My career is over.
She realized with a start that the man—whose name she still didn’t know—had said something. “What? Sorry…I…was thinking.” She blinked and refocused.Get it together, Mack. You’re not giving up yet.
“I guess that’s natural for a writer—uh, to be daydreaming. I offered you some coffee.”
“No thanks. I have some tea. But it sure would be great to know your name.”So when I call Harriet to chew her butt over this, I have a name for my problem. No,herproblem. She booked the place. She can fix it.
“Oscar London.”
“Seriously?”
He grimaced and opened a small fridge (he’d brought his own fridge?). “My parents had no idea.”
“No, I mean—it’s agreatname. Really. I know names, believe me. It took me three weeks to come up with my main character’s name—he’s a sort of spy-slash-adventurer who’s also a librarian, but once I did, I knew it was perfect. And Oscar London…well, it’s great.” She took in his bright, golden-red hair, neatly buttoned white shirt, and British-like formality. No accent, other than a bit of East Coast. “It suits you.”
“I’m delighted you approve.” There was a little more snarkiness in his voice than she’d expected.
Hmm. Interesting. And compelling.
“I have work to do, and so, apparently, do you. So…” He made a little waving gesture, as if to say,Off with you, you pesky creature.
“I can’t write with you making all sorts of racket out here. And I can’t concentrate with youin my space.” The panic escaped and clawed at her chest again, its talons sharper than ever. “This isn’t going to work. One of us is going to have to leave. And it isn’t going to be me.” Teddy knew her voice had gone high and thready, and she despised herself for it. But her career was on the line.
And Oscar London was ignoring her, the rat.
He’d turned back to his project—whatever it was—and was putting a glass container in a device that looked like a small top-loading washer.
“What’s that machine? And what are you doing, anyway? Are you really testing for E. coli?” Teddy realized she was desperate to do anything but sit in front of her laptop and stare at a blank white screen.
“It’s a centrifuge.” He closed the door and pushed a button, then adjusted a dial. As the machine began to rumble quietly, he pivoted to a desktop computer, complete with monitor.
Sheesh. What kind of geek traveled with all of this stuff?
Still ignoring her, Oscar began tapping on the keyboard, using the hunt-and-peck method. Just watching him pick at the keys with two fingers—thunk, thunk, thunk-thunk, thunk—made her twitchy.
“You never learned to type properly?” She edged closer, looking at the screen, and conveniently ignoring how much she hated it when someone looked overhershoulder while she was working.
“No.”
The screen was filled with a form he was completing: numbers, date, time, location, etc. Nothing worth being distracted over. “So the centrifuge spins the, what, the samples around?”
He turned. “You sure are talkative for someone who has a book to write.”
Teddy exhaled a long breath. “Yeah. Well, I’ve been having a little writer’s block.” She watched as he measured out a sample of water from a container like the one she’d filled yesterday—maybe the same one—using a pipette to transfer it carefully into a test tube. She sighed wistfully and slumped against the wall, arms crossed over her middle. “Microbiologists don’t get writer’s block. You just know what you have to do, and you do it. You follow the procedures andvoila! Done.”
“Yep. It’s that easy. So if you’re going to stand there instead of work, how about getting me another cup of coffee? Black, please.”
“Might as well.” When she came back from the tiny kitchen, which—she had to give him credit for—was neat as a pin, with his clean breakfast dishes lined up in the drainer, he’d stripped off the gloves. His fiery hair was standing nearly on end, obviously rumpled from a hand jamming through it, presumably post-glove-removal.
“So you’ve got writer’s block.” He took the cup and sipped. His eyes, a rich mix of green and brown, settled on her. “What kind of story are you working on?”
Teddy wandered over, looking in the boxes of equipment. Tubes, small bottles, larger bottles, petri dishes, labels, and syringes of all sizes. “You brought your own refrigerator with you?”
“Yes.” He soundedextremelypatient. “I have to make sure the samples are kept at a precise temperature, and the only way to do that is to use my own equipment—equipment that I know is accurate. I check the temp first thing in the morning, and several times through the day.”
“Have fridge, will travel. Huh. That’s one dangerous-looking microscope you have there.” She walked over to the complicated instrument branded Horix and peered through the eyepieces. She saw nothing but black.
“It’s a digital microscope. The image appears on that computer monitor. But, of course, the light has to be turned on, and there has to be something on a slide.” He snapped on another pair of gloves. “And it’s worth over two K, so please be careful.”
