Free Going Royal 01 - Some Like It Royal by Heather Long Page A

do you create?”
    “Hmm?” He lifted a brow, chasing an escapee nut trying to sink into the melting ice cream.
    “Spherecast? It’s a software company. What kind of software do you do? I mean—video games? Finance software? Shoe comparison app that lets you take a picture of shoes and finds them for you online?” A drip of chocolate hovered at the corner of her mouth. It looked more edible than the ice-cream sundaes.
    “We design a lot of things.” And he needed to stop staring at her mouth. “Water?”
    “Actually, I want coffee. I know it’s weird, but I always get cold after eating ice cream—which is the point, I know. But coffee sounds good. Maybe? Please?” She batted her eyelashes in such a patently false show of modesty that he laughed.
    “Sure.” He headed for the pot. It was already set up for morning, he just had to turn it on. He could reset it when they were done.
    “Define a ‘lot of things’?” She licked her spoon clean and claimed both their bowls to rinse out in the sink.
    “Finance software.” He waited for her nose to wrinkle and suppressed another smile when it did. “Database tools. Retail processing software, shopping carts and occasionally a video game here or there. We’re just getting our feet wet in that department, though. Mostly we specialize in high-end security, network internal and external.” He picked up the ice-cream tub and the whipped-cream can to put them back where they went. In a couple of minutes the center island was clean and she wiped it with a damp cloth as the coffeepot burbled and gurgled the last of the brew.
    “Huh. Why software? I mean I know it’s lucrative, but why did you get into designing it?” She rinsed her hands off and passed him the two coffee cups they drank out of and washed up that morning.
    Filling both, he shrugged. “Just something I was good at. I got my first computer when I was eight or nine. Wrote my first program at ten and never looked back.”
    “What was your first program?” She sipped the coffee and leaned back against the counter, looking more relaxed than she had all day.
    “You’ll laugh.” His lips twisted and he took a drink of the coffee. She was right—it was the perfect level of heat to chase away the chill of their dessert.
    “I promise, I’ll try not to laugh too hard.” Her impudent, irrepressible grin drew him. He liked her brand of honesty.
    “It was a stats tool.”
    She squinted one eye closed and tilted her head. “How would that be funny?”
    “Because,” he lifted his mug, “it was for an online game so I could get the best gear with the most attributes for my characters.”
    Her mouth opened. “Why?”
    “Because a lot of the good gear was BOP.” At her quizzical look, he chuckled. He’d already let his inner nerd out of the bag. “It was bind on pickup. When you went on raids with groups, you had to know whether you could really use an item before you took it, because you couldn’t give it away. Raids were a big thing and you were often limited to winning one item. I wanted to make sure whatever item I was after I could use and was the best for my character class. I created a database that let me see how adding or taking away a piece would affect my overall strength, health and talents. The best combos I saved and that way I knew what to get.”
    “What you’re saying is that it was a shoe comparison program for geeks?” No malice or criticism echoed in her words, but the analogy wasn’t that far off.
    “More or less.”
    She grunted, the corners of her eyes crinkling. “That’s kind of cool.”
    “Yeah, well, I thought so. When it worked well, I put it on a Web site—that way others could use it—and in six months I had a lot of hits and an offer from the game company to buy it. They wanted to add it to their own tools on their Web site.”
    “All right. It’s funny, but I’m impressed. How old were you?”
    “Eleven—or twelve maybe. I’d really tweaked the software