I wonder for a moment—as I check the final draft of the Arizona Copper agreement and let my bot eyes read in the other three that I need to get done today—what Cindy has been up to for the last few months. With the plane she runs for us sitting idle, she wouldn’t have had any duties. Probably living well in Vegas, I’d guess. Very well, given what we pay her. I hadn’t thought when I redid the budgets that we’d be in a situation any time soon when we didn’t have at least a few of the heirs of the Butler legacy constantly traveling, but then the whole Jeff thing happened. Oh well. She’s worth it.

I’m just glad that I’ll get a chance to get away from the desk I’ve been glued to for the last few months. Alternately dealing with the aftermath of our last trip, trying to figure out where Jeff went with our gear, failing to find out anything about Mr. Wu’s super secret illuminati group, and working to keep the Butler Institute solvent has left me drained. This upcoming trip isn’t exactly a vacation, but it’s as close to it as I’m likely to get any time soon.

Lin knocks on the open door, interrupting several workflows with a welcome smile.

“Are you sure that you want me to set up in here?” she asks. “You have three empty offices on this floor. I can take one of them.”

“Are you kidding?” I stand up and walk over to her. “Half the point of this was so that we can spend more time together.”

She steps inside and closes the door behind her before pulling me in for a kiss.

“I do like the idea of more time together,” she says. “I’m just worried you’ll get tired of me. I don’t know what I’d do if your infatuation diminished.”

“Never.” I don’t remind her that with my condition I don’t think I need to worry about building up the kind of small resentments that would make me get sick of anyone. I can only include so much in my daily read and there’s no reason to jam in every annoyance. “So, I’m thinking that we could put your desk here.” I walk over to the section of the wall opposite to the grand whiteboard of Father’s master plan. “You still want one of those standing ones?”

“I do. I need to keep up this stunning figure.”

I laugh. “You’ll always be beautiful to me. So we’ll get whatever model of desk you want and get it installed here. I’ll clear off these shelves there for whatever you want to store, and you can work here whenever you want. Whatever hours you want.”

“And I still get all the server racks we talked about for my new data center downstairs?”

I laugh. She’s a hardware junkie. It’s so nice to have a girl who appreciates the power of a highly optimized compute cluster and an ocean of RAM. “Of course. We already have those ordered.” I don’t mention what a strain that request put on the Institute budget. I’m making a big bet that the Geologists will get their first automine running and bringing in a pretty significant revenue stream before we run out of cash and have to start selling off the SynTech stock.

Lin steps closer to me. “Well then. I suppose I just have one more question. What exactly would my duties be in your office, Mr. Kimball?” She says it in a low, breathy voice as her pulse quickens and her pupils dilate.

Her vitals are screaming attraction. It takes me a second to realize what she’s doing. I think this was the plot to some romance movie, but I couldn’t say which one. I flip through her index entry and see my working theory that most of her ideas about romance come from American cinema. She watches Hollywood movies obsessively whenever she has free time. I note what she’s doing now as additional evidence for the hypothesis.

“Well, Ms. Liu,” I say, straightening up and trying to look as tall and handsome as whatever movie star she thinks I’m supposed to be right now. “You’d need to be very hands on.” I take her hand and pull it to rest on the side of my waist. She smiles shyly and runs her fingertips down a few centimeters while her other hand reaches up to my chest. “Maybe help me with my, uh, briefs.”

“Oh, yes.” She slips her fingers between the buttons of my shirt and starts caressing the skin beneath. “I think I could be very, very hands on.” The top three buttons of my shirt are somehow undone in an instant and she’s kissing my neck. Oh, sweet thanks to all the gods in the universe. We’re finally making out again for the first time since China. My hands slip along her arms and down her sides to rest on the curves of her hips.

Her fingers find the rest of the buttons of my shirt and as she pulls it off of me, I send a contingent of bots to lock the door. My fingers fumble with her blouse, opening it in front and exposing a lacy black bra beneath. Her kisses on my neck stop and she pulls her head back.

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“Noah, I…”

I nuzzle into her neck and kiss her throat.

“Noah…”

Her body suddenly tenses as her breath catches. Her dilated pupils suddenly revert to normal. Strange. None of that is consistent with attraction, and she definitely seemed very attracted just a few seconds ago.

“Is something wrong?” I ask.

“No. It’s just…” She pulls back, her hands coming up to bring the two sides of her blouse together. “I thought I could. I’m sorry.”

“What is it? I thought you wanted to…”

“I did,” she says. “I mean, I do. It’s just…”

She finishes buttoning her shirt and leans down to pick mine up from the floor. She hangs her head as she hands it to me. “I didn’t tell you everything.”

“Whatever it is, we can work through it.”

“I know. We can. We will. I just…”

We stand there in silence for three minutes and twenty-four seconds. What’s going on with her? Her physiology is all over the place, heart rate going up, then down, then back up.

“My father,” she finally says, her voice barely audible. “He didn’t just hit me.”

“Oh.” Everything starts falling into place. “Shit. I’m so sorry.”

“You didn’t know. I concealed it from you, after you told me everything and you thought I had told you everything.”

“You just weren’t ready to talk about it. It’s fine. Don’t feel bad about that. What can I do?”

“Just what you have been doing. Be patient with me. I want this. I do. I’m just not ready. I’ve been talking to your therapist.”

“Andrea?”

“Um. No. I meant Dr. Jimenez. The professional one with the office in the Residence. Andrea is just your therapist, right?”

“Yeah, I don’t think she does it for anyone else. We know she’s not a real shrink, but she’s as close as I think I can get. I don’t think that with my particular set of neurological conditions that a traditional one would do me a lot of good. And she has helped me get over a lot of stuff.”

“Well, Dr. Jimenez is very good too, and I’ve been working with her for a few months. I thought that I was getting better, but when you pulled my shirt open, it was just…” She trails off, leaving it there.

“You don’t have to talk about it with me if you don’t want to.”

“I don’t ever want to talk about it with you. Not ever. Please don’t take that the wrong way. I just don’t want that to be a part of our life together at all. Besides, you already have too much to deal with right now. I wanted to make things better for you. Give you, well, me. I’m sorry.”

I feel an unwelcome presence moving quickly down the hallway toward the office. It’s Yang Song. Dammit. Not now.

“Your bodyguard is coming.”

Lin frantically fixes up her hair while I button up my shirt. My bots do a quick sweep of her makeup and the lipstick she’s transferred to my skin. The office door rattles as she tries to open it. Three pounding knocks follow. I open the door.

“There you are!” Yang Song’s strident voice fills the air as she pushes past me. “I have been searching for you.”

Lin glances at me. The vulnerability that had been all over her face a moment ago has been replaced with a cool mask of serenity. This isn’t the first time she’s hidden this pain from Yang Song. “We were just finalizing the plans to set up my new office space in here.” She moves toward the wall. “I’m putting my desk right here. A standing desk, so I can make sure I get enough exercise while I work.”

Yang Song responds with something that sounds derisive, but it’s in Chinese so I have no idea if it actually is. The two of them start talking quickly in words that I don’t think my disability will ever allow me to learn. I don’t have any ear for it, can’t parse what I hear into anything more than random-seeming sounds, and whatever learning a wet brain normally does to acquire a new language just doesn’t happen for me. At least they don’t sound like they’re fighting this time.

I shake my head and return to my desk to get back to finalizing my agreements while Lin continues to mollify her by showing her around the office and pointing out what I assume are changes she’ll be making. I still don’t really understand the dynamic between them. Lin doesn’t need her as a translator or a bodyguard anymore, but she still seems to think that she needs to keep the older woman happy. Yang Song, on the other hand, acts more like the stern governess of a young child from an old novel than anything else I can think of.

Did Yang Song know that Lin was being abused? I mean, she knew about the hitting, but the other? I watch the two of them for a minute. No. There’s nothing in Lin’s vitals that indicates the kind of smoldering anger she would have to feel if that was the case. I can only think that she didn’t. She must have been Lin’s shield whenever she was around. Maybe that’s part of why Lin still needs her so much.

Their voices seem to bounce off of each other and I swear from their body language that they must be arguing now. My index reminds me in bold letters of the several times I’ve tried to get between them over the last few months and how none of them did me a speck of good.

Just a few more days and Lin and I will be off on a trip without anyone more intrusive than Evan and Valerie for supervision. I just wish there was something I could do to help her.