Page 72 of The Law of Attraction
“It doesn’t have to.” There was more of his trademark bravado. Maybe he actually believed what he was saying, but it didn’t do anything to calm the voices hissing in the back of her head.
She’d felt things yesterday that she’d never felt before. Whatever this was between them, it was visceral and intense, and it scared the shit out of her.
Mostly because she was afraid of losing it.
“Come on,” he said, giving her one of his almost-smiles. “We’ve got work to do.”
They worked their asses off for the next six hours, throwing themselves into testing with grim determination. When two o’clock rolled around, and it was time to make the call on an extension, Olivia was still convinced they needed another day of testing and Adam was convinced they didn’t.
They went over the tests they had left, arguing over which could be put off and which couldn’t, and how long they’d each take to run. Kurt was off doing one of his regular checks, so they were alone in the office for the first time all day, but there were no fond smiles or affectionate touches as they hashed out their opposing positions.
Adam was right that it would technically be possible to start generating power from the plant at midnight. But Olivia was afraid of staking their careers on the hope that everything was working as opposed to being really certain. The halls of IT history were littered with the bodies of people who thought something would be fine when it wasn’t, and the stakes were high because it was power. The regulatory fines for making a mistake were steep. Millions of dollars were on the line, not to mention little things like hospitals and airports and grandmothers who needed their air-conditioning.
“You know they’re not going to bid it out to market until Monday,” Adam pointed out. “They’ll want to do test generation first. And we’d already planned on staying through Sunday in case something barfs. That gives us plenty of time to catch anything we might have missed.”
“That’s all the more reason not to rush,” Olivia insisted. “We’re killing ourselves for an arbitrary deadline. Realistically, the board won’t care if it’s done Friday midnight or Saturday midnight, as long as when they walk in the door Monday morning, it’s done.”
Adam leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms. “How confident are you that we can go live right now with no failures? Put a number value on it.”
She tried to rub some of the tension out of her neck while she thought about it. “Eighty percent? Maybe eighty-five.”
“Eighty-five percent is pretty fucking sure.” He was starting to sound exasperated. “You know how impressed they’ll be if we meet that deadline tonight after all the shit that’s gone wrong this week? We’ll be superheroes. I thought you wanted to make a name for yourself.”
Olivia dug her heels in. “I want another day of testing. I think it’s worth asking for the extension.”
“You’re just resisting because you’re allergic to shortcuts. You have to make everything as difficult as possible.”
Now she was pissed. “I happen to love shortcuts, when they’re actual shortcuts. I’ll have you know, I have all the shortcut paths at Ikea memorized. I can move through that store like a goddamn ninja and be in and out in under ten minutes on a holiday weekend. What I don’t like is leaving half the work undone and calling it a shortcut, which is what you’re proposing. It’s sloppy and I won’t sign my name to it.”
As she glared at him, she remembered his hand sliding through her hair last night, his mouth moving over her body, and his voice, rough with desire, alternately soothing and begging. But today was a brand-new day, and the closeness of yesterday felt like a dream-fogged memory that faded more with every tick of the clock toward their midnight deadline.
Why had she thought anything would be different between them? Just because they’d slept together didn’t mean they’d magically start agreeing on everything or even getting along. It was one thing to fall into each other’s arms during a moment of boredom in close quarters, but they weren’t bored or isolated anymore. They were back in the real world now, and in the real world they were the opposite of compatible.
“Most of these tests are redundant and you know it.” His jaw was set and there was a vein standing out in his neck. He looked so frustrated and annoyed, she couldn’t bear it—not now that she knew what he looked like when he was telling her he thought she was amazing.
She grabbed the borrowed mug she’d been using and stalked over to the coffee maker. “Redundancies exist for a reason. Every single one of these tests is part of the process because someone missed something one time and they realized they needed to test for it before going into production.”
“Fine,” Adam said behind her. “We’ll play it safe.”
She poured a cup of silty black coffee. “Eighty-five percent certain is still a fifteen percent chance of catastrophic fucking failure. The potential benefit isn’t worth the risk.”
“I said fine.”
She turned around. “You did?”
“Call Gavin, if that’s what you want. Tell him we need another day.”
“Really?”
Adam shrugged. “I’m not stopping you.”
“Okay.”
He watched dispassionately as she picked her phone up off the desk and called Gavin, who answered on the first ring.
“Olivia? What’s the word?”
“We need another twenty-four hours for testing.”
