She thought about Daniel, and how she’d been so close to telling him about her app during their time at McKinney Falls. Yet, even with this budding, several-steps-past-friendship thing slowly building between them, Samiah couldn’t risk sharing her idea with him. If she gave a detailed explanation about the technology behind Just Friends at this table, Samiah would bet her beloved Mustang that Taylor and London’s eyes would start to gloss over before she even got to wireframes and back-end structure. But a software engineer with Daniel’s level of expertise? He could have the app on the market before she had a chance to present it to a single potential investor. She couldn’t take the chance.

And that’s why she needed to honor the pact she’d made with these two and put dating on the back burner. Getting involved with Daniel—with anyone—right now would only result in her not putting all her heart and soul into her app. If she was going to prove that she could do this, she couldn’t allow anything to distract her.

And daydreaming about Daniel Collins had become one helluva distraction.

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Thirteen

Daniel finished off the final number string, pressed ENTER, then sat back in his chair as he watched the coding he’d worked on all morning materialize into a flawlessly designed personnel management portal for one of Trendsetters’ smaller clients. Who would have thought accounting software could be so damn sexy?

The rush he experienced had become familiar in the time since he’d started this job. This was his twenty-second undercover operation with FinCEN, but it was the first that had allowed him to do the kind of work he would have been doing if he’d chosen another career path. It wasn’t too late. If he stepped away from his job with the Treasury Department, Daniel had no doubt he would have his pick of positions at some of the top firms in the country. That wasn’t cockiness, that was knowing what he brought to the table. With the experience he’d gained working for FinCEN, along with his military background, he could command a quarter million a year and potential employers would consider it a bargain.

But it just wasn’t in his heart. He appreciated the opportunity to sit at this computer every day and indulge in his first love, but duty to country had been instilled in him at an early age. He could never be truly happy if he ignored that call to serve.

“Hey, Daniel, did you hear what happened to Mike?”

He looked up from his monitor to find Jerry Johnson standing before his desk with the wide-eyed excitement of someone who’d had too much coffee and not enough sleep.

“Umm, no. Who’s Mike again?”

“Mike Epsen. Tall guy with the glasses.”

He’d just described one-third of Trendsetters’ workforce, but okay.