The Geek Tycoon Read Online Free

Blake.” He took a sip from his mug.
    “How did it go?” Until this moment she hadn’t admitted to herself how much she enjoyed watching him drink beer, or anything, really. But mostly she’d been on hand for the beer. He had a great mouth – wide and firm, the kind of mouth that could potentially send her to the moon and back.
    “He hotly denied groping Miranda.”
    “Shocker.”
    “Then he threatened to quit because he didn’t want to work at a place where he’d been falsely accused.”
    Charlotte groaned. “So you had to beg him to stay?”
    “Sort of. I said that if he quit he’d be running away. He didn’t much care for that image so he’s staying to prove we’ve got him all wrong.” Tony sighed and took a long swallow from his mug.
    “That’s a brilliant approach, but do you think that’ll make him keep his hands to himself? A leopard doesn’t change his spots.”
    He set down the mug. “I know, so I sounded the alarm about sexual harassment suits and told him my personal policy of not touching women I work with.”
    “Do you have such a policy?” That could explain why he’d never touched her .
    “No.” He finished off his beer and grabbed the pitcher. “Refill?”
    “Sure.” So no policy, but he’d still never laid a hand on her. Depressing. She took a hefty swallow of his most excellent beer.
    “I should amend that. I didn’t consciously decide to avoid touching women I work with, but now that I think about it, I probably should.”
    “Tony, nobody with half a brain would ever accuse you of sexual harassment.”
    “Easy to say because you know me, but this company is going to grow and I need to consider things like this. I plan to discuss it with the guys tomorrow and see if we need to come up with a company policy we can adhere to.”
    “I wouldn’t advise adopting a rule against all touching.” Sadly, she could see where this was going. If she’d harbored a fantasy that he secretly longed for her, she might as well give up that pipe dream. If he had feelings for her he wouldn’t be mentally drafting a no-touching policy. Every day she became more attracted to him, but she was looking at years of frustration if she kept the job.
    “Wouldn’t that simplify things?”
    “Not really. There are all kinds of touching, from the innocent and friendly to the seductive and sexual. A handshake is touching.”
    “Then we’ll have to get more specific. But now’s the time to start, when the numbers are manageable. We only have five men and three women. Statistically speaking the odds are low that of those five men and three women, we’ll have potential matchups where touching is an issue.”
    She couldn’t help smiling. “You’ve reduced human interaction to an equation.”
    “What’s wrong with that? The probability of finding a perfect match in such a small sampling is nearly zero.”
    “But relationships don’t follow the laws of probability.”
    He peered at her over the rim of his mug. “Can you prove it?”
    “Not without some research, but I’m sure of this much – you can’t bring a group of people together and expect them to conform to some statistical model. You have to factor in the shared interests of the group, the close proximity and the opportunities for meaningful interaction.”
    His eyes crinkled with amusement. “Listen to you, talking nerdy.”
    “Can you prove me wrong?”
    “No, you make a good point. All the more reason to get a handle on this now and bring it to a level of awareness. These aren’t lab rats in an experiment. These are people we know, people we can reason with and explain all the factors that indicate why they shouldn’t press the lever to get the food pellets.”
    “Press the lever to get the food pellets? Is that code for having sex?”
    He blushed again. “Uh . . . I guess if you wanted to reduce it to basics . . . yeah, maybe.”
    He made her laugh, but he also made her want to scoot around to his side of the booth, cup