A Baby for the Boss by Maureen Child Read Free Book Online

Jenny had indulged herself with searching out Irish myths and playing with possible story lines. She’d even turned a few sketches into an abbreviated storyboard to pitch to Sean and Mike at some point. But her idea for “The Wild Hunt” was just a little something extra and if she ran it by Dave first, he’d let her know if it merited being presented to the Ryans.
    “I was thinking that even a legendary hero like Finn MacCool could use a little help.”
    “Okay.” Dave pushed his glasses up higher as they slid down his nose. “What’ve you got?”
    “I was thinking it might be a nice twist to have a Wise Woman in the mix.”
    “Wise Woman?”
    “You know, it’s what they called witches back in the day.”
    He laughed. “Really? Interesting. Okay. Tell me.”
    Encouraged by the way he was giving her his complete concentration, Jenny started talking. Reaching into her top desk drawer, she pulled out a few sketches she’d made the night before. Handing them to Dave, she talked while he looked through them.
    “She can live in the village. Almost like an Easter egg surprise, she wouldn’t be activated unless the gamer hit a certain point on the quest.”
    Jenny paused, waited and was rewarded when Dave said, “Keep going.”
    “Okay.” Tapping one finger on a storyboard of “The Wild Hunt,” she said, “Here, in the timeline of the story, Finn finds a sword in a cave at the base of the cliffs. The gamer has to collect twelve rune clues to free the sword.”
    “Yeah...”
    “Well, I was thinking, what if we laid down fifteen rune clues? Twelve to free the sword and allow the gamer to take Finn into combat with the wizard. But , if he finds all fifteen, then he unlocks the Wise Woman. She could help Finn defeat the forest demons and—”
    “Be a love interest that maybe we could carry over into the sequel,” Dave finished for her, studying the sketches of the witch. “That’s excellent, Jenny. It adds another layer and rewards the gamer for collecting all of the runes.” Nodding to himself, he added, “Game rules say twelve unlocks the sword, fifteen unlocks magic.” He laughed to himself again and kept nodding. “Yeah, that’d be great. We make three of the runes really difficult to find so that players have to work for it if they want the extra. Most will just go for twelve and the sword, but the hard-core gamer will want to go for the magic. I like it.” He lifted his gaze to Jenny’s and added, “You should take this to the Ryans. Get their okay. They’ll love it.”
    “Um...” she said, pleasure sliding away at the thought of talking to the Ryan brothers together. Sean would be okay. He was nice, reasonable and he liked her. Mike on the other hand... “Why don’t you do it? You’re the head of my department.”
    He looked surprised. “It’s your idea, Jenny, and it’s a great one.”
    “Yeah, but—”
    “Don’t be dumb,” he said and dropped the sketches onto her desk. “Sean’s in Mike’s office. You can pitch it to both of them at the same time. The sooner you get this to them the better. Programmers will need more time to set up the extra layers.”
    “I know, but—”
    Dave chuckled a little. “Since when are you shy? Come on, take your idea to the bosses, impress the hell out of ’em.”
    Still shaking his head, he wandered off to check on a couple of the other artists. Jenny watched him go, then dropped her gaze to the Wise Woman sketches. It was a good idea, damn it. And if she and Mike weren’t...she didn’t know what they were exactly, but if they weren’t in such a weird space, she’d have no trouble at all taking her ideas to the Ryan brothers. They were always open to the employees coming to them with suggestions.
    She was the head artist now, so she shouldn’t be wary of facing her bosses. This was her job, and hadn’t she made a point out of telling Mike that nothing was going to stop her from doing her job?
    Nodding to herself, she gathered up her