I’d been staring at the same reply for hours now. On my phone, then on my television-sized monitor that I should be working on. I had my preliminary notes back from Nelson, my contact at GameSoft. Only I couldn’t concentrate on the thousands of lines of code.
Nope, it was the seven sentences that had my brain reeling and my body way overheated. Then again it was still fucking hot as hades at eleven in the evening. The vaulted ceilings of my A-frame cabin usually kept things pretty cool. Add in the lazy fans buzzing above me and things should have been copacetic in my life.
Again, that was a big ole nope.
I crossed to my wine fridge and unearthed a Malbec. I needed to chill the fuck out.
This woman was making me nuts and she didn’t have a damn clue I existed.
Story of my life.
The slightly flirty tone under a veneer of politeness told me she thought it was a stranger. And okay, so we were near strangers. A few mumbled words between coffee and food orders did not make a friendship.
Because I was a moron and couldn’t get up the nerve to actually speak to her.
Where the hell was my electric corkscrew?
“Christ,” I muttered as I dug through my drawers. My older brothers had been here for the first football games of the season. The wall projector was too much of a draw when they wanted to go over each and every play with the newest coach for the Giants.
Me? I didn’t give a crap. I enjoyed football enough to let my idiot brothers come over, but I’d rather watch a movie all things considered.
But as usual, they’d ransacked my kitchen. And my wine bar since they’d finished off the beer. And I hadn’t replenished. At least they’d left me one bottle.
I found my manual corkscrew and frustration notched up with each twist. Too much frustration evidently, since I shredded the cork into the wine.
I poured half the bottle into a wide glass and picked out the shrapnel of cork. I didn’t even let it breathe. All the things I’d been taught when I toured the Andreas winery a few months ago went right out the window. But damn if they didn’t make a helluva wine.
With two long pulls, the warmth curled up from my empty belly and splashed through my veins. I pressed my hand to the window and tried to center myself with my favorite view. Moonlight shimmering off the lake was exactly why I’d built my house here.
The half-empty glass hung from my fingers as I cooled my forehead on the glass. The alcohol was definitely doing its job. Enough that maybe, just maybe, I could figure out a way to write back to Veronica.
Everyone called her Vee, but to me she fit her full name. Just as she was the only person on this earth who had used my given name since my school days.
But right now, she didn’t know the man behind the messages was Murphy Masterson.
I was as nameless and solitary as the handle I’d used for my email.
What I’d named my company.
I didn’t hide my name, but I certainly didn’t advertise th
at I was behind the LLC. It was just easier in the gaming world to have a few layers with so much theft of code and dark web sales. I could protect myself well enough without going to felonious levels like some of my compatriots.
I padded on bare feet to the bottle of wine and refilled my glass before heading to my work station. I set the glass down between my ergonomic split keyboard. There had been some nights when I’d put a thirty-ounce cold brew coffee right there to get work done. To talk to Veronica, I might need the same size wine glass.
“Liquid courage, don’t steer me wrong.”
I opened my browser and found her email again.
Normally, I used an email program, but I didn’t want anything tracking back to me right now. I tapped my lip with my wine glass as I read her letter one more time.
Did I want to keep my manners?
Did I want to slide into that flirty banter she was looking for?
That I saw her use with Lucky today. Well, maybe. I wasn’t really sure if she’d flirted with him. But they’d been chatting and he’d definitely been in his flirt mode.
My fingers tightened on the fragile stem of my glass. No, I couldn’t go there.