by Liz Isaacson
“I can act like a human,” he said.
“Good,” she said. “I want to see the robot first, and that means you’ve got to take me down where your brother is.”
“Graham knows about us.”
“Does he now?” A dangerous glint entered Becca’s eyes.
“Becca,” he said in a warning voice, and she laughed. “What?” he asked.
“Can you please relax?” She sobered. “I’m not going to kiss you here. I’m not going to hold your hand. Did it ever occur to you that it’s my first day on the job, and I’m nervous? That I might like to have your help? Have a friend at my side? That no one would think that was weird?”
Her voice sounded a bit pinched, and Andrew’s heart filled with affection for her. “I’m sorry,” he murmured. “Honest, I am.”
She nodded, stood, and smoothed down her dress. “Okay.”
He stood too, the words he wanted to say piling up in his throat. He opened his mouth and said, “Did it ever occur to you that I’m dying to kiss you, and every time we’re together, my thoughts wander that way?”
Her eyes dropped to his mouth, and Andrew thought she wanted to kiss him too. “How about dinner at my place tonight?”
“Do you cook?”
“It has been a very long time since I’ve dated anyone,” she said, a bit of nervous energy infecting the air between them. “I don’t know why I said that. Only that I think you should know.”
“Is that your way of telling me I can’t kiss you tonight?”
She swallowed and wiped her hands down her dress again. “I don’t know,” she said.
“I haven’t dated anyone in a while either,” he said. “And dinner tonight sounds great. You didn’t answer if you could cook.”
“I’m okay in the kitchen,” she said. “We can order in, if you’d like.”
“I can pick something up, if you want.”
“I like that Chinese take-out over by the gas station.”
“Harry Wong’s. I’ll swing by there and come over about seven?”
She nodded, and Andrew walked around his desk to stand right in front of her. He took both of her hands in his, a thrill running from the top of his skull to the soles of his feet. It zinged around after that, causing him to smile.
“Carla will see,” Becca murmured, swaying slightly.
Andrew went with her, keeping both eyes past her on his secretary. She had the phone to her ear, completely unconcerned about what was transpiring in the office behind her. “I’ll close my blinds next time,” he said.
He leaned down and pressed his lips to Becca’s temple. A quick kiss, nowhere near the mark he wanted to hit, and released her.
“Let’s go see this SonarBot,” he said.
The basement was unusually quiet today, but Graham sat at a chest-high counter, a tablet lying in front of him.
“Hey,” Andrew said when he arrived at the counter. The tablet held a bunch of code he didn’t understand.
Graham smiled as he looked up. “Hey, there.” He stood. “I’m Graham Whittaker. You must be Becca Collings.” He met Andrew’s eye for much too long before focusing on Becca long enough to shake her hand.
“We’re ready to see the bot,” Andrew said, glad he’d disclosed to Becca that Graham knew about them. “And Becca will need anything you think is relevant to her preparing media statements, speeches, or press releases.”
“I’ll have Janet put it together,” Graham said. “Let’s go.” They left the main room of the basement and entered a much different area. Becca’s step slowed as she drank in every detail.
“This is like being underground,” she said, her voice awed.
“It’s supposed to simulate that,” Graham said. “So I designed this bot to use sonar to detect gas beneath layers of rock. It’s tricky, because some of the types of rocks we have here in Wyoming, along with a lot of our other dig sites, block the sonar.”
“They block it?” she asked.
“They absorb it,” he corrected himself. “So we get back reads as if there’s no gas there. But there is. Normally, we simply fracture down to find it. But with the SonarBot, we’re trying to locate the gas before we mine for it.” He pressed his palm to a reader and waited until it beeped.
The door opened, and he entered it. “So I started working with the rocks here in Wyoming. We went all over and got all the samples from our mining sites, and we built this simulation, I guess.”
The layers and layers of rock had been reconstructed just as they were at the dig sites.
“I had to work layer by layer, figuring out how much sonar a particular type of rock could absorb, and what the readings would look like when they hit gas. It took a long time.”
“A really long time,” Andrew said.
Graham chuckled. “My brother doesn’t understand the nuances of computer science. One change can mean thousands of lines of code need to be redone, or written anew, or whatever.”
“It’s the whatever I don’t get,” Andrew said.
“Anyway,” Graham said as he moved over to the plastic case where they kept SonarBot. “I finally came up with the right sequencing. The right level of sonar to get through the layers of rock here in Wyoming. And we developed the SonarBot.” He stood in front of it, a remarkable little robot that somehow Andrew wished was bigger.
For the amount they’d spent to design and build it—both in terms of money and time—it should be the size of the Sears Tower.
As it was, the SonarBot was about four feet long and three feet wide. Barely a kid’s toy. It had big, bulky wheels perfect for the terrain it would be traversing, and then it was basically a computer box, with screens on the top to show readings.
“Do you have to go with it?” Becca asked, peering down into the case. Her face held wonder and excitement, and Andrew started to feel those same things in his pulse. This was an amazing thing. It would improve their business, make it more profitable, and help the people of Wyoming.
“Nope,” Graham said. “We can set up a mobile lab anywhere. Even just in a room at a school, or an office at the town hall. We can make him move with a remote, and send out the sonar with a press of a button.”
“Show her the simulation,” Andrew said, a hint of pride welling in him and he hadn’t even designed the darn thing.
Graham turned to the huge screens behind SonarBot, which they’d used to present the robot to their family and the top scientists at the company. No one else knew about it yet, and they’d get all the details only an hour before the official unveiling.
“We went out with it oh, what? Two dozen times?”
“Probably,” Andrew said. He wasn’t the scientist. He didn’t take the notes. At the end there, he’d stopped driving out into the Wyoming wilderness just to have the robot fail again. But not Graham. The man was as dedicated as anyone could possibly be to getting SonarBot to work.
“We recorded every time, made notes, analyzed what was happening. Tested here. Adjusted. Reworked things. And went out again.” He flipped open the wall panel and pressed a button.
The screen brightened, and he said, “Play SonarBot, final excursion.”
The video began, and it showed the robot rumbling along the Wyoming rocks at quite a steady clip.
“Whoa,” Becca said. “How fast does it go?”
“Up to forty miles per hour,” Graham said.
The robot slowed and Graham said, “We use a frequency of 200 hertz, and we’ve tried to use the sound waves at a low decibel so we don’t disrupt nearby communities.”
“What’s it at?”
A loud ping! went out from the SonarBot on the screen, and Becca jumped.
“We’ve committed to it being no louder than one-hundred-ten decibels,” Graham said. “The average rock concert is up to one-hundred-fourteen.”
“Not a lot of rock concerts in Wyoming,” Becca mumbled as she stepped closer to the screen. “Are these the readings?”
The video had changed to a top-only view
of SonarBot, with the five screens for findings.
“Yes,” Graham said. “We get depth, type of substance.” He pointed to the second row. “So we see here that it hits gas and the returning echoes are at a different wavelength.” He moved down a notch. “This is the depth. And this is the volume. Once the SonarBot finds gas, it goes back and forth until the entire pocket is mapped.”
He tapped the wall and the video sped up. He tapped again and a moment later, a diagram came up. “See? There’s the pocket we mapped on our last trial. Now we know exactly where to dig. We do the hydraulic fracturing in the biggest concentration and we can get all the gas out with one mine instead of multiple.”
The screen darkened, and he said, “Lights, level one,” and the room brightened again.
Becca looked at him, then Andrew, then SonarBot.
“So,” Andrew said, his pulse humming along at quite the clip. “What do you think?” He exchanged a glance with Graham. Becca’s opinion was very important, as she had been one of the most vocal against what Springside had been doing.
She looked back at Andrew. “What do I think? I think this is the most brilliant thing I’ve ever seen.”
A smile burst onto his face. “Yeah?”
“I think your protests will stop now, Mister Whittaker.”
Andrew tipped his head back and laughed. “Good, because it’s part of your job to make sure everything is presented to the public in the best light possible. Can you give me a second with Graham? You can wait just outside and we’ll go back up to the office together.” He gestured for her to leave the room first, which she did.
“So?” he asked Graham. “Hiring her was a good move, right?”
Graham shook his head as he chuckled. “Andrew, you tell yourself what you need to tell yourself.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means you’re head over heels for her, and you’ve been out once.”
“I am not. Let’s focus on the SonarBot. She liked it, and she’s been protesting against our company for a decade, Graham. A decade.”
“That’s because she didn’t like Dad.”
Andrew’s blood froze in his veins. “What?”
“She didn’t like Dad. They got into a fight or something years ago.”
“How do you know that?” Andrew hadn’t lived in Coral Canyon for a while, and he admittedly didn’t know much about Springside before Graham had called and begged him to come be the public relations director for the company.
Graham shrugged like this information was no big deal. But it was to Andrew. “I don’t know. Dad told me? Maybe Dwight did. Maybe I read about it. But it’s good she likes the concept.”
Andrew followed his brother out of the lab and went with Becca back up to his office, his mind whirring. He’d ask her that night, over Chinese food. After all, he did really like her and he didn’t want any secrets between them.
Ten
Becca’s first day ended much better than it had started. That SonarBot was cool, and while she spent the remainder of the afternoon with yet more paper to look at, the unveiling of the robot was actually going to be fun.
She made a couple of checklists, took the thumb drive home with her though she wasn’t sure when she’d have time to look at it, and had just managed to feed all the strays and changed her clothes before Andrew arrived with the food.
Otto barked, but she pushed him out of the doorway so Andrew could come in. “I’m not the cleanest person in town,” she said. “Otto, back up.” She gave the huge Lab another push and he finally fell back a few steps.
Andrew grinned at her, and he hadn’t even changed his clothes from earlier that day. “In the kitchen with this?”
“Yes, through there.” She pointed though it was unnecessary. The living room connected to the kitchen with a cut-out in the wall to allow conversation to flow through. She had two barstools at the bar, though she never ate there.
Otto, ever the animal to go wherever food could be found, trotted after Andrew. Becca adjusted her shirt, pulling it down over the waistband of her jeans. She was tired, and maybe inviting Andrew over for dinner had been a mistake.
A yawn overtook her right as he came back into the living room. “Tired?” he asked.
“Yes,” she admitted. “I haven’t worked that hard in a while.” She settled onto one end of the couch though she was hungry and could probably eat enough to feed an army.
“Oh?” He joined her on the couch, the picture of perfection, right there in her living room.
“You haven’t been home yet?”
“I have.”
“You didn’t change.” She raised her eyebrows. “Do you wear a suit to bed, Mister Whittaker?”
“Very funny.”
Becca thought so, and when he didn’t answer her question, she started to wonder if he really didn’t own a pair of pajamas. “Seriously, though. You have pajamas, right?” She loved the flirtatious energy between them, and Andrew wore a look of desire in his eyes when he looked at her again.
“Yes, Miss Nosy. I own pajamas.”
“Do you wear them?”
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t you change then?”
“You ask so many questions.”
“You like my questions.”
“Not when they’re about me.” He stood and walked toward the kitchen. “I’m starving. Can we eat?”
She followed him, not quite ready to let this go. She got down a couple of plates from the cupboard. “You…intimidate me in the suit. I thought this was going to be personal time.”
He caught her wrist as she reached into the silverware drawer for forks. The increase in electricity should’ve shorted out the light bulbs, but they continued to blaze evenly.
“I intimidate you?”
She locked her eyes onto his. “Just here, in my house. Not at work.” My, he was gorgeous, and so close to her, and her mouth started watering for all the wrong reasons. “And, um.” She swallowed back all that saliva. “I’m usually the one who intimidates men.”
“You are?” He spoke so softly, almost tenderly.
“That’s what I’ve been told.” She shrugged, his fingers still tracing a circular pattern around her wrist. “I don’t know. Something about how I know so many dumb facts, or that I won’t let certain subjects drop.”
He didn’t need to know everything about her disastrous break up with Jarom right now. But her ex had told her that he didn’t like that she was smarter than him, and she’d challenged him with, “What am I supposed to do? Act dumb?”
“I think smart is sexy,” Andrew said, stepping closer and moving both hands to her waist. He drew her effortlessly into his embrace, and Becca sighed as she pressed her cheek to his chest.
It seemed strange that less than a week ago, she was jobless, prospectless—both on the job front and the boyfriend front—and just…less than she felt now. Happiness coiled through her, and she wanted to stay in Andrew’s arms for a good long while.
He, however, seemed to have a serious need to eat, because he stepped back only a few seconds later and started dishing himself some of the tiny spicy chicken that was her favorite too.
“Tell me something about you I don’t know,” she said.
He cast her a wary look and went for the ham fried rice. “I didn’t change my clothes before I came, because my only other options are what I wear to feed the horses.”
Her eyebrows went up. “How many horses?”
“Thirteen of them,” he said. “Every morning. I’ve given up on the nighttime feeding. I have a man named Jake for that.”
She spooned a healthy portion of noodles onto her plate to go with her chicken. “And you like taking care of the horses?”
“Very much.”
“Do you ride?”
“Yes.”
“How often?”
He gave her a look that said Is this Twenty Questions? but then answered her with, “Every weekend.”
“Huh.”
> “Huh, what?”
She finished filling her plate and took it around the wall to the bar. He joined her, and she said, “I’d love to go horseback riding on the weekends.”
“Oh, you would, would you?”
“Is that something you’d consider? Me coming with you?” She speared a piece of chicken but didn’t put it in her mouth. “And you know, I’m doing all the asking for dates. I think I’m going to stop doing that.”
Andrew had bypassed the forks and unwrapped a pair of chopsticks instead. He held them loosely in his fingers, his attention solely on her.
“Becca,” he said.
She waited, expecting more than just her name. “Yeah?” she asked when he still said nothing.
“Are you sure I can’t kiss you tonight?”
“I never said you couldn’t.” But fear bolted through her with the power of a freight train. “I just—I mean—I might not be very good at it.”
He shook his head as he smiled. “Becca, you’re good at everything you do.”
“I—”
“And I would love for you to come riding with me this weekend.” He mixed his chicken with his rice and popped a bite into his mouth.
She sighed, every muscle in her body releasing. “You’re not a very nice man,” she said.
“What?” He chuckled, because he knew exactly what.
“I thought you were going to kiss me,” she said.
“Oh, really? I told you I was starving.”
“Then you’ll have bad breath. You think I want to be kissed after you eat this?” She put her spicy bite of chicken in her mouth. A moan followed, because the sauce was sweet and sticky, with the right amount of burn in the back of her throat.
She swallowed and said, “I don’t think so.”
Andrew laughed again, and Becca enjoyed the sound of it. Maybe not as much as she’d have enjoyed being kissed by him, but apparently they were going to eat first.
“How’s your mom?” she asked, a question which drew Andrew’s attention.
“She’s…okay.”
“I mean, I was thinking about her today when you and Beau were talking. I think it would be hard to lose a spouse, especially if it was sudden.”
