Forster
Or the boysenberry oat milk sherbet?
He adjusted his bag and his belt again, promised her one of each flavor with a chance to lick both spoons, and stepped back out into the hall.Seven o’clock. He could last that long. He just had to endure his proximity to Erin until five today, when they’d finish a preliminary engineering meeting about accommodating their new laser and optics needs in the MEC hutch.
A few more hours.
Willing himself to concentrate, he returned to the Sidewinder conference room. Erin was waiting.But, he reminded himself,so was Forster.
Working with her rival over the past week had been difficult.
Less difficult than she’d anticipated, however.
Yes, they had the disparate but complementary expertise to tackle one of the most herculean questions in physics—and to lead departmental research teams on the topic. Yes, they were both hungry for publication and recognition.
But when forcibly paired with Dr. Ethan Meyer, would she treat her opportunity like a punching bag? Compelled to cooperate with her, would Ethan cut off his nose to spite his face?
After that awful moment in his office during the Department of Energy’s site visit, and its follow-up at the Wine Room?
The extant data screamedcatastrophe.
She’d braced for a fight—
—and found herself in the midst of a decent research collaboration without quite knowing how it had happened. They’d even made progress on an experimental outline, in between snippy comments about the irrelevance of relativistic mechanics or the large-scale uselessness of quantum physics.
Maybe they recognized that despite their precedent of sabotaging each other’s efforts, any mischief now would damage them both.
While predictive analytics was sometimes wrong, though, it frequently transpired that its outcomes were just delayed; she couldn’t relax, despite Ethan’s unexpected apology for submitting their project charter to Kramer without her materials review. She didn’t want to forgive him. But she shouldn’t have tried to borrow his pencil today. She’d offered an apology of her own… but then he’d reared back and slammed the conference room door on her.
Pushing away her laptop, she examined the hand she’d extended. Rosy eraser residue from the pencil he kept behind his ear had caught under her nails when she’d scratched down his neck. She scrubbed her thumb against her jeans. The pressure didn’t eradicate the tingle in her fingertips from their brush against the razor-roughened skin of his throat, though, or from the unexpected softness she’d found behind his ear—
The door clicked open again.
She snatched up a journal from the table.Advances in Physicswas upside down.
Checking his watch, all Ethan said was, “The West Experimental Hall.Now.”
“Fine.”
She didn’t care that he’d ignored her journal’s orientation, that he hadn’t even looked at her—not when she had the anticipation of her updated meeting with Bannister to sustain her. She could wait a few more hours for her artist.
Couldn’t she?
She tossed away the pencil and stuffed her computer and her notes into her backpack, snagging the zipper. She hitched a strap over her arm without pausing to straighten out its metal teeth and strode for the hall. Ethan blocked the door, as he’d once blocked her in the control room. But he stepped aside before her gaping, swinging bag could catch him in the chest, before she had to squeeze past him.
“Hurry.”
“No—no harping on my time management?” She followed him to the exit, not quite jogging after his long strides.
He veered off toward the Modern Physics parking lot in silence.
“You better not have deflated my tires again. It’ll be your fault if I’m late.” She’d leave for Salt & Straw directly from the West Experimental Hall, so she forwent a scooter.
His hatchback unlocked with a chirp. The driver door closed.
Fine!
Clipping on her helmet, she kicked her tires to test their pressure, then pushed off from the pavement with her left foot on its pedal, swinging her leg over the bicycle seat. She bulldozed through a stretch of native plant landscaping between the lot and Ring Road, flattening sprouts of fescue, California sagebrush, and a litter of turkey feces before gaining momentum as she swept by a scrapyard of discarded industrial equipment. She blew past a stop sign and pushed up an incline toward the experimental halls. Tires rumbled along the road behind her, then decelerated at the intersection. Of course, he was a law-abiding driver. She pushed harder, sweat prickling under her arms.
