Talk Nerdy to Me

TALK NERDY TO ME

Copyright © 2006 by Vicki Lewis Thompson. Tip-in photo ©
Shirley Green

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or
reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in die
case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For
information
address
St. Martin's Press, 175 Fifth
Avenue, New York, NY 1001ft

ISBN: 0-312-93907-8

BAN: 9780312-93907-6

Printed in the United States of America

St. Martin's Paperbacks edition / February 2006

St Martin's Paperbacks are published by St. Martin's Press,
175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.

CLS 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

To the real Eve,

who happens to be
my

extremely
glamorous, black office cat;

and to the real
David and Jill Henkel,

who happen to be married and living
happily ever after.

Acknowledgments

Many
thanks to my engineering persona consultants. What would I have done without
you? Kudos to Patty Anderson, Barb Betke, Lynn Bielin, Benjamin Foresta, Nicole
Hulst, Ericka and Don Poletti, Julie Wang, and Gina Watson-Haley for sending me
advice, jokes, and encouragement on the subject of engineering nerds. If I
screwed this up, it's my fault, not yours!

And
as always, I'm grateful for the unwavering support of my editor, Jennifer
Enderlin, and all the folks at St. Martin's Press; my agent, Maureen Walters;
my husband Larry; and my daughter and assistant, Audrey Sharpe.

The
explosion caught Charlie by surprise. People didn't usually blow things up in
Middlesex, Connecticut, especially at four in the afternoon. But as Charlie
rode his Harley down Elm Street, something exploded behind the metal door of an
ordinary two-car garage.

The door was still rattling
as he made a U-turn and swerved his bike into the drive, skidding on layers of
snow and ice. He damned near hit the Civic Hybrid parked there.

Leaping from his bike, he
ran toward the garage. "Don't panic! I'm here!" He banged on the
door. "Can you hear me? Are you okay?"

"Yes!"
The voice was muffled and female. And she was coughing.

"I'm
calling 911!" He reached for the cell phone clipped to his jeans pocket.

"No!
Don't do that!" More coughing.

He
paused, his finger over the send button. "Why not?"

"Because I'm
fine!"

Charlie
needed more information. There had been an explosion, for God's sake. And there
was this funny smell seeping out of the cracks around the garage door molding.
"Can you open the door? You could be in shock or something."

"Honestly." She
coughed again. "I'm okay."

"Are
you sure?" Charlie tried to picture himself climbing back on his bike and
riding away without knowing what had caused the explosion and whether the woman
in the garage was as fine as she claimed. Nope, couldn't do it. "Open the
door. I need to know you're okay."

After
a moment of silence, the door started up. Then it quickly stopped, leaving a
gap of six inches. The funny smell grew stronger.

"See
there?" Charlie breathed in the fumes and the back of his throat tickled.
He cleared his throat. "Now your door's jammed."

"No,
it's ... uh, yeah! It must be jammed! But I'm fine, really." She coughed
twice. "Here's my hand, in one piece."

Charlie stared at the hand
she stuck through the six-inch opening. He thought of Thing from
The
Addams Family,
except her hand was a lot
prettier than Thing.
She
was
wearing a pink sweater with the cuff turned
back
over a very delicate wrist.

She
wiggled her fingers. "See? Everything works." Her nails looked
manicured, although she wasn't wearing polish. No rings, either. She'd have to
be lying on her back on the garage floor in order to stick her hand out like
that. Maybe she'd landed on the floor after the explosion.

But
that made no sense, because she'd just activated the garage door opener. Sure,
she could have been holding the opener at the time of the blast, but that was
highly improbable, which meant she was lying there specifically to stick her
hand out and convince him she wasn't maimed. She was hiding something in that
garage.

Just
his luck, that kind of behavior intrigued him. Not too many women he knew caused
explosions and then tried to pretend nothing had happened. None, in fact. He
dropped to one knee and took off his helmet so he could peek under the door,
but the warm air coming out made his glasses fog so he couldn't see much of
anything. "What's that smell?" Now he'd started coughing, too.

She
pulled her hand back inside. "I'm... um . .. making something."

"Moonshine?"
Charlie had never smelled moonshine, but he'd tasted his share of cheap whiskey
in his under-grad days. This garage had distillery written all over it, not
that he cared, philosophically speaking. He was just damned curious.

Her
laughter was interspersed with more coughing. "Are you a revenuer?"

"No,
I'm an engineer." His knee was getting cold where it rested on the icy
cement. His leather chaps helped, but he decided to shift to the other knee to
balance out the chill factor.

"An
engineer? The choo-choo kind or the brainy kind?"

"The
electrical kind." He tried not to breathe the fumes. "I work at
Middlesex Light and Power." At least for now. Before the end of the month
he'd have his new position nailed down at Hoover Dam. At that point the ML
& P would have to survive without him.

"Interesting."
Her coughing fit seemed to have ended. "Are you out reading meters?"

"No. I have a desk
job." He shifted knees again.

"Then why aren't you
there? At your desk?"

"In winter I come in
an hour early so I can knock off at four. Look, we're straying from the topic
here. Are you sure you're okay? Some injuries have a delayed reaction. You can
bleed to death without really knowing you're hurt."

"I'm not bleeding."

"It
could be internal. I've heard of people who had no idea they were wounded and
then bam! They keel over dead."

"That
would be bad." She didn't sound as if she were taking this seriously at all.
"Are you qualified to assess internal bleeding?"

"Well,
no. But I'll bet I could tell if you were mortally wounded or not."
Besides, he wanted to know what she was hiding in there. "If this door's
jammed, you could come to the front door." And after he'd made sure she
was fine, he'd talk her into letting him into the garage.

"What
happens at four that you take off from work early?"

"I
like to shoot pool at the Rack and Balls before dinner. I was on my way there
when I heard the explosion. Naturally I stopped." He could still smell the
noxious odor, but it was much fainter.

"I appreciate your concern. I really do."

"Anyone
would have done the same. And speaking as an engineer, I'm not sure you should
be breathing those fumes."

"The
Rack and Balls has a pool table?" "Yeah." It was common
knowledge. "You must be new here."

"I bought the house in October. I guess that's
new."

With that, Charlie's brain
processed the data and came up with an ID. She was the New York model who'd
moved to Middlesex last fall. Both his mother and his aunt Myrtle had mentioned
that a model had bought a house on Elm Street and she sometimes came into the
bakery. But she'd only allow herself one cinnamon roll and then she'd make it
last several days.

And
what was her name, anyway? Erin? Elise? He couldn't remember. But now he was
really confused about the explosion. Fashion models and explosions only
coexisted in James Bond movies.

Curiosity
made him ignore the cold cement. Leaning down, he balanced on his forearm and
took off his glasses so they wouldn't fog up while he tried to get another look
inside the garage. He ended up with a fuzzy view of denim overalls and lots of
brown wavy hair. He couldn't see her face and he definitely couldn't see what
was going on in the garage.

Obviously
she wasn't planning to open the door all the way. He might never find out what
had caused the explosion, but at the very least he needed to make sure that
she wasn't in shock and therefore numbed to the pain of something like a piece
of metal sticking in the back of her skull.

"About
the pool table," she said. "Is it full-sized or bar-sized?"

"It's an Olhausen
eight-footer."

"Really?" She
sounded more than a little interested.

He
knew she could be faking that interest to distract him, but somehow he didn't
think so. It seemed as if she recognized the make of the pool table. He acted
on impulse. "Want to come with me and try it out?"

In
the resulting silence, he could almost see wisps of indecision curling out from
under the door along with the noxious fumes. Of course she was hesitating. A
New York model might not see herself playing pool with just any schmuck who
happened along after an unscheduled explosion.

In
point of fact, he'd never envisioned himself playing pool with a New York
model, either, regardless of whether an explosion had preceded the game or not.
But pool required such concentration and coordination that even one game would
probably be enough to convince him that she was okay.

If
she was new in town she might not have any close friends who would check on her
tonight. She could lapse into unconsciousness and he on the garage floor for
hours, maybe even days, before anyone noticed. She could die in there and not
be discovered until she failed to show up on some runway or another.

Time
to get tough. "Here's the deal," he said. "If you'll come down
to the Rack and Balls and play a game of pool with me, I'll be able to see for
myself that you're not hurt. If you won't, I'm going to call 911 right
now."

"I'd rather you didn't
call 911."

"That's
pretty clear. Obviously, whatever you're building is top secret, but I can't
let myself leave you lying on your garage floor, when something could be
seriously wrong with you."