Page 101 of Pressure

He rang the doorbell several times, though he had no idea if she was home.

She yanked the door open with cash in her hand. "Sorry, I was in the bedroom..." her sentence trailed off when she realized he wasn't there to deliver food.

"Go home." Her words were terse.

"I can't. Talk to me."

The delivery driver stepped up with bags of Chinese. Lance fished a fifty-dollar bill out of his pocket and shoved it him.

"Beat it," he said, taking the food.

The driver froze for a minute until Lance glared at him. "Keep the change and beat it," he snarled.

"What are you going to do, hold my food hostage until I talk to you? You just gave that guy like a thirty-dollar tip."

He stared at the amount of food. "All of this was twenty bucks?"

"Cheap Chinese is the best. Can I have my dinner please?"

He clutched the bags.

"Come work with me. You'll be in charge of an entire department of developers. Full hiring and firing authority and you can implement whatever gender bias training you see fit, company-wide, not just in your department."

She whistled. "That's a pretty sweet offer."

"Don't say yes right now. Just say you'll think about it." He shoved the bags of food in her direction. "I'll let you eat your dinner and I'll send a courier over with an offer."

He took a step back as she held the bags and stared at him.

"I'm sorry, Marissa. I didn't mean to hurt you again and I know you did nothing to hurt me. Let me make it right. Even if you want nothing to do with me romantically. We can have a go between at work, so you never have to see me unless you want to."

She blew out a breath and shook her head. "I'll think about it. Now go away."

♦♦♦♦

Marissa watched as Lance walked away with slumped shoulders. She'd planned to spend the night working on code for a new app she wanted to market to potential investors in her new company, but he was offering her something far more lucrative and potentially game changing.

Could she work with him again? There was so much to lose. What was to stop him from making another baseless accusation?

She sat on her couch and opened a box of steaming food. She absently stirred the pork fried rice with her chopsticks as she contemplated her dilemma. She didn't have another session with Dr. Hoffman until next week, but she would kill to talk to the woman now.

He looked so dejected when she walked away, and she knew from the texts he'd sent her that he was genuinely apologetic.

She sighed and shoveled rice into her mouth. As she pushed chopsticks back into the box for another bite, her phone rang.

She frowned at the number.

"Hello?" she answered with hesitation.

"Marissa, it's Eli Barrett. I wondered if Solitaire could employ your expertise again."

"What can I do for you?"

"We're still not convinced we don't have a mole among us. Would you be willing to work with us and keep everything super hush hush? You've got skills and Lance is not in a good place right now."

She sighed. "Lance is the reason I have to say no. That's his system and I would report to him."

Eli cleared his throat. "No. You would be answering to me. I can make sure you don't have to interact with him unless you want to."

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