Shift - Omnibus Edition Read Online Free PDF Page A

yeah. He was fine. Like old times. In fact, it’s like he hasn’t aged a day.’
    ‘He doesn’t really age, you know.’ She crossed the room and picked up large molded pieces of foam, then slid them noisily into the empty box. Donald found his eyes drifting toward her skirt and forced himself to look away.
    ‘He takes his nano treatments almost religiously. Started because of his knees. The military covered it for a while. Now he swears by them.’
    ‘I didn’t know that,’ Donald lied. He’d heard rumors, of course. It was ‘Botox for the whole body’, people said. Better than testosterone supplements. It cost a fortune, and you wouldn’t live forever, but you sure as hell could delay the pain of aging.
    Anna narrowed her eyes. ‘You don’t think there’s anything wrong with that, do you?’
    ‘What? No. It’s fine, I guess. I just wouldn’t. Wait – why? Don’t tell me you’ve been …’
    Anna rested her hands on her hips and cocked her head to the side. There was something oddly seductive about the defensive posture, something that whisked away the years since he’d last seen her.
    ‘Do you think I would need to?’ she asked him.
    ‘No, no. It’s not that …’ He waved his hands. ‘It’s just that I don’t think I ever would.’
    A smirk thinned her lips. Maturity had hardened Anna’s good looks, had refined her lean frame, but the fierceness from her youth remained. ‘You say that now,’ she said, ‘but wait until your joints start to ache and your back goes out from something as simple as turning your head too fast. Then you’ll see.’
    ‘Okay. Well.’ He clapped his hands together. ‘This has been quite the day for catching up on old times.’
    ‘Yes, it has. Now, what day works best for you?’ Anna interlocked the flaps on the large box and slid it toward the door with her foot. She walked around the back of the desk and stood beside him, a hand on his chair, the other reaching for his mouse.
    ‘What day … ?’
    He watched while she changed some settings on his computer and the new monitor flashed to life. Donald could feel the pulse in his crotch, could smell her familiar perfume. The breeze she had caused by walking across the room seemed to stir all around him. This felt near enough to a caress, to a physical touch, that he wondered if he was cheating on Helen right at that very moment while Anna did little more than adjust sliders on his control panel.
    ‘You know how to use this, right?’ She slid the mouse from one screen to the other, dragging an old game of solitaire with it.
    ‘Uh, yeah.’ Donald squirmed in his seat. ‘Um … what do you mean about a day that works best for me?’
    She let go of the mouse. It felt as though she had taken her hand off his thigh.
    ‘Dad wants me to handle the mechanical spaces on the plans.’ She gestured toward the folder as if she knew precisely what was inside. ‘I’m taking a sabbatical from the Institute until this Atlanta project is up and running. I thought we’d want to meet once a week to go over things.’
    ‘Oh. Well. I’ll have to get back with you on that. My schedule here is crazy. It’s different every day.’
    He imagined what Helen would say to him and Anna getting together once a week.
    ‘We could, you know, set up a shared space in AutoCAD,’ he suggested. ‘I can link you into my document—’
    ‘We could do that.’
    ‘And email back and forth. Or video-chat. You know?’
    Anna frowned. Donald realized he was being too obvious. ‘Yeah, let’s set up something like that,’ she said.
    There was a flash of disappointment on her face as she turned for the box, and Donald felt the urge to apologize, but doing so would spell out the problem in neon lights: I don’t trust myself around you. We’re not going to be friends. What the fuck are you doing here?
    ‘You really need to do something about the dust.’ She glanced back at his desk. ‘Seriously, your computer is going to choke on