"Yeah, she would. I'll check with him about it, then." He wanted to get out of here. They could talk about Christmas another time.

"Don't bother. I'll tell him. I have to ask him to make some for other people, too." There was something secretive about how Scott said that - like he didn't want to say who he was making the extras for. That was odd. "Um, speaking of your mother, she usually comes to town around Christmas, doesn't she?"

Bill nodded. "Yeah. She likes to see Rachel."

"That's good. I think it's important for Rachel to have a relationship with her. Do you know when she's planning to come?" "She hasn't decided yet." More importantly, Bill hadn't decided how to minimize the damage yet.

"Well, after Christmas would probably work best for us. We're going back East early, and then flying back Christmas Eve to be with Seth and Annabelle on Christmas Day."

Bill was pretty sure that "we" included Carolyn. She came from somewhere back there, too, as he recalled. He couldn't say anything about that, though - not without destroying the civility of their conversation so far. "I'll tell Ma, but I'm sure that will be fine with her." Time to get out of here. He stood.

"Well, thanks."

Scott half-smiled. "Sure. I'll let you know about the pictures."

"Great."

Okay, that was a pretty successful conversation. Now all he had to do was figure out how to keep Scott from meeting Ma.

Oh, geez. Nik couldn't meet her, either!

CHAPTER THIRTEEN.

Late Wednesday morning, Nik stretched her back muscles as she saved her doc.u.ment. She'd been working on this presentation all day, and it was finally done. She'd just save it, send a copy to the printer, and head out for her lunch break.

Oh, no, TechDoc crashed! She sighed, crossed her fingers, and invoked it again. It said her doc.u.ment didn't exist!

She tried a couple of things that might retrieve it from inside her computer, but none of the tricks she'd learned to help users worked. She'd have to find someone who knew more than she did about it.

Unfortunately, all of her support engineers were either on the phone or at lunch already. Maybe a developer? She checked Bill's office first, but it was empty. Carolyn's office was nearby, so she stopped there. "Excuse me, Carolyn, but who'd be a good person to try to retrieve a doc.u.ment I lost? I wouldn't care about it normally, but it's part of a presentation that Seth needs this afternoon -"

Carolyn smiled and waved away the rest of the explanation. "I can try. What version of TechDoc are you using?"

Oops. "The one we've been testing - I forgot to switch back to the production one."

Carolyn shrugged. "I forget sometimes, too. Let's go see what I can do." She headed to the other building and Nik's office, her long legs setting a pace that made Nik feel like she was running.

Nik started out standing behind her, trying to follow what Carolyn was doing. She was typing fast and using several windows at once, so it was hard to follow. Before long, Nik's muscles started screaming, and she finally moved to her visitor's chair.

Carolyn swiveled around to face her after ten minutes or so. "I got it back - maybe not your latest changes, but it should be close. But it's a good thing this happened now. There's a real butchery in the code that we need to fix before this goes out to customers. Can I use your phone?"

Nik nodded, and Carolyn punched the speakerphone b.u.t.ton, then someone's extension. The phone was answered. "I've been thinking about you." Bill's voice was as smooth and intimate as ever. Carolyn turned beet-red and gasped, then looked at Nik with what seemed to be horror in her eyes.

Finally, she said, "This is Carolyn, Bill. I'm with Nik - one of her doc.u.ments crashed and I came to get it back for her. We've got a major problem."

"Major, how? You can't retrieve it?" He sounded businesslike, not wishing-he-could-fall-through-the-floor-with- embarra.s.sment like she was. But then, she guessed he might not care that people knew they were seeing each other. He'd been with plenty of women at A-W.

Carolyn shook her head, her blush fading. "No, I got it back. It's why it crashed that's the problem - it's the beta software, and I can't believe n.o.body found this problem during testing."

Bill's sigh was amplified by the speaker. "Should I come down there?"

"Yeah."

"I'll be right down." The receiver clunked into place on his end.

Carolyn pushed the b.u.t.ton to end the call and raised her eyes to meet Nik's. Her blush returned and she said, "Um - normally I wouldn't say anything -"

It was Nik's turn to wave away the rest of whatever Carolyn might have said. She wasn't blushing, but only because she never blushed. "No, it's okay. And yes, I know what Bill is like. I'm not expecting this to last."

She wasn't. She hadn't even expected it to last this long.

Bill could bite his tongue off. They hadn't talked about it, but he was sure Nik hadn't wanted anyone at work to know they were seeing each other. He knew why, of course - she was ashamed of being attracted to a low-cla.s.s guy like him. If she was going out with somebody like Scott, it would be totally different. She'd a.s.sume he was sincere and had her best interests at heart. She wouldn't be so busy denying the obvious about their relationship, either.

When he walked into her office, he could tell she and Carolyn had been talking about him. Carolyn blushed and wouldn't look right at either of them, and Nik was busy studying the arrangement of objects on her desk. He pretended not to notice. "So, ladies, what's up?"

That broke the still-life, and Carolyn proceeded to show him just exactly what had happened to Nik's doc.u.ment. And d.a.m.n if she wasn't right - it was bad. It was also quite possible to fix. "It shouldn't take more than an hour to fix this and make sure it works," he said.

"But haven't the beta disks already been shipped?" Carolyn asked.

"Not yet. They're set to go out this afternoon." A sudden thought. "But Scott's got the bad software at the conference."

Carolyn came up with the answer a microsecond ahead of him. "We could send the update with Seth when he leaves today, and not ship to the beta customers until tomorrow. a.s.suming we really can fix this that fast." She looked to him for the decision.

Geez! This was it - a chance for him to be the boss, like he'd always wanted. It was exciting, but also scary and not a little lonely. He wouldn't mind it a bit if Scott suddenly zapped into the room and took over, like he'd done a million times before. But that wasn't going to happen. Scott was about a thousand miles away, and Bill was going to have to make the call. He nodded. "We'll do it. I'll tell Seth and make sure we don't ship the bad software by mistake. Who do you want to work with you on the bug?"

Carolyn sucked in her breath, like she was surprised he wasn't grabbing the fun job for himself - well, she had a point, he guessed. "I can do it on my own." After a second, she looked him straight in the eye and added, "You might want to take a look at my fix later - make sure I'm not causing us more problems down the road."

It wouldn't do to make a big deal out of her offer, but today was the first time she'd acknowledged him as either her boss or as a skilled engineer. "Be glad to," he said with a nod. "Give me a call."

Nik ought to take her lunch break now. Maybe not a full hour, but she needed a chance to stretch out, flat on her back, and relax her muscles.

Just not right now. She had her office and her doc.u.ment back. She needed to see if it was all there, and if it was, do one last critical read-through before having transparencies made for Seth to take with him to the conference.

She'd take her break then. In the meantime, she'd sip her nutrition drink - a new brand she'd gotten at the store with Bill, and boy was it tasty - as she worked.

Bill left Seth's office so charged up it was almost better than s.e.x. No, that was going too far - close to as good was more accurate.

Seth was impressed! He'd been leery earlier about subst.i.tuting a new version of software at the last minute like this, but Bill had a.s.sured him that they'd run the full regression test suite overnight before shipping to beta customers. He also reminded Seth that if Scott didn't feel confident of the new version, he didn't have to install it and use it for demos. That had been enough to get Seth to give his guarded consent.

But it was different now! The fix was made, and Bill had asked the whole team to individually read over the code and make sure it made sense. They'd all agreed it did. Carolyn had written an explanation of the bug and how she'd fixed it, and they'd included that on the disk they gave to Seth for Scott. They'd also managed to run about half of the regression base on the new software this afternoon, and everything had pa.s.sed so far. The real kicker, though, was that Phillip had created a test doc.u.ment and set of commands that caused the exact same crash on the version of TechDoc Nik had been using - and it ran successfully on Carolyn's fixed version.

Seth wasn't a software guy, but he was smart and he'd been around developers long enough to understand Bill's explanation of what they'd accomplished. He knew they'd done something in one afternoon that normally took several days, and he could see there was reason to feel confident about the results.

So, not only did he approve of sending the new version of beta software out tomorrow, he did something else as Bill left his office. He shook Bill's hand and said, "Good job." That, and the honest smile that went with it, was a first.

Before Bill consciously realized that he had to do something special to celebrate his day, he was on Nik'shall. He hoped she was still in her office - for the life of him, he couldn't imagine what time it was.

She was, bent over putting something away and apparently getting ready to leave. What timing! "We're celebrating tonight, Nikolia. What should we do?"

She tipped her head back a couple of inches and his stomach plummeted. Her face was ghastly pale, and her eyes dull with pain. "I'm sorry. You'll have to celebrate without me."

He saw now that her position wasn't right. She was bent way over at the waist, much more than she'd need to bend to put something in a desk drawer. "What's wrong?" He raced to her side, thinking to help her up, and then - he didn't know.

"Don't touch me - not like that. Just -" One hand snaked out and grabbed his arm. "I'll pull myself up this way." The other hand was on the edge of her desk, but it seemed to be the one holding onto him that gave her the leverage to raise herself. She caught her breath and held it as she sat back in her desk chair, and he saw tears glistening in her eyes.

When she finally seemed a little more comfortable, he asked, "What happened?"

She sighed. "I didn't break at lunch today, because of the crash and needing to get the presentation ready for Seth. By the time I finally got it done and finished with my staff meeting, I could tell I was in trouble.

So I figured I'd stretch out my back muscles by bending forward in my chair - it's not as good as lying on my back, but I just needed a temporary fix until I could get home."

"You intended to do that?" That didn't make sense.

"I didn't expect to get stuck," she said with a weak smile. "But once I leaned forward, I realized my muscles were too spasmy to let me sit back up, and the desk and the arms of my chair weren't in the right place to help me. I was going to try to move my chair around so I could see if putting my arm on the edge of the table would work."

He'd caught sight of the clock on her computer by now, and knew it was only a little after quitting time.

"Someone in your group must still be around. You could have just called out."

She shook her head - once - emphatically, then winced at the pain that caused. "I try not to let anyone see me like this."

He didn't tell her how foolish her att.i.tude was. He knew about pride. Instead, he said, "Okay, now how do we get you home? Do I need to carry you?"

"I can get home just fine, now that you helped me up. Thanks." She stood cautiously and straightened upright gradually.

"I'm not just leaving you here like this! I'm going to drive you home and make sure you're all right."

"But you have to celebrate tonight," she protested. "You didn't tell me what for, by the way. I a.s.sume you fixed the bug this afternoon?"

He nodded. "Yeah, but I'm taking care of you tonight. We'll celebrate - together - another time."

"I'll be okay, really. I don't need you taking care of me." Her protest ran out of steam, and she said quietly, "But if you want to, it's okay."

They walked out together, and he thought about how she didn't want people to see her like this. But shelet him see her like this!

That, in itself, was worth celebrating.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN.

Nik knew that, as bad as she felt right now, she'd be pretty much okay by morning. All she needed was to get home and stop using the muscles that were so painful. She didn't really need Bill to take care of her tonight.

But if he wanted to do it, she'd let him. It would waste too much energy to argue the point with him, for one thing. For another - well, this disease of hers was awful and sometimes she got depressed about the years ahead, about decades of fighting fibro flares all alone. It would be nice to have this one time when it was different to remember.

He drove her home in her car. At first, that seemed strange, but her car was in the part of the parking lot closest to her office and he always parked near the opposite entrance, so she didn't ask. And then, when they got to her place, he used the garage door opener to let them into the garage, and she realized he'd probably already thought about that point. Fibro fog made her thought processes much slower than normal.

It was weird. Usually when she overdid at work like this, she had a ma.s.sive struggle to get home, and every second was endless and full of pain. Today, though, she seemed to be floating. Her body still hurt, but time was pa.s.sing without her really noticing it, and the pain didn't seem to matter quite so much.

The problem with floating like this was that it was hard to get her body's attention to actually do something. Like now, they were in the garage, so she should get out of the car, go into the bedroom, and undress. But try telling her body that! It just kept sitting in the car.

It was lucky Bill was around. He came and opened her car door, helped her to stand, and walked her into the bedroom. He even started undressing her, except that made her think about other times he'd undressed her, and she came to her senses enough to at least do most of the work.

She stood there, tottering as though she had on her first pair of high heels, and he asked, "Do you want a nightgown?"

This man had been her lover for how many weeks and he didn't know she slept in the nude? She didn't laugh, though. He was simply trying to be helpful. "No. I can't stand clothes touching me, and I get hot."

"Okay, then do you need to use the bathroom or are you ready for a ma.s.sage?"

He sure was serious about this taking care of her business! "I'll lie down for a while and then get some dinner." She lowered herself to the bed and stretched out. A lot of the strain on her muscles disappeared immediately, and she felt almost comfortable. Too bad she wouldn't stay that way all night. She knew she'd go through a hundred different positions before the night was through, and would feel pain in every muscle in her body in most of them.

It really wasn't fair to make Bill live through this kind of night with her. He thought he understood about her disease, but he didn't, and he wasn't prepared to learn the truth. "In fact, you really don't need to stay. I'll just zone out as much as I can all night, and by morning, I'll be much better. You could take my car and come back in the morning to pick me up."

"Not a chance, Nikolia. I'm here to help you. Just tell me what I can do." But that was the point. He couldn't really help her. No one could.

Bill wouldn't have expected that he could be in the same room with a naked Nik and not need to make love to her. But he didn't. All he wanted was for her to feel better.

"Shouldn't you take a pain pill or something?"

She shook her head slightly. "The only drugs that work for me are real heavy-duty. I don't take them for something like this." She must have realized how crazy that sounded, because she gave him a weak smile and said, "I know that seems strange to you, but I'm really not as bad off as you think. It's maybe like if you pushed your workout extra one day. You'd be more tired after, and maybe sore, but you'd be better by the next day."

He understood her example, but the example itself showed how messed up things were for her. She was young and she took care of herself. She ought to be as strong and resilient as he was.

Ought to be, huh? When and where did Bill get the idea that life was fair, or even that it was intended to be? It wasn't, whether you were the precious daughter of a college professor or the unwanted son of George Adams, Sr.

There was no point even thinking about it any further. "I'll get you some dinner. What would you like?"

He adjusted the position of the blanket slightly.

"I've still got some soup in the fridge. You could zap me a mug of it, if you don't mind."