A Not-So-Indecent Proposal

by L. D. Blakeley

  Published by EVERNIGHT PUBLISHING ® at Smashwords

  www.evernightpublishing.com

  Copyright© 2021 L.D. Blakeley

  ISBN: 978-0-3695-0402-9

  Cover Artist: Jay Aheer

  Editor: Jessica Ruth

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

  WARNING: The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. No part of this book may be used or reproduced electronically or in print without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in reviews.

  This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, and places are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  DEDICATION

  For everyone who's ever felt the albatross of a student loan.

  A NOT-SO-INDECENT

  PROPOSAL

  Romance on the Go ®

  L.D. Blakeley

  Copyright © 2021

  Chapter One

  “Fuck, that’s nasty!”

  Engrossed in yet another spreadsheet, Bram Wilson had reached for his coffee cup, expecting happy, caffeinated sustenance only to be greeted with ice-cold disappointment. Which he might have anticipated had he noticed the time at all over the past four hours.

  It was the third time in as many days he’d been stuck at his desk long after everyone else in his department had gone for the day. Although he would bet good money the programmers were still downstairs in their so-called dungeon, where they’d likely be into the wee hours. From what he’d seen of it, though, dungeon wasn’t the word he’d have used to describe the comfortable suite of offices that had its own lounge, kitchen, and games room.

  “I can’t be paying you enough to be here this late,” a voice boomed from several cubicles over.

  “You don’t actually pay me at all,” Bram answered without looking up or missing a beat. Then quickly realized who he was talking to as the man walked toward him. “Mr. Kemp,” he stammered. “Sorry, sir. I didn’t realize—” He forgot what he was about to say as an unexpected deep, rich chuckle rose from Spencer Kemp, his de facto boss and the man who could fire his ass and quash any of his career aspirations with little more than a text.

  While he didn’t report to the man directly, Bram was well aware of who he was. It was hard not to when the CEO of the company looked as good as Spencer Kemp. The man could rock a suit and tie better than most runway models. Today he was equally impressive in jeans and a crisp button-up. He was tall and lean, with an unruly head of dark curls that had ever-so-slightly started to silver at the temples. His eyes were what Bram had first noticed about him, though. They were of the darkest blue, fading to a dazzling inner ring of silver. And the slight crinkle when he smiled only added to what Bram thought of as his sexy devil appearance. The man was a puzzle to all the singles at AppMedica who tried their damnedest—at least once, anyway—to put themselves in the man’s line of sight. There was no shortage of those who tried. But none managed to get any further than a polite rebuff. And as far as Kemp’s personal life went, that was a shrouded mystery.

  “No, no,” Kemp said, holding up one hand. “Don’t apologize. If anyone should be apologizing, it’s me,” he added. “You’re the only one left here most nights when I head out. So why, exactly, do I pay you nothing?”

  “Intern,” Bram said flatly. “And I have student loans so far up my ass it’s hard to sit some days. So I’m hoping to make a decent enough impression I’ll get a job offer at the end of it.”

  And before Bram’s brain caught up to his mouth and had a chance to freak out over his casual turn of phrase, Kemp laughed again. This time with the bonus of a dazzling smile.

  “I’ll see if I can put in a good word,” Kemp said. “We seriously don’t pay interns? That can’t be right,” he added, brows drawn together.

  “Unless someone else has been cashing paychecks in my name, I’m afraid it is.” Bram felt emboldened by the conversation’s casual tone and figured go big or go home.

  Kemp smiled again, then asked, “Which would be?”

  “Wilson. Sir. Bram Wilson.”

  “Parents fans of literature, were they?”

  “They were, actually. Well, my mom. She was a professor at U of T.”

  “Well, Bram. What are you working on that has you here after hours?”

  “Status report on the Infernal Voyage downloads for this week. It’s doing insane numbers.”

  “Define insane.”

  “It’s outperforming everything else in our stable,” Bram answered. “By a lot.”

  “Well, I’ll be damned.” Kemp nodded in approval.

  “Is it true the Hoard Warriors built it as part of the twenty percent project?” One of the things that had drawn Bram to AppMedica was their implementation of the initiative allowing employees to use a percentage of their paid work time on personal projects. It seemed like a dream work environment.

  “Hoard Warriors.” Kemp raised an eyebrow. “Is that what they call themselves?”

  “I noticed a few people with nameplates on their desks,” Bram explained.

  “I like it.” Kemp took a step back and stretched his neck from left to right. “And yeah, they did. I mean, if it’s good enough for Google. Can’t really argue with that kind of success, can you?”

  “Definitely not.” Envy didn’t seem like the right word to describe how Bram felt toward the development team. Admiration might be a better choice. Maybe a combination of the two.

  “Do you write code, too?”

  “I do. And I try to get downstairs when I have free time.” He felt awkward when he did so, but the entire team had told him on more than one occasion he was welcome to come downstairs and shadow as much as possible. Their team lead, Max, had added the codicil quietly. But that went without saying as far as Bram was concerned. The last thing anyone wanted when they were up to their tits in code was someone interrupting and forcing a manual debug to start from the beginning.

  “Seems to me your talents are wasted doing admin work, though, aren’t they?”

  “I’m just grateful to be here.” Bram hoped he wasn’t shooting himself in the foot when he admitted, “Although, yeah, this isn’t exactly what I went to school for.”

  “Let me give it a think and see if I can’t come up with a better way for you to finish your internship.”

  “Oh. Uh, okay.” That was out of left field. But he sure as hell wasn’t about to dissuade the man. Especially if it meant he could do something other than write reports for other people’s work.

  “It might not be right away. But the least I can do is get you on payroll while we figure something out.”

  “Wow. Thank you, Mr. Kemp. I really… I wasn’t trying to.” Bram stopped himself before he spiraled into a full-fledged ramble. He cleared his throat and simply said, “Thank you, sir.”

  “No, thank you. And please,” he added, “don’t call me sir. It makes me feel ancient. Come see me Monday morning. I’ll have Nadine put something together and have her buzz you when it’s ready. Sound good?”

  “Sounds amazing, Mr. Kemp.” He opened his mouth to continue, then thought better of it. After a moment, though, he continued. “Isn’t Monday a holiday?”

  “Is it?”

  “Yeah. I mean, I think so. The second Monday in February. That’s Family Day, right?”

  Kemp’s brow furrowed momentarily. Then his face lit up in realization. “Right you are! I always forget about that one. In that case, Tuesday it is. Enjoy your long weekend.”

  “I will. You too.”

  Kemp was already buttoning up his heavy wool coat and heading for the bank of elevators. “See you Tuesday, Bram,” he shout
ed over his shoulder.

  Chapter Two

  “Morning, Nadine. How was your weekend?” Spencer Kemp nodded to his assistant, who was already hard at it and probably had been for several hours.

  “Morning, Mr. Kemp,” she answered cheerfully. “I had a great weekend. Did absolutely nothing and enjoyed every second of it.” She looked up from her laptop and grinned. “That list of interns is on your desk along with those other files you requested.”

  “Thanks, Nadine. But seriously. Mr. Kemp was my father. I’m Spencer.” He knew she was simply paying him a professional courtesy, but it always threw him for a loop when someone referred to him that way. Especially when it was someone he’d known since his freshman year at university and was gracious enough to never bring up his awkward phase.

  “Spencer.” She pushed her chair back, came around to the front of her desk, and handed him a cup of steaming black coffee. “How was your weekend?”

  “Oh God, you just saved my life.” He’d rushed out the door that morning without so much as a whiff of caffeine. “My weekend was…” He thought for a moment, trying to remember what he’d done and realized, not for the first time, that he’d spent another long weekend working. “Uneventful,” was the word he decided to go with.

  “No offense, Spencer, but you need to start getting out.” Her nose crinkled as she tried to hide a grin. “I know several people—right here in the building—who’d be more than happy to provide you with some extracurricular plans for your next evening off.”

  “I just bet.” He snickered and shook his head as he headed for his office.

  He tossed his cellphone and keys onto his desk where, as promised, a list of his current interns sat on top of a pile of file folders. How the hell had not paying interns slipped under his radar? He didn’t handle the day-to-day minutia anymore, but that was pretty inexcusable. There were four names on the list, all recent graduates, and all working in positions that had fuck-all to do with their areas of expertise.

  He pinged Nadine on Hangouts: Hey, Nadine, can you do me a favor and get all four of those interns on payroll by end of day? Base salary, retroactive. And I also want to rearrange their positions to something more suited to their skill set. But I know that’s going to take a bit more time. Just the payroll for now is fine. We’ll talk later about the rest.

  NP, she responded. Oh, and Max is here to see you. Says it’s urgent. Are you free?

  Dammit. It was never a good thing when his lead developer needed to see him first thing in the morning.

  After a sigh and a hearty swig of coffee, he typed: Sure, send him in.

  “Hey, boss.” Max burst in and took a seat without preamble.

  This was going to be bad. Spencer could feel it.

  “Max, to what do I owe the pleasure so bright and early on a Tuesday morning?” Early mornings were Nadine’s thing, but his development team? Not so much. They tended to work long into the night, so whenever they rolled in the next day was fine by Spencer.

  “Do you want the good news or bad news first?”

  Crap.

  “So long as there is good news, let’s start there.”

  “Okay, so Infernal Voyage?”

  “Word is it’s doing insane numbers.” Spencer grinned at the cute intern’s words.

  “Beyond insane.” Max was practically vibrating.

  “And that means?”

  “Riot Games mentioned it on their Twitch stream, and it went viral over the long weekend.”

  “Oh shit.” That got his attention. Games weren’t his strong suit, but Spencer understood going viral. “So what’s the bad news?”

  “All those extra downloads peaked our cloud threshold and bumped us into a higher tier in order to keep all our main clients running at optimal capacity.”

  “And?” There was going to be a price tag attached to this good news. His shoulders bunched as he waited for Max to continue.

  “Ideally, we should spin up a dedicated server and devote some programmers to just the game. Viral sensations don’t last forever, and we’d be nuts if we didn’t ride this one out as long as we can.”

  “How much?” Spencer sighed and rubbed his temples. Max was right. There were millions of games out there vying for attention. And dozens that were variations on Infernal Voyage. Even if the game faded away after a year or so, the initial buzz might be just the thing to get their name out there and nab a few more high-profile medical clients. Currently home to four of the top ten downloaded health and wellness apps, AppMedica had also developed an app allowing healthcare providers to collect and share patient records via smartphone. Its initial success had spread from a locally used novelty to province wide, and eventually cross-country. Spencer was thinking globally now.

  “We’d need at least one senior-ish team member and two or three others. But they could be minions we pay entry-level, if that helps. Plus the new server cost.” Max looked like he was holding his breath.

  “Fuck me.” Spencer did some quick mental calculations, remembering he’d committed to putting four more people on salary already today. Maybe some of them could be shuffled to Max’s new team. “I’m looking at around half a million, aren’t I?”

  Max exhaled loudly and nodded. “More or less, yeah.”

  Spencer knew what he had to do. How he was going to do it, though, was the problem. He couldn’t go to his angel investor again, and it was way too early to be thinking about an IPO. But capitalizing on this game would do wonders for his bottom line when the time did come. Unfortunately, the company coffers didn’t run deep enough to deal with this unexpected hiccup.

  But there was one avenue he could explore. It made him twitch to even think about.

  “Go ahead,” he finally told Max. “Do what you need to do. We’ll figure out something.”

  “Thanks, Spence.” Max was already on his feet and ready to bolt. “I’ve got a file of vetted CVs I keep pretty up to date that I can start looking at right away. Should be able to get a team up and running in no time.”

  “Can you be ready to pull the trigger on this in a day or so?”

  “Shouldn’t be a problem.”

  “Hang on.” Spencer grabbed the list Nadine had given him and handed it over. “Take a look at a few of these for your juniors. They’re already here. Might speed along the process.”

  Max glanced at the sheet. “Oh yeah,” he said as he quickly read through the list. “That Bram kid seems pretty keen. We could use that kind of energy.”

  “Great. Just keep me in the loop, will you?” Spencer was already trying to figure his plan of attack.

  “Will do.” Max nodded and was on his way.

  Chapter Three

  Bram let himself into his apartment and was greeted with a shriek that startled the bejesus out of him.

  “Will wonders never cease?”

  “Holy hell, Vinnie, you scared the shit out of me.” His roommate had a disturbingly loud voice that could best be described as a joyful foghorn. He always marveled that a woman so small could make so much noise.

  “I was beginning to forget what you looked like,” she teased, reaching up to ruffle his carefully coiffed hair. “I haven’t seen you in forever. I thought you’d taken up residence in that big, shiny office building.”

  Bram casually tried to flatten his cowlicked hair back into place. “Very funny.” She was right, though. Between her job at the nursing home and his long hours at AppMedica, they barely saw each other. Not that he’d trade those long hours. Especially after the way today had worked out.

  “Wait.” Vinnie put her hands on her hips and scrunched up her nose. “Why are you home at a civilized hour? You didn’t get fired, did you?”

  “Not even close.” Bram beamed. “In fact, pretty much the opposite.” He flopped down on the sofa and patted the space next to him. Vinnie vaulted herself over the back and joined him. “I got promoted. And hired.” He could feel the smile threatening to crack his face wide open. “Or maybe the other way around.�
��

  “Deets! Immediately, please?”

  Bram drew in a deep breath and exhaled loudly as he smiled, still somewhat incredulous over the happy turn of events. “So first I get called into HR and they tell me they’re putting me on payroll. Something about taking advantage of free labor, it had been an oversight, and they didn’t realize interns weren’t being paid … blah, blah, blah.”

  “Wow.”

  “I know. But that’s not even the best part. They’re gonna pay me retroactively from my start date—three weeks’ pay. Can you believe it?”

  “Holy shit. That’s awesome!”

  “I know, right? The only downside is I have to wait until the end of this pay period. But still—money!” He turned sideways and tucked his feet up under his legs.

  “A-mah-zing. And here I thought my day was stellar because the new kid at the coffee shop spelled my name right.”

  “Well, now you’re just trying to make me jealous. He never gets mine right.”

  “Yeah, but he also never charges you, so … I think you win this round.”

  “Fair,” he said. Vinnie patted his hand in a conciliatory there, there gesture.

  “There’s more, though!” Bram was still giddy at this part. “I’m barely back to my desk when I get a call from Max,” he continued. “And he wants to know can I come downstairs after lunch for a chat.”

  “Wait, which one’s Max: the hot one or the genius?”

  “Genius,” he answered quickly. “So I go down—”

  “Hold up, so remind me—who’s the hot one?”

  “Spencer. Quit interrupting.” He could feel his face heat and deftly changed the subject. “So Max says he’s putting together a team to work exclusively on Infernal Voyage and wants to know would I consider coming on board as a junior member? I could barely hold my shit together I was so excited.”