Burning Ultimatum (Trevor's Harem #4) (19 page)

The headline reads,
Brilliant or Dangerous?

And the subhead:
Barnes’s cutting-edge psychological research is redefining our understanding of sex for the first time since Masters & Johnson. But at what cost?

Then Barnes is startling me at the door. It’s as if he’s stepped from the spread to answer the question in person.
 

“So you’re the man whose money I keep trying to get my hands on,” he says to Daniel.
 

“And you’re Alexa’s secret lover.”
 

It’s a joke, but it barely cuts the tension. Barnes smiles, but even his grin is arrogant. It’s like he’s humoring Daniel’s attempt at levity without actually enjoying or being bothered by it.
 

“Come in.”
 

As we follow Barnes out of the foyer, I expect to enter a typical doctor’s office. I’m very wrong. I’ve never seen a shrink (though God knows I should, with all my issues), but the setting should still be vaguely medical — or at least plush, muted, comforting for those who come here to share their problems. Barnes’s reputation paints him as half couch-man and half mad-scientist researcher. I see evidence of neither, unless there’s an asylum basement cut from 1920s clichés, where lunatics scream in dank cells.
 

It doesn’t make me laugh. The joke isn’t clearly absurd enough, in this place, to for-sure be untrue.
 

Instead of being medical or nestlike, the place is all gray walls. And they’re not flat paint; there’s a texture to every surface that feels like a thin coating of diamond-hard, uneven pebbling. Every room we pass is finished the same way as the hallway, with furniture shoved way back in. The effect isn’t like walking through a hallway lined with chambers so much as stepping through the center of a maze with many branching passageways.

We finally emerge into a large room at the hallway’s end. Barnes closes the door, blessedly killing the maze illusion from inside. The walls in here are gray, too, and there’s not a speck of dust, a scrap of paper, or even a stray pen on his desk or end tables. But at least the place has large, airy windows, which for some reason I imagined it wouldn’t have at all.
 

I’m still trying to catch up, wondering why Barnes seems to know Daniel. The papers Trevor and Jessica slipped under my door in the middle of the night had the doctor’s address and name on them, not his phone number. Despite this place looking like either an institute or a medical practice, we couldn’t find a number anywhere online. We didn’t call first. We just showed up. And until I started my research on the drive, Daniel had no idea who Barnes even was, or why he mattered.
 

But as I dug deeper, Daniel told me it was starting to make sense. The doctor’s firm was ridiculously ambitious, fearless in topics investigated and methods used. It smacked of a larger reach than the public knew, and funded from somewhere beyond its patient roster, with no on-record grants that Daniel could find.
 

The kind of funding that could only have come from Eros, behind Daniel’s back.

And so he said,
This is what the board has been hiding. This is the partner the board wants. Barnes is the prospective partner Alexa almost blabbed to me about before she stopped herself and remembered that the board was no longer telling the boss everything, seeing as his time at Eros was almost up.
 

Daniel said that this is who the board wants to impress, even more than Caspian White. Because of what he knows. Because of what he’s learned. Because of what a man like Barnes can do that not even Eros, with all of Alexa’s illicit spyware and all its undercover innovations, can.
 

If the board reports to anyone, this is who it is.

“What can I do for you, Mr. Rice?” Barnes says as we file into the room. He gestures us into chairs across from his expansive black desk.

Daniel doesn’t know Barnes at all. But Barnes, it seems, knows Daniel just fine.
 

“I don’t know where to start,” Daniel says after a moment spent considering the question.
 

“Perhaps with what made you come here?”

I sit as Barnes meets my eyes. Daniel follows suit, and Barnes sits last. But I’m still looking at Daniel, watching him trying to decide if he should reveal Trevor’s hint. He knows what the lab results mean. But how Barnes fits in — and whether he can be trusted — is another matter.
 

“Or you, Bridget,” Barnes says when Daniel doesn’t answer. “Maybe you can tell me.”
 

I blurt, “Oxytocin,” then look at Daniel, wondering if I should have kept my fool mouth shut, or if he wishes he’d made this errand alone.
 

Barnes nods, apparently unsurprised by my non sequitur. “An interesting and multifaceted hormone. Did Daniel explain to you what it does?”
 

“Not really.” I shouldn’t have spoken. I don’t like the doctor’s gaze on me. I glance at Daniel, but there’s no help in his eyes. We’re both in uncharted waters. I only know that this has something to do with the board, with us, with those test results. But what — and why we had to come here to find out — is anyone’s guess.
 

“It’s a connection hormone,” Barnes says. “Instrumental in the childbirth process, but even more so once a child is born. Oxytocin is what bonds a mother to her baby. Without it, mothers might leave after birth, as most animal fathers do. And then the babies would die. So it’s vital. Essential to our survival.”
 

I look at Daniel. But he still seems to have no idea where this is going.
 

“But it’s also part of a trio released during orgasm,” Barnes continues. “When you climax, your brain releases dopamine, which is your chemical reward signal. It releases opioids, which make you feel good. And lastly, it releases oxytocin.” He looks at me then Daniel. “Which bonds you to your lover.”

Barnes stands. He moves to the edge of the desk and sits on it, closer to me than Daniel.
 

“In a way, it’s true, what your mother always told you was a lie. You
can
find love through sex, and not just sex through love.” A not-quite-right smile ticks the corner of the doctor’s mouth.
 

“I didn’t have a mother growing up.” It’s like I’m a leaky faucet, saying all the most pointless things.
 

Barnes smiles, and this time he looks at Daniel as if they’re sharing a secret. “I know. Sad, isn’t it?”
 

Daniel seems to reach a decision in the uncomfortable seconds that follow. I sense a
What the hell; we’re fucked already
, and then his mouth is opening.
 

“You know about Halo,” Daniel says.
 

“Of course. I wrote half of its programming, based on my research.”

“And I assume the board has been sending you its results. From our experiments in Colorado.”
 

Barnes nods. “Yes. But if you’ve come here to tattle, there’s no point. I already know that Halo declared Bridget the winner, once all of the deleted data had been reinserted. Accepting the second-highest scorer — Jessica? — was Eros’s decision to make, not mine.”

I watch the two men, knowing there’s a game of chess in play beneath their words. I don’t think Barnes has any official role with Eros, but I do think the board deeply cares what he feels about experiments like ours — sufficient that Barnes might as well be holding all the cards and calling all the shots. Eros doesn’t report to the doctor, and he can’t truly tell the board what to do. But because a connection to Barnes is apparently incredibly important to whatever Alexa wants to do in the future, displeasing him would be a
terrible
idea. He’ll pull out of whatever they’re building in secret together, and Eros will lose everything it’s invested. They won’t be able to build their 2.0 without Barnes and what he represents.
 

But still, he’s toeing the line, acting as if he’s only a bystander. And Daniel doesn’t know how much he can say, or where this man’s allegiances lie.
 

“You may not want to invest so heavily in a flawed concept, is my point.” Daniel’s words are like steps through a minefield.
 

“It’s
not
flawed. Halo
did
choose Bridget. I’ve seen the raw logs. I’ve had my people go back through everything, after you so kindly identified the chink in Halo’s armor, to make sure everything had, in fact, been done correctly. I even made sure it included all your sessions in the bonus room.”
 

My head picks up. He can’t mean what I think he does. But Barnes sees me and smiles knowingly.
 

“Oh yes, Miss Miller. Halo doesn’t merely
watch
the house. Halo
is
the house. Surely, you noticed the way the environment constantly responded to you?” He shifts position. “It could no more ignore the two of you fucking like rabbits in private than I could ignore a splinter in my thumb.”
 

I feel my breath taken away. And so, apparently, does Daniel.
 

“It’s considered everything. Halo is perfect, as your board claims. Circumstances forcing the company to choose the runner-up to save public face changes nothing. Halo has only deepened my faith in the company you built, Mr. Rice. Working together, we will keep searching. Repeat the experiment, and others like it. If there is a truly special candidate out there, by Alexa’s airy criteria and my more grounded ones, we will find her.” He shrugs at me. “Don’t be disappointed, Bridget. You were the best of this group, and the closest to whatever it is we hope to find — and don’t ask me; none of us really know precisely
what
it is we hope to discover — but you are still just a woman. The last-minute drama by Mr. Welty may have been over the top, but no harm done.”
 

No harm except that I was robbed, with only Caspian’s gift of my mother’s rescue surviving. No harm except that Daniel lost everything, a lifetime of his hard work usurped by the board.

I look over at Daniel, expecting to see the disappointment on his face that I feel on mine.
 

But Daniel doesn’t look disappointed at all.
 

Instead, he stands. His back comes erect and tall. His shoulders are back. Everything in his body broadcasts confidence, declares that he’s holding a trump. He turns to me and smiles. In his eyes I can read the words as if spoken aloud:

Don’t worry, baby. I got this.

He opens the envelope. He hands the test results to Barnes.
 

“Halo chose Bridget” — his smile becomes cocky, every bit as arrogant as the doctor’s — “but what if I can prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that Halo chose wrong?”

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

Bridget’s cell phone rings with an unlisted number. But I know who it is. I’ve been waiting, and it hasn’t taken long.

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” the voice on the other end demands before I can even say hello.
 

I’m still chewing popcorn. I swallow it, then answer Welty in my most placid voice.
 

“I was watching a movie. Thanks for asking. What are
you
up to?” I feel the asshole’s smile on my lips: half-satisfied, the other half cruel. I should push it down and play cool, make a point to be the bigger man. But fuck that.
 

“Daniel, what is — ”

“The Princess Bride.
Bridget had never seen it. Can you believe that? I guess you were right; she has a few flaws after all.”
 

“Listen to me, you motherfucking — ”

I cut him off to quote the movie:
“‘Inconceivable!’”
 

Beside me on the couch, Bridget looks over with one raised eyebrow. The expression strikes me as hilarious. I want to laugh. I want to hold her. I want to kiss her and never stop.
 

Welty has stopped speaking, possibly wondering if I’m about to follow up with “
As you wish.”
But when I swallow the last bit of my popcorn and start picking my teeth without saying more, he tries again.
 

“I called Tony, Richard, and Logan to set up the next round of experiments. But when I got Tony on the line, do you know what he told me?”

“Probably that I said he couldn’t help you. At least not right now. Because he’s not available.” I know because Tony talks loudly. And because he was ten feet away when Welty’s call came in.
 

“Tony’s on retainer. He
can’t
be
unavailable
.”
 

“Correct. He’s on retainer. And right now, Tony’s engaged in other Eros company business, and hence is
unavailable.”
I say the word deliberately, so that even Welty can understand it.
 

Welty sort of huffs, probably because he’s trying to decide between asking more questions and declaring something imperious about how I have no access to
Eros company business.
 

“What’s he doing, Daniel? What’s he up to that’s so important?”
 

“He’s helping me move.”
 

“He’s
helping you move?”
Welty sounds incredulous. Weak, and incredulous.
 

“Well, me and Bridget.”

At that exact moment, Tony walks by holding Bridget’s massive penny jar in one hand as if it weighs only ounces. I raise my hand, and he smacks it with his free one, heading for one of the many open boxes around the little apartment.
 

“Tony is a company asset. He can’t help you while he’s on retainer for us.”
 

“Why not? I know this here isn’t an Eros residence. But the Vail chalet certainly is.”

“The Vail chalet!
You can’t … ! You aren’t … !”

“Relax, Tommy Boy. It’s just for during ski season. You’re free to visit it when nobody wants it.”
 

“But — !”

“If
you’re good,” I add. “We’ll be in California for most of the year anyway. Or France. But mostly California because that’s where Bridget’s new recording studio is. She was going to buy this place here in Inferno Falls, but I talked her out of it. We can afford something much better.”