Page 10 of Written By a Woman

“…Can I?” Mary asked, making me blink and focus on my friend and the conversation she was having.

“No.” Nikhil laughed at Mary right when he met my eyes. I had missed a sentence or two of conversation, “Can you do that?”

“I’m sorry, what?” I asked, blinking, and focusing back in. Damn, how long had I been staring at Zaid’s beautiful, sculpted cheekbones?

“Simon is going to be out for a couple of weeks,” Nikhil smiled, not irritated at all that he had to repeat himself, “And we are hiring two more senior-level engineers. Would you mind sitting in with me on the initial interviews?”

I smiled at Mary, whose arms were crossed over her chest in irritation, “Of course.”

“Excellent.” Nikhil reached out and patted Mary on the shoulder, “You won’t ask fair questions and you will scare my interviewees off.”

“Maybe you should interview more competent engineers then.”

At that, Zaid’s lips twitched a little bit as he fought a grin, before his hand came up to wipe across his face to hide it.

“I am trying, but we need to give them a chance to prove their competence in a friendlier environment,” Nikhil jutted his thumb toward my direction, “Which is why Signe is sitting in instead of you.”

“Ugh,” Mary playfully rolled her eyes before starting to walk back to her desk and calling over her shoulder, “I’m still waiting on Andres!”

“I’ll talk to him!” Nikhil gave her a thumbs up before turning back to me, “Jacqueline has already screened these candidates and helped me narrow things down. So we only have two or three short interviews in the next few weeks. I can’t quite remember which day. Does that work for your schedule?”

I nodded, grabbing my mouse to click open my calendar to double-check, but my days were always flexible, “I think so.”

“I’ll send you the invites when I get them,” Nikhil smiled and turned to Zaid, “Hopefully we can get these two hired and ready to go in time for the product team to calm down.”

“Hopefully,” Zaid’s low voice agreed.

“This is Brandon…” The CEO suddenly answered a phone call and started marching off toward his office, lifting a hand to wave goodbye to the two men in front of me. I waved my hand goodbye, but he didn’t acknowledge it. So I shifted my hand underneath my desk and flipped him off.

I then turned to glance back at Zaid and Nikhil, still chatting in front of my desk, only to see Zaid lifting his gaze from my lap, tipping one corner of his lips up a little bit. It wasalmosta smirk.

My whole body froze.

Did he just see me flip off the CEO underneath my desk?

Based on the knowing look in his eye before he turned to pay attention to whatever Nikhil was saying, probably.Shit. Like every other awkward interaction I had with Zaid, I pasted a smile on my face and got to work on my computer to pretend that nothing weird happened.

The method was tried and true.

Finally, Nikhil and Zaid continued towards their offices as they finished their conversation, something I tuned out because it involved more coding and development words that I didn’t care too much about. What I did care about, shamefully, was getting my fill of Zaid’s glorious backside as he walked away from me. If I found out a co-worker was staring at my butt as much as I stared at Zaid’s, I would be fairly uncomfortable. And yet, here I was. I blatantly ogled him whenever I could because I was officially a huge hypocrite.

I just wanted to bite his hammies, nothing crazy.

I reminded myself in these moments that it wasn’t like Iactuallywanted to sleep with Zaid. I hardly knew him beyond our roles in the office, but our first one-on-one interaction together had been…underwhelming.

Zaid was shy, that much was obvious.

As was the way he wouldn’t meet my eye at all for the first few days of me starting here, even when I made sure to paste a friendly smile on my face every time we passed each other. I constantly remembered our first real conversation, where he basically told me to leave him alone until he was in the right headspace to train a new employee on how he liked his reports and presentations formatted.

I was an assistant to Zaid, the CTO; as well as Jacqueline, the head of HR; and Brandon, the CEO. Talks were being made about officially hiring a CFO here soon, but that hadn’t happened yet. I had plenty of work to do for Jacqueline and Brandon when I first started, so I wasn’t too disappointed that Zaid had dismissed me so suddenly, but it was still alittledisappointing, nonetheless. Especially seeing how chummy the guy seemed to be with Brandon over the last year or so.

Mildly rude, business-obsessed, and introverted men were cute to read about in romance novels. Unfortunately, they weren’t as cute in reality. This is where another spark of Zayne and Sydney’s story came to me. I couldn’t help myself. A man with the physique of literal perfection being shy and short with his words? All I had to do was write a sentence about how he was originally shy and short with his words because his brain just couldn’t comprehend howgorgeousSydney was, and boom. A tried-and-true romance was born.

The miscommunication trope has its problems, but many readers were suckers for it—every single time.

Personally, I liked a little bit more personality in my partners.

Not that I was against shy men, but usually if a guy was shy on a date, it was because, well, we were on a date. I had the motive to break through his shy walls and get to know him. A shy CTO that could sometimes come across as rude and demanding? I wasnotmotivated to help him not be shy around me. We were both professionals and adults. If he wanted to be friendlier with me, he would. So far, he was a little friendlier, but not a lot. And that was fine by me. Boundaries, and stuff. Beyond the littlealmostsmirks he would give me, or the eye contact he would break first every single time, it was clear that we would never be more than co-workers.

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