Nothing Short of Perfect

by Day Leclaire

  Instead of settling down at the end of the bed in her customary position, Kit’s ears pricked up and her head swiveled toward the door. Tension swept through her sleek body and she went into predator mode. Slipping off the mattress, she made a beeline from the room.

  Curious, Daisy gathered up the ankle-length cotton nightgown she wore, the warmest of her options, and followed the cat. The chill of oak flooring beneath her feet caused her to shiver. She reached the main level in time to catch a glimpse of Kit darting into forbidden territory.

  Uh-oh. Did Justice’s first condition—to keep everyone out of the basement—include the cat?

  She hesitated at the top of the stairs leading to Justice’s bat cave, debating whether or not to sneak down after Kit. She doubted the cat would come to any harm. Still… Who knew what Justice kept down there? There could be automated vacuums that might suck up a poor, defenseless cat. Electrified fences. Even killer robots.

  Admit it, she silently scolded herself. Just admit that she couldn’t sleep and wanted to talk to Justice to see if they had any chance at creating a lasting relationship. That she half hoped he would insist on giving her an intimate and thorough demonstration of Condition Three. Or she could confess she was dying of curiosity to take a peek at the forbidden. Concede the fact that she just couldn’t resist stepping over whatever lines he drew in the figurative sand and never had been able to.

  She surrendered to the inevitable, knowing full well she wouldn’t sleep until she’d put a toe over that darned line of his.

  Daisy reached the bottom step, that no-man’s land between her territory and his, and stood there. Though she suspected the lower level occupied the same space as the floor above it, the setup was vastly different. Much more high-tech. The overhead lights were off, while low wattage lighting along the floor reflected off blindingly white walls and a crisp, almost sterile corridor. Leaning forward from the safety of the bottom step, she peered down a dimly lit hall to her right. Doorways sealed tightly shut led to mysterious rooms that she itched to explore.

  “Now how did I know you’d break Condition One before the day was even over?”

  Daisy jumped and her head jerked to the left. She wobbled on the step, catching her balance at the last possible second. “I haven’t broken your condition.” She offered an abashed grin. “Not yet.”

  He’d approached so silently she hadn’t heard him. The subdued lighting of his underworld lair cast interesting shadows across his face, giving him a forbidding appearance. Okay, a more forbidding appearance. And yet for all that she found him appealing in the extreme. But then, she always had. She’d never understood it, never been able to adequately explain it. She just knew from the moment she first set eyes on the man he’d been the only one who did it for her on every possible level.

  When Justice had left to go to college—or not to college, as she now knew—it had taken her years to get over what she’d assumed was an infatuation, that indelible mark left by her first love and lover. There had been other men in her life since, a select few. But they’d never stirred her the way Justice had. Never ignited that fierce fire that had quieted over the years, but never quite been doused. And since the night Noelle had been conceived, it had only grown worse. Intensified. Made her realize what they had was special and unique. More, she realized she wanted to be with him for as long as he’d allow it.

  “What are you doing here?” he asked, the prosaic question making her smile.

  “I’m on a rescue mission. Our cat came down here and I didn’t know what sort of trouble Kit might get into.”

  “Kit?” He stilled, an odd expression shifting across his face. “As I recall, you named the kitten I gave you Kit. It was the night we made—”

  He broke off, but she knew what he’d been about to say. The night they made love. Not “had sex” as he’d been so careful to label it since. Daisy let the silence stretch a moment before responding. “You said you chose Kit because we both had green eyes and were pure trouble.”

  “This can’t be the same cat.”

  His adamant statement confused her, pricked her for some reason. She planted her hands on her hips and fixed him with a look of exasperation. “Of course it’s the same cat, Justice. Didn’t you recognize her?”

  “I didn’t even realize you brought a cat,” he confessed. “I guess my focus was elsewhere.”

  She softened, feeling a tug on her heartstrings. “Yes, of course it was. You couldn’t take your eyes off your daughter.”

  “Or you.”

  He approached with the silent grace she’d always associated with him. Thanks to her position on the step, they stood eye-to-eye, the odd dark gold of his gaze gathering up the light and hinting at wonders and mysteries and delicious depths to be plumbed. They also glimmered with an odd emotion, one she couldn’t quite pinpoint.

  “You kept the cat I gave you for all these years?” He phrased the question almost like an accusation, as though determined to force her to deny it.

  Indignation swept through Daisy. “Did you think I’d throw her out?” she asked. “I adore her.”

  Adored her in part because he’d given her the cat, though she didn’t dare admit as much. But also because she’d formed an immediate attachment to the mischievous little beast, one that continued to this day. Kit was part of her family. Part of her life. And a lifeline that remained to this day, connecting the two of them through all the years stretching between them.

  “I thought your parents might get rid of her.” He shrugged. “All things considered.”

  “You mean because they threw you out, they’d throw your cat out, too?”

  His expression closed down. “Something like that.”

  “Well, they didn’t,” Daisy retorted. “She’s been with me for ten years now. If I’m lucky, she’ll be with me for another ten. Didn’t you notice I used her in my storybooks?”

  Clearly, he hadn’t made the connection. “So, she really is Kit, both in reality and in fiction,” he murmured.

  “Yes, she is. And in case you didn’t catch it… You’re Cat.”

  “The panther?” His eyes darkened. “That’s me?”

  “It seemed fitting at the time.” She smiled, daring to tease. “So are you going to let me use Kit as an excuse for a tour of the forbidden?”

  “If I satisfy your curiosity, will you stay out?”

  “I’ll try.”

  He released a sigh and held out his hand. “Come on.”

  She stepped into the hallway, the tile even icier than the wood flooring. She suppressed a shiver, not wanting to give Justice any excuse to send her away. “What’s down that way?” She pointed to the right.

  “That’s my uncle’s section. You don’t get a tour of that area without his express invitation.” He paused, capturing her chin within the warmth of his palm and tipping it up. “I’m serious, Daisy. You have to allow him his privacy. No stray cats. No sneaking down in the middle of the night. No excuses. Got it?”

  “I wouldn’t do that,” she assured him. “Honestly, I wouldn’t. I might give you a hard time because I know you can take it. But not Pretorius.”

  Her sincerity must have come through loud and clear. He gave a single sharp nod, then gestured to the left. “I have a number of labs down this way, as well as my private quarters.”

  Good Lord. “A number of labs?”

  He shrugged. “For measurement and instrumentation. Another for research and development. A computer lab. A test lab. It isn’t as specialized as the Sinjin complex, but it works well enough for tinkering.”

  “I want to see the robot lab.”

  He actually grinned. “Okay. I’ll let you see the nonsterile one.”

  “You have sterile labs?”

  “Yes, but you have to be naked and sterilized before you can go in.”

  One look assured he was kidding. Excellent. She’d only been here a few hours and she’d already infected him with a sense of humor. “It must not do a very good job steri
lizing,” she retorted. “Otherwise you wouldn’t have a daughter.”

  He placed his palm against a plate outside one of the doors and then requested admittance. “Maybe we don’t have to be sterilized,” he admitted while they waited for his security system to run his palm and voiceprint.

  “And maybe we don’t have to be naked, either?”

  The door to the lab slid silently open. “No, I’m pretty much going to insist on nudity.”

  She stepped into a huge room that looked very much like a workshop. Long tables spanned one half of the room and lined the walls. Predictably, they were a crisp, painful white. Instrumentation—none of which she recognized—clustered in a half-dozen stations perched on top of various tables. Each station also possessed its own computer system. At the opposite end of the room were endless cabinets and shelves and banks of drawers, most on rollers. Supplies, at a guess. Everything was ruthlessly organized which didn’t come as much of a surprise considering Justice’s propensity for neatness.

  Dead center in the middle of the room stood a huge, sturdy workbench, possibly the messiest section of the room, not that Daisy found it all that messy. To her amusement, one of his Rumi spheres had been left there, and like the one in the office, this one had been transformed into a daisy, as well. She started to comment on that fact, then thought better of it, something in his expression warning her to tiptoe around that particular subject. Instead, she turned her attention to his work project.

  Resting on the table squatted two odd devices on treads, presumably to give them mobility. She studied the first which combined dark metal and light gray plastic in a round shape the approximate size of a canister vacuum cleaner. Specialized arms spoked the device and what looked like a ring of aquamarine eyes dotted the circumference. A small helmet capped it, the helmet studded with lights and buttons and a display screen. Beside it squatted its more sophisticated twin.

  “What are they?” she asked, fascinated.

  “That’s Emo X-14 and X-15. Short for Emotibot, X for the tenth generation, fourteenth and fifteenth versions.” Justice frowned. “At least, that’s what they’re supposed to be. Right now they aren’t much of anything.”

  “What are you hoping they’ll become?” She shot him a questioning look. “Is that a better way to phrase it?”

  “Much better, I’m afraid.” He blew out a sigh. “Eventually I’m hoping Emo will be the next generation lie detector. A feeling detector, I suppose.”

  She stared at the robots, intrigued by the idea. “Why would you want to create a feeling detector?”

  “I’m attempting to design a robotic that can anticipate and respond to human needs, not just based on what is requested verbally, but also to nonverbal cues. In fact, I’d like to use the in-house videos and cameras to photograph everyone’s various emotion responses to stimuli over the next several weeks in order to help teach it. Assuming none of you objects.”

  “Huh.” Intriguing. “I’ll check with the others, but I have no objection. So, let me get this straight. By using photos and videos of us coming unhinged, or whatever, Emo will figure out when we’re happy or sad or hungry or thirsty and do something about it?”

  “Exactly.” A smile danced across his mouth. “Although it isn’t necessary for you to come unhinged in order to teach it appropriate emotional responses.”

  Daisy waved that aside. “That is so cool.” For some reason she was drawn to the less sophisticated model, perhaps because the haphazard appearance gave it a bit more personality than its starkly streamlined big brother. “And this little guy can do some of that already? He can process emotional responses?”

  Justice grimaced. “No, this little guy cannot do that, which is the current problem. Emo 14 hasn’t been as successful at reading emotions as 15. I may have to scrap this particular model and repurpose its parts.”

  “Oh, no,” Daisy protested. “He’s too adorable to scrap.”

  One look warned he’d shifted into remote, logical scientist mode. “Adorable or not, sometimes when there’s a catastrophic failure and what you’re attempting to produce isn’t working on any level, you just have to scrap it and start over.”

  Logical, as always, but still… “I hope you won’t do that with 14.”

  Justice lifted an eyebrow. “Why not?”

  She caught her lip between her teeth. “I don’t know. He’s so cute…it seems mean, somehow.”

  “Mean,” he repeated. “Daisy, Emo is a machine, not a ‘he.’ It’s not sentient. It’ll never be sentient. If I anthropomorphized every one of my creations, I’d never get anything accomplished.”

  “I guess. Although you did name it. What’s that if not anthropomorphizing a machine?” To her private amusement, he winced, her point finding its mark. Satisfied, she continued. “I know Emo isn’t alive. It’s just that he reminds me of something you were working on ten years ago.”

  He stilled. “You remember that?”

  “Of course, I remember it. I found all your creations fascinating.” She pulled out one of the stools tucked under the workbench and perched on the padded seat. Anything to get her poor abused feet off the cold floor. “But my favorite was the one that reminds me of Emo. The spaceship on rollers.”

  “It wasn’t a spaceship.”

  “Yes, I know.” She didn’t know whether to laugh or roll her eyes. “You told me that a thousand times. But it looked like one and it somewhat resembles this little guy.”

  “Actually, it’s the other way around. This little guy resembles the spaceship, as you call it. That’s because it’s the prototype for Emo. I work on the project in my spare time.”

  “I’m surprised you haven’t finished it after so many years.” His expression closed over and she wondered what she’d said to upset him. Because there wasn’t a doubt in her mind that she’d struck a nerve. “But I guess you have to give the paying projects priority,” she hastened to add.

  “Yes.” A hint of bleakness crept into his voice.

  Somehow she’d opened a door she shouldn’t have and she didn’t have a clue how to close it again. “What’s wrong, Justice?”

  He turned away. How did she do it? How did she slip beneath his guard with such ease? For as long as he’d known her, she’d possessed that uncanny knack. And for as long as he’d known her, it had thrown him off-kilter. With that glorious fall of wheat-blond hair and those sparkling green eyes, she could short-circuit his brain with a single smile. In all the years he’d known her, he’d never figured out why the hell he didn’t affect her the way he did every other person in existence, why she chased instead of ran.

  He’d discovered at a young age that his appearance and intellect intimidated people, even his parents to a certain extent. They’d never understood the cuckoo who had appeared in their nest, though he’d later learned that he took after his father’s brother, Pretorius, another strike against him considering his uncle’s social anxiety issues. His parents’ death in the car accident when he’d been all of ten had thrown him into foster care and prompted him to use that knowledge to hold people at a safe distance, often with a single, dark look.

  But not Daisy. Never Daisy. No matter how many black looks he gave her, she remained impervious. No matter how many lines he drew, whether virtual or actual, she wriggled that potent little body across them as though they didn’t exist. Even now, sitting in his workshop in a nearly transparent nightgown she managed to fit in when she should have been as out of place as an ice sculpture in the fiery bowels of hell.

  He remembered when he’d first moved in with the Marcellus family, Daisy had invaded his room and his life like a dizzying spring breeze, both relentlessly determined and passionately warm. He hadn’t wanted to be invaded, so he set boundaries, literal ones. He’d taped lines on the rug, blocking off his personal sections of the house, lines she’d taken great delight in yanking up and moving until he’d discover his personal space encompassing smaller and smaller areas. In the end, he’d been left with tiny boxes that wo
uld barely contain a mouse. Daisy simply refused to be shut out.

  She still refused to be shut out, whether from his thoughts or his emotions or even his career. Somehow she managed to sweep into his life and lock herself around him with all the brilliance and delightful joie de vivre that was such an innate part of her. As a callow teenager, he’d been unable to defend or resist. And now…

  Now, nothing had changed.

  Surrendering to the inevitable, Justice joined her at the workbench and touched the panel on the robot’s helmet. Instantly, Emo 14 hummed to life, a series of lights twinkling gaily. “Emo, this is Daisy.”

  “Hello, Daisy,” a sweetly youthful male voice said.

  She was instantly enchanted. “Hello, Emo.”

  “How are you feeling today?”

  To his amusement, she gave the question serious consideration. She shot Justice a glance from beneath a sweep of lashes. “I’m feeling a little nervous and a bit upset at the idea that your creator might dismantle you.”

  “Perhaps you simply require a restorative cup of Aggie’s hot tea,” Justice suggested.

  She narrowed her magnificent eyes in clear displeasure. “Perhaps I do.”

  Emo’s lights twinkled and she caught a muted hum, somewhat similar to the sound Jett’s laptop made when it accessed a program. “Processing,” Emo informed her, his voice giving a little hiccup.

  Daisy frowned. “Or perhaps Emo needs some tea. What’s with his hiccup?”

  Justice grimaced. “It happens sometimes when he—it—is running multiple functions.”

  A quick, appealing smile winged free. “He can’t walk, talk and process at the same time?”

  “Not very well.”

  She patted the robot’s helmet. “He’s still young. Give him time.” A small frown formed between her brows. “You’re not going to kill him off just because he’s a little slow, are you?”

  Kill him? Justice scrubbed his hands across his face. “I’m going to say this one more time, Daisy. I would appreciate it if you would pay close attention. Emo is a machine. You can’t kill a machine.”