Page 504 of Lodestar

“Jesus H. Christ, Conor. Eat the damn soup.”

When I pushed the bowl in front of him, he took the spoon and ate some.

Brows lifted, he declared, “It’s good.”

“I can cook. When I want to. I survived a desert storm, Conor. Without MREs. Trust me when I say Dead To Me and Grail werenotdoing the cooking.”

He smirked. “And you wanted to cook. For me. I’m honored.” His gaze turned distant. “And horny.”

“I’ll accept both statuses.”

“Is this why you brought soup?”

I snorted. “Horny wasn’t the end goal, more like you had to be hungry and weren’t moving from your desk any time soon.”

“It’s this match-fixing business. It’s fascinating.”

My lips twitched. “That's what you're doing?”

“Uh huh. I'm working on two pieces of software that deal with predicting outcomes. The first one is for targeting serial assailants in murder or sexual assault cases.”

I pursed my lips in thought. “That program you started developing for your da? That takes stats and enables you to figure out the likelihood of the next place of an attack as well as their neighborhood?”

“You remembered!”

“Of course I did. It’s fascinating. And creepy. LikeMinority Reportwithout Tom Cruise.”

He grinned around his soup spoon. “Yeah, apart from we’re not the government.”

“I thought you’d have stopped working on that now that he’s dead.”

“How can I stop?” He grimaced, his expression so pained that I had to reach out and grab his hand. “You’re giving back by working with Rachel on this charity, and this is my chosen method.”

“True.” I rubbed my fingers over his then knotted ours together. “What’s the second project?”

“Making software that predicts match outcomes.”

Sensibly, ‘predict’ came with air quotes.

I grinned. “Similar coding structure I’d imagine, only with different inputs?”

“Yeah,” he concurred, going into a basic rundown of how he was creating the system. “This way, we’ll be able to manipulate other teams and force wins so that the Saturns surf toward the top of the league.”

“While making a lot of money gambling and taking bets on those games?”

He winked.

“Declan’s taking to his new job as club president?”

“Not really.”

“It’s only because it’s soccer,” I grouched. “If it were any other sport, you’d be all over it.”

“I can’t argue with that,” he agreed, making me shake my head with a sigh.

“The Saturns are playing this weekend. I was going to take Kat…”

His nose crinkled. “That’s a silent command to come as well, isn’t it?”

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