Page 63 of The Billionaire's Wake-up-call Girl

She has to get something. I feel her staring again. Willow’s a whiz with computers, but she’s nosy. She always has been.

“Spill,” she says.

“Maybe I don’t like unanswered questions. Sorry to disappoint.”

“Oh you’re hardly disappointing. I haven’t seen you in this good a mood in forever.”

“You think this is a good mood?”

“For you it is.” She refreshes her screen. “You seem almost happy.”

“Must be all the baby goat videos I’ve been watching.”

She sniffs, like that’s a joke, and sits up on my desk.

Seven could’ve asked anything of me at the moment, and she asked me to watch baby goat videos. It’s insane. And she bakes and meticulously frosts special-occasion cookies. Gives them to her friends or family, probably. Though she doesn’t sound East Coast. She didn’t grow up here; she feels too easygoing, somehow. A transplant. She’d send them to her family. She’d be close with her family. Sentimental.

I stare at my screen while Willow scrolls through her phone.

Frosted cookies. What’s the point of pouring time into making something that’s going to be consumed in five seconds? She should have more respect for her artistry if that’s what she loves to do.

I think about telling her that, challenging her on that, on the next call. She’ll probably think it’s arrogant. She likes to keep control. And then I’d make her touch herself, because she likes to give it up, too.

“What’s up with the daffy look?” Willow asks.

“Refresh it again.”

“Not until you tell me what’s up.”

“I have this wake-up-call girl that I…have questions about.”

“Questions,” she says. Like that’s not the right word.

“Yes, questions. And it’s using up bandwidth I need for solving dehydrated Vossameer.”

When I look up, her expression is tender, a little bit somber. “You get to have things for yourself,” she says.

“I know.”

“Yeah, I don’t think you do. You deserve to be happy even if you don’t nail this new formula.”

I give her a hard look.

Willow holds up her hands. “Fine. I’m shutting up. Here’s me shutting up, okay?” She stabs the button, refreshing again. “I mean, they may not email back forever.”

“Judging from the correspondence so far, there’s a better than fifty percent probability they reply in the first ten minutes,” I tell her. “Otherwise, some point today.”

“Is this something you’ve worked out scientifically?”

“Not that hard,” I snap.

She smiles.

I refresh. “Nothing.”

The email will come back to both of our machines. She’s set something up where replying to the email I sent will give us information about the location of the sender. A little extra something hidden in the email that will get it to bounce off a specifically honed server. Or something. She’s the computer whiz, not me.

She thinks we can get the IP address for starters, but depending on what kind of email setup the boss of Hello Morning is using, we could get much more. An intersection. An address. Maybe even a name.

---