Page 30 of The Billionaire's Wake-up-call Girl

Operator Seven—that won’t do. I want her real name. I want to know who she is as a person. I press my fingers to my forehead.

“Mr. Drummond? Is there anything else?”

“Uh...” I feel half crazy. “How’s the…uh…Instagram thing working out?”

“Oh, fabulous!” she says. “I think you’re really going to like one of the directions I’m having the team create. We’re working up a behind-the-scenes view of the formulation process. A tools-of-the-trade thing. Think beakers and whiteboard shots. Race for a cure. But don’t worry, we wouldn’t bother you with it or divulge trade secrets. We’d have a junior chemist work with marketing on it.”

“Hmm,” I say. It’s actually not a bad idea. The race to develop the new Vossameer formula is far more dramatic and exciting than anything else we’re up to. “I’d take a look at that.”

“You would?”

“Put something together.”

She thanks me, and we get off the phone.

I click over to my most recent molecular model, letting my mind free-fall over the visual data, red and purple on a field of brown. I convert it to a dynamic model that simulates the natural motion of the atoms in a structure, point by point.

I groan. Nothing holds up. Nothing works.

I rub my eyes. I’ve been up and awake for hours looking at this thing and not seeing it the way I need to see it.

Why should I care about a wake-up-call girl? Just some girl doing a job that could be done by a machine. She’s a human being replacing technology. Nothing more.

I go back to the model and start retracing my steps, which is what I do when I don’t see a clear answer. I could do this all day. Probably will. There are people out there to whom it literally means life or death.

Sometimes the way forward is hidden in the steps behind me. A faulty choice I made days ago. A discarded data point.

An hour later, I’m pulling up my early notes. Figuring out how to make a more concentrated version of the existing gel without losing its clotting properties shouldn’t be so complicated.

The solution exists.

And the maddening thing is, it wasn’t thirty-seven degrees at JFK this morning. At no point this morning was it thirty-seven degrees at JFK. The temperature at JFK at 4:30 this morning was forty, and that was thelow. So what the hell? Did she know the temperature or not? Is it possible she knew the correct temperature and told me the wrong one just to toy with me?

I grab my phone and text her.

Me: Your thermometer is broken.

I wait. No reply.

Me: FYI. The low was forty last night.

I wait. The words NOT DELIVERED appear.

What?!?! She blocked me?Blockedme?

Never mind. My sister, Willow, will know how to get around a block.

I click over to favorites and find Willow’s number.

I’m just about to call her, but I stop myself. What am I doing? People are dying out there every day for lack of a dehydrated hemostatic agent with vascular repair properties, and I’m putting the full weight of my intellect into tracking down my wake-up-call girl?

I rub my eyes. This stops now.

I force myself to go back to my notebook, but it’s no use. I’m looking at it without seeing it. The formulas blur. I push away from my desk, annoyed with myself.

Women never make me lose my focus. Not ever. I enjoy sex as much as the next guy, but in a context of respect and rationality. Not…whatever these calls are.

And how is it that I’m even thinking about her in the women-and-sex arena? Then again, I was thinking about that assistant—Lizzie—the one who dresses like she just fell off a turnip truck in that way, too.

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