Meltdown (7 page)

He didn’t ask any of these things. Human curiosity got the better of him. “What did he buy you?”

Melanie’s wry expression told him she didn’t share his enthusiasm, but there was a hint of a smile on her lips as she dutifully opened the package. Chris could tell that, in her own way, she was as entertained by the computer’s quirks as he was. “He orders the strangest things. He has good reasons for what he buys—or what he thinks are good reasons—but he doesn’t understand.…”

She stopped looking down at the contents of the package. “E, you’ve outdone yourself. What am I going to do with golf balls?”

Not just golf balls. Glow-in-dark golf balls.

“Okay,” she said, smiling, “what am I going to do with glow-in-the-dark golf balls?”

Nothing.

“Then why did you buy them for me?”

Not for you. For Chris.

“For C-Chris?” Melanie stammered, her emotions tumbling. “You bought them for Chris?”

Natch. Know likes golf. He gives me things. I give him things. Need balls to play. So bought them.

So bought them. Einstein’s simple words reverberated through Melanie’s mind, adding to her already considerable confusion. Chris’s gentle intimacy during the pre-rap moments had bewildered her, making her doubt everything she knew about the man. Not to mention everything she knew about herself. And now E—her E—had bought him a present.…

Chris’s low rumble of laughter curtailed her thoughts. “Glow-in-the-dark golf balls,” he said. “That’s a new one on me.”

Einstein’s screen brightened.
Can play whenever want now. All the time. Even at night.

“Thanks, E. That’s very thoughtful of you,” he said, flashing Melanie a rakish grin. “I always have trouble figuring out ways to fill those long, sultry evenings.”

The bright humor in his eyes and the hedonistic
thoughts it implied sent an electric jolt through her. She’d bet money that Chris had a black book crammed with phone numbers of beautiful women who were more than happy to help him fill his evenings—especially the long, sultry ones. An uncharacteristic tinge of jealousy pinched at her emotions, and she turned away, more annoyed with herself than with him. “Einstein was only trying to do something nice for you,” she said with more sharpness than she intended. “He’s never bought anyone besides me a present before. You should be flattered.”

“I am flattered. Very much so. But come on, genius. Glow-in-the-dark golf balls? That’s pretty funny stuff.”

Melanie tossed the package of golf balls down beside Einstein’s monitor. She should have known better than to expect Chris Sheffield to take anything seriously. She turned her back to him, facing a small, little-used monitor console, and mumbled, “You
would
say that.”

“And what,” Chris drawled, “is that supposed to mean?”

She adjusted several unimportant calibration dials on the console. “We really need to get to work. These dials have been out of sync for more than a week—”

“I asked you a question.”

“All right,” she said, spinning back to face him. “It means I’m sick and tired of the way you’re treating Einstein, like he’s just one big joke.”

“That’s not true. I’m working like a dog to make this presentation a success. You said so yourself.”

“Right, while you were eavesdropping,” she accused, her voice warming with anger. “You’re working hard, all right. But you’re working for your own interests, not for Einstein’s. If it weren’t for that
promotion you want so badly, you wouldn’t give him the time of day. You don’t care about how much he needs you, or about how special he thinks you are, or how important you’ve become to him.”

“To
him
?” Chris asked pointedly. “We are talking about Einstein, aren’t we?”

Melanie blushed hotly. “Don’t flatter yourself, Mr. Sheffield. A woman would have to be mentally deficient to get involved with you. The only person you care about is yourself.”

Chris drew his mouth into a tight, thin line. “Maybe you’d like to add murder and robbery to the list? God knows you’ve accused me of everything else.”

“Far be it from me to criticize the ways you choose to fill those long, sultry evenings.”

“That does it,” Chris said. He turned and stalked toward the door, not the easiest thing to do through a room full of computer peripherals.

Melanie watched him go, his strong shoulders stiff with anger. Logically, she knew she ought to be glad he was leaving. But she wasn’t. Not by a long shot. She couldn’t bear to see him go. Not like this. Oh why, why had she said all those terrible things to him? She hadn’t meant them. She had to tell him, to apologize before he walked out the door and possibly out of her life. “Chris—”

He whirled to face her, his metal-bright eyes cutting into her like a knife. “Look,” he said, without letting her finish, “I may need this partnership, but I don’t have to like it. I don’t have to like you.”

The shock of his words knocked the breath out of her. He couldn’t stand her. And she was crazy about him. Feelings spun inside her like a kaleidoscope. Dizzy, she leaned against the console for support, but straightened as he continued to speak to her.

“You know, you’re right. I am doing this strictly for
my own advancement. But you’re doing it to finance your computer. You don’t care whether I get this promotion or not. Bottom line is you don’t care about me any more than I care about you.” He turned his mouth into a smile as cold and hard as steel. “I may not have your best interests at heart, Miss Rollins, but at least I’m honest about it.”

Melanie’s week went from bad to worse. Chris’s words forced her to take a long, hard look at herself, and what she saw wasn’t pretty. Her noble goal of procuring money for Einstein lost its luster when she looked at it from Chris’s point of view. He’d been working just as hard as she had and, if his motivation was a promotion, what right did she have to look down her nose at him. He had just as much right to his dreams as she did to hers. She would have told him so, except that he hadn’t given her the chance.

Chris hadn’t seen her or called her since their argument. Twice she came home and found a stack of computer parts on her porch, but that was the only way she could tell that he was still working on the project. She told herself it didn’t matter, that as long as he hadn’t given up on Einstein she didn’t care what he thought of her. She knew she was lying, but she told herself anyway.

Her one hope was that Chris’s absence would put an end to her ridiculous fascination with the man. The opposite happened. Images of Chris invaded her consciousness on a regular basis. A honking horn would make her turn, searching the traffic for Chris’s silver convertible. A scent of musk in the hallway filled her mind with the memory of his cologne. And the sudden shock from one of Einstein’s shorted electrical circuits had made her think
of that day in the kitchen when Chris’s touch had ignited her skin. Sugarcoated dynamite.

Einstein was no help at all. He missed Chris as much as Melanie, but, unlike her, he had no problem saying it. He constantly asked her where his friend was, his questions stinging at her like incessant, angry bees. Disappointment, combined with lack of sleep, stripped her of her usual caring patience. She lost her temper more than once with him, throwing him into a byte-driven looping iteration. In human terms, a sulk.

She’d hoped that out of sight would equate to out of mind, but the sorry truth of the matter was that neither she nor Einstein was capable of forgetting Chris.

On Wednesday she sat in front of her terminal at work and reflected on her dismal situation. Even her appearance had suffered. She had rolled out of bed at the last possible moment, throwing on the simplest outfit she owned and giving her hair only a cursory brush before heading for her car. Worry about Einstein was keeping her up at night. Worry, and other things.

Last night she’d dreamed about Chris, a particularly vivid dream that caused her to wake in a tangle of sweat-dampened sheets. The harder she tried to forget about it, the more often it came back to her, playing over and over in her mind like a movie on perpetual rewind. The graphic scenes, and her reaction to them, sent her logical mind into a tailspin. Even the antiseptic atmosphere of Sheffield’s data-entry department couldn’t drive those images from her head.

“Chris Sheffield …”

Lord, Melanie thought glumly, now I’m even
hearing
his name.

“That’s right. Chris Sheffield.”

She
had
heard his name. For one horrible moment she imagined someone had read her incriminating thoughts. But it was only Shelley Perkins, two desks over, relating the latest gossip.

“I heard he’s come in late every day this week, looking like something the cat dragged in. Bill—you know my friend Bill in finance?—well, he said when Chris came in yesterday morning he hadn’t even shaved.”

Her neighbor Rhonda Macauley tapped her plump, manicured fingers against her chin. “Really? And he’s usually so immaculate,” she said. “What do you suppose he’s been up to?”

“Doesn’t take much imagination. Some new conquest, no doubt. Or several. Who knows?”

Melanie’s hands stilled above the keyboard, and despite her better judgment, she found herself straining to overhear their conversation.

Rhonda spoke. “I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if he’s been out with a different woman every night of the week. He has no scruples, none whatsoever,” she finished, her voice thrilling with innuendo.

“That’s not true.”

Two sets of eyes swung toward Melanie.
Damn
, she thought,
why’d I say that
?

Shelley and Rhonda’s surprised expressions told her that they were wondering the same thing. Shelley spoke first, peering at Melanie through her glasses. “Did you say something, Melanie?”

Keep quiet
, Melanie’s inner voice warned. Yet how could she sit idly by and not defend the man who’d spent most of his free time getting spare parts for Einstein? “I said that’s not true. About Chris, I mean.”

“Is that so?”

Melanie squared her shoulders. “Yes. I mean, you have to think about it scientifically. Chris may be
handsome, and popular, but that doesn’t automatically mean he’s a … a …”

“Casanova?” Shelley supplied.

“Well, yes,” Melanie agreed, pleased Shelley was following her discussion. Maybe this wouldn’t turn out so badly after all. “Consider the evidence. You haven’t actually seen him out with all these women, have you?”

Shelley looked at Melanie over the rim of her glasses. “No, I haven’t.”

“In addition, no one you know has seen him out with these women, have they?”

“Well, no, I guess they haven’t,” Shelley answered.

“Then, logically, you can’t conclude that he’s gone out with these alleged women, or even that he’s gone out with anyone at all.”

Rhonda shook her head. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say Melanie had a crush on Chris herself.”

“That’s not true,” Melanie stated. “I was only pointing out the logical—”

“Now, now,” Shelley interrupted. “Having a crush on Chris Sheffield is nothing to be ashamed of.”

“But I don’t—”

“Of course you don’t,” Rhonda intoned, patting her arm. “And don’t you worry. We know what it’s like to be young and in love. Your secret is safe with us.”

Melanie turned away, her cheeks burning. She tried to cover her embarrassment by concentrating on the mound of paperwork at her side, but her mind kept replaying the conversation and her foolish defense of Chris. Why hadn’t she kept her big mouth shut? She didn’t care what anyone said about Chris. From now on, people could talk about him all they wanted, accuse him of anything they liked. They’d never hear a peep out of—

“Rollins!”

Melanie winced. Things were getting worse by the moment. She looked up, not surprised to find the department supervisor Mrs. Hardcastle bearing down on her. Hardcastle, nicknamed “Hard Case” by her subordinates, had a bloodhound talent for sniffing out inactivity. She’d already spoken to Melanie once today about her daydreaming.

Her quick strides brought her immediately to Melanie’s desk. “Rollins—”

“I know what you’re going to say,” Melanie interjected, remembering their previous conversation. “My production figures are down for the month. If they drop any further, I’ll lose my first-place standing in the department.” Not that she gave a damn, she added silently.

Hard Case nodded, briskly jotting a note on the clipboard she always carried. “Precisely. But that’s not why I’m here. Someone wants to see you. In my office.”

“Your office?” Melanie asked, surprised. Hard Case’s glass-enclosed office cubicle was off-limits to all the data-entry personnel. No one used it for private business, not unless they had a death wish. “Who?”

“See for yourself,” Mrs. Hardcastle said, stabbing her pen in the direction of her office. “Wants to see you pronto. Better hurry.”

Melanie stood up, smoothing her beige poplin shirtwaist before heading for the office. A central pillar hid most of the office from her line of sight, obscuring her view of its occupant. She started walking at a brisk pace, curious to see who could wield such power over her ferocious department head. She couldn’t imagine Hard Case hurrying for anyone.

Neither, apparently, could most of the other data-entry personnel. The click of typing had all but
disappeared from the department, filling the room with a deep, unnatural silence. Everyone was looking at the glass-walled office. Melanie rounded the central pillar, and saw why.

The man inside had his back to the office window, but neither Melanie, nor anyone else in the department, could mistake the broad shoulders and easy stance of Chris Sheffield.

Short and sweet. That’s how he planned to keep this meeting, and that’s how it was going to be. He needed Melanie’s blessing on the media presentation he’d worked up for the board, but he wasn’t about to spend one more minute with the woman than was absolutely necessary. No way was he giving her another chance to take a potshot at his character.

He’d liked her. That was the craziest part of this whole business. He’d looked forward to seeing her, to hearing her tell him in that cautious, guarded way of hers that she appreciated his help. Here was one person, he’d thought, who didn’t think of him as some empty-headed playboy. He’d started thinking of her as a friend.