Love, Technically

By Lynne Silver

Noah Frellish is a king amongst geeks. As CEO of Chicago's hottest tech company, he's done with the world only seeing him for his money—especially when it comes to romance. So when he helps a beautiful employee with a printer problem and she mistakes him for a help desk technician? Well, Noah can't help but play along…through every sexy, romantic moment.

Small-town girl Michelle Kolson loves life in Chicago, not to mention her work at a cutting-edge tech company. A whirlwind romance with a hot coworker is the cherry on her happy life sundae—until her job lands on the chopping block.

Suddenly, nothing is what it seems, and Michelle finds out the man she fell headfirst into bed with actually owns the company. If Noah's going to convince the sweet, small-town girl to stay in the big city, he'll have to prove he's still the sexy nerd she fell for.

Previously released on Entangled's Ever After imprint – July 2013

• Language: English
• Publisher: Macmillan Publishers
• Release date: Jul 29, 2013
• ISBN: 9781622662210

Lynne Silver

Lynne Silver is the author of sexy contemporary romance such as the popular Alpha Heroes and Coded for Love series. She absolutely loves to travel and explore new cities. She has a slight (huge) addiction to donuts, fancy purses, romance novels and video games. She lives in Washington, DC, with her husband and two sons. She loves connecting with readers so please find her on social media or at her website, www.LynneSilver.com

Book preview

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She’s falling for his alter-ego…

Noah Frellish is a king amongst geeks. As CEO of Chicago’s hottest tech company, he’s done with the world only seeing him for his money—especially when it comes to romance. So when he helps a beautiful employee with a printer problem and she mistakes him for a help desk technician? Well, Noah can’t help but play along…through every sexy, romantic moment.

Small-town girl Michelle Kolson loves life in Chicago, not to mention her work at a cutting-edge tech company. A whirlwind romance with a hot coworker is the cherry on her happy life sundae—until her job lands on the chopping block.

Suddenly, nothing is what it seems, and Michelle finds out the man she fell headfirst into bed with actually owns the company. If Noah’s going to convince the sweet, small-town girl to stay in the big city, he’ll have to prove he’s still the sexy nerd she fell for.

Previously released on Entangled’s Ever After imprint – July 2013

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Table of Contents

Dedication

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Epilogue

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Find love in unexpected places with these satisfying Lovestruck reads…

Melting the Millionaire’s Heart

Sleeping with the Boss

Fiancée for Hire

Merger of the Heart

Tell Me Something Good

Holly’s First Noel

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

Copyright © 2013 by Lynne Silver. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce, distribute, or transmit in any form or by any means. For information regarding subsidiary rights, please contact the Publisher.

Entangled Publishing, LLC

2614 South Timberline Road

Suite 109

Fort Collins, CO 80525

Visit our website at www.entangledpublishing.com.

Lovestruck is an imprint of Entangled Publishing, LLC.

Edited by Lewis Pollak and Stacy Abrams

Cover design by Heather Howland

Photography by iStock

ISBN 978-1-62266-221-0

Manufactured in the United States of America

First Edition July 2013

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To my mom, who always encouraged me to do something with my writing.

Chapter One

Darn it. Michelle Kolson clicked her mouse furiously on the print button. No dice. The large gray box on the stand in the corner remained silent and still.

Don’t you curse at me, young lady. Mom’s voice came through the phone loud and clear.

Sorry, Mom. The stupid printer won’t work.

Why are you still at the office? It’s eight thirty at night. Even Walmart employees don’t work such crazy hours. What’s wrong with the management?

Michelle rolled her eyes. Mom didn’t get it, didn’t have a clue about the life she wanted. If she were still back home in Minsker, Iowa, she’d be with Brad, waiting on an engagement she didn’t want and working a job she hated.

Nope, not for her.

On cue, Mom just had to mention her ex-boyfriend. I ran into Brad at the diner. He was eating burgers with Rebecca. Do you think he’s dating her?

Mom, stop worrying. Brad and I are done. He’s free to date anyone he wants. She got up to check on the printer, stretching the desk phone cord as long as she could. She examined the printer closely. The green light was on and the tiny gray screen said Ready. Why then wouldn’t it print? Arrgh. She gripped the handset tighter, resisting the urge to bang it against the printer.

Mom, I have to go. This thing is due tomorrow.

Fine. I’ll call again soon.

Bye. Love you, she said almost absently. Priority number one was getting her time sheet and record log finished and on her jerk of a boss’s desk. He wouldn’t forgive printer problems. Though why he couldn’t approve it via e-mail like every other twenty-first-century office worker, she didn’t know. Ironic, really. You’d think a company specializing in eco-friendly products would have policies about paper usage. But this was her first week at the job, her first real job in an office anywhere, unless you counted working at her parents’ secondhand store since the age of ten—which she didn’t.

If she did count it, she’d still be in Minsker, working at the family store. Or if she were truly lucky, the Walmart, where Missy McQueen, high school cheerleader and popular girl, was manager and still making people’s lives miserable. Ha. If life had any sort of justice, Missy McQueen would be fat, unemployed, and suffering karmic justice for her behavior in high school. But she was still thin, beautiful, and mean as a snake.

Michelle sighed as she glanced around the space. LiteWave Tech was an open office environment, her coworker explained on her first day’s tour. It meant no cubicle walls were in sight. Instead, a sea of desks stood in rows, looking like a wood-and-computer army. She could see all the way to the windows where the finance cluster stood. Her department was on the third floor: the boring floor, she’d learned. The floor where the bills got paid, benefits were doled out, and customer calls fielded.

All the fun stuff happened on the fourth floor, where the tech, graphics, and marketing teams lived. Michelle had only been up there once, but it had been more colorful somehow. The desks had been personalized with photos, comics, and toys. Down here it was Any Office, USA, and it was currently dead. No computer screen flickered other than hers. Darn it, that meant no one to help.

Time for a last-ditch effort. If it didn’t work, she’d have to grab a flash drive and pay to print out the document at the twenty-four-hour printing store near her house with money she didn’t have. She kicked the printer stand and caught it as it wobbled.

That never works, but I appreciate the sentiment.

She jumped and whirled around to see a young guy, looking nerdy in an endearing way. He wore a ratty black T-shirt with the words There’s no place like 127.0.0.1. She guessed it was a computer joke. Despite her confusion, she took note of the way the numbers spread across his wide chest, hinting at some interesting muscles hiding behind the geeky demeanor. She had to lift her chin to see his face.

You startled me. She placed a hand to her chest to calm down her wildly beating heart, which jumped thanks to being startled but also at her close proximity to a tall, handsome man. At least, she thought he was handsome. A baseball cap pulled low over his brow prevented her from seeing most of his face, other than a nicely squared jawline shadowed by a hint of a dark beard.

Do you need help?

That would be amazing. I have to get my weekly time sheet and call log printed and on my boss’s desk.

Let me see what I can do, but for future reference, the help desk is always on call here.

Help desk?

The IT group whose sole purpose is to assist—

The office Luddites.

He grinned. You said it, not me. He bent over the printer.

I didn’t even know such a thing existed. It’s my first week here. My first week anywhere. She blushed and tried to stop rambling.

He started to say something, then stopped and walked back to her desk to fiddle with her mouse. He spent a few minutes hitting buttons until he looked up and grinned. I found the problem. Come with me.

She followed him around a row of desks to another printer stand that was spitting out a sheaf of papers. She snatched at the pile to see that her document was there in triplicate. Her hand brushed his wrist as she reached for the paper, and then understanding of her silly mistake dawned. She flushed and wanted to hide. I was sending to the wrong printer bank. I must not have heard it, since I was on the phone.

He grinned. Yeah. Easy mistake to make. I would’ve assumed the closest printer too, but now you know.

Thank you. She stuck her hand out. I’m Michelle. She felt a bit foolish shaking hands as if they were being formally introduced, but she wanted an excuse to touch him, to feel his strong and capable-looking hand in hers.

…

He grinned and thrust his hand out. Sark, he said, granting her permission to call him by the name all his gamer friends used. Her soft hand fit in his perfectly, and he wanted to keep holding on. Back when he’d first founded LiteWave and it had been fewer than a dozen employees, he’d been Sark to everyone. Now, he was mostly Noah or Mr. Frellish around the office. But he definitely wanted Michelle to be in the small circle of people to call him Sark.

Her long brown hair was the kind of soft he wanted to run his hands through, not to mention the skin on her face looked as soft and smooth as her hair. But she seemed kind of jumpy. A lot of employees got that way with him. Did they think he walked around with a pocket full of pink slips or something? She’d only been there a week, but she had to recognize him. They always plastered his face up on the screen during orientation meetings.

The thought of his corporate headshots reminded him that the trendy glasses he wore for press meetings had fallen off and cracked during his last bike ride and he was wearing his older, supposedly geeky ones. Jane from PR was going to kill him for having to order yet another pair. She claimed he needed to look nerdy chic. He didn’t care, as long as he could see and they stayed on during a long, sweaty bike ride.

Nice to meet you, Sark. You helped me out of a tight spot tonight. Jim made it pretty clear that these time sheets are pretty important. Maybe he’d fire me if I didn’t have it done.

For real? And who’s Jim? Then the memory clicked. Junior head of the customer service Director level. Maybe he did have the power to fire someone and it was going to his head. Sark made a mental note to look into it.

You work in the call center? They recently hired you?

Why did you sound surprised? I’m a hard worker.

It’s not you. I’m sure you’re great. I’ve… He started to say he’d signed a contract to move the call center overseas, but he didn’t want to start a companywide panic. He had to be tactful. A lot of big corporations are moving their call centers to India.

Her face fell. What?

"Something about bottom-line costs to us and helping the global

Reviews for Love, Technically

[beckymmoe_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Love, Technically is a quick read—just over 125 pages—and cute, providing the reader is okay with some major suspension of belief. At first Michelle's mistake makes sense—Noah gives her his gamer nickname, because he thought she was cute and wanted her "to be in the small circle of people to call him Sark." He's wearing casual clothes and a baseball cap, and his older "geeky" glasses since he broke his more stylish ones on a recent bike ride. He looks nothing like the polished publicity photos she'd seen around the building. It's late, there's no one else still working on her floor, he's wearing a seriously nerdy (but amusing) t-shirt, and he does "fix" the problem she's having with her printer.Soon, though, it gets a little silly. She sees him many times in a more normal work environment, but never makes the connection. Then Noah decides he has to tell her the truth, but does so in pretty much the most bizarre and obscure way possible—and she totally doesn't get it. Then for a big chunk of the novella he thinks she knows who he is but she totally doesn't. They spend a lot of time together—how does she not make the connection a single time? He does talk about work and is even often driven around in a company car. Every single other employee knows him. Just not the new girl, apparently.Still, there were a lot of cute moments in the story...along with M&Ms and a Mork & Mindy reference. Both Michelle and Noah find solutions for their work woes (going public and having to answer to a board of directors has taken his company in directions he's not comfortable with), and she does make him grovel just a little to get her back in the end.In a nutshell: Short and sweet; though not entirely believable, it does have its moments. 3 stars.I received an ARC from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

[readyourwrites · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Reviewed by Kimfor Read Your Writes Book ReviewsI loved the premise of this book. There’s just something really great about truly falling in love with someone for them as a person and not for the size of their bank account.Michelle Kolson is working late one night during her first week at LiteWave Tech. She thinks she’s alone on the floor and is having printer problems. In fact, she even kicks the printer and is surprised to hear the voice of a tall, handsome, geeky looking guy approaching her. Since he helps her and reminds her that the help desk is always on call, Michelle thinks Sark works for the help desk.Sark, known to his friends, is really Noah Frellish, the billionaire CEO who actually founded and created LiteWave Tech. Noah realizes that Michelle doesn’t know who he really is and decides he will tell her the truth the next day. Well....He kind of sort of does, but she doesn’t realize it.Love, Technically is a romance for starry eyed romance lovers everywhere. You get to watch two people fall in love with each other and come to terms with who they are and what they really want out of life.Noah is just an average guy who even though he has tons of money, doesn’t show it. Michelle is a small town girl who wants to live in the big city. She doesn’t have a college degree but she’s a fast learner and a hard worker. What these two can accomplish together is what friendship and love is all about.I was hooked from the beginning and I enjoyed the book to the very end. Noah and Michelle are two characters you will fall in love with.Source: Publisher

[mybookaddiction_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This was a romance story about Michelle and Sark. Michelle just recently moved to Chicago and started a new job at LiteWave. She was working late one night and was having trouble with her printer and Sark came to her rescue. She thought he was from the IT Department but unbeknownst to her, he was actually Noah, the CEO of the company. He knew he should tell her the truth but he was tired of people liking him because of his money instead of just for himself. Their attraction was mutual and a romance started.I really did not like how Michelle was portrayed as a country hick. She saw the billboard of Noah and still didn’t put it together that Sark was the CEO. Then Sark sent her a note explaining who he really was and she misunderstands the note. I was mad at Sark that he thought he could explain his deception in a note and then never talk about it with her in person. Once she found out who he really was, she felt betrayed and left her job, running home to Iowa. Sark followed her and they get their happily ever after. Cute story but not enough substance for me.Rating-3Reviewed by Donna McClaughertyCourtesy of My Book Addiction and More

[snarkymom · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

“Love, Technically” is a “Geek Novella” written by Lynne Silver and will be published by Entangled Publishing in another week (7/29/13). This is a 95 page quick read of a feel-good romance where the small-town girl comes to the big city & meets the boy… who is actually the CEO of the company where she works… and lots of miscommunication ensues. He tells her who he is but she misunderstands… and when it finally comes to light, well, you’ll find out all about it once YOU read “Love, Technically”!This is a great beach read, but be aware – there are also some rather “deep” subtexts dealing with issues like call centers being outsourced overseas; the value of a college degree versus work experience; and how the Business of business typically stifles creativity in the workplace. It is a self-proclaimed “geek novella” – so yes, there is some “geek speak” (along with a shout-out to ThinkGeek – I was sold on the book at that point LOL!) but nothing that a “non-geek” can’t understand… or skip over while pretending to understand it. (You know who you are.)