"I already have it covered," I said, trying not to grin when I thought about the present I had found for Josie.
The Svensson PharmaTech booths were busy. Parker was doing a live demonstration of sequencing genomes at the booth along with geneticists specializing in various cancers and other diseases who were there to talk about how they used the information.
"Any interest?" I asked Josie, touching her lightly on the waist.
"There's been a steady trickle of people," she told me. "People seem very interested, especially with the speed and relatively inexpensive cost."
"You helped make it easy to understand," I told her.
"So the rumors are true!" I heard a man say behind me. I turned to see my brothers Weston and Blade.
"There are more of you!" Josie exclaimed.
"Nice to meet you," Blade said solemnly, extending his hand. "I told him not to come bother you," Blade said to me.
"I'm assuming from the names you're all Mace's full brothers?" Josie asked as Weston swept her into a hug. I shoved him off of Josie.
"Of course!" he said, batting away my hands. "Though we're the younger, fresher models."
"You aren't that young," I told them.
"Are you guys twins?" Josie asked.
"Irish twins," I explained. "Born the same year but nine months apart."
"Exactlynine months," Blade said. "It's actually quite fascinating when you look at the probability of that occurring."
"Your name shouldn't be Blade. It should be boring," Weston retorted.
"You're boring!" Blade shot back. How they managed to run a successful company was beyond me.
"I'm the fun one,"' Weston told Josie as he put a palm on Blade's face.
"Is Archer around?" Blade asked. "I was wondering if there was any news on the conference center."
"The chocolate factory?" Josie asked excitedly.
"You've been there?" Weston demanded. "How does it look? Could we hold retreats there?"
"Their company, ThinkX," I explained to Josie, "is a consulting company. They do logistics and a type of fake engineering called industrial engineering."
"It's real!" Blade protested.
"Please," I scoffed. "While I was studying inorganic chemistry, you guys were partying. All you do is make spreadsheets."
"Don't knock a good spreadsheet!" Blade said.
"Also, who designed your whole software system?" Weston demanded. "And who developed your whole supply chain?"
"All right! All right!" I said, waving my hands. "Correction—they do a little bit more than spreadsheets."
"We're a big competitor with Holbrook Enterprises," Weston bragged.
"I think we do better work than them because their conglomerate is a catchall for a variety of industries," Blade said, "whereas we mainly focus on logistics, software systems, and back-end processes to make your business run more smoothly and make more money."
"You have a pretty good sales pitch," Josie said.
"But you could make it so much better," Weston said, grabbing her hand.
