Those certainly hadn’t been there in high school.

He’d always been athletically built, but more lean and cut from a young metabolism and all the cardio playing football. This new muscular body was the product of his hard, laborious days. A tanned chest and the hint of oblique muscles appearing at the top of his jeans were almost enough for her to forgive the unmerciful hammering he was doing at… She rolled to look at the clock on the bedside table.

Ten fifteen?

Shit.

She sat up quickly. Too quickly. Her head throbbed, the pounding inside her brain keeping time with the pounding against the roof. Too much wine the night before.

The muffled sound of her cell phone ringing coming from somewhere among the bedsheets and pillows, her boss’s ringtone, had her moving all her electronics off the bed to try to locate the phone. She’d been awake until two a.m. working on the proposal for SmartTech Kids. Their new potential client needed an app aimed at kids and teens, and if Sarah had a shot at the promotion, she needed to push herself beyond her comfort zone of telecommunications and show her boss she could handle different kinds of accounts.

Finding the cell phone, she took a deep breath and tried to sound as wide awake as possible as she answered. “Gail! Hi!”

“Is there no cell service out there?”

Her boss’s chilly tone made her shiver. “So sorry, Gail. Yesterday was…eventful.” She’d spare her the details; Gail wasn’t one for water cooler chitchat. Her employees’ personal lives were of zero interest. Sarah knew absolutely nothing about her boss besides her hard-nosed business persona. She’d never met a spouse at any of the corporate events the company held, there were no family photos in her boss’s office, and her expensive suits were always pet-fur-free, so Sarah could only assume the company was Gail’s life. Unless there was a goldfish or something…

“I received your email last night with the revisions to the first proposal…”

Sarah held her breath. These revisions were the fourth round that her boss had requested. She was running out of ideas for ways to design the kid app the company was looking for. Not having kids, it was difficult for her to determine what they’d even use an app for in the first place. So far, she’d focused on practicality—a messaging system to connect with friends, a safety GPS locating system…but the company wanted the app to appeal to kids, not necessarily to their parents.

“It’s still not wowing me,” she said.

Not much wowed Gail. Almost impossible to impress, but there was such a sense of accomplishment and pride to be had whenever Sarah was able to garner any kind of praise from the woman. “I’m still coming up with ideas.”