Command (17 page)

The combination of regard and need had caused her to transcend the pain, and, in fact, had made her even hotter for him.

“So come on, give it up. Am I a genius, or what?”

“That remains to be seen. We’ve only been here twenty-four hours.” He looked at her.

They had a shared secret, and the reminder made her tingle.

“We haven’t come up with anything feasible for Bonds, yet,” Grant finished.

She heard the subtext. For them, personally, things were definitely working.

“Our next billion dollars is out there, waiting.” Hands still shoved into his pockets, Julien rocked forward onto the balls of his feet.

“No pressure there,” Grant said.

“The fate of the world is on your shoulders.” Julien’s body seemed to vibrate with energy, as if he hadn’t slept in days and didn’t need to.

“Or the spring show,” she added.

“That too,” Julien agreed. “But that doesn’t sound nearly as dramatic.”

“You need to stop watching disaster movie promos,” Grant said.

“Hold on,” Aria said as realization dawned. The theme music, the way he was talking, the fact he’d sent her into Grant’s lair. “You’re making a movie.”

Grant looked at her, a puzzled frown on his face, darkening his eyes, forcing his eyebrows together. “What are you talking about?”

“Always helps to diversify,” Julien replied. “I’ve always want to attend a premiere.”

“Make friends with an actor,” Grant suggested.

“Or own the carpet yourself.”

“See why I like her?” Julien’s grin deepened. “I’m expecting great things from you, and I know you’ll deliver.” Without another word, the screen went blank.

She and Grant looked at one another for a moment in silence.

“Enlighten me,” he prompted.

“Whatever he told us, whatever we believed originally, we were wrong. Don’t misunderstand. He adores the fact he can get what he wants—a new project developed especially while he’s meddling in our lives—but he’s operating from a higher purpose.” She waved a hand, indicating Grant’s workshop. “He
is
grooming you for a larger role at Bonds. I’m willing to bet he’s been telling you that all along. You just haven’t wanted to hear him.”

“Doesn’t matter. Still not interested.”

“You’re not going to have much of a choice.” Everything made perfect sense. If she were Julien, she might have come up with the same idea. “He’s diversifying into other areas that intrigue him. Of course he is. He gets bored, restless. But all of a sudden, he’s got a million projects going. Even though he is Julien Bonds, there are still only twenty-four hours in a day.” She began to pace. “He is interested in movies. And it’s time for advances there that are going to come out of Silicon Valley and not Hollywood, or…”

She waved a hand, impatient with herself for not being able to sort out what she was thinking, put it in an order that would make sense to Grant, and express herself coherently. “A hybrid. Hollywood may have the idea, but the execution is going to require horsepower, in terms of computer programming, in terms of mainframe capacity. Have you seen him this excited before?”

“In college,” Grant admitted. “Then again when we rented the first office in Silicon Valley, in the remains of a startup that had gone bankrupt. Then when he introduced his smart watch. And again when he broke ground on the Bonds headquarters. We dragged old furniture from our first office out there, piled it up, put a torch to it, and bam—fucking epic bonfire. We shook a bottle of champagne, launched the cork into the next county then realized we hadn’t brought anything to pour it into, so we swigged it straight from the bottle, just like college. Had them turn the dirt over, so the ashes are still there. You know Julien. Said it was the past, present, future, all blended together. All very dramatic. Said we should have filmed it for the archives. You know, just in case someone wanted to watch it a hundred years from now.”

She laughed. “I hadn’t heard that story.”

“I’m surprised. I thought it was legend. We got a hell of a ticket. Something about not being allowed to have a fire in the city limits.”

“Who knew?”

He shrugged. “They wanted our tax dollars more than they wanted to make a point. And when they sent the fire trucks and police, a camera crew from a local news station was notified. So he got his footage. And yeah, it’s in a digital archive. And because he’s now a gazillionaire, we didn’t get arrested.”

“All of those stories have one thing in common,” she said.

He waited.

“You. You’ve been part of all of that. And he needs you in the future every bit as much as he needed you in college, in the early days. He’s looking to you, to us, to provide infill and backfill.”

“That sounds like human resources jargon—maybe even bullshit.”

“I’m not expressing this well.” Aria strode to the window. This time, because her brain was moving so rapidly, she didn’t experience any vertigo at the sight of the sheer drop off. “In order for him to move onto the next big thing, he needs people he can trust. There will be a hole created in the organization when he turns his focus toward other things. He’s smart enough to see that.” She turned back to face him. “What I mean is this… You are going to fill the voids he creates. More and more, you’re going to be the face of the technology side of Bonds.”

“Not interested.” Resolutely, he folded his arms.

Stubborn man.
No wonder Julien had sent her. At first, she’d thought he was punishing her for the Simon fiasco. Her broken engagement had made headlines, none of them good, for Bonds. If she hadn’t been so stunned and upset by his dictate, she would have realized that he didn’t behave that way.

Certainly, he could be fucking ruthless if people betrayed him, violated their confidentiality agreement. He treated his people well, but she’d seen him ruin careers of people who’d plotted against him. And he had always known she wouldn’t do anything to harm him or Bonds. Sending her to New Mexico wasn’t an act of retaliation, it was an investment in the organization’s success.

He needed to see if they could work together, if she could coax or coach Grant into being more prominent. The public, as well as the press and business community, would need to trust him.

Turning to her for help wasn’t a bad tactic. She’d developed a leadership program in their overseas divisions so that all representatives, no matter where they lived on the planet, were communicating the same messages about Bonds’ integrity and how freaking cool the products were.

She’d seen an intense side of Grant. The fact he’d created Molly—and the hologram dog—attested to his creativity. If the world could see that—like she did, like Julien did—then Julien would be free to expand the business. But first, she had to get Grant out of his cave. Realization dawned on her. The cave wasn’t just literal, it was figurative, too. The man needed to come back, at least occasionally, to Silicon Valley. Julien was right about other things, too. When people interacted, energy was generated. What had happened between her and Grant was proof of that.

But she recognized the firm set of his jaw. Whatever had brought him here to Los Alamos would take a while to undo. That was okay. She was patient. He hadn’t shoved her into a BDSM scene. He’d allowed it to move at its own pace. She could do the same for Julien and Bonds. “There is no one else,” she told him. “You’re a cofounder. You understand him. Without you, there would be no Bonds. Julien is smart enough to know it—and so are you.”

“This was never part of the deal.”

She was willing to bet that Grant leaving Julien’s side hadn’t been part of the plan, either. To cover her frustration and the fact she wasn’t sure how to help, she asked, “So, where were we before the genius interrupted?”

“Talking in circles,” he replied. “Probably because I couldn’t stop thinking about sex.”

She grinned. “Me either.” She crossed the room and slid back onto the stool near him. “What have we got?”

Drinking coffee, they reviewed their ideas from yesterday.

Grant pressed a couple of keys and a thick piece of glass rose from the floor. “Sometimes I prefer to work the old-fashioned way.”

If glass partitions rising from a hole in the floor were old-fashioned, sure.

He grabbed a set of colorful markers and put them on top of the metal table then picked up an eraser and started to remove old notes.

“Wait!”

“Don’t panic. Molly took an image of the work, saved it and created a file. She can project it back at any point.”

“Silly me. When I say old-fashioned, I mean I get a notebook and scribble random thoughts, and when I can’t remember where I left the notebook, my ideas are gone forever.”

“That
is
old-fashioned,” he agreed with a disarming grin.

Together, they recreated the thoughts from yesterday, of how to make Molly functional at a greater level. They added new notes, ways Molly could be improved.

“Don’t tell her I agree with you,” Grant warned.

They took a short break to head back toward the kitchen for snacks and to brew a third pot of coffee. She noticed the dog in front of the hearth, and it lifted its head when she entered the room. Its tail did a slow thump on the floor. “Shadow,” she said.

“Shadow?”

“The dog. He’s always there, real, but not real.”

“Brilliant and appropriate,” Grant approved.

“I can’t believe I didn’t think of it before now.”

“You did well. I’ve lived with him for months without even coming up with a name. Shadow it is.” He nodded.

Outside, the sky was a milky blue. “This is the first time I’ve seen the sun since I arrived.”

“Once the front passes, it will be spectacular.”

A few minutes later, drinks refreshed, they returned to the workshop. The forest scene was back, and the sight of their notes, in random colors, with dots connecting them and small drawings invigorated her. “We need to start with a platform that already exists,” she said. “Something that’s already in a lot of—if not all—homes and build from there. Don’t limit it, but consider ones that carry data.”

He drew a line that arced. “Name them.”

“Internet. Cable. Some appliances already have smart technology built-in.”

“Cell phones. Tablets.” Grant nodded and wrote, then added, “Alarm companies.”

“Alarm companies?” She drummed her fingers on the metal. “That’s a hell of an idea.”

“We still have the problem of proprietary or closed interfaces.”

She nodded. “Unless we work out a deal. Or…”

“Or?”

“Never mind. It seems…ridiculous.”

He capped the marker and looked back at her. “That’s what the brainstorming process is for.”

“I know. But no one wants to be that person. You know, the one where everyone rolls their eyes? Or worse, groans.”

“Better you than me.”

“Thanks.” She shot him the stink eye to let him know how she felt.

He grinned and slid onto a stool across from her.

“We could work out deals with all these different places—or we could build our own. It makes sense in some ways. We already provide music, books.”

“Keep going.”

“An even bigger challenge is the hardware. How do you think Julien would feel if we asked him to go out and buy an alarm company and a cable company?”

“Yeah.” He sat back. “Pick any two from above. Cable and alarm. Satellite and alarm.”

“They have hardware already in people’s houses. They’ve got trust established, a business model that could be tweaked, but it wouldn’t need to be created.”

Grant whistled. “This is a departure.”

“Privacy concerns,” she added. “And that’s just the beginning. We’ll be accused of dozens of things. Obscure laws will be dug up. We’ll be sued by private industry, by governments, including our own. It’s ludicrous to even consider it.” She put a hand over mouth, as if that had any hope of stopping the flow of the words. “I can list sixty-two thousand reasons we should abandon this line of thinking right now. Figure out how to market a stuffed animal that lets nervous parents know how their baby is doing at day care. We should enhance the phones, tweak the watch technology. I know…release the tablet in fourteen karat gold accented with diamonds.” Anything but dream up a project so filled with problems.

“If we’re not going to change the world, what’s the point in showing up for work?” he asked.

That wasn’t rhetorical. More like the company motto.

“It would enable us to add a million different services. Your music can play through the whole house.”

“And if Julien wants to go into movies…”

“
Fuck me.
He could be on everyone’s television sets.” Grant tossed his pen in the air. “He’ll fucking love it.”

“And he can talk everyone through the instructions via a hologram.”

“If there’s a device in the home…”

They were both silent.

“This will take years,” he said.

“Eons,” she agreed. Her heart was thundering as ideas zipped through her brain, and possibilities blossomed. “Connecting the world. Others will be forced to interact with our interface.”

“Better that than us trying to interact with theirs.”

Those words could have come directly out of Julien’s mouth, she knew. She was beginning to see how much alike their viewpoint was, even though they couldn’t be more different otherwise.

“And someone’s going to attempt this eventually,” he continued. “But it will never end up as well as if we do it.”

“This is beyond arrogant,” she said. “Audacious.”

“Huge.”

“Hairy.” And that was what Julien demanded from all his employees. If a concept wasn’t scary, it wasn’t worth the investment of energy. If it was terrifying, all the better.

She picked up her thermal cup to take a drink, but it was empty.

“I could go and refill it for you.”

“You’re a man after my heart, but I need to sleep tonight.” Forgetting the coffee again, she slid from the stool and arched her back. “We need to think this through. We can’t take it to Julien at this stage.”

“Agreed.”

She noticed that the sun was setting on the horizon. Again, they’d worked for hours without either of them noticing. Being here, without constant email and phone interruptions, soothed the brain as well as the body. She understood Grant better. Who could blame him for not wanting to go back, especially with all that that entailed?