“Well…” She shot a wicked glance at her friend, the pretty girl with black hair and blue eyes who reminded me of Snow White. “April says you’re taken and I was pretty sure that you were single. So which is it?”

My mouth opened. Wow. They really weren’t subtle, were they?

“Ah,” I looked at Emilia. I thought she’d fallen asleep, but her head perked up. I couldn’t see her eyes but I knew she was watching us. I didn’t hold her gaze long. But how to answer that? Emilia and I were broken up, after all. All that had gone on between us the night before hadn’t changed that, at least not yet. She’d even said as much herself: Tonight I’m yours. So in spite of the warning bells at the back of my head, I decided to milk it a little.

“I am currently unattached.” Emilia didn’t move. Didn’t turn her head away.

Blonde Intern threw up her arms in victory. “I win!” she said, while her friend sat back, not looking upset at all about losing her “bet.”

“I’m sure you ladies have more interesting things to talk about than my personal life.” Like hair products, maybe, or shopping sprees with daddy’s credit card.

The blonde’s smile grew hungry. She almost licked her lips. “None that I can think of.”

Jordan snorted next to me and I shot him a look.

“Lawsuit bait,” he muttered under his breath and I nodded, agreeing with him.

I turned back around and adjusted my sunglasses, squinting out the windshield. We hadn’t even left Nevada, yet. Three more hours of this. I pulled out my laptop and fired it up, starting to work on my new, secret pet project. Jordan couldn’t peek at my work, thanks to the privacy filter, but the chicks behind me were really starting to bug me with the whispering and giggling. So I grabbed my shit and moved to the back of the bus where there were two empty seats and I could spread out.

As I passed them, I shot the girls a stern glare lest they get any ideas and try to follow me back. And minutes later, I was happily buried in my own little world of code.

I loved coding. I could lose myself in it the way an artist got caught up in creating his visual depiction of the world around him, the way a musician was swept away by the creation of music during jam sessions. Coding was a jam session to me. I could rattle out a string of code and relish the challenge as I tweaked and fine-tuned and problem-solved until I got it just right. It was like a giant puzzle that I created and solved at the same time.

It was an hour later, while I was checking for bugs before I moved to the next subroutine, that I noticed someone coming down the aisle toward me. I looked up, hoping it wasn’t an overeager intern.

It was Emilia, headed to the bathroom just behind me and she didn’t even glance my way. Perhaps she hadn’t noticed that I’d moved. I glanced around me. There was no one in the seat across from me or in front of me—one of the reasons I’d moved here—and the person diagonally across from me, a Dragon Epoch developer, was draped over his backpack, fast asleep. I set the open laptop on the seat across from me and waited for her to come out of the bathroom.

When the door opened again and she moved by in the aisle, my hand snaked out and grabbed her wrist, tugging her down beside me.

“What?” she said, but I put a finger up to my lips to silence her and pointed at Tony—the dude snoozing over his backpack—one of my hardest working devs who, I think, was getting the first bit of shut-eye in at least twenty-four hours.

Emilia glanced at him and turned back to me.

“What are you doing back here?” she whispered. “I thought you had plenty up there to amuse you.”

I studied her. Interesting. She was clearly jealous and not even bothering to disguise it. That was a good sign.

“I want to talk to you about tonight.”

Her eyes grew wary. “What about tonight?” she asked.

“I’d like for you to come over. We need to talk.”

Emilia blew out a long sigh and glanced away. I let go of her wrist and laid my arm gently across her shoulder so I could rub her back.

“You have a headache?”

“Yes,” she said. She frowned, preoccupied.

“You want some aspirin? I’ve got another packet somewhere. I think in my laptop case.” I bent and pulled it out for her, grabbing my bottle of water.

She took the packet from me, shooting me a guarded look while she popped the pills in her mouth and knocked back a swallow of water. “Adam, about last night—”

“Don’t say it,” I said, holding up a hand to cut her off.