Yikes. Problematic, for sure. He was her boss, after all. And he was rude, arrogant, and presumptuous. And he suffered from a profound lack of imagination, judging from his lunch habits. Plus, he had a weird, fetishistic thing for her chubby knees. So nothing doing.

Uh-huh. So why had she spent all that money she could ill afford on her hair? Why was her face painted? Why had she brought that clinging dress? She’d tarted herself up for exactly what? Get real.

She tried to drug herself into enforced calmness by mentally reciting the first sixteen lines of the prologue to Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, over and over as she worked. The afternoon passed slowly.

At the end of her shift, she sneaked into the back to change. She needn’t have bothered sneaking, as both Monica and Norma were waiting outside the door when she came out. Monica grabbed Nell’s chin and freshened her lipstick by brute force. “Good luck, chica.”

“Be careful, honey,” Norma said, her eyes misty.

“And don’t forget these.” Monica held up a three-pack of condoms, and stuffed them into Nell’s purse. “Got ’em for you on my cigarette break. Be safe, always, you hear me?”

She was mortified. “You guys! It’s a business meeting!”

She grabbed a cab, despite the warm evening, in deference to the promise to her sisters, and took the elevator to the sixteenth floor. She stood in front of his office, gathering nerve, and reached for the door.

It flew open. She looked up, straight into Duncan’s eyes. Her throat clenched.

His eyes flashed down over her body. “It’s you.”

“You were expecting me, weren’t you?” she asked.

“Of course,” he said. “Come on in.”

She regretted the dress. It didn’t cling provocatively, but the way he looked at her made her feel as if she were reclining naked, draped in silk, like Bathsheba in an old painting. Come and get me. At your peril. Or hers, rather.

“You changed your hair.” His tone was disapproving.

“Why, yes,” she said, confused.

He studied her hair, eyes narrowed, and was about to speak again when a handsome young man strode out into the room. He flashed her a dazzling smile and shook her hand, continuing to hold on to it. “Wow. Duncan told me you were an excellent writer, but he didn’t say you were so pretty,” he said. “Can I call you Nell?”

“No, you can’t,” Duncan cut in. “Let go of her hand. Ms. D’Onofrio, this is my younger brother, Bruce. Please excuse his unprofessional behavior.” He turned and marched past the goggling Derek into the conference room. “Let’s get started.”

They sat in the conference room. Bruce began. “Ms. D’Onofrio—”

“Nell is really okay,” she broke in.

“I prefer that he use ‘Ms. D’Onofrio,’” Duncan said.

There was an uncomfortable pause. “Ah,” Bruce murmured. “As I was saying, Ms. D’Onofrio, Duncan showed me your writing sample. I was impressed. I take it you’ve looked over our outline?”

“Of course,” she said. She’d been too rattled to think about it last night, after that charged stairwell incident, but she’d glanced over it while drinking her morning coffee, and had been pleasantly impressed.

“So?” Duncan prompted impatiently. “What do you think?”

Nell leafed through the folder. “It’s great. The story is involving, and the graphics are beautiful. It’s just that I think the choices the player needs to make seem too, uh…” She hesitated, reluctant to criticize.

“Too what?” Duncan snapped.

“Too logical,” she gasped nervously.

The two men looked at her blankly.

“If you want to appeal to language-oriented, literary types, I think you should play up the romantic, magical elements,” she went on.

Duncan grunted. His chair creaked in protest as he pushed himself away from the table. Nell pressed on. “It would be interesting to develop some plot twists based on leaps of faith, to deepen the feeling of mystery, create a sense of wonder. The game’s title, for instance. ‘The Dagger and the Thorn’ sounds so, um…”

“Pointy?” Bruce grinned. “Phallic?”

“Um, warlike,” Nell temporized demurely. “Masculine. I would recommend something more evocative, more magical. When I read about the sixth-level forest sequence with the lake and the magical swans, I thought of ‘The Golden Egg.’”

“‘The Golden Egg,’” Bruce mused. “That has possibilities.”

“I like it,” Duncan announced.

Bruce whipped his head around, incredulous. “You do? You’ve never liked anything imaginative or evocative in your whole life!”

“No, not that,” he said impatiently. “I mean her hair.”

A shocked silence followed his announcement.

Duncan frowned. “So? What are you gaping about? I didn’t like it at first, but I’ve decided that I like it. Is that so hard to understand?”

Bruce spoke up gallantly, after another half minute of shocked silence. “Ah, Ms. D’Onofrio, I didn’t have the pleasure of seeing how you wore your hair before, so I can’t offer any comparisons, but I can certainly say that it looks lovely now.”

“Uh, thank you,” Nell said. Her face was on fire.

“And if you’ve gotten the approval of anybody as resistant to change as my brother, believe me, it’s a compliment,” he added.

“Shut up, Bruce,” Duncan snapped.

“You’re acting unprofessional, Dunc,” Bruce murmured.

Nell knotted her hands together. “I’m glad you like my hair, Mr. Burke, but I’d rather talk about what you think of my ideas.”

“I don’t like them,” Duncan said abruptly.

Nell swallowed. “Ah,” she murmured. “I, uh, see.”

“I don’t want an interactive fairy tale. I want a fantasy quest. What you’re proposing would be impossible to reason your way through,” Duncan explained.

“But that’s just it! Reason isn’t the only tool people use when they’re problem solving,” Nell argued. “There’s an enchanted princess to be won! It should be romantic, surprising.”

“He hates surprises,” Bruce muttered.

“Shut up, Bruce,” Duncan snarled.

“Sheathe your claws, Dunc, you’re scaring her,” Bruce warned.

“Not at all,” Nell lied. “I don’t scare easily.”

Duncan got up with an abruptness that shot his chair against the wall with a bang. He stalked out of the room.

Nell watched the door fall shut behind him, alarmed. “Did I say something wrong?”

“Oh, not at all,” Bruce assured her. “He’s just that way. Don’t worry. He likes you. Your ideas are fascinating. It’s all good.”

“Uh, thank you,” she said, confused.

“Don’t mind him. Duncan’s just twitchy because there’s been so much change in his company since we started working on my game. Everything’s all shaken up. He’ll calm down.”

“But if he hates my—”

“Nah, he doesn’t hate anything. He’s just being a dickhead for the pure fun of it. Pay him no attention at all. He can’t help himself. He’s just programmed that way. He used to be a spy, you know that?”

Nell was startled. “Um, no. I didn’t know that.”

“Yeah. Intelligence and analysis, for the NSA. Spent a lot of time in Afghanistan, and other nasty hot spots. I’d like to say being a spy was what made him such a tight-assed bastard, but the truth is, he’s been like that since we were kids. So don’t expect it to change.”

“I wouldn’t expect anything of the kind,” she murmured.

“He’s a genius when it comes to algorithms for intelligent database design,” Bruce went on. “His biggest client is the U.S. government. Everything’s always so damn serious. National security. Terrorist threats. Blood and guts. Something as frivolous as a computer game drives the poor guy nuts.” Bruce rolled his eyes. “But he’ll feel better about it when the money starts pouring in. He likes money just fine. You just keep coming up with ideas, and you’ll be golden.”

“Okay,” she said. “And you really can call me Nell.”

Bruce grinned. “You’ll do.” He got up, came around the table, and sat down next to her. “So, here’s where I think we should start.”