“Notyou.” Her shoulders straightened, her ponytail whipping back. “You… you put your research in the limelight and convinced Secretary McCandless that you could deliver something actionable—”
“Dr. Kramer’s work is still largely theoretical, but my data is—”
“Actuallyactionable? Good, since we’re stuck together now with an impossible—”
“Project—”
“—project—andstop interrupting me.”
A flush crept down her throat under her jacket. He’d seen the low dip of her collarbones on Saturday, knew just how the warmth would gather there. An answering bloom swelled in his chest, and—
Fuck! Focus.
He swallowed, tensing his forearms and his abdomen. “I…sorry.”
She blinked.
“Quantum gravity is an impossible research project. You…you’re right.”
“I’m… right?” The silent pressure of her question and her gaze scorched his ears for an immeasurable breath—but then she rallied with her usual sarcasm. “Obviously, I’m right. Yes. But the… the issue is that it’s now my responsibility to make the impossible into something possible, because your talk—”
He breathed. “Mytalk.Quantumgravity.”
“Sure,” with a snort, changing tactics. “Maybe you’ll finally get a first-author paper out of this!”
Thank God. This, he could manage. This was safe territory.
“Are you volunteering to be my second author?”
“You won’t get any traction without applying my expertise in relativistic mechanics, so why would I take a secretarial role?”
“Youwon’t get anywhere on quantum gravity without using the principles of quantum mechanics.”
“Thank you for stating the obvious.”
“You want the obvious?” Turning back to her, he crossed his arms. “You would’ve volunteered to take a fifty percent cut to LIGO’s operating budget before you would’ve volunteered for this project.”
“I would’ve taken seventy-five.”
“And I’d never choose to work with you, either.” But when had he ever been given a choice about what he did at the lab? Dr. Kramer didn’t care whether he would’ve chosen to clean corrupted data sets for a month straight, to sacrifice his nights and weekends to tuning the holometer, to manage budget reconciliations and second-author drudgery. He did what he had to do. Always.
The project charter will be on my desk by the end of the week.
Focus.
“We… we don’t want…this,” he confirmed. “We agree. But we don’t have a choice. We won’t make any significant progress on the quantum gravity question if we work alone—”
“—because if I could’ve solved the paradox with just relativistic mechanics, I would’ve done it already.” Erin echoed his stance, defiant. “And published my findings inNature Physics. As a sole author. Just like you would’ve.”
“Right.”
“I don’t like sharing glory.”
He didn’t bother responding to that.
“Youdon’t like sharing data. Or using numbers like mine. But you’ll have to.Voluntarily.”
“None of this is voluntary.”
