Page 55 of The Nanny and the Nerd
Penny stared at the doors. Her pulse hammered in her throat.
“Go easy on him, young lady. He’s not as detached and unfeeling as you’d think.”
“Are you sure about that?” Penny replied, raising an eyebrow.
Chuck hummed an amused response. “It was nice to make your acquaintance, Penny,” the man said, then sauntered back toward the park.
She narrowed her gaze. It was now or never. If she had laser eyeball superpowers, she’d have melted the Gale Gaming door handles clean off. She inhaled a centering breath that would have made Libby proud, then opened the doors and entered complete pandemonium.
Make that complete auditory pandemonium.
The phone at the empty receptionist’s desk rang. And the incessant trill tangled with the eardrum-popping blasts and pings coming from the second level as overlapping voices called out to each other frantically.
Did the platform crash again?
I found two more bugs in the intro sequence!
What the hell happened to the beta version? All the colors are off!
And where the hell is the coffee?
She didn’t recognize any of the voices and quickly realized that Chuck was right. Gale Gaming sounded more like the place where chaos went to die rather than a video game company. She was poised to take off and come back later when Jerome padded down the steps.
“Penny!” he exclaimed. “What are you doing here?”
A great question!
She pasted on a grin as a series of high-pitched explosions followed by a chorus of moos echoed through the office.
Jerome shook his head. “Now the audio files are messed up, too.”
Penny took a step toward the door. “I came to speak with Rowen, but I can come back at another time.”
The man scrubbed his hands down his face. He looked as if he hadn’t slept in days. “Sorry, I thought you were my husband. He’s supposed to bring me a clean shirt.”
She surveyed the man in his rumpled button-up. “Have you been at the office a while?”
Jerome rubbed his temples. “What day is it?”
“It’s Friday.”
“How is it Friday? We had six developers leave in the last three days. It’s an all-hands-on-deck situation with AI-77.”
A lump formed in her throat as guilt twisted in her gut. “I see.”
The trill of the phone started again, and Jerome’s eyes nearly popped out of his head.
“I can get that,” she said, heading toward the empty desk.
“You wouldn’t mind?” the man asked.
“No,” she answered, feeling for the man. He looked as if he could use a gallon of coffee and a hot shower.
“There’s a headset in the top drawer. We’ve got a meeting in five minutes. Rowen’s been coding nonstop the last twelve hours, and now I have to tell him that the audio is glitching. Are you sure you don’t mind answering the phone?” the man asked in a weary breath.
“Not at all,” she replied, heading to the desk. She plucked the headset from the drawer. The phone started to ring, and she tapped the button to answer. “Gale Gaming, how can I help you?” she said as Jerome pressed his hands into a prayer position and mouthedthank youbefore booking it up the steps.
The next few hours passed in a blur of penning messages and coming to realize how thinly Rowen Gale was stretched. Call after call from VPs in California, game designers, audio engineers, and marketing reps flooded in, and they each requested to speak with Rowen. Perhaps the idea that the guy had fled the Crystal Hills mansion for a little action was wrong. Okay, notperhaps. The guy was damned busy. She finished taking what seemed like message two million six hundred and thirty-two, deflated into the receptionist’s chair, then noticed something that had been missing all day.
