Page 11 of Biker Orc Baby Daddy
Back at my desk,the spreadsheet is exactly as broken as I left it.
I fix Column G. Trace the error in J-14 to a misplaced parenthesis. Update the formulas and watch the numbers cascade into place with the satisfying logic of a solved puzzle.
This, I understand. Columns and rows and formulas that behave predictably. Variables I can control.
Not women who taste like cherries and slip away before sunrise.
My phone goes off again.
Stop sulking. Ask her to coffee.
I type back: I'm working.
You're spiraling. I can feel it from here.
That's not how feelings work.
Ask. Her. To. Coffee.
I set the phone face-down and stare at my monitor.
Here's what I know: she called herself Sis. She owns some sort of cosmetic glitter shop. She's funny and warm and terrible at sneaking out quietly. She has freckles I wanted to count.
Here's what I don't know: if she'd have looked at Gunther the same way she looked at Ridge.
The henna tattoos washed off Sunday morning. The leather jacket went back to Colum's brother. My glasses are perched on my nose where they belong, and my pocket protector has three pens, one mechanical pencil, and a tiny notebook for sudden calculations.
I am not Ridge. Ridge was a fantasy. A single night of pretending I could be someone confident and spontaneous and worth sneaking away with.
Gunther schedules things. Gunther plans. Gunther doesn't do one-night stands with beautiful strangers and certainly doesn't moon over them afterward like some protagonist in a romance novel.
Except apparently, Gunther does.
My email pings. Investor meeting moved to Thursday. Colum needs the projections by end of day tomorrow instead of this afternoon.
The projections take four hours instead of two because I keep getting distracted by the memory of her laugh.
Pathetic.
I finish at six, send the file to Colum with a subject line that says "Done" because anything more feels like too much effort, and lean back in my chair until it creaks.
The office is empty. Everyone else left an hour ago, off to lives that probably don't involve obsessing over women whose names they don't actually know.
Sis. She'd said it so casually when I asked. "Just call me Sis." And I'd been too busy trying to be Ridge, confident, mysterious Ridge who didn't need last names or phone numbers, to ask for clarification.
Brilliant, Gunther. Really top-tier decision-making.
I should go home. Order something bland and predictable for dinner, reorganize my bookshelves, maybe clean Clarence's screen with that special cloth I bought specifically for vintage calculator maintenance.
Instead, I pull open my desk drawer.
The hair tie sits exactly where I left it, coiled like a question mark next to my backup pocket protector. Navy blue with a small metal charm—a star, I think, though it could be a flower. Hard to tell.
I pick it up. Turn it over in my fingers.
What are you doing?
Colum's voice echoes in my head.Ask her to coffee.
