Free Scandalous by Tilly Bagshawe Page B

public.
A sort of Steve Irwin for nerds.
    For six years, Theo had been promising to deliver. Now, just when Gilliam had begun to despair of ever making any money from him—by forty, Dexter would be losing his hair and spreading around the middle and the game would be up—Theo had called in high excitement, summoning him to Cambridge.
    “This had better be good, Theo.” Gilliam’s high-pitched child’s voice quivered with irritation. “I’m not in the habit of making day trips. Why can’t you come to London?”
    “Because I’m still working on it and I need to be here. It is good, Ed. I’m e-mailing you a rough draft now.”
    He was right. It was good. Better than good. Ed Gilliam was not a physicist himself, but if Theo Dexter really had proved what he claimed to have proved in this document…this could be as big as Hawking. Bigger.
    Ed flipped through the manuscript as he sipped his white wine.
    “Who else has seen the material?”
    “No one. You, me…” Theo hesitated.
    “And?”
    Theo picked the crust off a warm piece of bread. “I showed pieces of it to a student of mine. A girl. She…we’ve talked through some of the concepts together.”
    “I see. Anyone else?”
    “Well, my wife. But she can’t understand a word of it, it’s way over her head.” Theo laughed dismissively.
    “Good,” said Ed. “From now on, don’t show this to anyone and don’t discuss it with a soul. If I’m going to try to put together a multiplatform deal, I’m going to need complete control.”
    “Multiplatform?” Theo was salivating. “You mean TV?”
    “Of course. Book deal. TV. The works. We’ll start with a simple press release in the
New Scientist
. Let the idea build up some steam amongst your fellow eggheads. Then, when the scientific community’s behind you, we take it mainstream: you’re on the news channels. Once the commissioning editors at Sky and ITV get a good look at that pretty face of yours you’ll be beating off offers with a stick, I promise you.”
    “Here’s hoping…” Theo ordered a petit filet and green salad—expensive, as befitting his soon-to-be new lifestyle, but mindful of his six-pack. Ed went for spaghetti vongole, which he slurped noisily while outlining his action plan to his client.
    “You need to come to London as soon as possible. Tomorrow, if you can swing it. I’ll get you in front of our intellectual property lawyers.”
    “Lawyers?” For the first time since they sat down Theo’s shit-eating grin began to fade. “Is that really necessary?”
    “It’s a formality,” slurped Ed, garlicky clam juice dribbling down his receding chin. “But yeah, it is necessary, especially in this case. You know what it’s like with ideas. Some people only have to read them once to think that they came up with them in the first place.” He laughed. “This is your theory, Theo. We need to make that ironclad from the get-go.”
    “Right. Of course.”
    Theo felt a momentary stab of guilt but quickly banished it from his mind. In the two weeks since Sasha had first shown him her theory, he’d worked on it so tirelessly and with such all-consuming passion, correcting even the tiniest errors, improving and polishing the text until it flowed like molten gold, that he’d almost come to believe it really
was
his work. Yes, Sasha had produced the original spark that inspired him—a spark that
his
teaching had so patiently nurtured and encouraged in her. But it was he, Theo Dexter, who had transformed that spark into
this
: a volcanic eruption of genius that had Ed Gilliam sitting across the table, eating out of his hands.
    This is your theory, Theo. We need to make that ironclad.
And they would. Ed Gilliam’s fleet of top lawyers would protect him. They’d know what to do if Sasha got nasty. But she wouldn’t, would she?
    Just at that moment, Theo’s phone buzzed to life on the table. He grabbed it, read the text, and quickly deleted it.
    “Nothing important, I hope?”