War Games

No arse that good should be put at risk that way!

“Toby—what the hell do you think you’re doing?” Jack McKenna stepped out from behind the yards of bloody stupid camouflage netting that had been draped around each silly little ’war zone’. As he moved into their line of sight, the group of young men clustered around Toby, all stopped laughing very abruptly.

Tilting his head back as he lifted a hand to shield his eyes from the sun, Toby smiled up at him with the same puppy like enthusiasm that seemed to come so naturally to him. “I’m…de-fusing a bomb?” he hazarded.

McKenna frowned down at him for several long seconds. “If you could manage to do that without blowing your arse into a hundred different pieces, I’m sure the board of investors for the company would appreciate it,” he snapped.

He forced himself to turn away from Toby then, and go to check on all the other lunatics who’d been let out of the asylum for a day of military themed ‘corporate bonding’. Still, even as he strode away from the boy, he couldn’t help but think he’d find it a hell of a lot less frustrating to work for the country’s leading computer games manufacturer if Toby did manage to get himself blown up.

He should be counting his blessings, McKenna told himself, as he glanced into one of the other areas set up to represent a somewhat more historical war zone and did a quick head count of computer geeks. At least being given fake bombs to play with was distracting Toby from following him around like an untrained pup all day. He should be making the most of being able to turn around without tripping over the boy.

Still, somehow, McKenna soon found himself wandering back to check on the group of game designers that just happened to include Toby. But that was only because the boy obviously needed more supervision than everyone else, McKenna told himself, as he glared at the expanse of cargo netting. It wasn’t because he actually liked keeping an eye on the silly little fool. And it certainly wasn’t because he was actually starting to fall for the boy.