Page 9 of Technical Advances

My hand was warm, still surrounded by both of his, the hours of writing and tapping on the touchscreen washed away as the warmth traveled throughout my body. I could feel my cheeks flushing, and that wasn’t the only part of my body where blood was traveling, all from simply shaking hands with the man and staring into those eyes. I moved my free hand but stopped short before wrapping it over his, which continued to cling to me like I was a cozy mug of hot chocolate on a winter's day.

“And I’m Ani,” he whispered as our hands slowly moved up and down.

The other man cleared his throat again, and Day mimicked the sound, dropping my hand unceremoniously as he said “Anson” before turning with an awkward look and a head nod toward the door.

“Beck, I was … just wrapping up my interview with Ben … Benji, here.” He stumbled on my name, and hearing it come out of his mouth had all of the zeros and ones in my stomach realigning into the tech world’s messiest computer virus.

Beck looked at his watch. “I didn’t realize you had an interview on your schedule. I’m sorry to have interrupted.” The man did not sound sorry at all.

“No,” Anson said to Beck, then turning to me with another crinkly smile, he said, “no,” again. “You’re not. We were just wrapping up.”

Anson stepped out from between the desk and the chair, putting him further away from Mr. Beckett, and I followed, facing him as he extended his arm again. The zeros and ones in my stomach had begun a battle for supremacy even before our palms touched.

His shake was one-handed this time as he returned to formality though the light dancing in his eyes remained. Weird how his eyes were soft and liquid blue and still managed to exude a pulsing excitement at the same time. It couldn’t possibly be the same kind of heat I was feeling, but I also couldn’t imagine it was excitement over our work. How could Anson Day be moved by the work of a scientist who wasn’t even out of grad school yet? The binary numbers in my stomach were beyond confused.

“Mr. Warren. It was truly a pleasure to meet you. Erin will be in touch shortly, and should you have any questions …” He paused, and his grip on me tightened ever so slightly. The binary code in my gut called for reinforcements. “I …” Anson almost imperceptibly shook his head no, deciding against whatever he was going to say.

“Please be on the lookout for Erin’s call,” he said instead, emphasizing the please with another slight squeeze of my hand.

“Thank you,” I began, the first word getting caught in my throat and causing me to pause to clear it. “Thank you so much, Dr. … Anson, for your time today. I look forward to hearing from Erin.”

His second arm rose to meet our joined hands, and I was surrounded by his warmth once again. We shook hands, smiling at each other, our eyes locked until Beck grunted again, clearly exasperated and not bothering to hide it.

I pulled away from Anson’s grip and stepped backward until I tapped into a chair and decided I would need to turn around in order to walk out of the room without toppling over one of them and falling on my ass. As I rounded the corner of the table and stood halfway between the two men, I met Anson’s gaze once more.

“Oh!” I chuckled. “We didn’t even get the chance to talk about it, but my father, Ben Warren, he said to say ‘hi’ and to let you know that the fort is still standing.” I shrugged and smiled. “I grew up on the same block as you, and I didn’t even know there was a fort!”

I found myself walking backward again and turned to exit. Beck was tapping on his phone and reached an arm out, grasping my forearm to stop me. “Erin will be here in a moment to escort you out,” he said sternly.

“Of course,” I affirmed, stopping in my tracks next to the tall man with the doubting, angry eyes.

I looked at Anson again. I couldn’t help myself. “Down by the creek,” he muttered, a faraway look in his cerulean blues, but a smile quirked one side of his mouth as he said it. Oh my God, that little half smile was possibly more adorable than the one that had practically blinded me earlier.

“Yeah, Dad likes to wander down there. Sometimes he takes a fishing pole, sometimes he just hikes.”

“It wasn’t really a fort.” There was that full-force smile again. He looked more comfortable in his skin than at any other moment of our time together, other than when we had been hovering over the tablet screen or scratching out formulas. He presented a whole different energy than when we had been working. The smile altered his face, highlighting those wrinkles around his eyes and making him look like he sparkled.

“It’s really just an overgrowth of branches near the water. When I first moved there, he and I fit in the little nook that formed. Shortly after that, we’d grown too big and couldn’t share it.”

I nodded and smiled as Erin came to escort me out.

CHAPTER 6

ANSON

Iwas well aware that I gave Beck reason to scowl at me on a regular basis, but it had been a long time since I’d seen such a severe look on his face. I studied it as I stood opposite him at the far end of the conference table.

“What?” I insisted but didn’t give him a chance to respond. “I slept last night. A little,” I assured him. His scowl remained.

“Okay, it was on the couch in my office, but I did! I even had one of those protein bars you leave all over the place for breakfast, and I spent an hour in the gym this morning. When I woke up,” I emphasized. “These are all Beck-approved uses of my time, so what’s with the …” I moved my finger around in the general direction of his face before looking down at the folder, covered in sketches and calculations on both sides. I reached for the pencil and leaned over the table, continuing a formula as Beck responded.

“My name is Ani? It’s not really a fort? What exactly did I walk in on here, Anson? Because you two looked awfully …”

I paused with the pencil hovering over the folder. My heart was pounding for some reason, maybe in response to the stress I was bringing out in Beck, but since I didn’t really understand why he was stressed, I wasn’t sure that was it.

“He’s brilliant, Beck. Come. Look at this,” I enthused, bypassing the folder and holding up the tablet. “We really advanced the mobility issue, and he has ideas on materials and tweaking the …” Beck yanked the tablet from my hand, forcefully, but his focus was on the diagram Benji had sketched on the folder.

He tapped the folder. “You were working on Project Orthos?” Then he woke up the tablet to peruse the open files we had modified. “Why were you even meeting with him, Anson? This was an entry-level, preliminary interview. Jesus, Ani, how long would you two have been in here if Erin hadn’t called to let me know?” He was focused on scrolling the tablet, so I held my response.