First Shift: Legacy (Shift, #1)(9)

“I think you’ll want one more.” She pointed to the other side of his original monitor. She wasn’t standing there to make him uncomfortable—she’d been surveying his workspace. “I can bring a splitter and set it up for you. Maybe untangle those wires while I’m at it.”

“Oh. Okay.”

He halfway expected her to tousle his hair while she patronized him. He flinched at the thought. Just conjuring the image made it feel as though it were bound to happen—or already had. He rolled his chair away and made a show of adjusting the other monitor.

“So,” he said. “You’re in town.”

“Since last week. I was gonna stop by and see you and Helen on Saturday, but I’ve been so busy getting settled into my apartment. Unboxing things, you know?”

“Yeah.” He accidentally bumped the mouse, and the old monitor winked on. His computer was running. The terror of being in the same room with an ex subsided just enough for the timing of the day’s events to dawn on him.

“Wait.” He turned to Anna. “So you were over here installing this while your father was asking me if I was interested in his project?”

She raised an eyebrow. Donald realized it wasn’t something one learned—it was a talent her clan passed from parent to child.

“He practically gift-wrapped the election for you,” she said flatly.

Donald reached for the folder and riffed the pages like a deck of cards. “You know,” he said, “the illusion of free will would’ve been nice. That’s all.”

Anna laughed. She was about to tousle his hair, he could feel it. Dropping his hand from the folder and patting his jacket pocket, he felt for his phone. It was like Helen was there with him. He felt the urge to call her.

“Was Dad at least gentle with you?”

He looked up to see that she hadn’t moved. Her arms were still crossed, his hair untousled, nothing to panic about.

“What? Oh, yeah. Your father was fine. Like old times. In fact, it’s like he hasn’t aged a day.”

Smiling, she picked up something from his desk. A twist tie. From the monitor’s cord, perhaps. “He doesn’t really age, you know.” She crossed the room and picked up large molded pieces of foam and slid them noisily into the empty box. Donald found his eyes drifting toward her skirt and forced himself to look away.

“He takes nano treatments almost religiously. Started because of his knees. The military covered it for a while. Now he swears by them.”

“I didn’t know that,” Donald lied. He’d heard rumors, of course. It was “Botox for the whole body,” people said. Better than testosterone supplements. It cost a fortune, and you wouldn’t live forever, but you could sure as hell delay the pain of aging. He’d read a story recently about a guy who had died in the middle of a triathlon. A hundred-and-ten years old. His grandkids didn’t sound upset at all, said he was doing what he loved right up to the end.

Anna narrowed her eyes. “You don’t think there’s anything wrong with that, do you?”

“What? No. It’s fine, I guess. I just wouldn’t. Wait, why? Don’t tell me you’ve been—?”

Anna rested her hands on her hips and cocked her head to the side. There was something oddly seductive about the defensive posture, something that whisked away the years since he’d last seen her.

“Do you think I would need to?” she asked him.

“No, no. It’s not that—” He waved his hands. “It’s just that I don’t think I ever would.”

A smirk thinned her lips. Maturity had hardened Anna’s good looks, had refined her lean frame, but the fierceness from her youth remained. “You say that now,” she said, “but wait until your joints start to ache and your back goes out from something as simple as turning your head too fast. Then you’ll see.”

“Okay. Well.” He clapped his hands together. “This has been quite the day for catching up on old times.” Peeking again at the shiny new monitor, he gave his hair another minor adjustment.

“Yes, it has. Now, what day works best for you?” Anna interlocked the flaps on the large box and slid it toward the door with her foot. She walked around the back of the desk and stood beside him, a hand on his chair, the other reaching for his mouse.

“What day—?”

He watched while she changed some settings on his computer and the new monitor flashed to life. Donald could feel his pulse in his crotch, could smell a familiar perfume. The breeze she had caused by walking across the room seemed to stir all around him. Her body had pressed against air molecules that now pressed into him. This felt near enough to a caress, to a physical touch, that he wondered if he was cheating on Helen right at that very moment while Anna did little more than adjust sliders on his control panel.

“You know how to use this, right?” She slid the mouse from one screen to the other, dragging an old game of solitaire with it.

“Uh, yeah.” Donald squirmed in his seat. “Um...what do you mean about a day that works best for me?”

She let go of the mouse. It felt like she had taken her hand off his thigh. Stepping away from him, she peeled the plastic film off the monitor with a loud ripping sound and balled it up in her hands.

“Dad wants me to handle the mechanical spaces on the plans.” She gestured toward the folder as if she knew precisely what was inside. “I’m taking a sabbatical from the Institute until this Atlanta project is up and running. I thought we’d want to meet once a week to go over things.”