by Alexis Gold
Oliver slowly raised his eyebrows and leaned forward, staring straight into Alexander’s eyes. “You are blushing, Sir. Blushing. I want details.”
Alexander laughed and shrugged. “Well, we went in to work on the code, and she fixed the whole damn thing. All of it, in an hour.” He lifted his hands in the air a moment and then dropped them to his side for effect. “Zip and done, just like that. My whole team worked for a month and didn’t get halfway through what she did in an hour.”
“That’s remarkable.” Oliver shook his head in amazement.
“No, it’s unheard of. She’s a genius. She’s… she’s just… beyond anything I can imagine.” He sighed and closed his eyes, giving his head a shake.
“Sooooo…. Then what happened? I’ve heard you talk about computers and code and programming countless times for the better part of a decade. None of it ever made you blush. Spill.” Oliver pressed, his eyes still steady on Alexander.
Alexander sighed. “She was leaving. She did the code, I paid her a quarter of a million dollars, and she was leaving. We made it as far as the door.”
“I love how you just nonchalantly say that like you dropped a dollar in the cup of a guy on the street.” Oliver stated with an ironic and level tone. “You made it to the door and what?”
With a distant look in his eyes, Alexander spoke in a quiet voice. “We made it to the door and then she kissed me… and I kissed her… and… and then I think my whole life changed right then.”
Oliver didn’t say a word. He simply stared at his friend.
Alexander sighed and continued. “She stayed the night with me. Like, the whole night. The sun was up and we were…” He trailed off and closed his eyes. Taking a breath he opened them again. “I fell asleep and when I woke up, she was gone. It feels so… weird. The whole thing feels weird.”
He furrowed his brow and let out a heavy sigh, looking at his best friend. “I’m not the same man I was at this time yesterday, Oliver. I’m not.”
Oliver leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms over his chest, regarding his friend thoughtfully. He did not speak.
“What? Say something for chrissake!” Alexander urged him.
Oliver pursed his lips for a moment and then leaned forward and planted his elbows on the table and pointed his finger at Alexander. “I know what this is. I do.” He pursed his lips again and gave his head a shake. “This is almost exactly what happened when I met Joshua, way back before the dating and the wedding bells. This. Exact. Kind. Of. Thing.”
It was Alexander’s turn to stare at him.
“Listen. I’m truly amazed about the workaround fix for the app. Seriously, I love the app but I am first in line for the fix. I call dibs. Now, if no one else at your company could come up with this, then you better get your ass in gear and hire her before someone else does, and don’t you dare let her get away, even if you did have sex with her. If she is a genius, she’s going to be hot on the market at some point and you want her before that. You don’t want to be her competitor.” Oliver eyed him knowingly, “Especially now.”
Alexander gave him a questioning look and Oliver waved it off. Alexander shrugged. “Okay, hire her immediately. Good plan. I was actually thinking that exact same thing, too. You know, Tony was there last night. He saw what she did with the app when she showed it to us at the bar. He knows she’s a genius.”
He looked panicked for a moment. “Oh god. What if he gets to her before I do and offers her a job?”
“Then you’d better get to her before Tony or anyone else does, because once word of her fix on your app gets around, she’s going to be a hot ticket, and you’ll be hard pressed to be first in line for her.” Oliver gave him a serious look. “Don’t lose her. For god’s sake,” he shook his head and gave his friend a tender, happy smile, “whatever you do, don’t lose her.”
“Why are you looking at me like that?” Alexander asked him suspiciously.
“Oh look, pasta!” Oliver smiled up at the waitress and then changed the subject to interior design.
***
Callie walked in the door of her mother’s house and saw her mother standing in the kitchen. Noel immediately sighed and looked up at the ceiling. “Thank you, Lord, she made it home safe.” She clicked her tongue and then shot her daughter a disapproving look. “You couldn’t at least send me a text to let me know you were alive? Where have you been?” She asked in an irritated whisper.
Callie looked around the kitchen and let out a breath of relief. “Does she know I just got home?”
Noel shook her head. “No, I didn’t tell her that you never came home last night.” Noel swatted Callie’s arm with the tea towel she had in her hand, and Callie was grateful that it wasn’t with the spatula that she had in her other hand.
“Now where have you been?” Noel asked again insistently. She gave her daughter a sharp look.
Callie reached for the tea towel and the spatula and gently took them from her mother’s hands. “Mama, I think you better sit down.”
Noel frowned darkly. “Why? What’s so bad you want me to sit to hear it? Oh no… what is it? Is it your brother? Please tell me you’re both fine. Oh Lord…” She planted her hand on her heart and sat down heavily in one of the kitchen chairs.
Callie shook her head. “No, Mama, it’s not bad. It’s incredible.”
Relief washed over Noel’s face and her shoulders relaxed some. “Well thank the Lord. Now what is it?” She asked, her eyes piercing her daughter’s.
Drawing in a big breath, Callie opened her purse and reached for the check. “You know that app on my phone and on my laptop that I wrote a program to fix?”
“Yes?” Noel said, reaching for her reading glasses and pushing them on, sliding them up her nose as she eyed the paper in her daughter’s hand.
“Well, I met the guy who invented the app. He’s a billionaire CEO of one of the biggest tech companies here in Seattle. I showed him what I did with the app and he paid me to do some contract work for him. He paid me to show him how to do what I did to fix the app. That’s what I was doing last night.” She handed her mother the folded check and didn’t bother to mention that she did a whole lot more than that the night before.
Noel opened the check and widened her eyes as she looked down at it. She read it three times in disbelief and then planted her hand over her mouth and then her heart as tears filled her eyes. “Oh my sweet baby Jesus! Look at that!” She stared at it and then her eyes lifted to Callie’s.
“Is that real? Am I looking at a real check? This isn’t a fake, is it?” Noel began to fan herself with her hand as tears flowed out of her eyes.
Callie felt tears coming too. “Mama don’t cry! You know I never let you cry alone!” She laughed and fanned her own face, wiping at her eyes with her other hand. “Yes, that’s real. I fixed his app and he paid me for it. It’s probably worth a whole lot more money to him, but that’s what he gave me and I took it and left. That’s for us now.”
“Oh my baby! I am so glad that you started going to college! I knew you were so smart, my smart baby girl… my… come here and hug me. I just can’t take this on my own. Come on over here!” She closed her eyes and began to weep as Callie hugged her and wept with her.
Noel began to recover and her eyes got wide as she gasped and held the check against her heart. “Now, you listen to me. We need to go put this in your bank account right now. No waiting. God knows what might happen to it, or maybe that man will see reason today and stop the payment on it.” She worried aloud as she pushed herself up from her chair.
“Mama, he’s a billionaire, he’s not going to-”
“Nope. We’re not taking any chances. Now you get that girl of ours and you get out here. I’m turning the stove off and we’re headed right for the bank. Thank heaven the bank is open on Saturday’s for a few hours. Now come on! We can come back and have breakfast after. Don’t even go to the bathroom, just get in the car. Quick now. Let’s go!” Noel waddled as fast as she coul
d around the kitchen, shutting it down as she shooed Callie along.
“Jenny, we need to run an errand and Noel wants to go right now. Come on out please, honey.” Callie called down the hall, and Jenny called back a muffled, “Okay!”
They piled into the car and Noel tucked the check into her bra and crossed her arms over her chest all the way to the bank until they walked in and were standing before a lady at the counter. Only then did the older woman pull the check from her bra and look around suspiciously before pressing it into Callie’s hand.
“Now sign that and give it to her. Quick!” Noel insisted seriously. Callie knew better than to talk about it or argue, so she did what she was told, and the teller smiled as she deposited the check and handed Jenny a sucker.
“Don’t you eat that until after lunch.” Noel eyed Jenny closely.
Jenny nodded. “Yes, ma’am.” She smiled and thanked the teller.
The teller gave them a receipt and they thanked her and went back out to the car. It wasn’t until then that Noel finally breathed a sigh of relief.
“Well thank the Lord that’s done. I just can’t believe it.” She dabbed at her eyes again. Then she looked over at her daughter. “So what are you going to do now?”
Callie grinned. “I know exactly what I’m going to do. I’m going to go buy Jenny a brand new outfit for ballet and new pointe shoes, and I want to do it right now.”
Jenny squealed with delight in the back seat and called out her thanks to Callie excitedly.
Noel bawled for a moment and then wiped at her eyes again. She grabbed her daughter’s hand and squeezed it. “You’re such a good girl. I’m so proud of you.” She sniffed at wiped her tissue at her nose. “Let’s go ahead and go now.”
When they returned home from shopping, Callie picked up the phone and her mother got busy making breakfast again. Looking over at her daughter as she pushed the spatula under a pancake, she asked, “Is that your brother? Are you calling your brother?”
Callie nodded and Noel smiled widely. “You tell that boy that his mama loves him.”
“I’ll let you talk with him too, Mama. You can tell him yourself.” Callie smiled.
Jenny bounced in her chair at the table. “Yay! Uncle Jack!”
A deep masculine voice answered the phone, and she could hear the smile on the other end of it. “Callie!”
“How did you know it was me? It might have been Mama!” she laughed.
“I always know when it’s you. It’s a twin thing. How are you doing, little sister?” he asked, giving her the old reliable dig at being two minutes older than her.
“Jackson, you’d better sit down.” She grinned.
“Jackson? I know it’s serious when you use my whole name. None of this ‘hey Jack’, no. It’s Jackson. What’d you do, win the lottery?” He laughed deeply.
“Yeah, I kind of did.” .
There was a moment of silence at the other end of the phone. “What?” He asked with a serious tone. She told him all about it and when he had gotten over the shock of it, he spoke plainly to her.
“Sis, you have enough money now to last for a good long while. I want you to quit that job. I want you to quit it today. I hate that you’ve had to do that to make money. Now you have a chance. You put that money in the bank and you only spend what you have to. You focus on school and you quit that damn job. You hear me?” She couldn’t remember the last time that he had sounded so serious.
“I hear you, big brother. That’s the plan. That is just exactly what I want to do. I feel the same way about that job that you do,” she said quietly.
Jenny frowned at her from across the table. “You’re going to quit your waitressing job?”
Callie cleared her throat and Jack chuckled quietly. “You know,” Callie said, changing the subject, “Jenny has got some exciting news to share with her Uncle Jack.” Callie gave the girl a sidelong look and a wink, and Jenny bounced out of her seat and ran to the phone.
“She does?” Jack asked with anticipation as Jenny took the phone from Callie. She told him all about her upcoming audition and how much it meant to her. He listened and cheered her on, telling her that he knew she could do it.
“Thank you, Uncle Jack. When are you coming home? I miss you! I want you to see me dance!” She pleaded excitedly.
He sighed and his voice grew serious. “I’m sorry baby girl, I’m working right now. I don’t think I’ll make it home until Christmas. But, I miss you and I love you too, and I think you better start watching the mailbox for a surprise from your Uncle Jack. Okay?”
She smiled brightly, though it was clear that she was sad that she wouldn’t see him until Christmas. “Okay! I will. Thank you! I love you!”
Jenny handed the phone to Noel and Callie gave Jenny a hug. “I am going to quit my job today, and then I’m going to have a lot more time to spend with you.”
“Really?” Jenny was completely elated again. “Oh, Auntie Callie! I’m so excited!!”
“Me too, baby girl. Me too.” Callie smiled wide and hugged the little girl tightly.
Chapter4
Callie slept for a good portion of the day and woke up in time to have dinner with Noel and Jenny before heading in to work. She grinned at them and promised them that it was the last weekend that she would be away from them. All of them were ecstatic about it.
Callie had never been so happy walking into the strip club where she had worked for so long. Never had she felt so good there. The moment that Max saw her, he stopped what he was doing and froze for a moment, and then a sort of sad expression came over his face.
She went to him beaming, and he nodded. “Okay. I know this look. I’ve seen this look on a lot of ladies. So what’s the story? You met the man of your dreams, you fell in love and you’re getting married? You won the lottery? You got hired on at your dream job? Why are we losing you?”
Callie gasped with a laugh at him. “How on earth did you know?”
He shrugged. “How do I know anything? I’ve been around this block so many times that there’s a rut where I’m standing. So? What it is?”
She couldn’t help grinning, even though he was looking at her so sadly. “I got a contract job that paid me a lot of money. Computer stuff. I’m not going to need to work for a long, long time.” She let out a long sigh, almost as though she had physically let a weight go off her back.
He nodded. “I really am glad for you, Callie. You’re a good girl; one of the best that we’ve ever had here, and you work really hard. You ever need a recommendation you got a solid one from me. Also, if you ever need a job again, this one is always open to you, though I know that you wouldn’t want to be here unless you had to be.”
“Thank you, Max. You’ve been amazing.” She walked around the bar to him and hugged him tight. When she let him go, she handed him an envelope.
He frowned and looked at her. “What’s this?”
She gave him a nod and a smile. “Thanks for always looking out for me. It meant a lot.” She grinned and he opened it and gasped at the thick stack of cash inside.
“You don’t owe me this. I can’t take this.” He shook his head and held it out to her. She only stepped back away from him.
“That’s for you and Sal. Do something nice for her. You work hard here and you two deserve some fun. Go take her to Disneyland or something. Hawaii. I don’t know. Somewhere good.” Callie grinned as tears stung her eyes.
He turned away from her and brought his hand to his face. After a long moment he looked back at her again with red eyes. “You’re a good girl, Callie. You know, we got three dancers here tonight. We have a guest dancer who showed up. I was going to have her open for one set, but she can do a double set, if you want to skip the stage tonight. We can call it good now.”
Callie swallowed hard. “Thank you, Max. I think I’ll let her do the double, and maybe I’ll go home and watch a movie with Mama and Jenny. But I’m going to go say goodbye to Trixie and Felicity first.”
H
e nodded and gave her a wave. “Bye now. All the best luck in the world to you and yours. Don’t you be a stranger.” He looked as if he knew he wouldn’t see her again, and he clutched the envelope in both of his hands tightly as he watched her head to the back room.
When she had said her goodbyes she headed out of the door and nearly crashed into Alexander Kingston, who was rushing in. They were both caught off guard, and both of them stopped and stared at each other for a moment, and then they laughed, standing outside in the bright sunshine.
“You look so beautiful in the sunlight,” he said quietly, gazing at her.
“Thank you.” She smiled widely at him, feeling butterflies go wild in her belly. She couldn’t believe how much he made her feel like a school girl. No man had ever had that effect on her before.