[chapter three]
Disclaimer: If you've heard of
them, I don't own them. Everything else is mine, so no stealing, pretty please.
;-)
**
"You don't live here." The girl on the front porch blinked from behind her glasses as Chad opened the heavy front door, both of them eyeing each other.
"Neither do you." Chad shot back without thinking. "Can I help you?"
"I'm Mia." The girl answered, looking at him expectantly. "The computer girl?" She added by way of explanation.
"Oh yeah. C'mon in. Sorry. I'm Chad." Chad apologized, opening the door wider to admit the small figure before him. "Faye!" He bellowed, making Mia jump away from him. "Mia's here!"
"Work the floor of the New York Stock Exchange as a side job?" Mia asked, noting the volume of his voice as he shouted upstairs.
"Sorry. Occupational hazard. You learn to be loud when you're around loud cars and drivers who don't listen much." Chad grinned and Mia returned his smile slightly with a raised eyebrow.
"Ah." She said softly. "I'm just…I'm just gonna go over there." She said, gesturing to the computer.
"I'm just gonna go…over there." Chad echoed, pointing to the couch. Both nodded and took up their spots in the room.
Chad surreptitiously watched the girl in faded overalls crawl behind the CPU and begin pulling gently on wires. Her mousy brown hair kept falling over her glasses and her slight shoulders. She bit her thin bottom lip in concentration as she typed onto the keyboard, her hands flying over the keys. Chad watched as she appeared to enter nuclear launch codes into a blank screen before bringing the computer back to life.
"You good with computers?" He asked, feeling like he had to make conversation in the quiet, Delta Burke long forgotten.
Mia looked over her shoulder and shrugged. "I guess."
"How'd you get good at them?" Chad asked, thinking of his own pathetic computer skills.
Mia turned around and eyed him. "How'd you get good at working on cars?" She asked, fully aware of who he was in the world of Winston Cup after conversations with Faye.
"Just played, I guess."
"Well, that's how I got good at computers. That, and two degrees from USC." She said with a slight blush as she whirled back around to face the monitor.
Chad opened his mouth to speak, then closed it again. This girl was about 7000 times smarter than him, and from the looks of it, could probably wipe out the power grid for the state of North Carolina with a few keystrokes.
Maybe he should leave her alone.
Which he did, after eyeing her
tush as she leaned over to check the back of the monitor.