A Perfect Night Read online

  “This is how I would do a Superman game,” he began. “Superman has the best superpowers, but Batman movies are more popular. The Arkham games are leaps and bounds better than any other superhero games.”

  She let his warm voice and his personality carry her into that alternate dimension in which Superman games were good. When he talked, Bobbi felt like her brain was getting a relaxing massage. The man could talk for hours without interruption and never bored her. He wasn’t always right, but he was always fun. She shared a smile with the other Ken who looked over his glasses at his friend. He was pretty much in the same boat, although Bobbi suspected that sometimes being around Ken Harrington could be taxing.

  A few hours later, when she looked up from her tablet, she noticed that the only other person in the room was Ken Harrington.

  “What would you include in the DLC for the Witcher 3?” she asked him to break the silence. He’d been raving about the game and up until that moment she thought she would strangle him with the power cord of the console if he mentioned it again. That eerie silence made even annoyance seem welcome. The guy wouldn’t shut up if you put a gun to his head. Whenever he had an audience, he was arrogant, his comments sarcastic, and he was brilliant like a perfectly cut diamond. To be in the same room with him and not hear his voice troubled Bobbi.

  He looked at her as if he didn’t understand the question. When someone asked him something like that, Ken had two possible responses: either he’d launch straight into his spin on the situation, or he’d shoot a scornful gaze to the person who asked the question soon followed by a tirade of derision for asking something so stupid. Neither of those reactions applied to her. Embarrassed, she got up to get herself a coffee from the expresso machine. Once more he left her out of the world of private jokes and what ifs that people at Cube seemed to share.

  This wasn’t the first time it happened and it was always freaked her out to see Ken anything other than his usual snarky self, to see him look less than perfect. She glanced at him. The first two buttons of his shirt were undone. Such a small detail, but on him … it was as if someone had drawn a moustache on Michelangelo’s David.

  When he was tired, especially if they were alone, his swagger vanished. He was still brilliant, but his words didn’t cut anymore. Bobbi tried to tell herself that he was getting used to her, and he didn’t need to impress her any more. The argument crumbled in the face of evidence. The guy tried to be a smart ass even with the guy who delivered pizza. She had to accept that he didn’t enjoy working with her without the buffer of an admiring audience.

  Bobbi was the quiet, getting things done type, but he was wrong if he thought that she didn’t appreciate his personality. She recognized his merits and her opinion of him couldn’t have been higher. When it came to her in-house teams, she was a great motivator, but Ken was such a strong personality, it felt wrong for mousy-Bobbi to stroke his ego, which was probably the size of Mount Olympus anyway. Or at least some of the monsters in the God of War games.

  It was partly scary and partly comforting to see him lose his arrogance. Portions of his self-confidence evaporated, too. Whenever they were alone he avoided eye contact. He who had perfect diction would sometimes stutter when he had to explain something. That should have made Bobbi like him less because she appreciated his swagger, and his vicious tongue. Ken’s jokes cut like sharp katanas and she loved them.

  “It’s done,” Ken Hunt said walking in. “I just got off the phone with Dean. We’re good to go.”

  Ken Harrington brightened up at the news and all the awkwardness that had enveloped the room like a thick fog curtain vanished. Maybe she was imagining things. Looking at him now, radiating enthusiasm, the strangeness of the previous few moments seemed unreal.

  Chapter 4 – The bad day and the bright boy

  Two weeks before E3, Bobbi was having the worst day of the year. Unsuccessful meetings, no new engineer signed, and her flight was grounded for five hours due to a bomb threat. To top things off, when she got off the plane there was a message from Ken Hunt.

  “Hey, Bobbi. Sorry to hear your flight got delayed. You should come by our offices anyway. There are some details we should discuss.”

  She knew him well enough to discern the hint of worry in his voice. Ken Hunt did not show emotion easily. If she could detect that something was wrong just from his voice in a fifteen seconds message, “details” was probably code for disaster.

  She jumped into the first cab and walked into Cube’s office building about six hours later than she was supposed to arrive. She’d been there often enough and at odd enough times that the security guy in the lobby let her in without asking. She waved as she hurried past him. The elevator crept to the twenty fifth floor. The place looked deserted through the big glass doors with the Cube logo on them. She swiped the security card and searched for any signs of life.

  The hallway was lit and a scent of freshly brewed coffee wafted from their kitchen. She heard a muffled sound of a match from one of the offices and followed it. When she got to the door saying Kenneth Harrington she also heard a familiar thumping. Ken often bounced a mini-basketball against the wall when he was bored or frustrated. Bobbi opened the door, careful not to get hit in the face. The man froze in mid throw, dropping the ball on his desk. The ball rebounded off the desk onto a pile of game covers stacked in a corner of a room.

  “Hi,” she said. “Sorry to be so late. There was a message from …” He probably knew. The two Kens didn’t seem to have secrets from one another. “I’m so glad you’re still here.”

  He wasn’t saying anything, just stared at her. She would never get used being speared with his gaze. It always unnerved her to be faced with a mute Ken Harrington. This guy could talk an Eskimo into buying beach umbrellas. Being around him when he was quiet gave her the unsettling sensation that the world was about to end.

  “The plane was delayed,” she rushed ahead, repeating herself to fill the gap his silence created. “Sorry.”

  She knew that apologies were not going to give him back the six hours he’d spent bouncing his ball with nervous energy.

  “N-no, it’s fine. There’s a match on,” he said with a shrug towards the big screen TV, “So … it’s fine.”

  His stuttering could be quite endearing but she was too rattled by the apparently fake bomb threat, not to mention that the other Ken’s message had cranked up her anxiety even more.

  “There was a message from Ken, the other Ken. It sounded serious.”

  “It is. Well, it was. I got working on it while I was waiting and …”

  He fished a tablet from under some bunched up papers and handed it to her. She brushed her fingers deliberately against his skin. Ken Harrington seemed unreal and sometimes she needed a confirmation that he wasn’t a holographic projection. She expected the spark, and she wasn’t disappointed. It went right through her fingertips and earthed itself somewhere in the region of her stomach. He flinched and yanked away his hand.

  While she read through the material, Ken gathered the crumpled pieces of paper from the desk and threw them into the bin, then he restacked the games and recovered his mini-basketball.

  “You are a brilliant brainy bastard.” she said after she finished.

  She stood up and she wanted to hug him. They found a glitch in RG’s newest game, which was scheduled to have a massive introduction at the next Electronic Entertainment Expo in less than a week, and he created an entire strategy to spin this glitch into a marketing ploy of such perfection that no one could believe it was a mistake. RG was going to do great at E3 and it was all thanks to him.

  He shook his head and Bobbi could swear he was on the verge of blushing.

  “They are going to make movies about this one day.”

  The door opened when she spoke. “May that day be far away,” Ken Hunt said as he strode into the office.

  “Obviously,” she agreed, rolling her eyes. Rogue Games would definitely not want it known that they made a mistake, but afte
r the game became a classic, it would be a nice bit of trivia for the fans. She turned again to the resident genius.

  “Ken, this is amazing work.”

  He seemed to want to blend into the background but that would be completely impossible. Ken Harrington was handsome by anyone’s standards. He had fine, symmetric features, dark brown piercing eyes and an expressive mouth that conveyed meaning even when he didn’t speak. He was about six feet tall and he had an athletic built that people easily ignored because he damn well sparkled. The things coming out of his mouth made him almost instantly intangible. Unreal. Even to her. He was ruthless in his observations; his irony varied from fine like delicate china to heavy like a punch in the face. How could this man imagine that he would ever not be the center of attention?

  He shrugged and grabbed his jacket. Bobbi watched him leave without understanding why or being able to stop him. He had waited six hours for her, and got the job done in the meantime. He was probably right; the meeting should be the next morning.

  She looked at the other Ken to see if she could get some explanation but he was pouring hot water from the electric kettle.

  “Have some tea,” he said handing her a cup with his right hand and holding out the left.

  She took the cup and gave him the tablet. The tea smelled of jasmine. It was Bobbi’s favorite and she stared at him, surprised that he had paid attention to this minor detail.

  “I’m glad you’re okay,” Ken Harrington said so quietly she barely heard the words, and he closed the door behind him.

  Chapter 5 – Kiss and tell

  “We heard about the bomb threat,” Ken explained.

  She sat back on the couch, clutching her cup. Ken sat next to her. The TV chirped in the background on the sports channel. The closest either of them got to sports in the past couple of years was when they played the FIFA or WWE games.

  “So, we’re watching this?” she asked.

  “Nah,” he answered. “Wait a sec, I don’t have the remote.”

  She watched him take out download an app on his phone to change channels.

  “The remote is right there,” she said, pointing at the remote clearly visible on the desk in front of the couch.

  He shrugged and smiled. Bobbi had to laugh. The smartest people she knew were also the laziest. He flipped through channels and for every “meah” from her, he kept surfing. He stopped at an old sitcom. The familiar faces and setup calmed her. Even the jokes they’d heard a hundred times seemed funny. She closed her eyes and relaxed.

  “Thank you for staying. This was one royally screwed up day,” she said.

  “Don’t worry about it,” he said. “We were happy to hear the threat wasn’t real.”

  “Oh, that was the worst! But before that I had some pain in the ass meetings. Sometimes I think I figured out how software engineers think, and bam! I find a new one.”

  She often joked that engineers were exotic and not quite human species, like vampires or werewolves. It made her head hunting assignments feel more like video game quests.

  “You ran into a new species, huh?”

  Talking to Ken Hunt was just about the most relaxing thing in the world. It wasn’t the words as much as the tone. The man was distant and self-controlled but he gave off a sense of safety. She felt like he gave her space to breathe.

  There was a quiet power about him despite his youth. He was tall, and retained an air of awkwardness that conjured up the adjective gangly. Somehow, that made him charming as hell. He wore suits as if they were jeans, and when he wore jeans everything about him screamed that he was a man that should wear suits.

  “I’m so relieved you guys figured this out. If I were here when you found the glitch I would have gone nuts.”

  “It was all Ken. To be honest, when we found out, I panicked. I knew how much this project means to you and to screw it up after all you’ve done for us …” He stopped, possibly embarrassed to have admitted to feelings of panic or gratitude. “Well thank God Ken kept his cool and pulled a rabbit with wings out of the hat.”

  She sank deeper into the couch. The languid feeling was as if her bones were slowly melting, so she rested her head on his shoulder. He shifted his position to make it more comfortable. She was already drowsy, that feeling of safety she got around him lulled her to sleep even in this unusual environment.

  When she felt his fingers in her hair, she purred. His arm draped around her shoulders and her head slid from his shoulder to his chest. She tried to correct that and she ended up with her cheek on his shoulder and her lips brushing his skin. She straightened up with a jolt. Their faces suspended a breath away from each other. Without thought to the implications, she leaned in and kissed him. He kissed her back for a fraction of a second, then pulled away.

  “Oh, God, I’m sorry,” Bobbi said and jumped to her feet.

  Her head spun and she couldn’t think straight. The only thing she knew was that she’d just done something horribly wrong. She might have already ruined their amazing working relationship.

  “I shouldn’t have … I’m sorry. I’m gonna go now.”

  She had to leave. She was going to find a way to deal with this after sleeping. No one could expect her to fix anything in this state. Her hand was on the doorknob when she felt Ken’s arms around her waist. He pulled her close and pressed his cheek against her temple. He kissed her hair before speaking.

  “It’s not that I don’t want to. Actually I want quite a bit more than to kiss you,” he said. To prove it, he pressed his body into her so that his erection poked into the flesh of her backside. “I really, really want this, Bobbi.”

  Her heart pounded, hammering at her ribs. She had to leave. She liked Ken but she could endanger their collaboration. It would be difficult enough to get back from that kiss, but sex would ruin it. And whatever scruples held him back, she could tell by the way he held her that it wouldn’t take much to get him to ignore them.

  He lowered his head and kissed her neck. Things were about to spin out of control. His lips brushed against her skin with every word.

  “Ken likes you. He’s my best friend and I can’t do this to him.”

  She stepped out of his embrace and turned to look at him.

  “I like him, too, what’s that got …”

  She stopped in midsentence when her addled brain assembled the information. It sounded as if he’d just said that he wouldn’t have sex with her because his friend wanted the same thing. But Ken Harrington had been anything but flirty with her. He never flirted with her, never made fun of her as he did with people he liked, never included her in the private world of which he was almighty God. She had always thought that he disliked her personally and the only reason he accepted her around was that he loved the playground Rogue Games offered his creativity. She was sure that the only way he appreciated her was as a client of their firm.

  “He really, really likes you. He hasn’t been like this for as long as I’d known him.”

  This was too much to deal with in one day. She remembered that she was a kick ass executive who had the power to move time backwards. According to her underlings anyway. She used the voice that worked on software engineers who were dawdling on their projects.

  “The past five minutes never happened. After Ken left, you dropped me off at my place. I’ll be here tomorrow at ten sharp and we’ll have the meeting that was supposed to be the follow up for the one I couldn’t make today.”

  She spoke calmly looking him straight in the eye, and it felt right. That first kiss never happened. She never heard this Ken confess his desire. She never found out about the other Ken’s feelings. She would be back tomorrow, and they would be just Ken with the glasses and the arrogant bastard Ken with the perfect hair.

  He nodded and called a cab.

  Chapter 6 – The most important days of the year

  The very first thought upon waking up the next morning was about those five minutes that never happened.

  “Flaming firey fire!”


  She hypnotized herself in the mirror while brushing her teeth, then focused her attention on her schedule for the day, and the strangeness of the previous night seemed to fade away. By the time she walked back through the glass doors with the Cube logo, she was in complete control of herself. A passing sensation of déjà vu hit her when the coffee smell wafted from the kitchen but it was easy to shrug it away in the noise and the bustle of a working morning.

  The sense of self-control lasted for a good twenty minutes. They were in the middle of the briefing. Ken Harrington was explaining the strategy he had devised the day before. Bobbi followed the presentation with occasional glances at the presenter, when he digressed and his innate showmanship took over.

  “Other, less successful companies, spent more than a decade naming their operation systems after predatory animals …”

  She laughed at his reference to Apple as a less successful company than RG. A weird chain connection Apple – biting – mouth led her to focus on his mouth. She was still laughing when she realized to her horror that the sound was high pitched and flirty. Her eyes were glued to his mouth, and it took a conscious effort to pull them away. From then on, following the presentation became difficult.

  How did his lips taste? Would he be shy? Or if he accepted that she wanted him, he would regain the self-confidence he so abundantly demonstrated in public? Damn Ken for telling her. Before he said that she hadn’t had a single thought of a personal nature about the other one. And there she was, remembering one man’s kisses, and wondering about the other’s.

  When her concentration wavered, her eyes wandered to Ken’s voluptuous lips. She turned away, and she saw the other one watching her. He looked vaguely disappointed and vaguely amused. It triggered a vivid recollection of his embrace. The memory of his arms wrapped around her waist, his cock so obviously ready…