Sometimes It Is Rocket Science (32 page)

“Enough,” Georgiana snapped.  “Mom turned you down because she had actual taste.  She wanted a man and not a pathetic, whiny child.”

“Georgiana, darling.”  Robert’s voice, silky smooth with an undercurrent of sharp steel, drifted across the lobby.  “Perhaps you should save the insults for when Mr. Prask is not pointing a gun at your lovely face.”

Georgiana wanted to look at him, but she couldn’t take her gaze off the gun.  Judging from the direction of his voice, he was near the entrance to the tunnels.  She wanted to hug him and then she wanted to punch him in the mouth.  Prask hated him as much as anyone; he might was well have walked in wearing a bull’s-eye.

“The building is surrounded by armed officers, Prask,” Robert said.  His footsteps were quiet but not silent.  Prask’s eyes frantically darted back and forth between Georgiana and Robert.  He kept the gun aimed at Georgiana.  “Your associate Buchanan has been arrested, and he has revealed every detail of your plot to ensure Tab Collier’s demise.”

“So then I really have nothing left to lose, do I?” Prask taunted.  His fat lips stretched in a broad, crazed grin. 

Georgiana felt as if someone had flipped a switch and turned the air to the consistency of molasses.  She watched Prask’s finger twitch a final time, squeeze the trigger.  The calculations she’d been so careful to adjust for every movement he made fell apart in her head.  She couldn’t focus on the bullet to guess its trajectory.  A second shot rang out. 

Something heavy, solid, slammed into her side and sent her dropping to the floor like a concrete brick.  Her head hit the marble floor with a sickening crack.  Multicolored spots obscured her vision.  Blood filled her mouth and her tongue throbbed.  Over the top of the hulking mass covering her, she spotted the shattered glass tile behind where she’d been standing.  It was at least seven inches off from what she’d calculated. 

“Oh,” she murmured, swallowing the blood and trying not to gag.

“Gigi?”  Robert moved off her.  His hands were hot, hard vices on her shoulders.  “Are you hit?  Is that blood?”

“I always forget the ballistic coefficient,” she said.  She tried to lift her arm to point at the tile, but there was a disconnect somewhere between her brain and her muscles.  The vibration of feet pounding on the floor rumbled through her.  “We need to get off the floor.  My stomach can’t take much more of this.”

“We need to get your head examined,” Robert bit out.  The gentle way he helped her sit up was at odds with the anger in his voice.  “What in the hell were you thinking coming down here to confront Prask?  I take back what I said earlier.   You don’t need a bodyguard, you need to be locked in a padded room.  I swear, Gigi, you took ten years off my life.  I didn’t realize you were so eager to send me to my grave.”

“Sorry,” Georgiana kissed the crease between his brows.  “I wasn’t thinking at all.  I just… he went after Tab, he went after Dan, and now he goes after my employees? I wanted him to have to go after me.  To stop being such a sleazy coward.”

Seated on the floor of her lobby cradled in Robert’s arms, Georgiana watched officers swarm around traumatized employees.  Prask was facedown on the floor, a bullet in his shoulder courtesy of one of her soon-to-be-promoted security personnel, with two officers standing guard over him.  Through the tall windows she could see an ambulance racing up the street and at least two news vans.

With a groan, she buried her face in Robert’s shoulder.  “I give it twenty minutes before Missy Galvan digs out her phone tree.  It’s bad enough they’re calling this a fairytale romance.  The last thing we needed to add was a vanquished villain.  We’ll never hear the end of this.”

Robert chuckled, lips brushed her ear.  “At least they didn’t forget to give us a happy ending.”

She pulled back to grin at him, teeth stained pink and lip split but more radiant than the sun overhead.  “That part’s enough to make everything worthwhile.” 

The elevator door swooshed open.  An ashen, frantic Yvonne dashed across the floor.  With a trembling arm, she held out Georgiana’s cell phone.  From the floor, Georgiana could hear her brother and Dan shouting.

“It is your brother,” Yvonne said, voice cracking.  Her eyes shifted to Robert’s face.  “And your father.”

Georgiana eyed the phone as if it were a burning coal.  She nudged Robert’s shoulder.  “Go ahead, macho man.  Talk to your dad.”

“Oh, no, I think you should offer your brother the reassurances he obviously needs.”

“No, no,” Georgiana insisted, “your father’s heart is still weak, remember.  You should ease his mind before he puts himself back in the hospital.”

Robert shook his head.  He shifted away from the phone.  “Your brother is emotionally fragile.  You should talk to him first.”

Yvonne snorted in disgust.  Composure regained, she lifted the phone back to her ear and glared down at the bickering couple on the floor.  She mentally selected a pair of shoes and a matching purse that she would wheedle out of Georgiana as payment for what she was about to do. 

“Mr. Norwood, Tab, they’re both just fine, but I’m afraid I’m going to have to take a message.”

Epilogue:

"Freeze!"

Startled, Georgiana complied.

"Put down the soldering iron down and turn around. Slowly."

Georgiana flicked off the tool, set it on its stand, and pivoted to face a stern, glaring Yvonne.

"Cashmere." Yvonne clucked her tongue. "I see I'm going to have to have another talk with Cedric about letting you get away with crimes against fashion."

"You have no idea how nice it is to have an assistant who doesn't care if I spill acetone on my shirt or drop a bucket of grease on my shoes." Georgiana bit back a grin at the horror filling Yvonne's eyes. While she didn't miss Yvonne's constant nagging, she missed riling the younger woman.  They saw each other daily, but their relationship had changed after Yvonne’s promotion to Chief Operating Officer of Collier Analytics.

"Oh, trust me, he's going to
start
caring," Yvonne said, tone of voice promising a wealth of unpleasantness for her live-in boyfriend. "Wait! Grease on your shoes? Which pair? Oh, please,
please
tell me you're not talking about that gorgeous pair of Choo boots Tab gave you for Christmas."

"The boots are fine." Georgiana jerked her chin at the stack of magazines in Yvonne's arm. "Do you have Tab’s article in there?"

"Yes ma'am. Ten copies as requested.  ’Ric's finishing the beta testing with Mr. Norwood, so I thought I'd drop them off. If you have time, we can grab lunch or order something in."

"So the meeting with human resources about the new training went well, then? They didn't try to pressure you into a different timetable?"

Yvonne blinked, swallowed. Once she recovered, she handed one of the glossy magazines to Georgiana. "Why couldn't you have paid this much attention when you were running things day-to-day?"

"It wasn't fun. It sorta is now that I don't
have
to do it."

Georgiana collapsed on the dusty chair in front of her workstation and grinned at the picture of her brother posed in jeans and a navy blue tweed sport coat on the cover of the magazine. He'd agreed to do the interview for his eighteenth birthday, but had only allowed Dan to read the proof copy. He'd insisted that it be a surprise for his sister and brother-in-law.

The headline named him the "
Crown Prince of Tech
" with the subtitle "The Next Robert Norwood." She groaned at that. Her husband's ego was going to be unbearable once he saw the cover.

The questions started with Tab’s first semester at Stanford and how he'd enjoyed his summer internship at Norwood Systems. The article touched on Prask’s meltdown in the CA lobby and Tab’s reaction to the incident.  Thanks, in part, to Prask’s plea agreement, no mention was made of the accident or Tab’s eight months as a recluse. Her brother skillfully brushed off questions about his non-existent romantic life. Halfway through the article, the focus shifted to his family and growing up in the Collier family.

"
Dad was amazing. I know he was a big-shot CEO, but it never seemed that way. He was always there for me, always at PTA meetings and helping with my homework. He helped me hack my first video game."

Tears stung Georgiana's eyes as a pang of grief clutched at her heart. Their father had tried his best to make up for the loss of Corinne Collier. Fortunately, Tab had been so young when she died that he hadn't realized exactly what he was missing.

"Gigi is nothing short of awesome. I don't know where I'd be without her. She's... she's just the best. She doesn't push, but she always supports. She's crazy and brilliant and ruins scrambled eggs and she can get so immersed in a project that she forgets everything else, but I wouldn't trade her for anything in the world."

"You should read what he said about you and Mr. Norwood," Yvonne suggested, carefully lowering herself to a crouch so she could pet the silky ears of a young cocker spaniel.  The dog had been Robert’s gift to Georgiana after Tab absconded to California with Quinn.

"
Life with Gigi and Bobby is even more insane, but it's great. He brings balance, but sometimes they'll get to working on something together, and I think you could set off a nuclear bomb in the living room and they 'd never notice. Of course, they’re likely to be the ones to set off the nuclear bomb. Bobby doesn't treat me like an in-law or anything. It's like I'm his real brother. I love it, and I'm so thankful he came into our lives when he did. It was perfect timing. I think I'm the only one not surprised Gigi's got him wrapped around her finger. She pouted for a week when I took our Irish Setter to college, so he ran out and bought her a dog.  She talked him into naming it after a form of electromagnetic radiation.  I don’t want to think about what she’ll name their children."

　
"Your mean Uncle Tab is just jealous he has such a boring name, Bremsstrahlung," Georgiana said, reaching out to tickle her puppy’s chin. She pointedly ignored Yvonne's snort.

"
They’ve said they’re going to wait, but I’m really looking forward to being an uncle.  The poor kid’s going to need someone to help him escape the House of Geekery. Someone who knows what it's like to live with two geniuses and all that legacy.

"
Some people call my life a tragedy. They pity me because I never knew Mom and I lost Dad so young. I don't need pity or sympathy. My childhood wasn't easy, but I had nothing to complain about. I had a father who adored me, and a fantastic sister. Honestly, I think it's those without a Gigi or a father like mine that should be pitied."

It was the sweetest thing he'd ever said to her. Georgiana swallowed back the lump in her throat. She'd worried that, with him moving to California for school and the addition of Bobby and Dan to the family, they'd grow apart. She should have known better. Tab was a Collier, and by extension a Norwood, he’d been raised knowing the importance of family.

Her eyes narrowed as she read the answer to the final question: "What is your greatest birthday wish?"

She whipped her cell phone out of the pocket of her lab coat and pressed the button for her brother's number. He picked up on the third ring.

"Nice article.  Thanks for the flattery, little brother. It's great and all, but it's
not
getting you the keys to the Buick."

The door to her lab swooshed open.  She glanced over her shoulder.  Warmth bloomed in her stomach at the stark adoration in Robert’s eyes.  She winked at him and held out one of the magazines.

“Bobby and I are going to take it out on a serious road trip.  Really put her through the paces.  Maybe drive up to California to see you.  See how our baby does in different terrain with the modifications we made.”

Robert’s arm slung around her waist.  His chin pressed against her shoulder and his lips teased her earlobe.  “Can’t forget to test the air shocks, doll.  Or that splendid rear seat.   I love that buttery soft leather.”

Laughing, Georgiana ended the call.  She turned to wrap her arms around Robert’s neck.  His lips were warm and tasted like rich, dark coffee.  It was a better buzz than she ever got out of a cup of Pep.

“Tab says hi,” she relayed, smiling against his mouth.  “Says we can keep the Buick, too.”

###

Thank you for enjoying this book.  I love to hear from my readers.  You can reach me at
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or via twitter @karahelen  

Other books by Kara Thorpe

Family Lies Trilogy:

The Chaos Child

Coming soon:

The Art of War and Werewolves