The Geek Gets The Girl Read online

  THE GEEK GETS THE GIRL by Michele Hauf

  Copyright © 2016 by Michele Hauf

  Cover artwork by Michele Hauf

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments of events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  This is published by Swell Cat Press, LLC.

  The Geek Gets The Girl

  Chapter 1

  According to the wrinkled strip of paper taped over the original brass placard on the office door, Rachel Parker was the manager of the Paris Haute Heels office. Zac assumed Miss Parker was the woman who strode down the parquet-floored aisle between cubicles with the air of a confident runway model, red heels clicking smartly. Not even the weight of the office supplies she carried could lower her proud jaw. Juggling a coffee cup in one hand, file folders, binders, purse and briefcase in the crook of an elbow—not to mention a mouthful of pink phone messages—she shrugged by Zac where he stood in the doorway to her office, and lunged toward the glass-topped desk to release her burden.

  The sleek bend of her body sprawling over the desktop begged attention. A clingy, dark blue dress hugged her from shoulders to mid-thigh, and he visually caressed the taut curve of her ass. Hmm, what did the French call it? Derriere. Nice. And when in France… His fingers cruised an imaginary stroll over the dangerous curves. Shifting into high gear, he hugged the corner and stepped on the accelerator, moving down around her thigh. Breathy pants encouraged his actions until—

  Those breathy pants ceased, and the woman whose curves he’d just mastered in a matter of three fantasy seconds stood staring at him, green eyes narrowed in stern summation.

  Conjuring a save to cover the distraction that had almost netted him the yellow flag, he tapped the paper taped over the door’s nameplate. “Snazzy décor you’ve got here, Miss Parker.”

  “Cutbacks. Tightening the proverbial office belt. It works for me.” Long coils of chestnut hair danced over the spill of office ephemera as she nestled the paper coffee cup into a nook amidst the scatter. “And you have finally arrived.”

  She caught his surprise and reacted, propping a manicured hand on her hip. “Seriously? How long does it take for IT to process a call for help? I know all eight private offices in this building share one tech department, but you must have more than one guy to handle service calls.”

  “IT?” Nowadays, he generally put his fingers on sales figures, outlook charts, and the butter-soft leather in the company jet. Zachary Cosgrove had moved up from humble IT guy. Way up. “Oh, you assume—”

  “Yes, I assume.” The woman whose curves he could still imagine warming his palms gestured absently toward his face. “Serious glasses. Skinny tie. And you have the air of…of…” She snapped her fingers, searching her mental stores.

  He tugged at the tie he’d purchased at a supermarket on the dash from the airport after arriving in Paris less than two hours earlier. The airline had lost his luggage, and he’d needed a change of clothing. Far from the Ermenegildo Zegna he was accustomed to, but he could work the budget look with the best of them.

  Miss Parker swept her hand to take in his attire, still trying to decide about him.

  Want to take me for a spin, Mademoiselle Derriere? I’ll handle your curves like a pro.

  Curious green eyes held his gaze a bit longer than was socially acceptable. He nudged up the black-rimmed glasses—emergency pair—the ones he’d been forced to wear because his contacts were tucked in with his luggage.

  He liked this woman for her daring assessment of him, as incorrect as it was. He also liked the way she made him feel. Confident and—most unexpectedly—horny with a side of let me lick those curves until you moan.

  “The air of…” she continued. A violet fingernail tapped her pretty pink lip. “…geekery,” she decided. And then an admonishing finger marked the air between them. “I’ve waited two weeks for you to resurrect the relics this company likes to call computers. So! Under my desk.”

  “Wha…?”

  She didn’t catch his dismay at her invitation to kneel before her. Instead, she rapped the desktop. “You’ll find my computer is eager for your attention.”

  Right. Her computer. Unfortunately, not her curves.

  Subtle beauty claimed Rachel Parker. She wasn’t overdone with cosmetics and overpowering perfume. De rigueur for most office managers he’d the opportunity to meet. Yet if he looked at her too long, he’d begin mentally detailing where on that soft, peach-toned skin he’d first like to lick. At her chin where the slightest dent inspired a slow, curious perusal? Or maybe at her neck where a long, silver chain glinted as if distant headlamps from an oncoming Lamborghini? And she smelled like oranges. A cheery scent that didn’t match her confident stance.

  “Right, then.” With that, she sailed out of the office as quickly as she’d drifted in, leaving him sniffing for the barest hint of citrus, and thinking this introduction to the Paris branch of Haute Heels could not have gone better.

  IT guy? Perfect. He now had a cover identity for what he’d hoped to keep a low-key fact-finding mission. According to the Haute Heels’ Operations Director, Joel Stinson, this office had been in the red for six months. Joel hadn’t bothered to hire a new manager because he’d not wanted to fund what he’d termed a dead zone. The Paris office hadn’t produced a marketable design or campaign in over a year. By the end of the week, the Operations Director intended to either fire everyone and start fresh, or close the office.

  An office that had been Madeline Cosgrove’s dream. Zac’s mother had founded Haute Heels, and this had been the flagship location. There was a touch of her in every detail that fashioned this office.

  While not one for hands-on relations with the Haute Heels branches, Zac wanted to make sure this office was performing as poorly as the reports detailed before such a drastic move as shutting it down. He’d already had a ticket to Paris: his mother’s apartment, sitting empty for ten years since her death, needed to go up for sale.

  So he’d told Joel he would stop into the office and have a look around. Joel had suggested he send him a list of any salvageable assets, including employees. They were scheduled to make a sales meeting with Les Grands Chaussures on Friday, but Joel predicted it would fall flat.

  Joel had also suggested Zac go incognito. If the employees knew the boss was peering over their shoulders, they’d freak. Zac had agreed. He didn’t want to cause panic amongst the employees should they learn the big guy had come for a final look around. If the smallest hope of resurrecting the office existed, Zac would put in a good word to Joel.

  Right now, he bent to look under the desk, assuming the IT role with ease. Holy hell.

  “Relic, indeed. I guess I’ll be getting on my knees after all.”

  *

  Two hours later, the intrepid Miss Parker floated in for another brief docking. Zac had listened to her heels click to and fro about the office all morning as if background music. Harried control defined her mental state, but her appearance still landed firmly in the nonchalant sensuality column.

  Still on his back and beneath the desk, his focus on the ancient motherboard he’d excavated from the computer, Zac almost took a pointed leather shoe-tip to the cheek as she slid her feet under the glass-topped desk. He noted the steel heel. The design was Haute Heels. Last season, if he wasn’t mistaken. And those ankles. Sleek, lightly tanned, and stretching down to a glide of foot that revealed a peek of high arch above the shoe’s red leather shank.<
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  The woman attached to the killer heels took no note of the guy she’d almost skewered, so through the glass desktop, he observed the sweep of her hand as it sorted paperwork. Her wrist was slender and attractive, as well. He could easily imagine wrapping a hand about both, pinning the gorgeous limbs to clean, white sheets and holding her at his command.

  Snacking on some kind of power bar, her eyes affixed to her cell phone screen.

  Compelled beyond mere fantasy, Zac reached for her sexy gam, sliding his fingers along the smooth, warm skin. Felt like summer. And with a warm July rain spattering the office windows, he was eager for the vacation. Cruising slowly over her anklebone, he closed his eyes, thumbing the rise as if it were a more intimate part of a woman’s body, yes, that sweet spot between her legs that was like an intricate puzzle a man must learn, lick, and master.

  With his schedule keeping him in the City of Light for the week, he wasn’t sure his libido could handle five days without a hookup. Another body lying next to him through the night would make the hotel room feel less empty, and—a man could not survive on spreadsheets and frequent flyer miles alone.

  Inhaling, he drew in the sweet flavor of orange and…leather, from the shoe. He loosened his tie. He imagined the steel heel pressing into his chest as she stood over him, exerting her dominance in a way that he would gladly succumb to…

  A surprised chirp alerted him that he’d been successful in diverting her attention from the phone. Miss Parker tugged her foot away and skirted toward the door.

  “Uh…” she started.

  An apology didn’t feel necessary, so, tilting his head out from under the desk and offering a non-threatening smile, he waited for her to speak.

  “Right. I forgot. The guy under my desk,” she gasped out.

  “Zachary,” he offered, realizing he’d not the opportunity to introduce himself earlier.

  “Of course. Zachary, the IT guy. I completely forgot you were there.” She slid the toe of her shoe along the back of her opposite ankle. “I, uh, have work to do. Uh… Out there. In the office. Away from…you—uh, here!”

  She spun out of the office and down the hallway.

  Zac chuckled softly. She’d be back. And so would those slender ankles and that tight little derriere. Before the day was over, he intended to learn a lot more about Miss Parker’s software.

  Chapter 2

  Seated in LeTrec’s chair before the mangled stack of papers he deemed to call order, Rachel excavated her way through the accounts payable bills and attempted to do the work LeTrec should have finished days earlier. Out with the flu in the middle of summer? She hoped he was miserable.

  Accounts payable was not her forte. She didn’t do numbers. Well, she could, she just didn’t like exercising that particular zone in her frontal cortex. Numbers made her brain hurt. Promotion and marketing was her calling, and she made it her religion to know what it was consumers wanted. The makeshift sign on her door named her Rachel Parker, Office Manager. It was a lie. She had been hired into Marketing as Director, and had only agreed to look over the office when the last manager had abruptly quit. Something about evading a tax issue when he’d left the States three years earlier.

  Rachel had been waiting for Haute Heels’ new manager to arrive for two months. She wasn’t complaining. Too much. When the chips were down, she rallied. And she had the ability to juggle three, four, a dozen tasks, if necessary. Her motto: I am woman; hear my fingernails scratching up the corporate wall to gain recognition. The path to her goal didn’t have to be straight. She just had to stay on it, no matter the curves and sudden dips or rises. She was all about making the challenge a learning experience. And she was learning about past-due bills today.

  She had almost begun to think the wait for assistance from IT would go on as endlessly as the wait for a new manager. Which reminded her of the sexy computer geek she’d left sprawled beneath her desk.

  Young, lean, and attractive. At least, from what she could tell with those severe, black-rimmed glasses detracting from his face. Yet behind the spectacles, blinked dark brown irises that had seemed to clutch at her and pull her in closer for an embrace that could only end in lusty kisses and tingling body parts. And he’d spoken English as if a native of the States. She was so over French men and their inflated sexual egos. A few sweet nothings whispered with an American accent would really get her steaming.

  Really, Rachel?

  Er, no, the guy was not sexy. He was an IT nerd, for heaven’s sake. And double no to her straying thoughts.

  Back to accounts payable.

  Yet as her eyes sorted through the columns of figures and dollar signs, her hand strayed down past her Anne Klein skirt to her ankle. He had touched her there. Stroked her skin with such agonizing leisure she had almost moaned right there in the office, be damned what the cubicle gophers might think. She had let the contact continue much longer than propriety allowed. Because what woman could resist a caress like that? The man’s touch had curled up through her calves, thighs, and stomach, and had tickled at her nipples as if he’d actually stroked them.

  “Mmm…” So good. She could really use some boldly blatant touching. When had she last had sex with someone other than herself? Two weeks? A month?

  What was she thinking? If she didn’t get this accounts payable mess sorted out, she would not be able to move on to the next mess. Sophie LaPierre was out having her baby. Which meant sorting through shipping documents was also on today’s roster. And when she’d walked in this morning, Amelie, her secretary, had reminded her to read—something. Surely it had been in that stack of messages she’d abandoned on her desk.

  No time to wonder what she was missing. If it were good news, it would avoid her like the plague. If it were bad news, it would find her and infect her like no plague ever had.

  She sorted the invoices into alphabetical order and logged into LeTrec’s accounts payable program. This insufferable computer was so slow. Almost as slow as that IT guy’s touch had been.

  Rachel couldn’t seem to steer her thoughts from the man whom she knew was still in her office, touching her things, gliding his fingers into the deepest recesses of her computer…

  His appeal had to be the spicy cologne she’d noted as she’d slipped between him and the door. Because it certainly wasn’t the pencil-thin black slacks that revealed bargain bin shoes, or those studious black-rimmed glasses. And toss in a skinny tie? She’d known he was from tech support without an introduction. Those guys never seemed to have a sense of style.

  And yet she’d lingered on his mouth for a few seconds too long. That mouth had been intricately formed, with the bottom lip slightly thicker than the top. And stubble had darkened his jaw, framing those pouty lips. Lips that had absolutely demanded a kiss. She could have kissed them. But had not. Because?

  Just because.

  Or, no! She knew the answer to that one. She was at work, and office managers did not kiss the tech help.

  “Right,” she whispered, and focused on the folders popping up on the computer screen. “You are the manager, Rachel. Act like it.”

  Yet that lusty little vixen that lived inside her shivered with anticipation, shook her hips in a sexy boogie, and whispered, “Come and get me, geek boy.”

  Oh, mercy, but she needed sex.

  Shaking her head and repressing a smile, Rachel noticed that the monitor prompted her for LeTrec’s password. She shoved the vixen into her red-velvet-walled closet and clicked on LeTrec’s employee profile where the company passwords were stored. Another wait as the little spinning ball taunted her.

  She wondered if the geek liked to be called Zac? Hmm…

  Then she wondered what it would feel like as his dark stubble brushed her skin and made her nipples tighten and knees soften. And if the vixen were prodding at her, then she had been ignoring her lately.

  Her last hookup had been…well before Bastille Day. And it was July 28th today. Rachel, you so need to get laid.

  No, she nee
ded to be the manager the paper sign on her door stated she was. Because in assuming the role, perhaps she could win the role. It was a possibility that she didn’t want to slip through her fingers.

  With all the work to be done, she hadn’t a moment to think about her sex-starved vixen, or the man sprawled under her desk, not two doors down; his cheap shoes tapping rhythmically as he hummed some random tune she’d heard before but couldn’t quite place. His deep tones resonated in her bones, setting her at the edge of the seat. She squeezed her thighs together, focusing a flash of wanting sexual energy.

  “Mercy.”

  No. He was not distracting her. She would not allow it—

  Ah! Saved by the password.

  But really? The red velvet door hung open, and the vixen stuck her head out, hungry for attention.

  Chapter 3

  The office always cleared out at five, on the dot. Despite the workload piling up on her desk—and everyone else’s desks—because she’d skipped lunch and her stomach was not happy, Rachel decided to leave early tonight. Early, being an hour after closing time. Normal departure time for her? Well after eight or nine.

  Lately, she hadn’t much of a life beyond the office. Dating was out of the question. Thank God for girls’ night out on Saturdays. It was hookup night, and no one went home alone. And if they did, it was because the idea of a late-night movie while snuggled up in a warm blanket and nursing the Pamprin was the better choice.

  It had been a long day. She needed carbs and red wine.

  Something crinkled in her skirt pocket. Right. The note Amelie had suggested she read immediately this morning. She tugged it out and read it while gathering her purse and slipping on her shoes.

  “Oh, no.”

  The plague she’d anticipated had descended upon Haute Heels.

  “Headquarters is sending in a bigwig to assess the Paris office this week?”