His Naughty Lessons

** Harper **

Much to Harper’s disappointment, the kiss didn’t end with him on top of her this time. All the distractions had taken a toll on the atmosphere of the evening, and although Harper didn’t think she’d mind, she knew Eli wouldn’t want to start anything even if there was only a remote chance of it being tainted by imperfections. So she let herself feel content with the soft kisses, and they spent the next few hours cuddling cozily over their comfort food and a movie.

Fortunately, there was always tomorrow.

Also fortunately, tomorrow was soon off to a good start.

Harper’s first meeting the next morning with Malcolm Smith was a breeze. She had been prepared for a bombardment of tricky questions, knowing what the Sterling advisor was capable of from their first encounter on investors day. But to her surprise, their discussions this time were nothing besides educational and pleasant, occasionally even entertaining enough to fill the whole conference room with laughter. As the hours flew by, so did a great number of her concerns over the details of her game plan, and the outline of her project quickly became more and more clear in her head.

However, the bigger surprise — and the even more pleasant one — was her first official interaction with the Future Vision consultants.

The technical integration meeting was led by Adam Wolfson, the leader of the consultant team whom Eli had introduced to Harper during the Luau. Apparently a practical and don’t-give-a-crap-about-looking-good-on-paper sort of guy, Adam didn’t bother starting with a perfectly polished presentation like all the other meeting hosts. Instead, he went straight to bringing out a dozen VR headsets and distributing them among the audience.

"When Sterling Trust first approached us about this contract project," he explained, "we were given a preliminary run-through of the scope of this space adventure game, so that we could come up with a demo to show that our technology matches what is needed. You’ll find a copy of that demo preloaded onto each of these headsets, which I believe will give you a good idea of what to expect from our collaboration."

Every member of the development team from Miracles looked at the headsets in amazement. Harper’s own eyes widened as well — a demo to show that their technology matched what was needed? Future Vision was already one of the very best in the industry, and yet Sterling Trust had put up a campaign goal for the consultant team to meet? Just how high were Eli’s expectations?

Curious and awed, she picked up the headset in front of her and strapped it over her eyes.

Oh ...