Andrew sat in his office, the door closed and the lights off. He needed to apologize to Becca, but he couldn’t bring himself to go next door and say the words.

He flipped his phone over and over, wondering if a texted I’m sorry was lame. It was in his world, but he loved the written word so maybe it was okay.

She’d want more than an apology too. She’d want an explanation. And while Andrew had one, he didn’t necessarily want to tell her why he’d acted like a beast during both meetings that morning.

He’d seen her leave for lunch with Carla ten minutes ago, and he knew his secretary would be back in twenty-five. No more, no less. She was as regimented as he was.

Then he and Becca would be going over to the basement to meet Graham and the SonarBot.

“Better do it before then,” he muttered to himself, tapping out the apology on his phone.

I’m sorry. I’m trying to figure out how to be around you at work.

Was that enough of an explanation? Would she understand what he meant? Did it give away too much of the stormy emotions inside him?

He wasn’t sure, and he was tired of thinking about it. So he sent the message and got up from his desk. If he didn’t go down to the cafeteria and eat, his next meal would be at dinner that night.

He opened his door and headed for the elevators, needing the sanctuary of the small space for a few seconds. The cafeteria buzzed with chatter and laughter, and he grabbed a premade sandwich and a bag of chips. The cashier, a woman named Ava-Jane, smiled at him and wrote his name in a book. He could actually eat as much as he wanted, but he tried to never go over his allotted one meal per shift, same as anyone else.

He scanned the cafeteria and found Becca eating with Carla and another secretary from another part of the building. Her back was to him, so he took a few moments to simply watch her. She really was perfect for this job, and he hoped he hadn’t messed things up too badly between them.

Upstairs, he ate in his quiet office, proud of himself when Carla and Becca returned exactly when he thought they would. Carla settled at her desk, but Becca came right into his office and closed the door.

“I got your text,” she said, her voice a bit quieter than he thought normal.

“I am sorry.”

She sat across from him and crossed her legs, the motion so distracting, Andrew forgot how to breathe. “Maybe this isn’t going to work out.”

His eyes flew to hers. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, maybe this job isn’t right for me.”

“Of course it is.” She couldn’t quit. “You’ll be brilliant at this job.”

“Can I ask you a question?”

Andrew smiled. “Becca, I want you to ask me a million questions. It’s actually one of the reasons I wanted you. For the job,” he added quickly. “You’re a thinker. You’re going to make me think about what I think.”

She squinted, the doubt plain to see. “This is not a job-related question.”

“Oh.” He licked his lips, wishing he had a mint to take away the vinegary taste in his mouth from the chips. “All right.”

“Do you really think we can work together and have a secret relationship?”

“I—yes,” he said. “I just need to figure a few things out.”

“Like how to look at me during a meeting.”

“Apparently.” He had tried to avoid making eye contact, because his mind went a bit blank when he looked directly at Becca. And he couldn’t control what emotion would display on his face. He hadn’t wanted Beau to see anything, but his brother had known something was off anyway.

“And how to listen to me when I talk.”

“I do listen when you talk,” he said.

“I should be doing that public safety review,” she said. “Why does Beau need to do that?”

“Because, Becca, once you see this unveiling plan and the SonarBot, you’re going to be neck-deep in reports, articles, phone calls, logistics, and travel details.”

“We’re working together on those, right?”

“Yes, but I still have other things to prepare for the tour.”

She nodded, though she clearly hadn’t said everything she wanted to. “So, let’s get to it then. Are we doing the unveiling plan first, or am I seeing the robot?”

“Are you mad at me?” he asked, feeling weak and not understanding why he needed her reassurance.

“I’m…adjusting,” she said.

“I told you our relationship would have to be undercover.”

“I know.” She lifted that chin. “But I guess I thought you could still act like a human in public, and just be my boyfriend in private.”

Boyfriend.

Is that what I am? he thought but didn’t dare articulate. They hadn’t even kissed yet. And he’d held her hand for a few minutes after dinner the other night.

“I can act like a human,” he said.

“Good,” she said. “I want to see the robot first, and that means you’ve got to take me down where your brother is.”

“Graham knows about us.”

“Does he now?” A dangerous glint entered Becca’s eyes.

“Becca,” he said in a warning voice, and she laughed. “What?” he asked.

“Can you please relax?” She sobered. “I’m not going to kiss you here. I’m not going to hold your hand. Did it ever occur to you that it’s my first day on the job, and I’m nervous? That I might like to have your help? Have a friend at my side? That no one would think that was weird?”

Her voice sounded a bit pinched, and Andrew’s heart filled with affection for her. “I’m sorry,” he murmured. “Honest, I am.”

She nodded, stood, and smoothed down her dress. “Okay.”

He stood too, the words he wanted to say piling up in his throat. He opened his mouth and said, “Did it ever occur to you that I’m dying to kiss you, and every time we’re together, my thoughts wander that way?”

Her eyes dropped to his mouth, and Andrew thought she wanted to kiss him too. “How about dinner at my place tonight?”

“Do you cook?”

“It has been a very long time since I’ve dated anyone,” she said, a bit of nervous energy infecting the air between them. “I don’t know why I said that. Only that I think you should know.”

“Is that your way of telling me I can’t kiss you tonight?”

She swallowed and wiped her hands down her dress again. “I don’t know,” she said.

“I haven’t dated anyone in a while either,” he said. “And dinner tonight sounds great. You didn’t answer if you could cook.”

“I’m okay in the kitchen,” she said. “We can order in, if you’d like.”

“I can pick something up, if you want.”

“I like that Chinese take-out over by the gas station.”

“Harry Wong’s. I’ll swing by there and come over about seven?”

She nodded, and Andrew walked around his desk to stand right in front of her. He took both of her hands in his, a thrill running from the top of his skull to the soles of his feet. It zinged around after that, causing him to smile.

“Carla will see,” Becca murmured, swaying slightly.

Andrew went with her, keeping both eyes past her on his secretary. She had the phone to her ear, completely unconcerned about what was transpiring in the office behind her. “I’ll close my blinds next time,” he said.

He leaned down and pressed his lips to Becca’s temple. A quick kiss, nowhere near the mark he wanted to hit, and released her.

“Let’s go see this SonarBot,” he said.

The basement was unusually quiet today, but Graham sat at a chest-high counter, a tablet lying in front of him.

“Hey,” Andrew said when he arrived at the counter. The tablet held a bunch of code he didn’t understand.

Graham smiled as he looked up. “Hey, there.” He stood. “I’m Graham Whittaker. You must be Becca Collings.” He met Andrew’s eye for much too long before focusing on Becca long enough to shake her hand.

“We’re ready to see the bot,” Andrew said, glad he’d disclosed to Becca that Graham knew about them. “And Becca will need anything you think is relevant to her preparing media statements, speeches, or press releases.”

“I’ll have Janet put it together,” Graham said. “Let’s go.” They left the main room of the basement and entered a much different area. Becca’s step slowed as she drank in every detail.

“This is like being underground,” she said, her voice awed.

“It’s supposed to simulate that,” Graham said. “So I designed this bot to use sonar to detect gas beneath layers of rock. It’s tricky, because some of the types of rocks we have here in Wyoming, along with a lot of our other dig sites, block the sonar.”

“They block it?” she asked.

“They absorb it,” he corrected himself. “So we get back reads as if there’s no gas there. But there is. Normally, we simply fracture down to find it. But with the SonarBot, we’re trying to locate the gas before we mine for it.” He pressed his palm to a reader and waited until it beeped.

The door opened, and he entered it. “So I started working with the rocks here in Wyoming. We went all over and got all the samples from our mining sites, and we built this simulation, I guess.”

The layers and layers of rock had been reconstructed just as they were at the dig sites.

“I had to work layer by layer, figuring out how much sonar a particular type of rock could absorb, and what the readings would look like when they hit gas. It took a long time.”

“A really long time,” Andrew said.

Graham chuckled. “My brother doesn’t understand the nuances of computer science. One change can mean thousands of lines of code need to be redone, or written anew, or whatever.”

“It’s the whatever I don’t get,” Andrew said.

“Anyway,” Graham said as he moved over to the plastic case where they kept SonarBot. “I finally came up with the right sequencing. The right level of sonar to get through the layers of rock here in Wyoming. And we developed the SonarBot.” He stood in front of it, a remarkable little robot that somehow Andrew wished was bigger.

For the amount they’d spent to design and build it—both in terms of money and time—it should be the size of the Sears Tower.

As it was, the SonarBot was about four feet long and three feet wide. Barely a kid’s toy. It had big, bulky wheels perfect for the terrain it would be traversing, and then it was basically a computer box, with screens on the top to show readings.

“Do you have to go with it?” Becca asked, peering down into the case. Her face held wonder and excitement, and Andrew started to feel those same things in his pulse. This was an amazing thing. It would improve their business, make it more profitable, and help the people of Wyoming.

“Nope,” Graham said. “We can set up a mobile lab anywhere. Even just in a room at a school, or an office at the town hall. We can make him move with a remote, and send out the sonar with a press of a button.”

“Show her the simulation,” Andrew said, a hint of pride welling in him and he hadn’t even designed the darn thing.

Graham turned to the huge screens behind SonarBot, which they’d used to present the robot to their family and the top scientists at the company. No one else knew about it yet, and they’d get all the details only an hour before the official unveiling.

“We went out with it oh, what? Two dozen times?”

“Probably,” Andrew said. He wasn’t the scientist. He didn’t take the notes. At the end there, he’d stopped driving out into the Wyoming wilderness just to have the robot fail again. But not Graham. The man was as dedicated as anyone could possibly be to getting SonarBot to work.

“We recorded every time, made notes, analyzed what was happening. Tested here. Adjusted. Reworked things. And went out again.” He flipped open the wall panel and pressed a button.

The screen brightened, and he said, “Play SonarBot, final excursion.”

The video began, and it showed the robot rumbling along the Wyoming rocks at quite a steady clip.

“Whoa,” Becca said. “How fast does it go?”

“Up to forty miles per hour,” Graham said.

The robot slowed and Graham said, “We use a frequency of 200 hertz, and we’ve tried to use the sound waves at a low decibel so we don’t disrupt nearby communities.”

“What’s it at?”

A loud ping! went out from the SonarBot on the screen, and Becca jumped.

“We’ve committed to it being no louder than one-hundred-ten decibels,” Graham said. “The average rock concert is up to one-hundred-fourteen.”

“Not a lot of rock concerts in Wyoming,” Becca mumbled as she stepped closer to the screen. “Are these the readings?”

The video had changed to a top-only view of SonarBot, with the five screens for findings.

“Yes,” Graham said. “We get depth, type of substance.” He pointed to the second row. “So we see here that it hits gas and the returning echoes are at a different wavelength.” He moved down a notch. “This is the depth. And this is the volume. Once the SonarBot finds gas, it goes back and forth until the entire pocket is mapped.”

He tapped the wall and the video sped up. He tapped again and a moment later, a diagram came up. “See? There’s the pocket we mapped on our last trial. Now we know exactly where to dig. We do the hydraulic fracturing in the biggest concentration and we can get all the gas out with one mine instead of multiple.”

The screen darkened, and he said, “Lights, level one,” and the room brightened again.

Becca looked at him, then Andrew, then SonarBot.

“So,” Andrew said, his pulse humming along at quite the clip. “What do you think?” He exchanged a glance with Graham. Becca’s opinion was very important, as she had been one of the most vocal against what Springside had been doing.

She looked back at Andrew. “What do I think? I think this is the most brilliant thing I’ve ever seen.”

A smile burst onto his face. “Yeah?”

“I think your protests will stop now, Mister Whittaker.”

Andrew tipped his head back and laughed. “Good, because it’s part of your job to make sure everything is presented to the public in the best light possible. Can you give me a second with Graham? You can wait just outside and we’ll go back up to the office together.” He gestured for her to leave the room first, which she did.

“So?” he asked Graham. “Hiring her was a good move, right?”

Graham shook his head as he chuckled. “Andrew, you tell yourself what you need to tell yourself.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means you’re head over heels for her, and you’ve been out once.”

“I am not. Let’s focus on the SonarBot. She liked it, and she’s been protesting against our company for a decade, Graham. A decade.”

“That’s because she didn’t like Dad.”

Andrew’s blood froze in his veins. “What?”

“She didn’t like that. They got into a fight or something years ago.”

“How do you know that?” Andrew hadn’t lived in Coral Canyon for a while, and he admittedly didn’t know much about Springside before Graham had called and begged him to come be the public relations director for the company.

Graham shrugged like this information was no big deal. But it was to Andrew. “I don’t know. Dad told me? Maybe Dwight did. Maybe I read about it. But it’s good she likes the concept.”

Andrew followed his brother out of the lab and went with Becca back up to his office, his mind whirring. He’d ask her that night, over Chinese food. After all, he did really like her and he didn’t want any secrets between them.