“Same here,” Siaka says, flopping down into his ergonomic chair and switching on the computer. He angles his monitor toward me. “Grab a chair. There’s enough room for both of us on my desk,” he says. “Did you bring Charlotte’s laptop?”

I pull a chair up next to his, trying to ignore the fact that there are only about eight inches separating his arm from mine. If the butterflies in my stomach would chill out, I might be able to concentrate. “Um...no, this is the ‘house’ laptop. The one they use for communicating with the Worldwide Consortium. I guess it’s mine now.”

Siaka swings around to face me, his expression serious. “Dude, are you okay?” he asks. He’s so close now that I can see his jade eyes are flecked with gold around the pupil. It would be so easy to lean forward, tilt my head, and... My eyes dart to his lips, my heart stutters fast and hard, and I can’t breathe. It feels like time stretches on for minutes, but I know it’s only been a second, as I use all of my willpower to break the magnetic pull between us and turn away.

Pretending that my insides haven’t just been ripped out of my body, reassembled, and shoved back in, I lean over, unzip the computer bag, pull the laptop out and plonk it on the desk. Then, running my hands through my hair, I tuck it behind my ears, and feel marginally more composed.

“Seriously,” Siaka prods. “What’s up?”

I don’t look at him this time. I don’t dare. “Like I said, I haven’t had much practice at being sociable for a really long time. I’m not used to talking to people in real life.” I force myself to chuckle as I open the laptop and type in the password Charlotte gave me. “It might take a while to transition out of hermit mode.”

My computer’s desktop opens to show a row of icons glowing against a background photo of...

“Oh. My. God,” Siaka breathes, looking over my shoulder at the screen.

It’s Ambrose, wearing his World War II army cap, a pair of worn jeans, his thick gold wedding band, and...nothing else but burnished ebony skin. Muscles bulging, twelve-pack sculpted, and a smoldering look in his eyes that would hands-down land him Mr. January in one of those Hot Guy calendars. Across the bottom of the screen Charlotte has labeled the photo in big flowery letters, “My cupcake.”

Siaka and I tear our eyes away from the screen, look at each other, and start laughing hysterically, wiping tears from our eyes.

“Okay, your first task is to replace Charlotte’s desktop image, or neither of us are going to get any work done,” Siaka says when he’s able to talk again.