“Hey, you know Peyton Shaw, right?”

“Uh-huh.” She seemed to be tabulating figures on the screen. Finally, she turned. “What’s up?”

He shrugged, trying to seem nonchalant. “Nothing. Just thinking it would be cool if you invited her to the company party on Thursday.”

Andrea smiled. “Really? You do? You think it would be ‘cool’?”

Desmond sighed. “Andie—”

Her tone was taunting now. “Somebody’s got a crush.”

“Oh, please. What grade are you in?”

“I could ask you the same thing, lover boy.”

“Will you do it?”

“For a price.”

Desmond stood there, dreading her next words.

She handed him some papers. “These are the time sheets for hourly employees and contractors. I have to type these in every week and verify them. I want a web form where they enter their hours and it automatically downloads to our payroll system.”

Desmond opened his mouth to respond, but Andrea had more.

“And, I want error checking and validation. No non-numeric characters, verification on values outside expected ranges, the whole nine. And it better work in Netscape and IE.”

“Is that all? Automate your entire internship?”

“It’s a wicked world, Des. Even love has a price.” She eyed him dramatically. “And it don’t come cheap.”

“You’re a lunatic.”

“Email me the link for testing.”

He finished the web form before lunch.

The xTV party was a celebration of a new round of funding, a new release of their software, and half a dozen milestones they had hit. They were barreling closer to their vision of taking over television forever.

Desmond found Peyton at a round table with Andrea. Two half-empty champagne glasses sat before them.

“Ladies,” he said as he reached them. “Can I get you a refill?”

Andrea looked at him with a sadistic smile only a torturer would wear. “You waiting tables now, Desmond?”

“What can I say? Stock options don’t buy groceries.”

Peyton laughed.

Andrea rolled her eyes and grabbed her champagne glass. “I’m just gonna go smash this champagne glass and eat the sharpest pieces. You kids try not to kill anyone with those puppy love eyes.”

Desmond sat down as she stalked off to the bar.

“She’s very subtle,” he said.

“Very.”

“I think she may have a lot of pent-up aggression.”

“Bad breakup last semester. And she sort of hates her internship.” Peyton smiled. “Heard you helped her with that.”

“Ah, well, all in the line of duty.”

“Part of your case?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Any new leads?”

“Working on something now.”

“Promising?”

He studied her. “Too early to tell.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure.”

She took another sip of the champagne.

“You like working at xTV?” she said.

“Yeah. I do.”

“Why?”

“I like solving problems. Going home every day knowing I made some progress on something. Waking up every morning with a new set of problems to solve.”

“What’d you do before?”

“Worked on an oil rig.”