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Chapter 16

Jack had been staring at the same trace for ten minutes when a pair of hands closed on his neck. Hot hands. He bolted from his seat, ducked and turned. Spec sheets flew everywhere as he closed with his assailant. It was Rhea. He crouched in confusion for a second, his body saying "fight or flight," his mind saying "friend."

"Um, you looked like you could really use a good neck rub," she offered. Her expression was all wide-eyed innocence, and her tone was serious, but there was a twitch at the corner of her mouth as her lips threatened to rise in a grin.

"Don't give me that," Jack said. "I know y'all just love to see me jump. What am I going to have to do—put a proximity alarm in my door?"

"Well . . . you are very, um, entertaining, to surprise," Rhea admitted. "But the offer for the neck rub is sincere."

Jack sighed. He was a little stiff, and a neck rub would be the best thing that had happened to him all day. "Yeah. Okay, sure. That sounds good, actually." He sat down again, leaned forward, and tried to relax his shoulders.

Rhea's hands were hot, wonderfully so. And she obviously knew what she was doing. Her thumbs pressed and released, pressed and released against neck muscles that hurt more than he'd ever realized, while her fingers worked in tiny, soothing circles across his shoulders. He didn't have to concentrate on relaxing; then suddenly his head sagged forward and he caught himself, realizing that he'd drifted into a tranced state, almost into sleep. "Whoa, stop." He shook his head and rubbed his eyes with his knuckles. "You're going to put me to sleep," he said.

Rhea moved back, and the air rustling the hairs on his neck was cold by comparison. "Do you know what time it is?" she asked.

"Eight?" Jack hazarded, then looked at his watch. It was two a.m. "Damn," he said. "What are you still doing here?"

"I had some paperwork to do. Things don't just run themselves. Unfortunately."

"I know," Jack said. He spun his chair around to face her and leaned his elbows against his desktop. "Suit stuff. I hate it. That's why I'd never want your job."

Rhea frowned. "I suspect you're one of the few people at Celestial who could do my job, Jack. You don't have to be a suit to work with them. You just have to remember you're a lot smarter than they are, and keep the rules of their silly little games straight."

"I know," Jack said. "Sorry. I didn't mean to imply you were one of them. I've worked for suits, I know suits, and you're no suit."

Rhea laughed. "Well, I'm no Jack Kennedy either," she said. "And what are you doing here at two in the morning?"

Jack launched into his tale of modulator board woe, and Rhea listened intently. "And I've run emulations on my workstation, and traced the schematic fifty times. There's no way I could be getting any overloads in there, yet I've blown the circuit time and again." He looked up at Rhea; her titian hair framed a face deep in thought, with eyes focused a million miles away. Somewhere out with the stars she wanted to reach. She looked as classically beautiful as any statue, but he knew she wasn't marble cold. Not by a long shot.

Then her eyes were focused on him again, and he felt heat rising to his face as he realized he'd been staring at her, and that she'd said something, and that he hadn't heard a word of it. "Uh, what was that?" he asked.

"A-flat, you said?" she repeated.

"Yeah. Think so. I don't have perfect pitch, but I'm not bad."

"Hmm. A-flat. That's interesting. I wonder if we're getting some kind of bleed-through or resonance. Let me see that schematic." She bent down beside him and he was aware suddenly that her right breast was nestled against his arm. It seemed happy there, but his better judgment advised a hasty strategic retreat. Not so fast, his hormones argued. A frontal approach might be a better idea. He compromised on gridlock, not moving at all except to look down instead of across at her. That gave him a good view of her long, sexy toes and bare legs, which didn't help at all. Neither did the smell of roses that surrounded her, more subtle than perfume. Jack began to sweat. He certainly wasn't sleepy anymore.

If Rhea knew what she was doing to him, she gave no sign. The corners of her mouth were turned up slightly, but that seemed to be her habitual expression. Certainly her eyes were intent on the printout. "No," she said, straightening up again—a move that filled him with regret. "You've done a good job on the layout—I never would have thought of half these optimizations. I don't see where the margins are tight enough anywhere to give you any bleed-through, and it looks like you've got enough damping to handle any resonance. Can you fire it up for a minute?"

"Sure. It's ready to go now; I fixed the last blowout a while back." He took the much-patched board back over to the trolley, and went through the hookup ritual. He flipped the switch and the familiar A-flat tone filled the room.

"Kind of pleasant, actually," Rhea observed.

"Maybe," Jack said, "but you can get a pitch pipe for pennies that would be just as good." The tone suddenly gargled to a stop as a little puff of smoke rose from the trolley. "Well, there it goes," he said, pointing. "I've seen a lot of that lately, and if we check, it'll be some part that couldn't possibly blow."

Rhea came to a decision. "Go home, Jack," she said. "You're not going to make any progress beating it to death tonight."

"But . . ."

"No buts." She hooked her arm under his and pulled him up with surprising strength. "I don't pay you to work twenty-four hours a day—I pay you to solve problems."

"I always assumed you were paying for my good looks."

"Angling for a salary reduction, hmm?" Rhea laughed. "Go home and get some sleep. I don't want to see you back here until after lunch tomorr—today."

That seemed like a good idea. The rush of adrenaline was subsiding, and Jack was suddenly dog-tired again. By the time they got to the parking lot, he was weaving on his feet, and the drive home was a real ordeal despite the lack of traffic. It was understandable then, perhaps, that by the time he dragged himself out of the car and up the front steps, Jack had completely forgotten about his morning and his gargoyle. She had not, of course, forgotten about him.

Some days, he concluded as he raced through his second emergency shower in twenty-four hours, life sucks.

 

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