Page 31 of Biker Orc Baby Daddy
"I don't need?—"
"Nonsense. You're part of the plaza family now."
He loops his arm through mine—carefully, so he doesn't jostle Orry—and starts walking.
"This is the bullpen. That's where the analysts sit and crunch numbers and pretend they understand cryptocurrency."
A woman in cat-eye glasses flips him off without looking up from her screen.
Colum grins. "See? Thriving workplace culture."
I laugh despite myself.
He shows me the break room, the conference space, the corner office he's turned into a "creative think tank," which appears to be a beanbag chair and a whiteboard covered in illegible scrawl.
"And here—" He stops in front of a glass-walled office. "—is where the magic happens."
I glance inside.
It's tidy. Obsessively so. Desk organized with military precision. Shelves lined with binders color-coded by label. Asmall potted succulent in the corner that looks like it's been measured for optimal placement.
And sitting at the desk, glasses perched on his nose, is an orc.
He's tall. Broad-shouldered. Olive-tinted skin with a faint green undertone that catches the light.
He's also wearing a button-up shirt with apocket protector.
I blink.
Colum knocks on the glass.
The orc looks up.
"Gunther! Come meet Cecie."
Gunther stands, and I revise my earlier assessment.
He's not just tall. He'stall.The kind of tall that makes me feel like I'm looking up at a very polite, very nerdy tree.
He steps out of the office, and I notice?—
Glasses. Wire-rimmed, slightly crooked, like he's pushed them up his nose a thousand times today.
Faint ink stain on his shirt pocket.
A watch with a calculator function strapped to his wrist.
He's theoppositeof Ridge.
And yet.
Something about him feels?—
Stop.
I shove the thought away.
"Cecie, this is Gunther Ridgeway. My right-hand man and the reason this place runs at all."
