CHAPTER 1
Colette
If there was a dick of the year award, Blaze Hanson would win it. First of all, who the hell names their kid Blaze. It has to be fake. Everyone in the office knew it was fake, but so far, no one had been able to prove it. Second, Blaze would win the award because he probably did have the dick of the year. There were enough rumors swirling around the office about one-night stands, random girls showing up in the boss’ office and strange noises issuing out, angry arguments and those thumps sure as heck weren’t stacks of paper or binders being dropped on the floor.
Then there was the fact that his secretary, Betty-Anne, wouldn’t confirm the details, but walked around with a strange blush on her face for a week after she’d disappeared inside said office for a few hours one afternoon.
Blaze Hanson would also win ass of the year award.
Because he had a nice one of those too.
Unfortunately.
He also had a business partner who detested the fact that Blaze was basically a walking, talking sexual harassment suit waiting to happen. How the company hadn’t actually been sued yet was a mystery. Or maybe it had, and Blaze and Matt kept it on the DL. Big time.
While rumors swirled around the office, most of them pertaining to Blaze’s groin region, the size, the layout, and the debated fabulousness of said area, there was no hard proof that the boss every single female and a few of the male employees had a crush on, actually was a man-whore.
He was like a unicorn. Or at least, his sexuality was.
If he’d messed around with any of his staff, he’d either paid them to keep their mouths shut or they spent so much time pining after a man that was clearly a one night stand, or more like a few hours stand, that they couldn’t quite put their heartbreak into words. Maybe they didn’t want to betray him.
Either way.
When Blaze dropped the bomb on the office, a challenge to the entire place to pick up flagging sales and come up with new, innovative ideas, a challenge that offered the mysterious prize of anything the winner wanted, within reason- though that reason was far from defined or specifically laid out and fell into a huge grey area- Colette got to work.
It was bad enough that she was considered the office baby, a term that Blaze effing Hanson had actually dubbed her, and it stuck.
It was extra shitty that she was still a virgin, and everyone seemed to know it.
Which was why she put every single ounce of her energy, every molecule, every cell, every neuron, every muscle, every minute and every hour of every single day, for three sleepless weeks, into finishing her app. She did the artwork herself. All the graphics. The coding. Everything from start to finish.
The idea wasn’t exactly revolutionary. It was a game where the main character traveled around planting trees. Through it, the user was able to identify all sorts of different trees, learn their growing time, how many years it would take for them to reach maturity, what habitat they grew best in, temperature, climate, what threats they faced- disease, insects, predators- the whole deal. The best part about the game, in Colette’s humble opinion, which she’d been told was not at all humble, was that the little characters in the game were all animals that depended on those trees for life. You could pick your choice of northern animals, like beavers, squirrels, or owls, or to something more tropical and exotic, like monkeys or koalas.
The game itself was fun enough. It was a do-good, warm and fuzzies kind of thing while addressing very real issues about climate change and deforestation and also taught the end-user a ton about plant life. It was a sneaky kind of learning, though. Fun and educational.
Colette knew that if she’d pitched the idea at one of the staff meetings, Will, the head of development and Phil, head of marketing, would have shut her down. Will would have said the idea was boring, Phil would have called it pretentious.
They would have said it wouldn’t have sold. That it would be hard to market. Farfetched. That no one gave a shit about trees and that she was a granola hippie who missed the boat on what they were trying to do as a company, which was design fun apps that people actually wanted to buy. Education wasn’t exactly high up on the priorities list.
Her colleague Del’s game, with his big breasted, skimpily clad characters who got to engage in mud fights in twelve different stunning locations, was far more up Hanson and Blakley Apps & Development’s alley.
After weeks of development, the apps were launched, and it turned out, a bit of healthy competition never really did hurt anyone. At least anyone at HBAD, because apparently, Anna in sales, let it slip the week before that the company was doing better than it had in months.