Page 83 of Ten Years and Then…
Pager. Pager? It was somewhere in her apartment. She’d picked it up from the travel office yesterday, and she clearly remembered bringing it home, and testing it out. But what had she done with it after that?
It could wait. She still needed to pack her suitcase—the brand new one Dad bought for her over the weekend when she told him about the conference. He’d driven down from Providence, took her shopping, and refused to let her pick any of the cheaper models she pointed out.
“You worked hard, and you earned this opportunity, Pumpkin. I won’t have you going around like a hobo on your first big opportunity.” So she had a top of the line Samsonite wheeled carry-on bag. It was even a lovely shade of pink. “And make sure you do carry it on the plane,” her father had said when they got back to her apartment. “You’ve seen how they throw the bags around when they’re loading the plane up. Carry it on, and find some strong young man to help you put it up in the bin when you get to your seat. Let him throw his back out instead of you.”
Nora had wondered whether Dad’s words came from a sense of chivalry, or because he’d thrown his own back out a few months ago. Either way, obviously she could load her own luggage in the overhead bin.
But it was probably chivalry. Daniel would have loaded the bag in the bin for her, no question.
Daniel, July 13
“Daniel, do you think anything has jumped out of your bags in the ten minutes since you checked them over?”
Jeff was exaggerating. It had been at least fifteen minutes. And he was just making sure he hadn’t forgotten anything. That was completely normal. Responsible, even.
“What? I’m just being thorough.”
“There’s thorough, and there’s obsessive-compulsive.” Jeff’s tone left no doubt where he placed Daniel on that scale.
He sat down, took a deep breath. Maybe his roommate was right. Everything was there, between the suitcase and the carry-on bag. And if—God forbid—anything wasn’t, he’d be at the hotel by noon, he could call the office and have them FedEx whatever was missing overnight.
The rest of his team wouldn’t even be there until tomorrow afternoon anyway. He’d asked if he could fly out a day early so he could get to the convention center at seven a.m. Wednesday morning, the minute it opened up for exhibitors. That way he could make sure all the materials for the booth were where they were supposed to be, and he could get a head start on setting up before everyone else arrived.
The other reason he’d wanted to go a day early was to avoid any possibility of a flight delay or cancellation or anything really crazy. Even if that happened, he’d still have Wednesday to fly to Kansas City.
Not that he’d tell anyone that. It sounded paranoid, even to his own ears.
He touched the necklace, hanging just a little above his heart. She would have understood. She would have laughed and asked why he hadn’t flown out yesterday, just to be extra sure.
He shook his head. It was no laughing matter. This was a huge responsibility, and he was going to do absolutely everything in his power to make sure the Quantum Networking Systems booth ran perfectly.
Short of a plague of frogs or locusts at the convention center, he was pretty sure he had every possibility covered.
She would have laughed and asked him what his plan for the frogs and locusts was.
Nora, four hours later
Everything had been easy, so far. There was no traffic on the taxi ride to Logan Airport, which was unheard of. There’d been no line at check-in. Nora had even been upgraded to first class.
She had one glass of champagne on the flight. It was free, and, anyway, she wouldn’t start working until tomorrow. She had all afternoon and evening to herself, and when was the last time that had been true?
Her senior year of college had been a blur. She’d juggled her position as editor-in-chief of the Observer, her honors thesis and what had felt like hundreds of job interviews. Then she’d been hired at the Livingston Scientific Network, and she’d had to move to Boston, find an apartment, furnish it and actually learn her job.
Livingston had three dozen publications, and over her first year there, she’d been rotated through most of them. Nora lugged home books and journals to study every night, so she wouldn’t sound like an idiot in staff meetings—or, far worse, when interviewing world-renowned scientists. She felt like she hadn’t sat down to rest in more than two years.
Eight hours with zero responsibility sounded like heaven.
But she had to get to the hotel first. Once she landed, she followed the signs from the gate, through the terminal and to the taxi stand. She had to walk by the baggage carousels, and as she went past Carousel #2, just as a tinny voice announced over the PA system that baggage for Flight 387 from Chicago was arriving now, she thought she saw something.
Someone.
Dark hair, crisp blue button-down shirt.
From the back, it looked like … him. The way his head tilted just a bit to the side, the way his shirt bunched up in the back if he didn’t stand up straight, the way her heart was fluttering just like it always did when she’d been with him.
But it couldn’t be. What were the odds that he’d be here, now, at the exact moment she was walking by? One in a million? No, worse than that—one in a million was generous.
Obviously it wasn’t him. She wasn’t going to see Daniel again. Not for another eight years, at least, and then only if he hadn’t met someone else.
