Page 46 of Conspiracies and Chemistry

I wanted something worthy of a conversation with West. If Tessa felt the way I did, I’d tell the whole company, the whole world, that she cared about me.

But she didn’t. She made that clear when she turned the handle and stalked out.

22

DEN = Illuminati HQ

From Barry Wright’s manifesto:

Under the Denver International Airport are miles of tunnels and lairs, which serve as the headquarters of the Illuminati.

TESSA

“That’s great news.” I grinned at Sadie. “We should start on it right away. Oliver,” I called down the row to where he was talking with Yujun, past the sign that read,38 days.

Oliver looked up and flashed me the kind of smile that made my knees wobble. The kind that made me want to take back what I’d said Monday in the supply closet, about everything being out of our systems. The kind that made me want to push him back in there and try again. I had to tell him to stop looking at me like that because surely someone would notice that wolfish grin and wonder if something was going on.

Nothing was going on.

Or so I kept telling myself.

He sauntered closer to us. “What do you need, Tessa?”

The way he’d phrased it was pure evil. My cheeks burned. I sucked in cool air through my nostrils, but that only brought his evergreen scent into my nose, sharp and comforting as a fresh-cut Christmas tree. “Sadie and the team think they have a hypothesis for the endometriosis test.” I nodded at her.

While Sadie told Oliver how the team had collaborated to develop a hypothesis based on the research they’d done and then successfully tested it in the computer model, I tried to breathe through my mouth without looking like a fool.

Fortunately, Oliver’s expression turned serious as he nodded in response to Sadie’s update. “That’s fantastic. We’ll queue it up for clinical trials after the cancer test.”

“What? We shouldn’t wait on this,” I protested. “We should get it into trials as soon as possible.”

“That’s what I said.” Oliver leaned against the desk. “Right after the cancer test trials.”

“Haven’t you ever heard of running jobs in parallel?” I said. “We should do them both at the same time.”

He rubbed his forehead. “No, Tessa, we…” He looked up. “We shouldn’t argue about this here. Come to my office?”

His question rose only slightly at the end, making it sound more like an order than a request. But he was right. We should present a united front to the team when we told them we’d be running the tests simultaneously since it would be extra work for them.

“Okay. Sadie, please draw up the plan for the trial and get the rest of the team to review it.” I stared at Oliver's stony face, daring him to contradict my request. He said nothing as he whirled and marched toward the exit.

I followed him down the hall to his office. He ushered me in and shut the door.

I glanced at his desk. His very clean desk, where I could easily sprawl while he ate me out again…

No. It was gross to hook upin my colleague’s office duringwork hours.Un-fucking-fortunately. I shook the image out of my brain. Despite his fuck-me expression earlier, Oliver wasn’t the type. Neither, I reminded myself, was I.

He seated himself behind his desk, so I perched demurely on his guest chair and took the offensive. Professionally.

“Simultaneous trials are the way to go. So if one fails, we have another product to take to market.” After I’d gotten Sadie’s email that she had good news to share this morning, I’d spent most of the night planning how I’d state my case. Hell, I’d been planning it since the team and I came up with the idea for the test. Hope wasn’t scientific, but it had served me well as I’d started Red Rover. I’d decided the best way to get what I wanted was to appeal to Oliver’s risk aversion.

He shook his head, and a lock of hair flopped onto the left lens of his glasses. He didn’t bother to brush it away. “Simultaneous trials will put an undue amount of strain on the lab’s resources. We must consider our employees when we make these decisions. Our priority is the cancer test since that’s what our marketing department has been preparing for.”

His arguments were all solid. But waiting months for the cancer test to be done meant thousands of women with endometriosis would suffer because of our delay. “It’s a risk we can manage. We’ll offer the team an additional week of vacation after this push. Cater dinner and provide transportation for anyone who has to work late. Nothing great is produced without risk.”

“Nothing great, huh?”

“I read it on a motivational poster,” I mumbled.

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