Page 245 of Dirty Discipline, Vol. 2

Luckily, it won't cost me too much revenue, but he didn't fight hard enough to keep their account.

If he were anyone else, I'd fire him in a heartbeat. But Daniel… is too cute to fire.

The way he stared into my eyes this morning—paired with the delicious hot cocoa he made me after I drove him home last week—is a walking HR red flag.

I'm inviting him into my office to nip this in the bud.

I lead Daniel into the leather chair in front of my desk, then pull it out for him. "Sit."

Daniel gulps. "I hope I didn't do anything wrong."

Walking to my own chair, I recline in it, then cross my arms over my chest. Before I respond, I take a moment to stare at my new employee.

Holy… shit. He's even cuter than he was this morning. His bright, blue eyes shine with an unspecified intensity, deep and blinding.

They're the type of eyes you could stare into for a lifetime. The type of eyes you want to see shine when you spank him.

"Tell me how your call with Brock Financial went."

Brock Financial is the account Daniel lost. He spoke with their chief executive, Brent Brock, a man I went to Princeton with. We played on the same rugby team and occasionally tossed frisbees when we went up to New York for the afternoon.

"Oh, it was fine. I mean, Brent was kind of rude when he discussed the lag in the recent update to your software."

"What did you tell him?"

"I said I was sorry and that he should turn his computer off and then on again to see if the glitch stopped. He said he'd already done that multiple times."

I tap my index finger on my mahogany desk. "I'm listening in on your calls, Daniel. You know what I want to hear."

Daniel stares at his knees. "He said... he was excited to go to the Giants game next week."

"Did you jump at the chance to build rapport?"

"I chickened out and went back to talking about our software."

I pinch the bridge of my nose. "That's exactly what you're not supposed to do. I know Brent—I went to Princeton with him. Men like Brent don't know the first thing about software and they don't want to. They want to talk about sports, hunting, and boating in that particular order."

"I screwed that one up."

"All you needed to do was ask him about the big game coming up next week and he would've been putty in your hands."

Daniel makes a face. "But… I don't know about the big game coming up next week. Or if there even is a big game."

"There's always a big game."

Daniel slumps in his seat. "I majored in engineering for a reason. I'm not good with this sort of shit."

"You're too smart not to figure this social skills thing out."

"You threw me into the big leagues when I wouldn't even have made a minor league team. I should be buried in code, fixing glitches in software, not talking to bigshot clients with millions of dollars on the line."

"Hundreds of thousands." I make sure to correct this for Daniel's sake. "Brent isn't a million-dollar client."

Daniel pushes out a breath. "I'm just not good at this. I'm sure I'll get better, but today was rough."

I rest my chin on my palm. "Why?"

"I was nervous. Scared I'd screw something up. I didn't want to drive him away."

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