Kyra paused and sighed before continuing. “I think it’s perfectly reasonable for you to care. Do I think King is happy? Maybe, but it’s not like he has ever said so. You should ask him the same question and then come tell me what he says because I’m wishing for it as much as you are. The trouble is I can’t guarantee King will ever be able to answer it in a way you’ll think is normal. Some of restored cyborgs avoid dealing with their emotions just as some full humans choose to do. They actually prefer cybernetic deductions to listening to their gut. What I’m finding is each soldier has to make peace with his restored condition in his own way. They all go through Norton sponsored therapy, but it doesn’t help some of them.”
“It doesn’t help some full humans either—and speaking of that—I should go to my Norton sanctioned appointment now. Thanks for working it out where I could see you on the same day.”
“You’re welcome, Seetha. I’ll be anxiously awaiting your call.”
Seetha walked in a daze to the airlift that would shoot her to the proper floor. A week ago, she was battling with Rodney over getting enough sleep time. Now she had the option of working for the very company that likely assigned Rodney to deprive her of sleep.
Of course she could always say no to the job…
Seetha sighed. Kyra Winters was right about the status it would bring to her work profile. She’d be very dumb not to tough it out for at least half a year. It beat all her other prospects.
If King truly didn’t know about the job offer, she wondered what King would think if she said yes. It sounded like King and the notorious cyber scientist were some sort of friends through the woman’s famous husband. Captain Peyton Elliott was a very public spokesperson for the rights of restored cyborgs. He was also very publicly Kingston West’s best friend.
Since her rescue, she had done a lot of catching up on what had happened while she was gone. Now here she was connecting the dots of her life and they were leading her right back to a man who had broken her heart.
Did she really want to risk being in his life, even if it was just as a friend of a friend? The hope flickering in her gut shamed her, but it also made her feel alive.
“Seetha—no shrink is going to be able to fix your kind of crazy,” she said aloud, glad she was riding in the airlift alone.
Forget how appalled King and her mother were going to be if she said yes to Kyra Winters. The bigger problem was how appalled she was going to be at herself.
Chapter 8
King stared at Annalise’s front door. For the two weeks before they’d found Seetha, he’d been knocking on it every other day. After the first visit, he had grown accustomed to the woman’s steady warm hug of welcome every time he arrived. Today all he could think was now Seetha was on the other side of the door. Annalise might still be glad to see him, but his gut churned just thinking about seeing Seetha.
After sifting through all the info Nero had provided, he had a new appreciation for why the woman had done her best to stay aloof around him. Norton had taken their intimacy away and compressed their life together into a file everyone but the woman who had lived it could ignore.
No, he wasn’t looking forward to discussing a shared past that unfortunately only Seetha remembered. Yet he saw no other way to open a channel of true communication between them.
He pressed the domicile notifier beside the gleaming security panel and listened to it calling out his cyborg identity to the occupants inside. The UCN said it was going to take several years before notifiers and scanners would accurately cross-identify cyborg IDs and start using their given names again.
King waited for a full minute. Then he pushed the notifier a second time, and waited one more. He could have easily scanned the residence for life signs, but Peyton was encouraging him to not use his cyborg skills around the people in his personal life. He had thought about it and concluded both Annalise and Seetha were in the personal category.
“Damn it. I guess no one is home. That will teach me to call first,” King said aloud, frowning at his deep disappointment when no warm hugging woman had rushed to let him in.
He stepped back to turn around just as the door was finally flung open.
“Kingston, what a wonderful surprise. Come in. Come in. I was out in the garden with my headset on and didn’t hear you at first. I’m glad you stopped by.”
Annalise hugged him as he crossed the threshold and closed the door gently. Tense muscles inside his chest relaxed. He rubbed over the spot, smiling at his visceral response. He liked the woman. He couldn’t seem to help it.
“Actually Annalise—this time I came to check on Seetha. I wanted to see how she was adapting to being home,” he admitted, looking off and around for her. When he didn’t instantly see her, King gave in and scanned the residence, but nothing on his scanner told him anything about the missing woman’s location.
Then he remembered Seetha saying her ID chip had been destroyed by the camp bots. Until it was replaced, she could conceivably sneak up on him. Anticipation curled in his midsection at the thought Seetha could pop up around some corner any moment. It made him realize how much he wanted to see her again—and see she was improving. He also secretly hoped something would make him feel better regarding what he’d learned about their past.
“Seetha’s out at the moment…with a friend…having coffee,” Annalise said carefully, not sure what to say to the man in front of her.
As she led the way through the foyer, Annalise told herself King and Seetha’s relationship—or lack of one—wasn’t really any of her business. There was also no need to confess Seetha was meeting someone she’d found trolling one of many online dating services. It certainly wouldn’t do to rant at King for it being his fault her daughter was acting so desperately.
“Come sit with me for a while. I hope you have time to wait on Seetha to return. I’ll make us some iced tea. I remember exactly how you like it.”
King touched Annalise’s arm as she turned to leave. “Is there something wrong? Your body is exhibiting multiple stress indicators.”
Annalise couldn’t help it. She snorted over his comments. “You know, I haven’t heard you talk like a cyborg in a long time, Kingston. I can’t say as I missed your cybernetic observations either. A woman has a right to keep some thoughts to herself. How about I just say I’m fine and you don’t have to worry about me? Does that make you feel better?”
Chastised for doing the very thing Peyton had warned him against, King removed his hand. “Sorry. Old habits. I didn’t mean to intrude on your reactions to things.”
Annalise laughed. “Of course you didn’t. Go into the Florida room and have a seat. It’s a couple rooms in that direction in case you don’t remember. I’ll be right there with our tea.”
King nodded and let Annalise go this time without saying anything more. He wandered through the house trying to remember how it had felt to live there. Recollections of it were absent. They had been wiped away when Doc removed the husband chip. He could only access minor details about his surroundings from what was stored in Annalise’s files. He did discover what he needed though. The Florida room was seventeen steps through the arched doorway he’d seen from the domicile entrance.
Just as Doc had explained, there was no sensory information attached to the knowledge he had about Annalise or her home. He was neither emotionally saddened by his lack of memories nor did he think he was made better by their absence. His human side routinely shrugged off all his musings about such things as being no big deal. Yet at the same time there was an emptiness in his gut which defied his understanding…and for which he could find no physiological cause.
As he walked, he found himself wishing for more data than just what he’d accumulated in previous visits. He took a seat in the room and found himself wondering what it would feel like to actually feel at home here.
His gaze raised to the woman who appeared in the doorway carrying a tray with drinks. Annalise sighed as she walked in and saw him sitting in the bi
ggest chair in the room. Choosing the giant chair had seemed the most logical option. The chair was the single piece of furniture in the room he calculated as best capable of supporting his size and weight.
King frowned as he read multiple indicators of stress again on Annalise. Her adrenaline was spiked. Her heartbeat was rapid. Her breathing was shallow and ragged. He tried not to say anything, but found restraint impossible once more.
“Does my presence in your home bother you, Annalise? Would you rather I stopped coming by?”
“No—I definitely do not wish that,” Annalise said firmly. “If you must know, I’m wishing things were like they used to be when you and Seetha were still together. Seeing you sitting in your chair brings back many good memories. Seetha went with me specifically to buy you that monster chair which fits you so well. Memories of our shopping trip are as clear to me right now as what I had for yesterday’s lunch. I can’t help wishing the new version of you could morph into the old version of you we lost. You’ll just have to be patient with me until I get used to the impossibility of it happening.”
She set King’s glass of tea on the coaster still in the same place it had always been on the table beside the chair he used to use regularly. Material possessions could stay the absolute same forever and a day, but unfortunately the people who used them always changed. If you wanted to be philosophical about it, you could say change was probably the best and the worst part of being a one hundred percent organic creature.
Annalise sighed at the blankness on Kingston’s face as she put the serving tray on the coffee table and lifted her own glass from it. “Is anything I’m saying making any sense, or are my ramblings just confusing you more?”
King looked for an appropriate answer to Annalise’s comments within his saved file data for her, but didn’t find one fitting this circumstance. Fearing he was taking too long to respond, he finally just shared his thoughts. “I regret causing you distress. It was not part of my intentions in coming here.”
Annalise nodded and sipped. It was hard to get it to go down a suddenly tight throat.
“Sometimes talking to you is like talking to a stranger, but then I see the real you peeking through, like just now when you apologized. Those moments give me hope, even though I tell myself hope is not a good thing to be feeling when I can tell you just want to run away from us. I think I’m having a harder time accepting this new reality of you than my daughter is. Seetha is letting go of her memories. I have to honor her decision so I can help her succeed.”
“Letting go of what memories?” King asked.
“Memories of you, King. Memories of the two of you. Seetha began dating this week. I thought it was still a little too soon after her work camp ordeal, but she insisted she needed to start moving on immediately. She’s out now having coffee with John Doe 1 or 2. I’m in denial so I forgot what she said specifically about the guy she was meeting today.”
King thought of the recorded conversations he’d been reviewing, of Seetha telling him how amazing he was as a man, as she cataloged the efficiency of each body part she was praising. He didn’t remember what had prompted her effusive adoration when the information was saved, but after hearing it in recording after recording, he could instantly recall how excited she sounded. Apparently his human mind considered her breathy tone and husky praise to be permanent memory worthy. He was sure it would always be in the one or two percent Nero had mentioned.
Before going after Seetha, he’d been too busy at the restaurant to date. He hadn’t dated anyone since her rescue because he was sure he wouldn’t have enjoyed it. He’d only be disappointed when the woman he was with didn’t sound like Seetha. It was a dilemma he had not figured out how best to solve.
King sipped his iced tea as he recalled her breathy laughter and praise again. Pulling away, he stared at his glass. Something was wrong. The drink had no taste. He sipped once more, making himself focus on the flavor. Maybe his tongue was malfunctioning. He would ask Nero to run some checks.
“John Doe 1. So Seetha’s dating another cyborg. That’s interesting. Is he restored? Has she looked up his records to see what kind of soldier he was?”
Annalise choked on her iced tea as she laughed. She rudely coughed and pounded her chest with a fisted hand trying to recover.
“Oh my lord, that’s hysterical. I see you’re still literal. I just called her date John Doe because I don’t know the man’s name. They’re all going to be John Doe Nothing-To-Me until my daughter thinks one is worthy. If her dating life goes anything like it did before she bought you, hell might freeze over before we get that far. Seetha never had much luck being happy with men before she bought…” She paused and stared before finishing. “No. Forget what I said. Never mind about what Seetha is doing now or about the past. I’m just going to shut up and finish my drink.”
King breathed slowly. He felt irritation growing. But what was the cause? He set down the glass of tea before he crushed it in his tense fingers. He scanned his mind—no logical deductions were available about his stressful reaction. He scanned his feelings verifying he was indeed angry, but why was he so pissed?
“So…you’re saying Seetha’s coffee date is a one hundred percent human male?”
Annalise snorted again as she shrugged. “I can only assume it. After her experience with you, I can’t see my daughter ever allowing another cyborg into her life.”
King put his hands on his knees. Were his fingers shaking? Yes. Yes, they were. How strange. He started running diagnostics before speaking. “Can I ask why you think her dating a cyborg is out of the question?”
“Good God, King. This is all just supposition on my part. Pay no attention to me. When it comes to Seetha, I talk too much anyway. Plus, this truly is none of my business. Seetha bought you for her own reasons. She gave you up for them too. At the moment, she’s just trying to move on with her life like you have. When you didn’t come see her after she first got back, she wrote you off permanently, as most any woman would. Whatever you’ve decided now, I think you’re too late.”
“I don’t understand. I specifically came here today to check on her,” King said, finding it hard to believe he had made Seetha mad with his absence. Where was her gratitude for him saving her? Or her patience to wait out his confusion? It had taken him all the time since her return just to get this far. And he was here. Where the hell was she? What was she doing with another man?
While analyzing possible scenarios, his mind created an image of Seetha testing some other man’s proficiencies. He couldn’t see the man’s face, but he could damn well hear her breathy whispers of praise. He wanted to kill the faceless man…which some part of him knew was a totally inappropriate response. When his mind erupted in flashing lights, King closed his eyes.
“Kingston, are you okay? You’re sweating profusely and your face is red. If you get upset and break any of my family heirlooms in here, I’m going to banish you to the patio next time you visit,” Annalise warned.
Laughing harshly at her threats, King lifted a hand with now obviously trembling fingers and touched his forehead. Feeling perspiration dampening his brow, he sighed in exasperation. Then he looked at Annalise’s arched eyebrow and felt his mouth twitch. Laughter followed and gratefully relieved the pressure building inside his skull…and his chest.
“Fucking hell—this is some messed up shit. I thought about Seetha being upset and my head is killing me now,” he declared.
To his amazement, Annalise choked on her tea again as she laughed. “You remind me of my son. Watching you come to terms with yourself is like watching a teenage boy figure out he likes a girl more than he thought. His wife almost married someone else while he was making up his mind about her.”
King leaned forward and covered his eyes with the palms of his hands. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me lately. I’m sorry I swore like that in front of you. Are you saying Seetha is dating just because I didn’t come see her? I’m trying to grasp the logic of her actions, bu
t it doesn’t make any sense to me.”
Annalise rolled her eyes. “Now I understand why they invented Cyber Husband programming. You were never this clueless with Seetha before…or with me later. I’m not sure I like seeing you so unsure of yourself.”
Despite his decision to keep his efforts private, his tongue was suddenly spouting the truth to Annalise.
“They removed the husband chip that was programmed for you. A few days ago I asked them to put a chip reprogrammed for Seetha back into me. They have the capability still, but they refused my request. The scientist assigned to my restoration is insisting I talk to Seetha without it before he’ll even discuss putting it back in.”
“Are you saying you asked to be reprogrammed for Seetha? Why would you do that, King? My comments were just me joking. No woman is worth doing such a thing to yourself again, not even my daughter. If you can’t like Seetha without the chip, then I don’t think you need to be with her. Go find a woman you do like. It would be better for all of us.”
“I can’t,” King exclaimed, letting his hands fall away. “I can’t move on. I need…I don’t know…closure, I guess.”
Annalise snorted. Now she knew why Seetha was in such a rush to insert a new man into her life. King’s confusion about the past was as charming as it was disarming, but his emotional distress would be sheer hell on a woman’s nerves.
“I think your chance at finding closure just came through the front door. Let me go tell Seetha you’re here.”
Chapter 9
After her mother announced she was heading back to the garden, Seetha looked down at the teal tunic and leggings she wore and sighed. They made her look even thinner than she did already, but she had purchased them primarily for comfort, not sex appeal. Good thing too, since the guy she’d just left had shrugged her off the minute he’d seen how tall she was compared to him. His shallow judgment irked her because he hadn’t told the truth about his own height. He could have spared them both two hours of their time if he’d just been honest in his profile and said he wanted to date a short woman.
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