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clarification. Instead, his eyes twinkled mischief at her, and he said, “I think I’ll keep that to myself and go with you being a puppy whisperer. I’d recommend you do the same. It’ll drive Caro crazy.”
    Since Jay knew Caro well enough to agree with that last statement, she saw no need to linger.
    She had taken but two steps when she heard Caro entering through the backdoor leading in from the yard. Jay inhaled, separating out and analyzing the scents. Caro had been picking apples. Meaning that if everything went well and Marissa did not demand Jay leave the house, Jay could offer to bake an apple pie for dessert. But now was not the best time to discuss such trivialities. Best make herself scarce before Caro waylaid her.
    “We’ll talk tonight, after everyone’s in bed.” Michael’s softly pitched words drifted up to her. “Go on up. He’s in his old room—not that you need me to tell you that.”
    Jay sprinted up the stairs while Michael, mind reader that he was, strode off to intercept his daughter before Caro realized that Jay had arrived, and commandeered her attention. A bloom of warmth spread in the pit of Jay’s stomach. Michael, as humans liked to say, had her back.
    She halted by the door to Tyler’s old bedroom. This was it. Make or break time.
    As though sensing his mistress’s uncertainty, the sleeping pup whimpered. Jay soothed him back into slumber by smoothing the fur down his spine. Unfortunately, her own concerns could not be so easily soothed. As always, they centered on her illogical but painful yearning for the young human male currently hiding out in this room. Whether he still wanted her in his life once the pros and cons had been weighed. Whether he could forgive her for putting his family at risk simply by existing. Whether he still loved her….
    Or had finally wised up to the insanity of a human loving a machine, and decided to move on.
    Excitement and eagerness at the prospect of seeing her boyfriend again had been supplanted by another emotion—one that clamped her chest and squeezed like some giant vise, and made the back of her throat ache as she struggled to swallow a huge lump that she knew wasn’t real, but physically affected her just the same. And when she lifted her hand to the door handle, a part of her was shocked to see her hand tremble. The desire to run back downstairs and use Caro to avoid this confrontation was almost overwhelming.
    Jay analyzed her physiological responses and searched her databases for information, determined to put a name to this debilitating emotion that had so thoroughly ensnared her. Names were powerful labels—hence her creator’s reluctance to bestow one upon her. Hence the irony that she had eventually taken his middle name for her own.
    Yes. Naming this emotion would be the first step toward defeating it.
    Data from countless sources poured into her brain and in a microsecond, she had her answer. Ah. So this was what dread felt like. It was a minor miracle that humans functioned at all whenever they fell victim to it.
    Jay scrubbed the palm of her hand down her jeans, gripped the door handle, and opened the door to Tyler’s bedroom.
    He lay stretched out on the bed, hands behind his head. A sheaf of the manuscript paper he used to notate songs and music sat in his lap. His eyelids were closed, highlighting the blue-black smudges of sleeplessness.
    Jay inhaled sharply, locked her shaky knee joints, and wedged her shoulder against the doorframe to counteract abrupt dizziness. She performed a swift diagnostic scan of her systems, which only confirmed what she already knew: There was nothing that needed attention, nothing that required recalibration. Which of course meant her reactions were solely caused by him. Tyler. The young human male who meant so much to Jay that she would willingly sacrifice herself to keep him safe.
    Too, she would let him go if he demanded it of her. Or, if the rational part of her brain deemed it the only way