Danny
I wasn’t lying when I told her she had ruined me. I’d almost blown a 5 million pound deal so that I could sit in a small girly flatshare, squirming in my own pre-cum watching a girl too young for me and completely off-limits, get herself off. Like a horny school boy.
Karl is still livid with me even though, by some miracle, I managed to salvage the deal. He was too furious to pull the details from me of why I was AWOL.
I couldn’t explain to myself what I was doing.
I take a swig of my coffee. I’d been on the conference call until 2am then had 30 mins of Karl busting my balls afterwards. Telling me how reckless I was, how we had been working for months on this deal.
It was worth every minute.
Watching her get herself off was the biggest turn-on of my life.
That bloody simpleton Mike is droning on when I enter the boardroom. He thrusts his chest out to show me he has control of the room.
Compared to any of the Nexus offices, this place is a joke. The boardrooms are filled with dying technology that wastes half the meetings trying to get a video link established and the types of plastic chairs you’d find in a school.
I’ll be glad to see the back of this pokey dump when we move them into the Nexus headquarters next week. Although half of them won’t get to enjoy it for long.
I scan the room, and every set of eyes is on me with one exception.
My attention is drawn to the brunette beauty, refusing to meet my gaze, a flush creeping across her face. She’s staring intently at Mike like he’s the most interesting man she’s ever heard. I’m almost jealous.
I exhale softly as I sit down. My eyes drop to her long toned legs. She must be about 5’7, still short compared to me; at 6’4, everyone is short against me.
I take in every detail of her appearance, banking it in my mind for later. Up past her tight jeans hugging her thighs to where her long brown hair curls around the curve of her breasts.
Fucking delicious.
I take a seat as Mike clears his throat. “Boss, we were just recapping on what has gone well this quarter.”
“Why?” I ask frostily.
“Why?” he repeats less confidently.
“This is supposed to be a crisis meeting.” I snap impatiently, leaning forward in my chair. “Not a meeting where you all pat yourselves on the back saying what a great job you’ve done. Bluntly, these products are failing.”
The entire room collectively inhales a breath.
“Sir.” he stammers, “against our stats, we are -”
“Your stats are wrong.” I cut in. “From now on, you measure against the Nexus stats. And against those, your products are failing.”
“Mr. Walker,” He braves again. “We’ve received positive feedback from all our major clients through the questionnaire we sent out.”
I run my tongue over my teeth; I don’t have the patience for this garbage. Together with spending half the night on calls to the States and a certain brunette keeping my dick awake, I’m tired as fuck.
“No new customers in 3 years.”
“No increases in the current customer usage.”
“Constant outages.”
“High support calls.”
“Bad reviews in the press.” I list out through clenched teeth. Do I have to do their jobs for them?
“This is where you can set yourself apart from others.” I say loudly. “Where is the initiative in this room?
“Has anyone tried to address any of the issues rather than burying your heads in the sand?” Tumbleweed.
The only sound is me angrily drilling my fingers on my laptop, trying not to punch a wall.
Why do I fucking bother? I should sack all of them on the spot. Most of them are staring at the floor. I scan the room, demanding them to make eye contact with me.
My eyes flit to Charlie again.
She looks up, her cheeks crimson, then looks away. I exhale heavily as I glare back at Mike. This is his fault; he’s buried any last hope of innovation in this team.
“The software is 10 years old with no proper design behind it, there’s no strategic thinking, it’s a mismatch of add-ons and hacks over the years but no one coherent design and vision.” She offers in a strong voice, and my eyes travel back to her, surprised.
“It’s expensive to maintain, and we can’t push new features fast enough. We do no user research on what our customers actually want.”
“No new customers in 3 years because we’ve added so many hacks. It’s an over-engineered system.” She continues. “People are scared of it.”
“Nonsense.” Mike barks. “Charlie, I really don’t think this is helpful.” “Let her finish,”I cut him off, raising my eyebrows for her to continue.
“No increase in the current customer usage is because we are not adding the features that they want.”
“Constant outages are because we have an unsustainable hosting platform.”
My attention is drawn to her mouth, but I find myself listening to what she is saying. “High support calls because of our constant outages, obviously.” She stops to take a breath.
“I have a number of suggestions for quick wins that we could add that would cut development time but, ultimately, this software is built on aging technology; if we want new clients and to keep our existing clients, we need to redesign it top-down not bottom-up as we are doing now.” I arch a brow.
“Good Charlie. I’d like my designers to hear your ideas.” A flash of annoyance passes over her, and I can’t nail why.
Is she pissed at my surprise?
“I wholeheartedly agree with you,” I reply firmly. “We need to invest in re-engineering this product from the top down. Remember, you have the backing of a global tech company now. Now I want to hear ideas of how we will make this happen.” I grit my teeth and wait.