“So you’re worried what everyone will think?” he asked. “You think they’ll see you jumping right from Zane to me and maybe think you’re just after the money?” He added this mostly to provoke her more.
It worked. She exploded.
“What in the name of the whole black universe do you think of me? That I’m a superficial vanity feed girl more concerned about my image and my bank account than anything else?”
He smirked at her. Her eyes were blazing, which just made them brighter. He wanted to kiss her more than ever, but he had a feeling she might not appreciate it right now. She finally seemed to realize that he wasn’t being serious, and the extra color slowly faded from her cheeks.
“You are the most impertinent, nervy, insolent, crazy man I have ever met,” she finally retorted, though a faint smile tugged at her mouth. She wanted to laugh at him again, which was a good sign.
“And you are the most stubborn, unbending, tenacious, and beautiful woman I have ever met,” he returned cheekily. Finally she laughed.
Now he could be serious. “So the problem is really your job, right?” he asked, cutting straight to the heart of the matter. “You were supposed to be keeping Zane happy, but now you’ve rejected his marriage proposal, and to start dating me would just add insult to injury.”
“Mr. Carter doesn’t know about the proposal yet,” Jenna explained, “but it won’t be long. Some idiot spectator at the race caught the whole postrace nightmare on video and uploaded it to a feed. Yesterday some society gossip site picked it up, and they’re making a big deal about Zane Quintan being turned down because he was cut out by a friend.”
“That would be me,” Jimmy guessed.
“Right. Of course they say Zane was so upset about it that he got in a fight with you. It’s gone viral. I guess people just love that kind of stuff. But when Mr. Carter sees it—or someone tells him about it—there’s a good chance he’ll fire me on the spot.”
Jimmy groaned. Why did everything have to be so complicated?
“So if I can manage to smooth things over, but then I start dating you . . .” she suggested.
“Mr. Carter’s not likely to be very understanding,” Jimmy said drily.
“No,” Jenna finished simply.
He wanted to ask if her job was really that important, more important than having love in her life, but he held himself back. Her job was very important to her, and she wasn’t sure about love yet.
Jimmy could be patient. The time would come. He was certain that no one in the Union knew Jenna as well as he did. He would win her over in the end.
Suddenly, their escape pod shook roughly, sending them both tumbling back into the ground. Jenna dragged herself back toward the viewport. “And we have been netted by the rescue ship!” she declared excitedly. The attack on his equilibrium ended, and he stood up shakily, taking Jenna by the hand.
The voice of the announcer, which they hadn’t heard in hours, boomed through the room. “Congratulations, survivors of the Gloriana!” Yells and applause greeted the announcement. Their escape pod disappeared around them, and they found themselves in a far corner of the VR floor, separated quite a bit from anyone else who was still standing.
“You have set a new record for reenactment survival!” the voice praised. “Twenty-seven survivors!” There was a deafening roar of whistles, and Jimmy twirled Jenna around so her hoop skirt swung wide.
“Congratulations, Miss Cora!” he shouted. “We win!”
It had just taken ingenuity on Jenna’s part as well as patience on his. Jimmy knew he would win Jenna’s love in the end too. It would just take the same things: some ingenuity and a lot of patience.
10. Under Pressure
After Jimmy had dropped her off at her door the night of the Gloriana reenactment, Jenna went right in to soak in her bathtub and think over her night. The bathtub was one of her favorite features in this apartment; it was actually large enough for an adult to stretch out in. She could have kissed the architect. It was her favorite place to relax and think.
There was a lot to consider that night.
The Gloriana reenactment itself had been both thrilling and fun. She’d enjoyed wearing a period costume and dancing the waltz with Jimmy, pretending that they really were on a high class space cruiser without a care in the world. Her careful plan for surviving had worked pretty well, though she still felt bad about the door shocking Jimmy.
Jimmy.
Her mind kept returning to him over and over. She had spent a lot of time with him since he had arrived on Zenith, and there was no one on the entire planet whose company she enjoyed more. Last night had been no exception. She was grateful he had been willing to go along with it. But the kiss at the end while they were in the escape pod had almost been her entire undoing.
She couldn’t do it. She couldn’t fall in love. It would wreck everything. It would put Jimmy’s life in danger and leave her vulnerable again. What if she lost him? What if he was the next target of the curse? She couldn’t live with that.
However, kissing him had unleashed a hunger in her that she had never experienced. She was terribly afraid it was too late. But she shut off those thoughts before she could consider her feelings any further. Forcing herself back to practical reality, she reminded herself that she still had her rupture with Zane to explain to Mr. Carter. It wouldn’t be pretty. The thought of that alone was enough to squelch her euphoria. When she finally crawled out of the bathtub and into her bed, she had one thought on her mind.
Maybe Mr. Carter will never hear about it. Maybe no one will tell him anything.
*
The scene with Mr. Carter was every bit as horrible as she had feared. She had gotten only two more days of grace before she was called abruptly away from her current cookie-cutter project to her boss’s office. At the door, his personal assistant had mouthed to her “High Times,” the name of the society site that had posted the video and all their speculations. She took the warning hint and gathered her courage before entering the office, prepared to do battle for her livelihood.
“Zane Quintan proposed, and you refused him?” Mr. Carter thundered before she’d even closed the door behind her. “That was the best offer our company could have received! A permanent tie linking the Quintan business to us.”
Jenna took a deep breath and finally stood up for herself. “It was an offer to me, not to Carter & Yen, and it was not in my best interest,” she said, her voice firm. “This is my life we’re talking about, Mr. Carter.”
Mr. Carter visibly pulled himself together. “You are right,” he admitted finally. “But if you had chosen to marry into the Quintan family, we would have been prepared to offer you a partnership as an inducement to stay with Carter & Yen, and so encourage the ties to be long-lasting between the Quintan business ventures and our firm.”
Jenna gasped. A partnership! If she were a partner, they would have to let her take the helm on design. She wouldn’t be stuck drafting some drab condo for the hundredth time.
But even for a chance at partner she couldn’t marry Zane. Wouldn’t marry Zane. Even if she had been one hundred percent sure that marrying someone wouldn’t bring the family curse crashing down on his head, marrying someone addicted to nanospeed was only asking for heartache. Or worse. She absentmindedly rubbed her wrist, thinking of the way Zane had gripped her hard enough to leave bruises.
Mr. Carter was still staring at her, his gaze calculating and eager at the same time. He thought for sure she would take the bait.
“Look,” Jenna offered, “Mr. Quintan still wants our firm to work on the Quintan West project. Zane was sent out there last week to supervise construction, so he wouldn’t be seeing me much anyway. I didn’t wreck anything for the company.”
Mr. Carter stood and walked to his window, clearly debating something in his mind. Finally, he came to a decision, turning to face her.
“I made my expectations about this situation quite clear early on, Ms. Donnell. If you expect to stay employed at Carter & Yen, you will make sure that you stay in the good graces of the Quintan family. Fortunately for your sake, Mr. Lev Quintan paid me a personal visit yesterday. It seems that that the elder Quintan is as eager to promote a match between you and his son as I am.”
Jenna’s eyes widened in shock. Mr. Quintan had come here? To see Mr. Carter about her relationship with Zane, even after her refusal? Surely not. Why would he care that much?
“He requested as a personal favor that you be assigned as project manager for Quintan West. He says that you have excellent rapport with his son and that it is especially convenient, as you currently reside in Quintan Tower. You’ll be in frequent contact with Zane Quintan, coordinating work at Marah.”
Jenna sighed. Why did everyone have to conspire to throw her into Zane’s company?
“So it appears you have a second chance. As long as the elder Mr. Quintan is happy with you, we are happy too. In addition, should you find that you have a change of heart toward his son—well, I think you will find a partnership here at Carter & Yen to be very lucrative.”
Lucrative, but slimy.
Jenna was beginning to wonder how long it would take her to open her own design firm.
*
That night she sat at her window staring out over the resort, remembering the last time she had seen Zane. Zane had dropped by her apartment the night before he headed out to Marah. Lilah had taken one look at Jenna’s guest and fled to her room, promising them all the privacy they could need. Jenna had offered Zane a seat while studying his face. Had the nanospeed truly worn off? Was he going through withdrawal? It had been hard to tell. He had dark shadows under his eyes, but that was all. According to Jimmy, Zane had been using the drug for several months. How had she missed it? Had there been no sign at all?
Could she have prevented his addiction? Would he have listened to her if she’d tried to stop him earlier? She felt horribly guilty. If she hadn’t been so wrapped up in herself, she could have been a better friend. Zane had deserved better from her.
“I’m leaving tomorrow,” Zane had explained unnecessarily, clearing his throat. He seemed at a loss for words, which was very uncharacteristic of Zane. Usually he had the right things to smoothly say in any situation. It was part of what made him such a good manager at the QE.
“I’m sorry,” Jenna had finally said, breaking the awkward silence. “I feel like I failed you.”
That seemed to snap Zane out of his trance. “No, no, I’m the one who has failed you. I took a dangerous risk just to satisfy my competitive streak and then proceeded to hurt you terribly. It’s not a surprise that you don’t want to marry me after that. After all, you must be afraid I’ll hurt you again.” His voice had trembled.
Jenna remembered impulsively reaching out and grasping his hand. “Zane, I know it wasn’t really you. It was the nanospeed. I’m not afraid of you hurting me. But the thing is, even if the other night had never happened, I still couldn’t marry you. I just don’t love you like that. I care for you as a friend, that’s all,” she had explained, hoping her words were kind but clear enough. However, it had seemed to backfire. At first Zane’s eyes had dropped to the floor. Then his back straightened and he brought his head up.
“Well, that doesn’t change what I came to say,” he began, his voice stronger again. “I love you, Jenna. I truly do. I’m not giving up. You care for me as a friend, and for right now that’s enough. But I’m still going to be waiting for you. When you change your mind, I’ll be right here.”
It was essentially the same kind of declaration she’d had from Jimmy. Everyone was waiting on her. Waiting for her to make a choice that was impossible.
She started her new job as project manager the very next day. Since Zane was personally supervising the construction in Marah, they were in contact on a daily basis, but only for business reasons. Zane commed her with whatever difficulties they were having with implementing the design or when they needed something reworked, and she reassured him that it would be taken care of and then passed the changes on to the design team. Her first long-distance conversation with Zane was stilted and uncomfortable, but pretty soon, time and distance led to their comms being friendly enough, though Jenna tried to keep them strictly professional. She longed to ask him how he was doing without the nanospeed, if he was going through withdrawal, but it wasn’t something she could exactly ask in a work setting. She wanted to weaken their personal ties as much as possible before he came back. Zane didn’t always follow her lead though; true to his declaration, he tried to stay friends by asking her what she was doing and how things were going outside of work. She tried to be as polite as possible while keeping all their conversations strictly platonic. It was a fine line to walk.
Now that she had been promoted to project manager, though, she finally got to learn the grand transportation secret of QE West. It was also the project’s biggest potential downfall. Quintan planned to install interdimensional gates, one at the QE in Omphalos and the other at the QE West in Marah. Jenna was flabbergasted when she saw the first copy of the full set of top secret architectural holos for the great room the other—public—plans called “Reception.” Gates weren’t new—they were the only way to travel deep space from planet to planet—but using one set off such a massive release of energy that no one had ever tried to build one on a planet’s surface.
Quintan was taking a huge risk, and not only of financial failure. He was gambling every future visitor’s and employee’s lives on an untested technology.
Jenna was kind of relieved they couldn’t get it to work yet. However, with that bit of information, Jenna better understood the constant stress she palpably felt every time she was in a project update meeting with Mr. Quintan. Before, it had puzzled her that even when they had a good update about how the project was proceeding on time, he was still tense and extremely worried.
The project was on track to finish early next year, and they still didn’t have a working prototype of the gate that was integral to the whole project. At the third project meeting that Jenna attended, Quintan’s construction manager had angrily demanded what was wrong with the team of engineers working on the gate. Quintan had kept his cool (he always kept calm, even when he was visibly stressed—it was one of the things Jenna admired about him), but he had stood abruptly and walked away from the conference table, striding to the window. He stared at the window for a moment before turning back to the roomful of project leads. “Our head engineer has been indisposed for a while, but the rest of the team is continuing to work on the prototype. They believe we will be to the testing stage soon.” There was some grumbling, and it was clear that some of the team wanted to convert the temporary construction shuttleport into a permanent one and redesign the project accordingly, but Mr. Quintan wouldn’t hear of it. He was certain that they would have a working gate—and determined that project delays were better than backup plans.
It didn’t make much sense to Jenna, and it continued to gnaw at her for some time afterward. Why was Mr. Quintan staking the future of his resort on a slim, dangerous daydream? A daydream that any team of engineers, no matter how dedicated, would be unlikely to make into reality?
She literally stumbled across part of the answer.
11. Jax
It happened on the day of the worst lightning storm to ever hit Omphalos. The thunderstorm had raged above the city, lightning striking building after building after building. Jenna had been home alone that night, with Lilah at work. She had stood for a while watching the flashing light show and listening to the thunder roll right through her apartment so loudly she could almost feel it. At first she had enjoyed the storm, but suddenly she saw a searing flash of lightning and a penetrating boom actually shook the building. She was instantly plunged into darkness. It had taken a few minutes of stumbling, b
ut Jenna eventually put her hands on a torch she kept in her emergency kit (something she had never used before). She had sat in the dark on her couch watching the storm rage on, but the eeriness of being alone in the dark finally got to her. She could see the lights of the QE from her window, so she knew the resort still had power. She began to wonder if she couldn’t make her way down there, where at least there was still power and she wouldn’t be alone. She tried to comm Lilah or Jimmy, but interference from the storm made her flipcom useless.
In the end she decided to brave the stairwell with her torch. Her floor was silent, but when she pushed open the door to the stairwell, she heard the echo of other voices farther down. Other residents had the same idea. She was just about to cautiously descend the stairs when she heard a man bellowing above her.
“No, no, no, no, no.” The voice was loud and edging toward hysteria.
“Hello?” she called up the stairwell. “Are you all right?” She didn’t get a response, but the voice immediately muted until he was barely audible. Jenna took a deep breath and headed up the stairs. There were dim emergency globes in the stairwell, but they left deep pockets of shadow. Jenna swept her torch beam ahead of her, trying to find the voice in the inkiness of the stairwell. She had just reached the landing halfway up to the next floor when the chanting suddenly cut off. She kept going up, hurrying now, afraid that someone was in serious trouble. Maybe he’d been injured somehow and had fallen unconscious? She had just reached the landing to the twenty-first floor when her foot caught on something and she landed with a thump, her torch clattering to the floor. She groaned, trying to get her bearings, and suddenly realized she could hear someone breathing rapidly in the dark beside her. “Hello?” she said softly, groping out for her torch. “Is someone there?” She didn’t get any answer, but when she at last put her hand on her torch and swept the landing, she found a large man curled in the darkest corner near the door. His hands were over his ears, and his eyes were shut tight as if he were terrified—though it could have been because she was shining her bright torchlight in his face. She quickly dropped the beam and tried to speak to him again, but he didn’t respond. Gently, she moved toward him and reached out to shake his arm. Was he injured? Was he having hysterics? She knew he was breathing, and she hadn’t seen any blood in her pool of torchlight. But when she reached out and put her hand on his arm, he shrieked as if in pain.
The Quintan Edge (Roran Curse Book 2) Page 11