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  “Yeah, Mom . . . No, sanding the drywall . . . Lin did what?”

  Gideon’s ears perked up. Something going on with Lindsay? He didn’t mean to eavesdrop, but well, he meant to eavesdrop. Anything to do with his darling girls was his business, after all.

  “She can’t— No, I know, but stop her for fuck’s sake—sorry, Mom, but don’t let her— I’ll be right there. Whatever you do, stall.”

  Alex shoved his phone into his pocket and clonked back to the scaffolding and sat down. He started to unstrap his drywall stilts, so it seemed safe to get off the bucket.

  “Is everything okay? Lindsay—”

  “Yeah. It’s fine.”

  “But—”

  Alex scowled at him and let the stilts fall to the floor with a clang. “It’s family, Gideon. Nothing to do with you. I’ve gotta go.”

  He jumped off the staging plank and fairly sprinted out the door and down the stairs, leaving Gideon alone to close up the half-finished apartment.

  Gideon was a little hurt, if he cared to admit it to himself. Wasn’t he close to Lindsay? Clearly not as close as Alex was. She obviously depended on him in ways she didn’t share with Gideon. As Alex had pointed out, it was a family thing. Apparently Gideon was a very long way from being included in that category.

  He went downstairs to take a shower so he’d be clean when it was time to go to work and get filthy again.

  Geekspeak: UX

  Definition: User experience; the feelings and emotional reactions evoked when interacting with a web page or software user interface.

  “You’ve got to be kidding me.” Alex stared at his sister, who was hovering by the back door next to an Asian woman no bigger than his leg.

  Lindsay shook back her hair and raised her chin in a passable imitation of their dad at his mulish best. “I’m not. We’re not. Toshiko is a . . . a computational biologist. She studies memory storage: biological and technological.”

  “What does that even mean? She wants to use Dad as a lab rat?”

  Lindsay darted a panicked glance at Toshiko, who appeared completely unperturbed. “I . . . I told her about Daddy, and she wanted to meet him.”

  “You told her?” Holy fucking shit. “No offense to your friend, but—”

  “Usually when one says ‘no offense,’ one fully intends to offer it.”

  Alex shut his mouth at Toshiko’s matter-of-fact tone. “Uh. It’s . . . I mean . . .”

  “However common social lies may be, they’re unnecessary in this case. Please speak plainly.”

  Alex shared a dumbfounded look with his mother and ran a hand over his skull-trim. “My father doesn’t handle strangers well. Hell, he doesn’t handle us well half the time. When Lin last brought a friend by—”

  “This isn’t the same,” Lindsay said, low and fierce. “Meredith expected chat. Toshiko is different.”

  Alex mentally compared the bouncy, chirpy Meredith with the preternaturally still woman in front of him. You can say that again. “I don’t know.”

  “Please? Only for a minute. We’re all here. If anything happens, I can rush Tosh out and you can distract Daddy with the football tape.”

  Toshiko removed her coat and folded it over the back of the kitchen chair with mathematical precision. “That won’t be necessary. You needn’t announce me.” She walked through the dining room and living room, back as straight as her blue-black hair, and turned right down the hallway toward the den as if she had an internal Ned-GPS.

  “Jesus, Lin. Where’d you find this one?” Alex muttered.

  “She and Charlie got to be friends at Columbia.” Lindsay tilted her head, brow wrinkled. “In fact, I think Charlie may have been her only friend. Every biotech firm in the world wanted to hire her, but she moved here because of Charlie.” Lin fiddled with a lock of her hair. “Toshiko is smarter than the rest of us put together. If anyone can find a way to help Daddy—”

  “Expecting an awful lot from her, aren’t you?”

  Lindsay pressed her lips together in that old stubborn line. “You don’t know Toshiko.”

  “Yeah, but—”

  “Shhh.” Ruth held up a hand. “What was that?”

  The three of them stared at one another, no sound in the kitchen as they held their collective breaths. Alex expected an outburst from his dad at any second, and in spite of her assurances, Lindsay must too, because she seemed just as tense. Finally, when nothing but the unintelligible babble from the TV disturbed the silence, they all breathed again.

  “Maybe he hasn’t noticed her yet,” Lindsay whispered. “Tosh is very good at disappearing. Sometimes she sits in the corner of our apartment for hours, and we totally forget she’s there.” She scuttled out of the kitchen, glancing furtively over her shoulder before she disappeared down the hall.

  Alex studied his hands, pretending he wasn’t watching his mom out of the corner of his eye. “You gonna go see?”

  She took a casual sip of her tea. “Please. I’m a retired nurse, not a five-year-old on the lookout for Santa. I can wait for the report.” She kept her gaze fixed on a disgruntled jay perched on the empty bird feeder outside the kitchen window.

  Alex drummed his fingers on the table. Fidgeted in his chair. Tilted it onto its back legs. “You know you want to.”

  She cast him a sidelong glance. “I will if you will.”

  Alex gave her a thumbs-up and helped her stand. They crept through the dining room, across the living room, and peered down the hallway. Lindsay was hovering outside the den doorway.

  “Hssst. Lin,” Alex whispered.

  She shot him a warning glare, shushing him with a downward motion of her hand. He beckoned, and she tiptoed toward them. Ruth immediately took her place and peeked around the doorjamb.

  Alex pulled Lindsay into the living room. “So? What’s he doing?”

  Lindsay shushed him again. “Watching his show,” she murmured, barely audible.

  “What’s she doing?”

  “Watching his show.”

  “That’s it? She’s not trying to talk to him or make him do some stupid interactive shit like the occupational therapist from the VA?”

  “No. Just sitting with him.”

  Ruth stumbled into the room, her hand over her mouth.

  “Whoa.” Alex flanked her immediately, wrapping an arm around her shoulders. “Hey. It’s okay. Whatever’s wrong, we’ll fix it. What happened?”

  She turned to him, blue eyes shiny with tears. “He asked her to pass the remote.”

  For the fifth time in the last hour, Alex strolled through Gideon’s work area. He was carrying miscellaneous construction paraphernalia, so Gideon supposed the path through the embryonic server room might be a major artery in the build-out roadmap, but he doubted it. Alex was obviously baiting him, the big jerk.

  Damn it, Alex had done nothing but annoying flybys all evening, and Gideon was perishing. Call him a nosy parker, but he hated to be left out of the loop, and Alex had left him out of way-too-many loops for his liking.

  On this pass, Alex had a cordless drill in his hand and was hitting the trigger in a pattern slightly out of synch with his footsteps. The competing sounds set Gideon’s teeth on edge, yet drew his attention like an irresistible Facebook ad. Unfortunately, since Gideon had no freaking chair in this godforsaken place and his desk consisted of an overturned five-gallon bucket, he had to sit on the floor to type on his laptop.

  Which put him at eye-to-crotch level with Alex. Again.

  Don’t ogle. Don’t ogle.

  “Hey, G. You got that network diagram for me yet?” Alex didn’t stop to hear the response, just walked out the other side of the space though a gap in the drywall.

  Gideon scowled at his back. “I’ll give you a network diagram, mister. I’ll diagram your—” He grabbed his knees and took a deep, marginally cleansing breath to avoid taking his foul mood out on his innocent laptop keyboard.

  If Lin was in trouble, he wanted to know. He needed to know, and he needed
to help. She hadn’t come home before he had to leave for work, and if she was running true to her latest pattern, she’d be shut in her bedroom by the time he got home tonight. What were the chances he could get Alex to be more forthcoming? Slim to less than none, probably.

  “After all, I’m not family,” he muttered.

  Alex poked his head through the cutout where the window would go. “Gideon? Progress?”

  “Not since the last time you asked, oh, fifteen seconds ago. Haven’t you heard? Uninterrupted work time is essential for complex tasks.”

  “Really?” He grinned. “Let me know when you find some.” Whistling tunelessly, he strolled off.

  Gideon hunched over his laptop, jabbing the keyboard almost at random. No point in trying to get anything useful done, because Alex would no doubt return in another ten seconds. Or fifteen. Or thirty. Or . . . where the hell was he?

  Gideon craned his neck and peered into the section of the site visible from where he sat.

  Nothing.

  God, was he anticipating these interruptions? If so, it could only be because this job was mind-numbingly boring. Couldn’t be because he actually craved Alex’s presence. Nope. Not possible. On the other hand, Gideon was a true fan of things being both practical and decorative, and that certainly described Alex. Especially the decorative part. Holy shit, that ass.

  But he was Gideon freaking Wallace. He never let any man get under his skin.

  Except one, and look how that turned out.

  But this time, it wasn’t trepidation over Alex’s size that had him on edge. It was wondering, What the bleeding fuck is going on? Frankly, Gideon’s nerves couldn’t take it anymore. He needed a little peace, damn it, and for that he needed no more effing surprises.

  He needed to know what that call was about, he needed Alex to stop popping in at odd intervals to fluster him—or else continue to pop in a predictable pattern Gideon could depend on—and he needed to get these fricking dates settled.

  Maybe he should take the initiative, invite Alex out for a drink so he could check date number two off the list of things hanging over his head. Somehow, Alex didn’t seem like the kind of guy who’d go for fruity umbrella drinks at a trendy Pearl District hotspot. Should Gideon suggest hanging out at a sports bar, so Alex could hoot at the big-screen TV? But maybe he wouldn’t like that either. Gideon had been spectacularly wrong about Alex before—to the extent that he was questioning every. Single. Assumption.

  God, what am I doing? Hookups were supposed to be laid-back, drama-free, predictable—everything Alex was not. The man was so not his type. How could he be consuming so much of Gideon’s mental bandwidth?

  Gideon saved his work, tossed the dust cover over his laptop and printer, and stalked off to get some answers.

  He tracked Alex down in the opposite corner of the floor, working on an electrical panel at the farthest possible point from the server area. So how was he getting back there so fast and frequently?

  Gideon flicked a fingernail against the panel door. “What about a club?”

  “What about a club?”

  “For the second date.”

  “Kinda busy here, G. You wouldn’t want me to— Ow!”

  Alex jerked backward, and Gideon’s heart leaped into his throat. “God, Alex. Are you okay?”

  Alex grinned at him. “Just fucking with you. But I’m not kidding. I need a span of uninterrupted work time here. It’s essential for complex tasks, or hadn’t you heard?”

  “You don’t say.” Gideon peered at him over his glasses. “Maybe as a start you could curtail your unscheduled excursions through my workspace, thank you very much.”

  “Would you rather I schedule them?” Alex waggled his eyebrows.

  “You— We— No. Just— Argh!”

  Alex’s chuckle followed him as he stomped back to his server cave. Network diagram, bah. He’d never be able to concentrate on it now.

  First, he’d take out his aggression by making vicious notes on the horrible design of the Haynes website, and exactly how he intended to rend it limb. From. Limb.

  Geekspeak: Automagically

  Definition: Refers to the transparent delivery of a complex technical process; the internals are hidden from the user, so the action appears to work by magic.

  Alex couldn’t stop chuckling to himself as he closed the panel door. When was the last time he’d had this much fun on the job? Not since he’d made journeyman, that was for damn sure.

  He headed back toward Gideon’s corner. Yeah, he’d mostly been bugging the guy about the network diagram to see his reaction, but it hadn’t been entirely for the entertainment value. To make good on his promise that Gideon would finish his project on time, Alex needed to get rolling on the cabling tonight, before the drywall finishers moved in.

  When he walked in, Gideon was hunched in front of his laptop, staring at the screen.

  “Hey, G—”

  Gideon jumped and fumbled with the touchpad, but before Gideon minimized the page, Alex caught a glimpse of Haynes’s smirk, and he lost any desire to laugh as a burst of possessive anger fired in his chest.

  “Haynes-stalking on company time? Bad form.”

  “It’s not like I’m being paid by the hour.” Gideon rose, dusting his hands off on his jeans, as he stalked toward Alex. “So what about a club?”

  “No.”

  “Why not? Afraid to be seen with a twink?”

  “You’re not a twink. You just play one on TV.”

  Gideon’s eyes narrowed. “If you’re trying to woo me, you’re going about it all wrong.”

  “Who says I’m trying?”

  “You’re not?”

  “Why should I? Last I checked, you’re the one following me around, begging for another date.”

  Gideon’s mouth fell open. “I’m doing no such thing.”

  “How’s that denial working out for you?”

  “You— I—” Closing his eyes, Gideon pinched the bridge of his nose. “Alex. What is wrong with a club date?”

  Jesus, I need to get a grip and stop being such a douche bag. He’s trying. Maybe for the wrong reasons, but he’d never once tried to back out of the deal. Why does it matter so much whether Gideon actually wants to hang with me?

  Alex picked up a stray length of cable and started winding it into a coil so he could avoid meeting Gideon’s exasperated gaze. “Too much shiny shit to distract you.” Including guys closer to his league than Alex would ever be. “Don’t want you to lose focus.”

  “I’m perfectly able to focus in any environment whatsoever.” Gideon crossed his arms and lifted his chin. “With the right incentive.”

  “Yeah? Would Haynes be the right incentive?” D’oh. Way to be a dick.

  “That’s not fair. The deal was for dates, not . . . not everlasting devotion. I never offer that to any hookup. You ought to know as much, since you knew about the two-date rule.”

  “Yeah.” Alex took a deep breath. “I get it. You want to get this over with.”

  “I don’t. I mean, I do, but not because I didn’t . . . um . . . enjoy the first date.”

  Warmth kindled under Alex’s sternum. “You enjoyed it, huh?”

  “You know perfectly well I did. You also know perfectly well that you surprised me.” Gideon scowled and flipped his bangs off his forehead. “I hate surprises.”

  Alex grinned. “Too bad. I love ’em.” Especially when they bothered Gideon this much. Keep him guessing.

  “Can you please, please tell me what we’re doing next?”

  “I might, if you knock off the Haynes-creeping. Or is that too much to ask?”

  Sticking his nose in the air, Gideon stomped back to his laptop. “For your information, I was working. Once this networking nightmare is over, I’ll finally get to do my real job and redesign the company’s execrable website.”

  “Your real job?” Alex gestured to the shell of the room. “This all looks pretty real to me. Pretty unfinished too, and it’s gonna stay unfini
shed unless I get that network diagram.”

  Gideon harrumphed. “I knew we’d get back to that.”

  Alex shrugged. “Hey, you wanted my help. I’m willing, but you have to do your part. Anyway, isn’t it on Archambault’s famous nightly task list?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “Well, then, hop to it.”

  “‘Hop to it’?” Gideon’s obvious outrage was practically sparking out of his ears. Jesus, he’s adorable. “Seriously?”

  Alex drew his eyebrows together in pretend confusion. “I’ve asked you for it every other way I could think of. I figured you needed the right incentive.”

  “You— Argh!” Gideon whirled and paced across the room, kicking a scrap of drywall out of his path. “You’re . . . you’re insufferable. How am I supposed to tolerate this—this passive-aggressive pursuit?”

  “How would I know?” Alex shrugged, blinking in his best impression of Gideon’s fake-innocent look. “I’m not the one with the dating rules.”

  Now that Gideon refused to let pass—not the comment and not the smirk. “Is that so? What about the not putting out on the first date?”

  Alex smiled, slow and wicked. “That disappoint you?”

  “No, of course not.” Yes. “It was just . . . unexpected.”

  “So you wanted me to?”

  “No.” Maybe? “But where do you expect this to go?”

  “Does it have to go anywhere? It can stay right here.”

  Alex dropped the cable and advanced on him, looming over him like a freaking oak tree and twice as unyielding. For an instant, Gideon flashed back to that awful day with Mark.

  On his knees in the single bed, half-suffocating because Mark’s weight pressed his face into the mattress.

  “Hold still, G. I can’t get it in with you squirming like that.”

  “I can’t help it. Something’s wrong. It hurts, Mark. Stop. Please.”

  “It’s supposed to hurt at first. If you just relax—” With a grunt and a brutal thrust, Mark breached him.

  At least the mattress had muffled Gideon’s screams.

  “Hey, hey. What’s wrong?” Not Mark. Alex. Alex, whose forehead was wrinkled in concern as he stepped away, palms out. “Take it easy. What do you think I’m gonna do?”