“—I knew it, I said this the day he arrived. His hair istoogood…”
“—See?Thisis what I was worried about…”
“Hey,” Holly said. “Just a moment, now—” But she was drowned out.
“—Because you can’t trust a situation like this to stay professional?—”
“—Does Sam know?”
“Do I knowwhat?” Sam asked, looking utterly baffled by it all.
Holly cleared her throat. “Quiet!” she bellowed. The room went silent. “No one is romancing anyone. And I don’t appreciate being the center of baseless gossip.Honestly, Luv.” She slanted a scolding look toward Luv. She could all but hear the gossip now:Holly’s usually so nice and soft-spoken, but have you heard heryell?
It was time to get a hold of things, before the meeting completely unraveled. “Look, Mish is right. We are low on funds and developers are circling like buzzards—they’re birds on Earth that…never mind. Anyway, unless someone has a constructive idea for how we raise funds and increase traffic to this station, this meeting is concluded.”
There was a long pause. Mish’s children rose in unison and clustered around their mother, and, because she was sitting next to Mish, Holly. Bean stretched out his nose to sniff the closest one, and Holly gently recentered him on her lap.
Tyer glanced uneasily at Mish’s offspring. “Concluded, then.”
The lounge cleared, comfortable and unhurried, as it did when people knew each other long enough to disagree and not hold grudges. Harry took a cupcake to-go and paused to tell Holly that regardless of the three-out-of-ten review, things were genuinely looking up, and he meant it, and she should know that.
Sam clapped her once on the shoulder without a word, which she had come to understand was Sam’s equivalent of a full-throated endorsement. Mish gathered her children with a series of looks that communicated something across their shared frequency, and they filed out in two neat rows. Tyer said a politegoodbye. Cody gave her a big, incense-laden hug, called her “cuz,” and wandered out with his hands in his pockets, humming something. Orba and Sula said nothing as they glided from the room.
Alyce was the last resident to go, and she turned on Luv. “You know better than to say something like that.”
Luv rolled forward and her visual indicators lit up red. “I’ve got my eye on that one,” she said, gesturing with a metal arm toward Rasker. “He looks at her entirely too much. And their heart rates increase when they make eye contact.”
“Howis that any of your business?” Alyce asked, exasperated. “I’ll tell you right now,myheart rate increases when I talk to you.”
Luv rolled back a little bit. “I’m protective of my human, is all. Don’t want to see her sell this place because of some smooth-talking?—”
“I appreciate that, Luv,” Holly said, cutting the Homeboti off before she went on an entertaining, but embarrassing, rant. She rose, keeping Bean tucked under one arm. “But I don’t need protection. I need friendship, and for you to trust that I can take care of myself.”
Luv’s visual lights turned back to blue. “I will process that and adjust my communication style. In the future, I’ll only tellyouif something worries me.”
“That would be fantastic,” Holly said dryly. “And you don’tneedto worry. I’m not going to sell this place. Not to Mr. Vipp. Not to anyone.”
That calmed the fiery robot, and Alyce let out a loud sigh as she tossed back a thin braid that fell in her eyes. “You need anything, let me know.” She winked and scratched under Bean’s chin. “You’re a good boy, you know that?”
Bean blinked solemnly. Hedidknow that.
Alyce departed, dragging Luv with her, leaving Holly and Rasker alone.
He crossed the lounge toward her at the unhurried pace she’d come to recognize, and Holly stayed where she was. Bean was getting heavy, but she kept him in her arms, like a shield.
“How are you?” Rasker asked.
“Fine,” she said. “Busy. Both.”
He reached out and ran his hand down her arm, a light, easy gesture, like it was a thing he’d decided was permitted. It was, she supposed. Given circumstances.
“Luv hit a nerve,” Holly said. “Is she? Is this—” She gestured between them. “Part of the strategy?”
He looked at her steadily. “No.” He said it without hesitation. “And honestly, I don’t see a strategy like that working on you anyway.”
“Thanks. It wouldn’t.”
The corner of his mouth moved. “For what it’s worth, I believe that you won’t sell. I think you’re going to stay here and fix this station up piece by piece until it’s a place people look forward to stopping at. And then you’re going to be very smug about it.” He pet Bean, who leaned into his touch. “Rightly so.”
