“But that’s illegal!”

She’d been worried about him getting fired. Now she was worried about him being arrested.

He shrugged. “Maybe. I just wanted to see if I could do it. And I wanted to get a look at this machine you’ve been telling me about.” He stepped past her and stood before the imager, staring at the 3-D hologram floating above it, a look of sublime wonder on his face. “Oh,

Nadj, this is amazing. I’d love to see the code that makes it go.”

“Maybe I never should have mentioned it.”

Knowing Doug was the compleat computerphile, she’d told him about the molecular imager. She’d noticed him mentally salivating when she described it. She never dreamed he’d go this far just to see it.

He was slipping around the rear of the workbench, peering at the electronics. “Oh, Nadj, Nadj, Nadj,” he was murmuring, sounding a little like he did during sex, “you’ve got a Silicon Graphics Origin 2000 running this thing! I’d give anything to play with it.”

“Don’t even think about it. If this thing crashes—”

“Don’t worry,” he said, returning to her side. “I won’t touch it. Wouldn’t dare. I just wanted to see it. And see you.”

“Me? Why?”

“Well, this is the big day, right? Your first real project? I just came by to wish you good luck, and to give you”—he reached inside his breast pocket and produced a single yellow bud rose—”this.”

“Oh, Doug,” she taking it and sniffing the tightly coiled petals. She felt lightheaded. Only a rose. How could a single simple flower touch her so deeply? She kissed him. “How sweet of you.”

“Let’s just hope your project’s not the same one Macintosh was working on.”

“Why not?”

“Because he said it was—and I quote—’a real bitch.’“

“You knew him?”

“We had a few beers now and again. Tom wasn’t the cheeriest guy, and I don’t think he had many friends. Wouldn’t discuss any details, just kept saying the same thing over and over: ‘Real bitch of a problem.’ Got so fed up, he just walked out one day and never came back.”

My lucky day, Nadia thought. Doug had approached Dr. Monnet and mentioned that one of his own former students was finishing up a residency and might be available to replace Macintosh.

Of course if she’d known what Doug was up to she would have stopped him. And when she did learn he’d been talking to Dr. Monnet about her… she’d felt sick. Their fling had lasted one day, one afternoon, really, much too brief to be called an affair…

She remembered entering his office at the end of the term, after she’d earned an A—she hadn’t wanted him to think she had an ulterior motive—and undressing. He’d watched her with this shocked look on his face, and she couldn’t quite believe what she was doing herself, but she’d been wearing only four articles of clothing so there wasn’t much time for a change of heart. In thirty seconds she was standing before him in her birthday suit, her nipples so hard they ached, and he’d hesitated maybe two heartbeats…