Free Hardwired For Ecstasy by Ravenna Tate Page A

working like they should.”
    “Does
that mean they really believe they can be reversed?”
    “I
think they believe it in theory, yes, because it has happened in nature. No one
has tried to do it manually, and all at once, however.”
    “I
hope it works, because I want to go to Maine now and catch lobsters with you.”
    He
raised his glass, giving her one of those intense looks again that sent her
heart fluttering. “So do I .” He clinked his glass
against hers, and she realized that in the three years she had dated Leland,
not once had he talked about their future, or speculated what they might do
together if they could return to the surface one day.
    All
the red flags had been there, but she hadn’t seen any of them. Or, perhaps she
had, but she’d purposefully ignored them? It was easy to look back now and say
should have, could have, would have. But at the time,
she hadn’t consciously been aware of any more than an occasional misgiving.
Those, she’d easily brushed aside each time.
    “Where
did you go just now?”
    “What?”
    “You
look far away.”
    “I’m
sorry. Dreaming of what might be one day.” A tiny lie like that wouldn’t hurt
anything. She certainly didn’t want to discuss Leland tonight, and she wished
she’d stop thinking about her time with him.
    He
gave her a sideways glance. “There’s something I wanted to explain to you.”
    “Okay.”
    “You
were so open with me about your relationship with Leland, that I wanted to
explain a comment I made to you.”
    “Was
it the one about trust being destroyed?”
    There
was that sheepish grin again. If he didn’t stop doing that, they wouldn’t make
it to the end of dinner before she grew bold and horny enough to kiss him.
    “Oh,
you caught that?”
    “Yes.”
    He
leaned back and put his hands on the bench. “Her name was Alicia Mansfield, and
you might hear her name at work because up until a couple of years ago, she
worked in the administrative assistant pool.”
    Emma
put down her fork to give Atticus her full attention.
    “We
dated for over six months, and although I always use condoms on general
principle, there was one time we didn’t. No special reason why. It simply
happened. She was on the pill so we both laughed it off, but a couple of weeks
after that day, she told me she was pregnant.”
    He
had a child?
    “Unfortunately,
I then found out she’d lied to me. She was never pregnant.”
    “How
did you find out she lied?”
    He
glanced away for a second, and she suddenly realized she hadn’t needed to ask.
She knew exactly what he’d done.
    “You
hacked into her medical records, didn’t you?”
    “Only
because I suspected she had lied.”
    “Atticus,
that doesn’t make it right.” Anymore than it had been right for him to go
looking through confidential HR files at the Central Police Headquarters in
Central.
    “I
know. I’m sorry I did that. But that’s why I’m telling you this now. I’m
ashamed of what I did.”
    “Are
you also ashamed of snooping in my HR files, and in the HR files of my former
coworkers?”
    “Yes
and no. I did that because of reasons we’ve already discussed. I looked at
Alicia’s medical records because of things she said to others,
that were then passed along to me, that made me believe she was trying
to trick me into getting married.”
    “Wouldn’t
the truth have come out eventually?”
    “We
had stopped using condoms once I thought she was pregnant, and later she
admitted she had stopped taking the pill. She was waiting to get pregnant for
real.”
    “Um,
does she think you can’t count? The timeline would have been off.”
    The
corners of his mouth turned up slightly. “Yeah, I know. Her plan wasn’t very
well thought out.”
    “Is
that why you fired her?”
    “I
didn’t fire her. She quit.”
    “You
must have cared for her or you wouldn’t have made that comment about trust
being destroyed.”
    “I
did care for her. I hadn’t thought about marrying her, but once I