Chapter Twenty

After lunch, I had a series of strategy meetings with the developers. As we talked through our team goals for the next year, I tried to keep my mind on task and not get distracted by the ongoing interview in the conference room. Max was just entering the last and most important leg—his hour with Jack Sorenson and Paul.

Paul asked challenging questions in interviews, but he was always fair. Jack, however, could be a bit of a prick. I’d sat in on some interviews where he’d asked bizarre questions for no reason, other than to make the interviewee extremely uncomfortable. There was no need for him to even be part of the interview process since VPs made their own hiring decisions. But he insisted on attending an interview for every senior position. He said it was because he genuinely cared about the quality of the personnel we hired, but I suspected that he really just liked to make people nervous.

I crossed my fingers and hoped that Max remained as unflappable as usual.

As I finished with the team and retreated to my office, Ron from sales appeared with Zack Morris. “Ready to hammer out the terms of our contract with Away-Ho?” Ron asked me with forced cheer. From the strain in his voice, I guessed that Morris was just as charming today as he’d been on Friday.

“Come on in,” I invited.

“Let me grab my laptop and another chair.” Ron disappeared briefly down the hall. Morris plopped into the seat across from my desk, giving me a long-suffering look as though we’d somehow forced him to do business with us. He didn’t say a single word in greeting. I supposed I should have taken the high road with some small talk, but I didn’t feel like it today. I just sat in silence and returned his displeased, flat-eyed stare.

His phone beeped loudly, likely announcing an incoming email. He raised it to his face and read something, his lips twitching in a sneering kind of smile. Since he was so inclined, I unlocked my laptop and checked my own email to make sure nothing urgent had arrived in the last few minutes.

The last item in my inbox made my blood run cold. “MAJOR TEASER WARNING!!!” screamed the subject line from the Sex Ghost.

“No!” Luckily, I’d only screamed the word inside of my head; Morris didn’t look up. I opened the email and read the horrifying text. It’s your lucky day, FSG fans. In thirty minutes, I’ll be sending out a red-hot major teaser for my upcoming Friday night release. You’re not going to want to miss this one… I had a real good time in Chicago.

Oh. Fuck.

Ron dragged a chair through the doorway—and stopped short when he saw my face. “What’s wrong, Tess?” he asked. “Disaster protocol for one of our clients?”

I shook my head at him weakly. “Nothing.” Just my personal disaster. Max had said that thirty minutes would be plenty of time to stop the teaser…but he was in the middle of a sixty-minute job interview. If he knew anything about interview etiquette, he wouldn’t check his phone at all. He probably wouldn’t see the warning email until the teaser had already been sent out.

Ron sat down and raised his eyebrows, waiting for me to take charge. But at the moment, I couldn’t even remember what the hell Away-Ho did, let alone how to lead the contract discussion. Stalling, I gestured between Ron and Morris. “Why don’t you bring me up to speed on everything you two have covered this afternoon?”

Morris rolled his eyes and muttered “fuckin’ waste of time” loud enough for us both to hear. To further make his point, he literally tossed his phone on my desk and stared at the ceiling.

Ron began to outline the terms and conditions discussed so far, and I tuned him out. How could I interrupt Max’s interview and get him out of there to help me stop the teaser?

You can’t. The voice inside my head was loud and bossy. I couldn’t hear anything over it even as I watched Ron’s lips move. This job interview was Max’s big chance. I had no professional reason to burst in and end it. If he was just with Paul, I’d risk an interruption, but there was no way I could do that with our CEO in the room. Jack Sorenson would think it extremely odd, and it would reflect poorly on us both. After his lunchtime confession about SideDoor, I knew Max didn’t need anything else reflecting on him poorly.

I would just have to suffer with the teaser being out in the world until he was free. How many people on the FSG’s mailing list would watch it immediately anyway? (I conveniently ignored the memory where Max said that the major teaser campaigns always triggered a spike in site traffic.)

The wild roaring in my ears was so loud, I was lucky to catch the end of Ron’s summary. “So that’s where we are,” Ron finished. “If you could provide Zack with an itemized list of project deliverables for him to review, we can start there.”

My hands decided to cooperate and pulled up my Away-Ho notes with no involvement from my brain. Muscle memory is a beautiful thing. “Absolutely, Ron.” I showed my teeth to Morris. “I have a list of thirty-eight bulleted items for you to review. I’ll print us some copies.” With a few clicks, I sent the document to the printer just outside my office. As I stood to retrieve them, I caught sight of Morris’s phone on my desk, his screen still displaying his email app.

His most recent email—the one he’d been sneer-smiling at—was the major teaser warning from the Sex Ghost.

My hands and face went entirely numb. I stumbled in my boots as I left the room to grab the printouts. Zack Morris was an email subscriber to the FSG. In less than twenty minutes, he could see me engaging in a graphic sex act.

This was so bad I couldn’t even think of the right word for it. Cataclysmic, maybe? It would be bad enough if someone internal watched it and reported me. But if an external client did? Particularly the very client Jack Sorenson wanted so badly?

Toast. I was toast.

The printouts were warm on my icy hands. I gripped them so tightly they were already wrinkled by the time I handed copies to Ron and Morris. Get ahold of yourself. This was not the end of the world. Maybe the montage wouldn’t even show my face. Morris wouldn’t know it was me from a tiny excerpt that just showed my ass, right?

Oh God. I wanted to put my face on my desk and cry.

Instead I detached completely. I felt as though I were watching the scene in my office while floating above it. Was this what going into shock felt like? There was the calm, strawberry-blonde woman talking through a detailed list. There was her colleague Ron, typing notes while he listened. There was the asshole client who continually yawned and rolled his eyes while checking his phone every two minutes.

The strawberry blonde finished her explanation and leaned back in her chair. Her eyes caught on the clock. Eight minutes until the major teaser was sent. “What questions do you have?” she asked the client.

Then the office door flew open, Max dashed in, and my body and brain rejoined in a frantic, jarring smack.

Max’s mouth dropped open, but he took in the scene quickly. “Sorry I’m late,” he said to Ron. To Zack Morris, he extended a hand. “Tess asked me to join the discussion in case you had any follow-up technical questions.”

“Great idea!” Ron said enthusiastically. Even Morris looked minutely appreciative. Clearly, the more people who fawned over him, the better.

Max looked up at me, his eyes an insistent dark laser. “In fact, Tess, why don’t I sit at your computer just in case I need to look up anything on the servers to answer his questions?”

My heart thudded so hard against my chest that it actually hurt. He knew. Max was going to try to stop the teaser. “S-sure,” I said, standing so quickly I banged my knee against the desk. I pressed myself against the back wall as Max squeezed into my chair.

Morris sat up straighter in his chair and puffed out his chest. “The first question I have is about number 14.”

I made a big performance of raising my printout and poising a pen directly above it. “Go on.” Below me, Max was typing frantically. He had two windows open, one accessing a server and one a plain, white text window.

Morris jabbed at his own printout and then lifted his paw and did one of his typical air stabs toward my chest. “This deliverable says that my team would have to be involved in testing. If we’re paying you all this money, I don’t understand why my team has to do a damn thing.”

Easy one. Lots of clients asked about this point, although they were generally less rude. My mouth went on autopilot with my stock response.

Below me, in the text window, Max typed: I’m in his server, and I found the teaser. I corrupted the file. The Ghost tried to re-upload it, but I kept corrupting it. He’s running out of time to make his subscriber deadline. Since he can’t get the Chicago montage to work, I’m betting he’s trying to find a substitute file or create another teaser.

It was quite a feat to deliver a speech on dual-team testing with my mouth while reading and deciphering Max’s message with my brain. But I pulled it off. I gave Max a small nod to acknowledge that I understood.

Morris harrumphed. He didn’t exactly like my explanation, but he didn’t dive deeper. “I also have a question about number 29.” This one was on pricing, and to my relief, Ron stepped in to field it.

Max elbowed my hip. Hard. I looked down at his latest message. He’s uploading a different file. We need to watch it to make sure you’re not in it.

Max started to double-click on the file, but I smacked his hand so hard Morris gave me strange look before turning back to browbeat Ron. Giving Max a pointed glare, I reached down and muted my computer’s speakers. The last thing we needed right now was to blare a bunch of porno sounds through my office.

Max’s lips twitched, and he shook his head in apology. Then he double-clicked on the file. Please don’t let it be another montage with me in it. Please. Please don’t let Max have cut his interview short only to get rewarded for his trouble by seeing a clip of me having sex with the Ghost.

For once, my prayers were answered. It wasn’t a montage at all. The video featured just one girl, a young brunette gyrating on top of Westley, her mouth open and boobs bouncing. Max fast-forwarded through the whole minute of the file to make sure there were no surprises.

Not you.

Fifteen minutes later, the three of us had fielded four more Morris questions, and he’d grown bored with us. “I’ll have my team review the rest and get back to you,” he mumbled, staring at his phone.

“I’ll walk you out,” Ron said.

Max and I watched them leave just as the new email from the Sex Ghost arrived with a link to the poor brunette’s teaser. The text of the email had typos. Hope you all enjoy this seek peek at one of my Phoenix Foxes, which is the city I’ll be releasing at the end of November. The ladies of Chicago didn’t want to cooperate in their major teaser—

“They sure as hell didn’t,” I muttered.

—but they’ll give you a good show when I release all of their videos on Friday night.

“No, they won’t,” Max said.

I had a sudden thought. “While we’re in his server world anyway, should we try to find and delete my whole video?”

“No,” he said firmly. “The teasers are stored in an easy-to-access, unsecure location. Probably because they’re free and no one has to pay to see them. The rest of his stuff is in more heavily secured and possibly alarmed areas. I want to be methodical and go with my game plan on Friday night.”

“Makes sense.” Wrung out, I maneuvered around my desk again and flopped in the chair Morris just vacated. I wished I had a bottle of bourbon in my bottom drawer, Mad Men style. “I feel really bad for the Phoenix Fox, but, Jesus, I’m grateful it wasn’t the montage with me. Thank you so much.”

How had I gotten so lucky? If Max had checked his phone during the interview, Jack Sorenson would absolutely hate that. “How did you know the warning was sent?”

“I’d set a special signal,” he admitted, his face flushing. “Any email from the Ghost makes my phone vibrate in a particular pattern. I knew the moment the warning arrived. I kept thinking you would make some excuse to pull me out of the interview.”

I didn’t say anything, but he wouldn’t let it go. “Why didn’t you come get me?”

“You were in the middle of y-your interview,” I stammered. He looked up at me, but his glasses were doing that annoying tilt where I couldn’t see his eyes behind the glare.

There was a long pause. “Anyway,” Max finally went on. “I improvised. I told them I needed to duck out early because I’d promised to help you with Zack Morris.” He laughed. “Which was a lie that became true. I had no idea he was actually in your office until I burst in.”

I joined his laughter. That was actually perfect. In my meeting with Paul earlier in the day, I’d mentioned how disrespectful Morris had been on Friday to me and Ron and how well Max had handled his questions. “Nicely done.”

Max stood and walked to the door. Pausing with his hand on the knob, he said, “I can’t believe you were going to let that teaser be sent out because you didn’t want to interrupt the interview.”

His warm scrutiny made me feel twitchy. I shrugged, stood, and switched my voice to breezy. “I figured it’d be minimum exposure,” I lied. No need for Max to know that Zack Morris was probably watching the Phoenix Fox right now. “Probably not a big deal as long as you could have removed it sometime this afternoon.”

He opened his mouth, no doubt to argue with my stupidity, but then he shut it again. “Oh.” Good. I didn’t want to talk about it. I didn’t want to even think about it…about the sacrifice I almost made.

“Thanks again!” I gave him a cheery wave, sat down at my desk, and began to industriously type nonsense into a blank email.