There was no reason to make this worse, but he struggled to find an apology. “I assume you’re quite qualified.”
She shifted her weight from one foot to the other. “Then give me something to do that will teach me and will actually help you meet your deadline.”
“How do you know this won’t?”
“It doesn’t matter how anal a company is when it comes to documentation—and few even bother to make it a priority—unless they’re about to be audited, they don’t care about shi— things like this. And if youareabout to be audited, you don’t expect someone to code from your documentation; it only has to be readable.”
“What is it you expect of me, Ms. Lowry?”
Several seconds passed before she replied. “Give me a real task list, and if I need orientation before I dig into your code, hand me over to someone who can provide that.”
He glanced at his screens, and his project timeline mocked him. He dragged the spreadsheet over to his primary monitor, then turned the second screen to face her. “Grab your laptop, and you can follow along.”
She relaxed her shoulders, and a smile ghosted across her lips. “Be back in two seconds.” When she returned, she set up her machine so she could see both it and his screen, and looked at him. “Whatever you do, don’t go easy on me.”
His helpful mind summoned a new interpretation for her statement, of pushing her onto the desk, shoving her skirt to her waist, and sliding between her legs.What the fuck is wrong with me today?
She didn’t know what she was asking, and he needed to stop letting his mind wander. He’d give her the same orientation all new developers received. He tended to be the one who did that first-day training, because the system was his. He’d done this enough times to have an idea of when to pause, when to nudge for questions, and when to plow forward.
He gave her a brief rundown of how the AI worked, and she nodded through the entire thing. That was a good sign. He pulled up the data structure. “We have a fourteen-layer normalization.” He paused and waited for her eyes to glaze over.
“Why?” she asked.
The simplicity of her query caught him off guard. Everyone else came back with an argument about how that was stupid or didn’t make sense, or they simply stared at him blankly. He laid out the answer, complete with all the technical details.
“That makes sense. But typically, when I see a system that’s created for flexibility, even the programmers struggle to extract information. How do you get around meaningless naming conventions and still keep things open ended?”
As the overview continued, she snapped back several more questions that implied she not only understood everything he was saying, but she also didn’t have a desire to argue. Despite not wanting to like her, knowing one misstep while she was around could cost them financing, and telling himself she was nothing more than another cog, he liked how quickly she caught on. This kind of intelligence was sexier than the peek of lace from her thigh-high stockings each time she shifted in her seat.
Antonio hated to admit it, but so far she was impressive.
He didn’t realize how much time had passed, until his messenger chimed through his speakers. It was the daily roundup, to see who wanted lunch. “I didn’t mean to work you this hard. It’s noon. We should take a break.”
“If you don’t mind, I’ll stay at my desk and work through what we’ve gone over so far. I won’t bill it back to Grant; I want to make sure I have a good grasp of what you’re telling me.”
Anyone else, and he’d wonder if the statement was either a way to kiss ass or some sort of passive-aggressive attempt at guilt. Nothing but sincerity shone in her eyes, and given how plainly she wore her emotions earlier, he believed she was genuine.
A sliver of regret wormed its way in, that he treated her poorly less than four hours ago. “Would you like company? We’ll have something brought in and go over what we covered.”
“Don’t you need to catch up on work?”
“I do. But an hour’s not enough time to find my focus. Let’s get you taken care of, and then I’ll get work done.”
He asked one of the guys to pick something up for them, then continued to review with Emily until the food arrived. He stepped out of the room long enough to grab their lunch. When he returned, he was surprised at what he saw.
“Didn’t expect that,” Antonio said. He set her sandwich, chips, and drink in front of her, and took his to the other side of the desk.
“Expect what?”
“You still reviewing.” He grabbed a fork. “You have five minutes free of the boss’s watchful eye, and I figured you’d be checking your email.”
“I wouldn’t do that. We’re working.”
He raised his brows. “Every person I’ve met, no matter how dedicated they are to their job—and that includes me—checks their phone the moment they have a breather. I don’t need a predictive algorithm to tell me that. It’s just the way things are.”
“Apparently youdoneed one. Unless you’re blowing smoke about what yours is capable of, it would have told you, based on my previous behavior, that I wouldn’t be looking at email when you got back. Or texts. Or anything like that.”
“Don’t pull thatI’m not addicted to my electronicsbullshit with me.”