s more extensive than tell my nearest and dearest,” she said.

  “Dev’s your man for that. He’s our closer-finisher.” She’d won the pencils in the ceiling tile contest, but possibly only because Dev had let her. “He was being a dickhead. But he’ll calm down. I think.”

  “You think. Did you make it worse, Reid? Not like I needed your help with that.”

  “I dunno that I made it any better. But I didn’t punt him off the roof if that’s what you’re asking.”

  They’d left those pencils there, hanging from the ceiling, until she noticed them appearing in other parts of the office and installed a darts board in the rec room instead. So far no one had lost an eye. “I didn’t expect him to take it so badly.”

  “Dev’s little Sarina is all grown up.”

  “I was never Dev’s little Sarina.”

  Reid sat up again and studied her, fixed on her face in that unnerving way that’d won him a reputation for being aggressive and offensive. He was both, though he was trying hard not to be, as a condition of his continued employment, but it wasn’t in his glare any more than it was in his imposing physical size. He was imposing in his ability to strip away the masks people wore and the politics they played and see clearly what was often obscured.

  She’d give an arm for that ability, but then she’d need an extra one, in addition to the one she’d given, to clean up after the damage he did. “What?”

  Nothing. Except unwavering eye contact.

  “Don’t give me that.”

  “I’m being subtle.”

  Hard not to laugh. “Go be subtle in your own office.” But what wasn’t he saying?

  “About this plan. What’s the basic projection?”

  It was a fair question. If she was going to do this she did need a timeline. “Assuming I’m well, I’d work almost up till the birth, then the first six weeks after is mother-only stuff.”

  “Like?”

  “Recovering from the birth, establishing routines, breastfeeding. Anything after that is childcare essentially, and it can be shared. But I’d want to take more time if we can afford it.”

  Reid raised a brow. “Anyone who’s carried around another life for nine months, spent like three days pushing it out and then has to go without sleep, do the poop thing and breastfeed, gets what they want.”

  She grinned. Reid was just scared enough about the whole have a baby thing he was unusually empathetic. Ah, sweet mystery of life creation.

  They spent the hour working out when the best time for her to be on parental leave was. They decided to block out eighteen weeks. She’d take advantage of being employed by a Silicon Valley company with one of the most progressive paid maternity leave policies in the country.

  Reid drew a circle around a portion of the timeline he’d drawn on her glass wall. “You need to instigate here,” he marked the timeline with a red X, “so you launch here,” a green X, “and can be off the project here.” He drew a circle around the zone that would be her leave period and another X over the date she’d return to the office. “Which means the on-ramp is the next six months.”

  Right. This is making it very real. On this plan, she had three to six months to get pregnant.

  “We need to start sperm shopping now,” he said.

  Looking at the scribbled timeline made her pulse swoop. She was doing this. Really doing it.

  Reid tapped the marker on the wall. “This is fastest possible time to acquire a baby.”

  “We need to plot contingencies.”

  He frowned. “Why? You can only be pregnant for nine months, give or take.”

  “Getting there might take a bit longer.”

  He looked puzzled.

  “We have to patch in my windows of fertility and it might not take the first time, same as with ordinary sex.”

  “Ah.” He turned back to the planning board and scrubbed and scribbled. “We need to account for that.” Now she had an expanded window of time, twelve months in which to get pregnant if she started on it immediately.

  “This timeline allows for a false start.” He tucked the marker in the back pocket of his jeans and palmed his face.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “It’s like there should be more poetry in this.” Reid had used the same language they used when they were planning for Plus; on-ramp, instigation, launch, acquisition. He’d referred to the nine months of pregnancy as a steady state and she knew it would be anything but steady.

  Poetry in pregnancy was for women who’ve mastered more than the businesslike terms of dating: on the market, off the market, friends with benefits, investing in a relationship; were married, loved and sure of their opportunities. “No, this is good. It’s practical. It’ll deliver, no pun intended. It’s what I want.”

  “You should check it with Dev.” That was Reid trying to be sensitive. He’d never check anything so basic, always sure of his own reasoning. “I get why Dev wants something better than this for you, something shared. It’s the hugeness of it. You should be able to hold someone’s hand.”
/>   “Zarley changed your life.” Shush must have changed Dev’s for him to have that insight too.

  “Yeah, I wouldn’t be thinking like this without her.”

  “But you’ll be there for me, you and Owen, and—”

  “Dev,” they finished together. She nodded. She could count on Dev like you could count on your best employees being poached by rival companies, as sure as the sun came up each morning. Until that sudden eclipse had blacked everything.

  “I’m buying the kid its first tablet, its first—” Reid scrubbed a hand through his hair, “robot friend, but that’s not the same as having someone to run you a bath, to make sure you’re doing all right on the inside.”

  She gasped, put her hand to her chest. “Reid McGrath can be touchy-feely.”

  He threw a marker at her. “Fuck off.” With the other one he wrote Project Offshoot above the timeline.

  She took a pic of it with her cell and Reid scrubbed the wall clean. She’d calenderize the key dates. Project Offshoot was a notion she’d thought about for years, and the only person disappointed there was no scandal was Christopher.

  SIX

  Laser fucking tag. Arik wanted the sprint team to have a project kickoff session in an ultraviolent, shoot-em-up gallery. Thank God it wasn’t a titty bar. No. Wasn’t happening. Inappropriate.

  “But Dev—”

  “What part of not happening didn’t you hear, Arik?”

  “I heard, but—”

  “Do you understand the word inclusive?”

  “I understand, it’s—”

  “Motherf—” Dev turned away, closing his mouth around the rest of that curse before it got free. You couldn’t just exclude people from things, especially on a new team. That was the whole point of teams, to do things together, to help each other, balance strengths, counter complexity, share the load. Plus made team software solutions, for God’s sake, and Arik thought it was appropriate to choose some macho bullshit aggressive soldier play as a team-building exercise. There were two women on the team of ten, and Trang had an artificial leg, obviously not gonna be good.