The Geek Tycoon Read Online Free PDF

Her parents had given her a Porsche for her sixteenth birthday, not a huge extravagance for people in their financial position. But thirteen years later she was driving a hybrid and she’d divorced the guy who’d seemed tailor-made for her.
    For the first time he wondered if maybe his assumptions about Charlotte were inaccurate. A woman who’d traded a Porsche for a Prius might also have changed her ideas about what kind of man she wanted to date. Now there was a concept. And he was the genius who’d proposed instituting a hands-off policy at work.
    Could that be why she’d questioned him about it? Nah, probably not. She’d simply wanted to point out the difficulties of enforcing a policy that would complicate her job as head of HR.
    The policy was still a good idea, though, even if it did need tweaking. He’d talk it over with his three friends and get their input. Arranging that could be tricky with Blake hanging around, but he’d worry about that tomorrow.
    Tonight he’d have the pleasure of diving into a project dear to his heart. He knew those components and they were primo. He’d make sure they were functional before he left Charlotte’s townhouse.
    Pulling his car in beside hers felt cozy and more than a little intimate, especially after the garage door came down, sealing them in. But he was here to fix her electronics. She’d only agreed to let him do it because he was the lesser of two evils.
    She climbed out of her car. “We have to go in through the laundry room. Ignore the undies on the drying rack.”
    Fat chance. He’d been imagining her undies ever since hitting puberty. He wasn’t about to ignore them if they were hanging in plain sight.
    Opening the door, she walked inside. “The heat will come on in a minute,” she called over her shoulder. “It’ll warm up soon.” She flipped on the lights in the kitchen.
    He caught a glimpse of sexy black lace items draped over a folding rack in the laundry room. One glance at those and he didn’t need central heating to raise his personal thermostat. Naturally he wondered what color she was wearing right now.
    Her kitchen was orderly with no dirty dishes in the sink and cheerful cupboards painted egg-yolk yellow with white knobs. Tony had never pictured how her kitchen would look, but this one suited her. His was more sterile, but then he didn’t spend much time in it.
    He followed her into a dining area with a massive wooden table and six upholstered chairs. She didn’t pause there but continued on into the living room where a couple of table lamps cast a mellow glow. Cushy furniture slipcovered in denim faced a wall containing a large flat screen mounted above a fireplace.
    “I let them put up the screen.” She gestured to it. “Obviously that took more than one person to hang it. But I planned to do the rest and I made a mess of it.”
    “Maybe not.” Tony took off his jacket and draped it over the back of the sofa as he assessed the situation. He recognized the general layout but this was a newer model than his. “Do you have the instructions?”
    “Yep.” She crossed to a small desk in a corner and came back with a sheaf of papers. “Good luck. I’ve studied them for hours. Didn’t help.”
    He took the folded pages. At moments like this a trumpet in his head sounded the charge. God, he loved solving a technical problem, especially a challenging one.
    She was right about the crappy instructions, but he’d only asked for them as potential backup. Configuring a system without written directions was more fun, like working a picture puzzle without the picture. Charlotte had given him a task that was in his wheelhouse. Chances were good he could have her up and running in less than an hour.
    At first he’d planned to do that to impress her. But as he studied the instructions and considered his options, he realized that might not be the smartest move. For one thing, he’d show her up. She hadn’t managed to solve this problem and had