Total pages in book: 143
Estimated words: 133886 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 669(@200wpm)___ 536(@250wpm)___ 446(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 133886 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 669(@200wpm)___ 536(@250wpm)___ 446(@300wpm)
“Yeah,” Marisol replied. “Especially around here, but Skye says they’re starting to break into Houston and Austin. I like it. Less money than the gym.” She pulled them out of the parking spot and drove slowly through the lot. If she went a certain way down an alley, they’d end at the beginning of his street. “I heard Secret’s taken an interest in them.”
“Hmmm.” News to him. That Secret/Wilder combination could really help the BikeBro’s social site. Dylan had money to spend. Tristan, of course, had more. He couldn’t remember hearing any whispering of BikeBro looking for investors.
Wait, no. He needed answers to something far more important. “Do you know Biker101?” His head never left the relaxing headrest, but he opened his eyes and rolled her way again.
“I don’t know. It’s hard to know who’s who because literally no one uses their own name,” she said, taking the corner onto his street a little too quickly. His stomach roiled as he reached for the dashboard to help keep himself in place. “They have an interactive mirror coming that’ll work directly with the box. It sounds really sick.”
“I haven’t heard that either.” Greer closed his eyes, lulled by the sultry tone of Marisol’s voice and the silence inside the car. He gave a big jaw-cracking yawn. “I’m slipping fast.”
“Then yes, you are getting old,” Marisol teased.
The perceived insult snapped his eyes open. She smiled again for the second time in five minutes. That had to be some sort of record. He hoped he remembered the momentous occasion tomorrow.
“I’m thirty years old. I’ll take mature, but not old,” he explained, indignantly.
She laughed straight out at his outrageous explanation, and barely had the car stopped in front of his house before he shoved open his door, stepping out into the brisk night air. He made a show of wrapping his jacket around him as he bent his head back into the car.
“You know, I used to like you.” He hurriedly slammed the car door to stop her from getting the last word.
Greer started around the hood to hear Marisol’s window lowering. She cackled with laughter. He liked the sound. Halfway up the walkway to his front door, he heard, “Love you, Greer.”
He shot her the finger then a smile over his shoulder.
She stayed until he made it inside the house. He gave another giant yawn. Maybe he was a little old. Greer abandoned his Scruff plans. He needed to be in the office early tomorrow anyway.
Chapter 6
Five days later
Ducky had managed to hold his excitement until a few steps outside the rotunda of Secret’s Dallas high rise. “I can’t believe Tristan Wilder offered me a job.”
His little brother was enthralled by the tour of Secret’s floor after floor of data centers. Donny had doubted the wisdom of bringing Ducky along with them today. What a mistake that would have been to leave him behind. Their rage-against-the-machine brother spiritedly spoke Dylan’s and Tristan’s language just like Dallas had hoped.
“You aren’t leaving us,” Dallas said. Ducky had turned the unexpected offer down on the spot, but Dallas liked seeing Ducky proud of himself, and it had been quite a surprise for all of them.
“So, what do y’all think?” Donny asked, the last one through the revolving door. Dallas looked up at the bright sunny sky, letting the warmth of the early spring sun bathe his skin.
Dallas didn’t want to add negativity. They’d had a great meeting, but the cash they had hoped to receive had never fully materialized.
“Having our social site as an app of Secret’s will give us a better interface, and we get to keep all our privacy and company focus and policies in place. Just the use of their servers alone could change things. We could never afford something like that up there.” Ducky pointed to the building where the data centers were housed as they started for the parking lot across the street. “Another positive thing, users can access their Secret profiles to access our network. So, less logins and hassle for our customers. I can’t see any reason not to join forces. They said they wouldn’t charge us anything for three years. We’ll know by then if we can make it work.”
“I’d hoped they wanted to invest cash,” Donny said his piece, ignoring Ducky altogether. He spoke Dallas’s truth aloud, making the weight of their load feel a little heavier than before. Why did no one want to invest money in them? BikeBro was growing into a substantial business.
Dallas grabbed the back of Ducky’s suit collar to keep him from stepping off the curb into oncoming traffic. His brother was too excited to pay attention to something as trivial as traffic lights and street signs.
“Tristan offered a lot of money to buy our company. That has to mean they see value,” Ducky said.