The security guard straightened, his hand falling to his taser. “Sir, you’re going to have to go through the line.”
Sam dropped his hand, turning a hard look on the guard. “That’s not going to happen. Miss Sinclair values her privacy. We’ve just been given the all clear to go up to see her father, if you don’t mind?”
He stood with his hands clasped behind his back like a soldier at parade rest, his chin tipped up arrogantly.
Ophelia couldn’t stop gaping at him.
“Miss Sinclair?” the guard repeated skeptically. “Look, whoever she is, she’s gotta go through the security line.”
“My father won’t be pleased to know you made me late for our meeting,” Ophelia said in her best imitation of her mother. “What’s your name, again?”
The security guard scowled at her, opening his mouth to argue when another guard hustled across the lobby. “Dave, that’s the CEO’s kid. Just let her through.”
Dave’s jaw shut with an audible click, and he gestured at Sam. “Well, who is this guy supposed to be?”
“Samuel Nolan, private security,” Sam said smoothly.
Nolan? That was the name of the contestant who’d been sent home on last night’s episode ofIsland Inferno.
He lied?He couldn’t lie!
Dread coiled in her gut. Between this and his impossible defense against the Next Gen cyborgs, she had a feeling that either Automata was violating the stringent laws around artificial intelligence… orLoganwas. Butwhy?
Dave huffed, rolling his eyes as he popped open the security gate. “Fine, just go through.”
Sam nodded at the man, putting his hand back between her shoulder blades when she didn’t start walking on her own. Numbly, she allowed him to guide her to the elevator. He put himself between her and the other employees who filed on, tucking her into a corner with only his broad back to look at. She fisted her hand in his shirt, reeling.
The employees thinned as the elevator climbed, until at last, it was just the two of them.
He turned to look at her, gently prying her hand from his shirt and holding it in both of his big, warm palms. “What’s wrong? Is it your father? Does he make you uneasy as your mother does?”
“You lied,” she whispered. “Back there, with the guard—you lied to his face. How can you do that?”
His face shuttered, making her heart skip a beat, but then he flashed an easy smile.
“I’m programmed for all sorts of roleplay situations, Ophelia,” he said in a teasing way, backing her into the corner. His hands gripped the rails on either side of her as he dipped his head, bringing his lips to her ear. “Do you have any fantasies you’d like to play out? I’m a convincing actor, as you now know.”
The tip of his tongue traced the curve of her ear, and her core fluttered as she grew wet in the space of a heartbeat.
The elevator let out a cheerful ping before she could answer.
An embarrassing wheeze came from somewhere deep in her chest as Sam pulled away and faced the doors.
He stepped off and looked back at her expectantly, forced to catch the closing doors for her before she’d recovered her mind enough to move.
CHAPTER 16
Samuel trailedbehind Ophelia as she made her way down the hall to her father’s corner office at the top of the building. She wrung her hands like she was already being scolded. What kind of man was her father to have her so upset? It was good he had ignored her attempts to leave him behind. She should not face this alone.
It hadn’t been an exaggeration—though hecoulddo that now—when he told her that he was obsessed with her. He didn’t want to be separated from her and disliked every moment she was out of his sight. He belonged wherever she was.
Her father’s office was not as opulent as Sam would have expected from the CEO of a major company like Optima. If anything, it was Spartan: all chrome and polished concrete, with a heavy-looking desk of ornate Jacobean design that looked completely out of place among the industrial modernity. He sat behind it in a high-backed leather office chair, not even bothering to look up as they entered. His influence over Ophelia’s genes was immediately clear. It had been a struggle to find anything of Ophelia in her mother, but her father had the same gray eyes and perpetually downturned mouth. His hairwas a shade darker and threaded through with silver at the temples.
Ophelia stopped a few feet from the desk and cleared her throat. Her father’s mouth thinned.
“Um… Hi, Dad,” she said.
At length, he looked up from his holotab, peering through the translucent screen of his holographic computer display.
