Page 18 of Some Like It Royal

“I warn you, I make a terrific sundae. I used to work at an ice-cream shop in high school. We had to make every single dessert on the menu—and they hada lot—to be sure we got the presentation right.” She drizzled chocolate in perfect swirls on both before claiming the whipped cream and adding a generous mound. The nuts she sprinkled with care, and slipped a spoon into the side of his bowl before passing it over. “Sugar’s up.”

“Looks good.” He put a spoonful of the confection in his mouth. The sugar overload hit like a brick, but she was right—it was spectacular.

“Thank you.” She dug right into hers, and they ate in relative quiet on opposite sides of the kitchen island. “What kind of software do you create?”

“Hmm?” He lifted a brow, chasing an escapee nut trying to sink into the melting ice cream.

“Spherecast? It’s a software company. What kind of software do you do? I mean—video games? Finance software? Shoe comparison app that lets you take a picture of shoes and finds them for you online?” A drip of chocolate hovered at the corner of her mouth. It looked more edible than the ice-cream sundaes.

“We design a lot of things.” And he needed to stop staring at her mouth. “Water?”

“Actually, I want coffee. I know it’s weird, but I always get cold after eating ice cream—which is the point, I know. But coffee sounds good. Maybe? Please?” She batted her eyelashes in such a patently false show of modesty that he laughed.

“Sure. Have a preference?” He motioned to the espresso machine then the single cup maker. The single-cup maker also had a carafe option. He preferred straight black coffee when he was working. At her shrug, he just flicked the carafe option on. He could reset it when they were done.

“Define a ‘lot of things’?” She licked her spoon clean and claimed both their bowls to rinse out in the sink.

“Finance software.” He waited for her nose to wrinkle and suppressed another smile when it did. “Database tools. Retail processing software, shopping carts and occasionally a video game here or there. We’re just getting our feet wet in that department, though. Mostly we specialize in high-end security, network internal and external.” He picked up the ice-cream tub and the whipped-cream can to put them back where they went. In a couple of minutes the center island was clean and she wiped it with a damp cloth as the carafe burbled and hissed the last of the brew.

“Huh. Why software? I mean I know it’s lucrative, but why did you get into designing it?” She rinsed her hands off and passed him the two coffee cups they drank out of and washed up that morning.

Filling both, he shrugged. “Just something I was good at. I got my first computer when I was eight or nine. Wrote my first program at ten and never looked back.”

“What was your first program?” She sipped the coffee and leaned back against the counter, looking more relaxed than she had all day.

“You’ll laugh.” His lips twisted and he took a drink of the coffee. She was right—it was the perfect level of heat to chase away the chill of their dessert.

“I promise, I’ll try not to laugh too hard.” Her impudent, irrepressible grin drew him. He liked her brand of honesty.

“It was a stats tool.”

She squinted one eye closed and tilted her head. “How would that be funny?”

“Because,” he lifted his mug, “it was for an online game so I could get the best gear with the most attributes for my characters.”

Her mouth opened. “Why?”

“Because a lot of the good gear was BOP.” At her quizzical look, he chuckled. He’d already let his inner nerd out of the bag. “It means bind on pickup. When you went on raids with groups, you had to know whether you could really use an item before you took it, because you couldn’t give it away. Raids were a big thing and you were often limited to winning one item. I wanted to make sure whatever item I was after I could use and was the best for my character class. I created a database that let me see how adding or taking away a piece would affect my overall strength, health and talents. The best combos I saved and that way I knew what to get.”

“What you’re saying is that it was a shoe comparison program for geeks?” No malice or criticism echoed in her words, but the analogy wasn’t that far off.

“More or less.”

She grunted, the corners of her eyes crinkling. “That’s kind of cool.”

“Yeah, well, I thought so. When it worked well, I put it on the net—that way others could use it—and in six months I had a lot of hits and an offer from the game company to buy it. They wanted to add it to their own tools on their site.”

“All right. It’s funny, but I’m impressed. How old were you?”

“Eleven—or twelve maybe. I’d really tweaked the software by then, and set it up so all I had to do was update it with new tables for new equipment during game updates. But after I sold it to them, they charged a subscription fee to use it. That kind of annoyed me, because the work was done and the players already paid to play the game. But I learned from that error in judgment. The next time I built something like that I made it free, and I didn’t take a gaming company’s offer to buy it out.” It also gave him the drive to look into computer degrees and programming design in high school. By his senior year, he’d finished three college-level courses and had gotten a full scholarship to CalTech.

“That’s really cool.”

“What about you? Why acting?” He regretted the question the moment he asked it. The cheerful gleam in her eyes shuttered behind a more guarded expression. She retreated from the easy intimacy of the chat and he was left to wonder why.

“That’s a long story for another night.” She finished the cup and rinsed it out, setting it on the counter. “I think I’ll try to get some sleep now.”

He wanted to pursue the issue, but she walked away and the stiffness returned to her posture. “I think I’ll do some work. Be up in a bit.”

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