Free Meltdown by Ruth Owen Page B

peace. I’m already behind in my work. If I lose any more time, I’ll have to work extra hours, which means more time away from home, which means less time for Einstein.”
    Einstein. He should have seen that one coming. Somehow or other her thoughts always came back to that damn computer.
    “I’ve got an idea,” she said suddenly. She turned to him, her eyes sparkling as they always did when she fastened her mind on a problem. “Chris, you’ve got to yell at me.”
    He’d expected something unusual, not crazy. Thewoman was certifiable. “Mind running that one by me again?”
    “Yell at me. Pretend to be angry with me.”
    “Pretend?”
No acting required there
.
    “Yes. Pretend you’re reprimanding me for something. Maybe the others will think you’re here on company business.”
    “And maybe pigs fly.”
    “Please, Chris,” she said, honestly disturbed. “We have to convince them you’re here on business.”
    She stood close to him, close enough for him to see past the barrier of her glasses and into the smoky depths of her eyes. Velvet soft, those eyes showed that part of her she kept hidden from the world: A fragile, breakable part. The part he’d felt so vividly through her hands.
    Sucker, he thought. Not that name-calling did a bit of good. “Okay,” he said with a sigh. “What do you want me to do?”
    She smiled, cautiously, for fear their audience would see. “Just head for the door. When you open it, pretend you’re reprimanding me. The more official the better.”
    Chris got up and walked toward the door, his lack of enthusiasm blatantly apparent. He didn’t give a damn what the data-entry operators thought. But Melanie did. The sober truth was that what was important to her was beginning to become important to him. Not wise, considering how little he meant to her. Perhaps if he showed up at her house wearing a few circuit boards and some wires …
    “Psst. Chris. You’re smiling.”
    “Sorry,” he said, schooling his expression back to a stern frown. This was insane. How could anyone seriously believe he could reprimand Melanie? He didn’t believe it himself.
    “Remember, you’re supposed to be angry with me.”
    “I
know
,” Chris said. She was so … what was the word she used to describe Einstein? Obstinate. What she needed was a good dose of excitement. And he was just the man to give it to her. He turned away from the glass wall and smiled brightly. A little too brightly.
    Melanie caught the look. “Hey, what are you going to say to them?”
    His smile deepened. He’d teach her not to think of him as a peripheral. He opened the door and said loudly, “You’ve been warned, Miss Rollins. I won’t tolerate any more of your reprehensible behavior. There are morals laws in this country. Not to mention the SPCA.”

Six
    Were there graphics?
    “Yes, there were graphics.”
    And colored transparencies?
    Melanie checked the voltage calibrator and made note of Einstein’s load variance. “There were transparencies too. E, I’ve already told you all about Chris’s presentation.”
    Tell me again. Must verify data
.
    Melanie smiled. E had asked to “verify the data” at least twenty times. She rolled up the sleeves on her work blouse and attacked the hard-wired circuitry of the CPU tower unit and Einstein’s request at the same time. E’s mood had improved geometrically since she’d told him about the presentation two days ago. She’d barely been able to coax three words out of him before that; now he was chattering away like a telex machine. His newfound happiness more than made up for the tedium of his incessant questions. Chris’s presentation had done more to lift E’s spirits—and hers—than all the spare parts in the world.
    Not that that let him off the hook. She’d spent therest of Wednesday and most of Thursday fending off questions from the people in the data-entry department. Everyone wanted to know what she’d done that was so appalling it could