Page 73 of Seducing Bran
Great, their relationship had diminished to small talk in the span of twenty-four hours. “Not the best.”
“Yeah, I was pretty upset after last night.”
Bran cleared his throat. “Me too, but…that’s not the only reason I had a bad day. It turns out the program you wrote malfunctioned this morning. We shut it down, and I called the company. It will take weeks to rebuild.”
“Wait, what?”
“The program misdirected two hundred orders this morning.”
“That’s not possible,” she said.
“I don’t know what to tell you. It happened.”
“I’m coming over.”
Bran sat up in his seat. “You don’t need to do that. I’ve got a programmer from Tech Banquet working on it.”
“You’re firing me?”
“Of course not. But I hired you through Tech Banquet and they sent someone else.”
“Why didn’t you call me first? I wrote the program.”
Because he was a big fat chicken?
“This is bullshit,” she said. “And so was last night. But I can’t worry about that right now.”
Normally, Ireland’s anger was a total turn-on. But right now, his chest tightened. He didn’t like upsetting her.
“Do me a favor,” she said. “Have someone let me in so I can see what’s going on. I’ll be over there in twenty minutes.”
“I’ll do better than that. I’ll let you in myself.”
She sighed. “Fine, but this isn’t about us and what happened last night. This is about the program.”
“Agreed,” he said. Though it was about more than the program. It was about everything, but he wasn’t opening up that can of worms.
How darehe not pull her in when things had gone south this morning? And after his shit-poor reaction to their accident last night? Ireland wanted to strangle Bran.
He might as well have blamed her for not reminding him to wear a condom last night. A woman could get caught up in the moment too! It was that damn mouth of his. What he’d done to her with his tongue had given her an orgasmic mind-numbing. How was a woman supposed to function under those conditions?
They’d made a mistake. Shit happened. But they were grown-ass adults. Bran was so focused on his past that he couldn’t see beyond it to support her and not make it all about him. And now, he’d gone around her for a program she’d written.
Her code was flawless. She’d checked and double-checked it before she made the software live. That didn’t mean she couldn’t make mistakes. But to just go over her head like that and call Tech Banquet without even consulting her? Did he have no faith in her at all?
It was late, nearly ten, but Club Tahoe, and all the casinos in South Lake Tahoe, didn’t sleep. People buzzed around the lobby as Ireland made her way to the lakeside end of the resort, where Prime and the now-closed shops resided. She pulled on the door to Prime, but it was locked.
Bran looked up from a table nearby, laptop open. He stood and walked over, opening the door for her. “Thanks for coming.”
Her heart jumped into her throat at seeing him. Part of her wanted to hug him, and the other part wanted to shove him.
She gestured to the computer. “You mind if I use your laptop? I’m assuming it’s connected to the server?”
He took in her face, as though trying to read what was going on inside her head.Good luck,she thought.
“Sure,” he finally said, and stepped aside.
Ireland sat at the table and pulled out her headphones. She needed to focus in order to figure out what the issue was. She couldn’t do that while Bran stood there, staring at her. So she turned on music and attempted to tune out Bran and the riot of emotions he brought out in her.
