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Chapter 27

Jack watched as Rhea took one of his pencils from his desk and started tracing on the printout. "It'll cross here, here and there," she muttered, but he wasn't really paying attention. He felt like a light had been turned on in his own personal root cellar . . . like he'd been awakened from a dream in which he'd done something so unspeakably gauche that he could never face polite society again.

He savored the feeling of relief and freedom for a minute, and watched the woman who had shaken him awake. Rhea's face was intent, and she absently brushed a stray strand of hair from her eyes. Her lips were pursed in thought, but Jack found the effect quite aesthetic. He moved to stand by her and look over her shoulder, but her closeness made it even harder to focus on the diagram.

Could Jan be right? He wanted to think so. If she were interested in him, and he didn't say something now, he'd be the worst kind of fool. He could feel the heat of Rhea's presence, and hear her breathing over the gentle skritch of the pencil. And if Jan were wrong?

Well . . . then he'd be the second worst kind of fool—and everyone should have a goal in life. He cleared his throat.

Rhea looked up and flashed him a high bandwidth smile, freezing him in place. "Look," she said, "this is going to take a while. Why don't we tackle it tomorrow, fresh. There's at least twenty hours of cutting traces and patching in surface wires—"

Jack finally looked—really looked—at the annotations Rhea had been making. "I think I can do it in sixteen hours," he said, his thoughts of the moment before forgotten.

"Whatever. The point is we've got our money, we think we've got our drive problem. It's time to celebrate!" She stood up from his chair and looked into his eyes. "Why don't we go to my place . . . no . . . better make that your place. We can call out for some Szechuan and talk." The word seemed laden with more meaning than a single syllable could bear, and her smile was back, amused and alluring at the same time.

Sometimes the world says put up or shut up, and Jack didn't think he was completely deaf. "I, well, yes. I mean my place looks like hell, but—"

"I doubt that," Rhea told him. She walked to the door and turned off the light. "Besides, I'm having critter problems."

Jack followed, not running—quite. "Mice?" he asked.

"No."

"Cockroaches?"

"Angels," she said.

"Oh." Jack was nonplused. "Well, I've got gargoyles, or gargoyle, anyway."

"But a gargoyle," Rhea said, "isn't a problem when you want to be bad."

 

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Framed