Page 14 of One Night Billionaire

She picked up the food and went straight to his office, arriving right on time.

“Come in,” he answered her knock.

She walked in, setting the food on a small side table.

“What is that?” he asked. His tone was annoyed, normal for him with her.

“Dinner,” she smiled back.

“I do not have time on my calendar for you to be setting dates with me,” he bit out.

Anna took a deep breath. She hadn’t considered he would think that. “I promise you, that was not my intention. Pete said you liked Thai food so I ordered that. I just wanted to provide some food during this late meeting.”

He grunted, clearly not believing her.

“I can leave it there.” She backed away from the food, more unsure than she had been before.

“What did you want to meet about, then?” he asked.

“I wanted to clear the air between us and I have a peace offering, aside from the food.”

“There’s nothing to clear,” he told her. His words didn’t match his body language as she watched the muscles in his jaw tick as he clenched.

“I didn’t know who you were when I applied for this job or when I met you. I applied before the trip because I knew my job wouldn’t last much longer.” All true.

“It doesn’t matter. I didn’t know who you were when I hired you. I might have if you’d stuck around.”

Damn. That was the first he’d made a comment about that night and only confirmed that her regret was valid, he wanted her to stay. “I thought it was a one-night stand and that I was supposed to leave. I’d never done anything like that before, sleep with someone I’d just met or had a vacation fling.”

“It doesn’t matter. What’s the work-related reason you came here for?” he asked.

“If it helps at all, I’ve regretted walking out since before I left that night. I just didn’t want the rejection in the morning,” she babbled on.

“Anna,” he said sharply. “Work.”

“Oh, umm.” She opened her laptop and sent her presentation over to him before taking a seat. “I sent you a file. I improved the presentation and added a few more things for phase three.”

Brian arched a brow but focused on his computer.

She pressed on as she looked at her computer, trying not to focus on him. “If we break up a few of the things I added in the previous presentation, we can shorten the timeframe on when phase two would be ready.”

“Are you saying you can’t do it in the timeframe you promised?” he challenged.

“Not at all. It would get the requirements you want out sooner and then allow for more updates. It would show that we are dedicated to the product if we have multiple updates that our product features. Customers would know that we are still working on it, not just a release and walk away deal.”

“How many versions are you proposing?” he asked.

“Three, but if you wanted to drag it out to show the same dedication, you could.”

“What else could you possibly add to it?”

Anna quickly scrolled to that slide in her presentation so she could read from it and list all the new features she was proposing. The most important one was the ability to expand outside of just documents to include spreadsheets and presentations.

“That feature would be something someone could turn on or off as preferred.”

Brian stopped looking at his computer and faced her. “And you believe this is possible?”

Anna nodded. “I confirmed with the team in our meeting today that it would be possible. It pushes out version three by several months, but we all believe it’s doable.”

---