Page 82 of Tangled up in You

TANGLED IN YELLOWSTONE

TYMBER DALTON

CHAPTER 1

JESSE

She stared out the airplane window as they made their final approach to Spokane.

God, I needed this trip.

That was an admission shehatedmaking, too.

Sure it was a work trip, but it got her out of the lab and the office for the first time in over a year.

It also meant it would get her dad off her back and hopefully curb his harping that he wanted her to take time off.

Get him off her back fornow, at least.

She expected to spend her extra time out here working, not relaxing. To her thatwasrelaxing.

Yes, she would absolutely fib to her dad and tell him she was relaxing, if he asked. How the heck would he know if she was working, anyway? She’d already warned him she’d be out of cell phone contact for much of the time, and she didn’t have a sat phone.

Hopefully he’d be too distracted with his very pregnant wife to pay much attention to Jesse’s current activities. He could log in to their corporate scheduling system and see Jesse was out of the office and conducting field tests in Yellowstone.

Not that she’d talked to him in person that week. Which was…unusual.

Not in a bad way, though.

Josephina would likely pop soon, so his focus was rightly on her and their unborn son.

Meaning maybe Jesse could work without him interrupting her with his ideas, “suggestions”, and last-minute changes to the equipment she’d devoted the past year of her life to perfecting—the working, beta-testing prototypes of said equipment which were securely nestled in several cases in the cargo hold, along with her luggage.

Or without him wanting to have father-daughter time. Which she understood was important to him, but it also annoyed her because it took her away from her work.

Whichwasrelaxing.

She’d picked Yellowstone for the trials because of the frequent earthquake activity. Darn near constant earthquake activity. Most of those tiny tremblors that went unnoticed by anyone except the USGS and their equipment. She also had the full blessings and cooperation of the USGS, for these tests, and had obtained all the necessary permits.

Hopefully, her new seismometers would prove viable during these small-scale tests. Her goal was to perfect an AI-based algorithm that worked in conjunction with seismology networks to improve earthquake prediction. Eventually, she hoped to deploy a network of devices all over the continent, and then the world.

No, it would never be possible to predict all quakes. But if she could perfect the algorithm and detection equipment to identify quake-prone areas, maybe even map out patterns, or potential new areas of earthquake activity, it could be a game-changer.

She also recognized—and had bounced off her therapist for confirmation—that her dad’s recently renewed helicopterparenting was likely due both to his anxiety over the impending arrival of his second child and his guilt over being a single father to Jesse for so many years.

What Jesse had never been able to drill into his loving skull was that she didn’t feel the slightest bit of resentment, or anger, or any of that other garbage toward him about the circumstances.

And she was happy she was about to become a big sister at the age of twenty-three.

She even loved her step-mother, both for herself and for how happy her dad now was. Josephina also went out of her way to get to know Jesse, and learn about neurodivergency, and bent over backward being accommodating.

It wasn’t her father’s fault Jesse’s mom died from pancreatic cancer when Jesse was ten. And it wasn’t bad parenting on his part that she spent the next several years attending elite private boarding schools, which ultimately led her to starting college several years early and earning her first doctorate by the age of nineteen.

Autism for the win, yo.

Her mom had understood Jesse, both her preternatural thirst for learning and discovery, and Jesse’s frequently aloof neurodivergent attachment style. She was okay being alone. She was fine not being smothered by attention.

She’d tried dating while in grad school, but attempts at relationships with neurotypical guys usually ended with her walking away after he felt butt-hurt because she didn’t want to be glued at the hip to him and refused to play NT guessing games about his mood, feelings, wants, and desires. She didn’t havetimefor petty bullshit.

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