because he’d been pestering me about work, anyway. His name had just been handy. He was the first single straight guy I’d thought of when push came to shove.
But I wasn’t looking for a love connection—now or anytime in the near future. I was too focused on my job. I had goals. A new home, hopefully, here in sunny southern California and a whole new life for myself that didn’t involve that hot mess I’d left behind.
It was good for me to be single for a while.
But that didn’t mean I couldn’t flirt a little and enjoy the side benefit of provoking Lucas, one of my most favorite pastimes.
Lucas spoke again, fielding questions about the new expansion. “I’m not going to give away the story line. That would ruin it for you all.”
“Isn’t the game ruined for you, a bit, I mean given that you have to play it over and over again to find all the bugs?”
Lucas smiled. “I guess it’s kind of like asking you if space flight is ruined because you spend years training on the same equipment before you can launch.”
The fourth astronaut, the one they all called Hammer, laughed. “Point taken.”
As he spoke to the guys, I studied my colleague-slash-secret-husband under my lashes. I’d mastered this subtlety that he had never picked up on. Several of the new batch of University interns had a thing for him. One even left him anonymous love notes that I intercepted when I could—to save face for her, of course, and to save Lucas from the requisite embarrassment.
Okay, I’d admit to myself—if no one else, ever—that I found Lucas hot.
And never ever would I let my friends learn of that. After a year and change of making it clear that Lucas drove me crazy, I’d never hear the end of it if they knew. Or if they found out we were secretly married. Gah. That would be the period on the end of the sentence. Bzzzzt. Game over.
We made our way into the warehouse where there was a full display of virtual reality testing equipment from our sister company, PurVizion. The guys all immediately brightened.
“This is the same equipment we use at XVenture,” Commander Tyler said, pulling a headset off its pedestal. “Adam wrote the programming on our simulator. We can interact with all kinds of surfaces and conditions using this, even simulate weightlessness when we are up on a swing and pully system. Are you putting this into the game?”
“We hope to,” Lucas answered, brightening. “Still in the early phases of development.”
Hammer chimed in. “Let me know if you want some expert advice. Especially if it’s a first-person shooter type of game.”
For the first time all morning, Lucas cracked a small smile. “I may just take you up on that.”
The VR system was one of his favorite subjects lately. After all, he was up for the position to run the new VR division of Draco Multimedia. He’d told me so yesterday as we’d walked out to our cars. “We’re currently researching avenues on how to integrate it with our game interfaces while still making it affordable for all our players.”
I had to admit that it was fun to watch him become so animated when he got fired up by this subject. He was passionate about gaming and always pitching an idea here or there. Some ideas sucked—and I never hesitated to tell him that—but some of them were pretty darn good. He had a great imagination.
Lucas was such a cool cucumber that he rarely became animated or visibly fired up about mostly anything. Except gaming.
“Why don’t you demonstrate it for us, Katya?” The handsome Russian asked. “I’d like to see how this works for games instead of how we’re using it to train.” He flashed me a huge smile, and I grinned right back at him.
Pretty. So pretty. Damn… how long had it been since I’d had a nice, hot fling?
I couldn’t hit him up for a date—even if I truly wanted to—because I was secretly married to the grump across the room. And we couldn’t date other people because rules.
I put on the light helmet with attached headset and goggles and slipped on my special shoes with sensors on the bottom. Lucas helped me onto the circular treadmill that simulated the ground movement beneath my feet as I ran around in the imaginary world.
Lucas was attentive as he helped me into this, double checking everything. But at one moment, when he stood between me and the other