“…and everyone’s gotta eat.” He winced. “I mean, I’m headed out to lunch and thought you could use a break too. Thought maybe we could…”
“Not a chance, Sunshine. She’s busy.” I dropped one hand on the computer, the other on the router. Sometimes I could get the feel of a thing, of what was broken in it.
“…would you?” Calvin yammered. “I’d like to buy you lunch. For all the hard work you’re doing here. And to apologize for the rough start this morning.”
I shoved my fingers into the router, feeling around for heat and cold and the strange discordant waves of electricity traveling as packets of data. Took me all of a half second to find a blank spot where electricity wasn’t flowing. I figured that was where things had gone gunny bag.
“Gotcha.” I focused, willing that blank spot to carry the electricity, which wasn’t easy. In for a pound plus a penny.
“I don’t think…” Jo said.
“If you don’t want to go out for it, that’s okay too,” Sunshine said. “You can order in. On me. Because I…uh…really appreciate you doing…this.” He sort of waved the rag at the desk.
I pulled hard, forcing the electricity to surge.
The was apop, there was asnap, snap, snap, and then there was smoke rising up out of the router case.
“Holy shit!” Jo pushed back.
I groaned. Lu just looked at the router, looked at Lorde, who sat up and stared at me. Lu rotated so she was facing me. A little smug smile curved her lips as she crossed her arms over her chest.
I should have been angry, frustrated, but that smile was honey on the flower’s petal. It was sunlight pouring soft through the clouds.
Even if it was an I-know-what-you-tried-to-do smirk.
God, I loved her.
“Fine,” I said. “It didn’t work. That doesn’t mean Sunshine over there is dating Jo. You haven’t won.”
Lu gave me one slow blink and her smile widened. Not enough to show teeth, but I knew she was laughing at me.
“I got this,” Sunshine said. “Hang on.” He strode toward the exact space where I was standing, so I walked through the desk and stood next to Lorde.
“You’re on my side, aren’t you girl?” I asked her.
She wagged her tail faster, her black tongue hanging out as she looked from me to Lu and back to me.
“I’ll get rid of this.” Sunshine picked up the router, deftly unplugged it, and strode quickly out of the room, taking the stink of burned wires with him.
“So,” Lu said, “you think it might be an electrical problem?”
Jo lifted both eyebrows, half a smile turning her golden brown face sharp, her eyes sparkling. She looked like a woman who liked mischief: starting it, getting into it, and keeping it going.
“Electrical’s a possibility.”
Lu stuck her hands in her front pockets. “If you want me to tell Calvin you’d rather go to lunch with me, or alone, or not at all, I will. I think he wants to make up for that ‘crap company’ and Texas thing. But you don’t owe him anything. Not even lunch.”
Jo stood and picked her messenger bag up off the floor, pulling it on so the strap ran across her chest and the bag rested against one hip. “He was an ass this morning.”
“He was.”
“But he seems…decent.”
“He does.”
“You get along with him.”
“I do.”
