Chapter 15
Fifteen
By the time the sky outside the glass windows turns indigo, we’ve gone through three pots of coffee, polished off all our takeout, and reviewed every sensor-alignment file in the system.
Theo has barely moved all day, except to scribble increasingly desperate equations across the whiteboard and pace a well-worn path between his laptop and the display screen.
My internal clock has long since given up trying to figure out what time it is, but my eyes are currently staging a protest. I’ve run test after test, but the calibration issue still won’t cooperate. At this point, the code might as well be hieroglyphs.
Leon gave up an hour ago. Theo sent him back to the hotel after he fell asleep on the conference table and started snoring like a chainsaw.
“I wish I could join him,” Theo admits as we watch his retreating form wave to us from outside the conference room as he heads to the elevators. “I’ve been awake for forty hours straight.”
I press my palm to my forehead, a spike of genuine alarm cutting through my own fatigue. “Theo!” I scold.
“I didn’t have a choice,” he says, trying and failing to hide a yawn. “There’s too much riding on this project for me to take a break.”
“Is the king waiting for the correct coding so he can declare Parliament open?”
“Well no . . .”
“Will this code cure a disease we haven’t found a treatment for yet?”
“No,” he says softly.
“Then it doesn’t matter as much as you think it does,” I say, my voice gentling. “Theo, this is an amusement ride. It’s an extracurricular activity. It’s something people do on a Saturday for a three-minute hit of adrenaline.”
I leave out the part about our jobs being on the line. I’m sure it’s already looming in the back of his mind.
“It does matter. The project’s steel order is due this week.
The fabrication team can’t start cutting track sections until they get the final load data from us.
” He pinches the bridge of his nose. “Every day we’re late costs us a fortune.
And if we miss the supplier’s production window, we’re talking a ten-week delay and a few million pounds down the drain. ”
So much for me trying to downplay the glitch. “Crap.”
“You can say that again. Mr. Harris has been on my back about keeping Vortex on schedule. It’s already five million pounds over budget.” His tone is even. “If this latest issue isn’t resolved, he’ll make sure everyone who’s involved in the project feels the consequences. I can’t let that happen.”
And from the picture that’s been painted of the lovely Mr. Harris, I wouldn’t put it past him to fire everyone and start with a new team purely out of spite.
I take a deep breath, trying to steady my own nerves, then I reach out and place a hand on Theo’s arm.
His muscles are corded with tension. “We’ll figure it out,” I say, keeping my voice steady.
“We’ve already combed through three-quarters of the data.
The answer has to be buried in the last stack. ”
“You always sound so certain.”
“Because I am.” I slide my chair closer to his, my focus shifting back to the graphs glowing on his screen.
“Look . . . I noticed this earlier, but I didn’t want to say anything until I was certain.
” I point to a line pulsing faintly across the display, a tiny jagged spike in an otherwise smooth curve.
“Do you see what I do? There’s a variance here.
It’s small, but it’s consistent across the last three tests. ”
He leans in beside me, our shoulders brushing. “You think it’s the sensor offset we’ve been chasing?”
“I do.” I hope my voice sounds as confident as I’m pretending to be. Inside, my stomach is performing a slow-motion somersault. If this doesn’t work, I’m not just wrong—I’m the person who gave him false hope at his absolute breaking point.
He studies the screen, the gears in his head beginning to turn.
“If the baseline input is drifting,” he says slowly, his voice dropping into that deep, gravelly range that makes my skin prickle, “the feedback loop won’t sync with the encoder data.
That would explain why the launch timing is mismatched. ”
He turns to me. “Run the correction.”
I adjust the parameters, cross my fingers and toes, and hit Enter. The system chugs for what seems like the longest second of my life. When the recalibration finishes, the jagged, chaotic traces on the graph suddenly snap into place, realigning into a beautiful, perfect symmetry.
I jump to my feet and throw my arms around Theo in a frantic celebratory hug.
He stiffens, but then his arms wrap around me, pulling me in tight.
He’s solid and warm, and the tension in his back feels like it’s finally starting to fracture.
He doesn’t let go. He just continues to stare over my shoulder at the screen, a long, shaky breath escaping him. “You found it.”
I pull back slightly and lock eyes with him. “We found it,” I correct.
He looks down at me, his eyes searching mine. “Once again,” he says, “you’ve saved me. Most superheroes wear capes. In this case, she wears glasses.”
He shifts his weight, drawing me a fraction of an inch closer. “I don’t know what I’d do without you,” he murmurs, voice low and frayed around the edges. “Thank you.”
His hand, which had been resting at my waist, slides upward.
I feel the heat of his palm through my clothes as it reaches the side of my neck, his thumb tracing the line of my jaw with a slow, shaky reverence.
It’s the touch of a man who’s been running a marathon and has finally found a place to stop.
I don’t pull back. My fingers, still bunched in the fabric of his shirt, tighten as I look up at him. The blue light of the monitors catches the green in his eyes, making him look less like the untouchable lead engineer and more like the man who’s been carrying too much for too long.
“I’m glad you’re here,” he says softly, his gaze dropping to my lips.
His other hand comes up to cradle the back of my head, his fingers combing through my hair.
My breath falters. He leans in, tentative and slow, giving me every chance to be the sensible one—to remember that he’s my boss, that we’re in an office, that his father would probably have us both escorted from the building.
But right now, sensible is the last thing I want. I rise onto my toes just enough to meet him halfway.
Our kiss is slow at first, then quickly turns desperate. He pulls me flush against him, his hands possessive as they anchor me to him. He tastes faintly of the coffee and chocolate we’ve been living on.
His thumb moves in a slow arc against my skin, and the rest of the world simply ceases to exist. There’s only the quiet hum of the computers and the dizzying realization that I’ve fallen for the one man who should be completely off-limits.
When he pulls back, it isn’t because the spark has died.
It’s because he’d forced himself to stop.
He rests his forehead against mine, his breath hitching.
“Kaori . . .” he murmurs. His eyes flutter shut, and I can practically feel him trying to reassemble the professional armor I just helped him dismantle.
“You make it impossible to think straight.”
“Good.” I manage a small, breathless smile. “Consider it payback for how often you’ve done the same to me.”
His fingers brush a loose strand of hair behind my ear, his touch lingering against my cheek as if he’s memorizing the sensation. “What are we going to do about this?”
My heart is still thudding against my ribs, but the reality of our surroundings starts to bleed back in. “Maybe,” I say softly, “we don’t decide that right now. We’re both operating on fumes. Let’s wait until we’re thinking straight before we try to label whatever this is.”
Theo’s smile deepens. “You always have such sensible answers.”
“Not always,” I say, giving his hand a light squeeze.
He nods, looking at me with an intensity that makes me feel like he’s trying to freeze this moment in time.
“Then we’ll leave it there. For now.” He finally takes a reluctant step back, scrubbing a hand through his already-ruined hair.
“Right. Let’s run the final simulation once more and call it a night. ”
“No. We’re done. We’re ending on a high note and not tempting fate anymore.”
“Fine. You win.” He holds up his hands in a mock gesture of surrender and starts gathering his notes. “Kaori, thanks for being my friend and looking out for me.”
“You’re welcome.”
We ended on a high note, but here we are again on Monday.
It feels like it’s been one of the longest days of my life.
Theo’s been locked in meetings since early morning, and aside from a brief text telling me to keep my evening clear, I haven’t seen him for more than a few minutes at a time.
Which is probably for the best. I still haven’t worked out how to look at him without my mind drifting back to the way his hands felt on my neck.
The London office hums with activity. There are engineers weaving between desks, assistants typing at lightning speed. The difference between here and Orlando is that no one has made much effort to acknowledge Leon and me. We’re definitely the illegitimate stepchildren.
None of it has bothered me, though. We’ve been too busy to care. Theo entrusted us with preparing the technical presentation for the board’s afternoon review, and his email made it pointedly clear—He wants his people on it.
I have my earbuds in and am in the process of formatting the final slide when a shadow passes over me.
“Just one second, Leon, I’m clicking Save now.” The disk icon shows a green checkmark. “Great, now what’s ne—” The words die on my lips as I pull one earbud out and realize it isn’t Leon.