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didn’t bother to stifle his laughter. “Is he always like this?”
    “Worse,” Melanie acknowledged. “Ever since he linked his audio into the TV he’s talked like a juvenile delinquent. It’s frustrating.”
    “It’s great,” Chris disagreed. “A computer with a home boy personality. What kind of processing power does he have?”
    “Watch,” Melanie said. She quickly reeled off an intricate set of equations for Einstein to compute.
    Chris shook his head in amazement. “Can he handle all that?”
    Piece of toast
, the computer replied.
    “Cake, E. It’s cake,” Melanie said.
    Cake … toast … same major food group
, Einstein replied as his CPU tower began to hum.
Catch you on the flip side
.
    “Incredible,” Chris said. “This is the most revolutionary system I’ve ever seen. He’s bound to make a hit at the board meeting.”
    “Board meeting?”
    “Sure. That’s my plan.” He turned away from Einstein, giving his full attention to Melanie. “In three weeks the board of directors hold their yearend meeting. All the major players at Sheffield will be there. My strategy is to present Einstein at that meeting, promoting him as the ‘computer of the future,’ or something like that.”
    Works for me
, Einstein said, taking a momentary break from his processing.
    Melanie wasn’t so sure. “Your father’s going to be at that meeting, isn’t he?”
    “Yes, but that’s the beauty of it. If the rest of the board members agree to fund Einstein’s development, my father will have to support the decision.”
    “And if they don’t?”
    “They will,” Chris stated confidently. “Your hardware’s faulty, not your computer. We’ll replace his old parts with new, improved ones.”
    Melanie sighed sadly. “Chris, Einstein has hundreds of parts. There’s no way we could afford to replace them all.”
    “So we’ll make a list of the most critical ones and concentrate on replacing those. I have some friends in wholesale. I’ll call in a few favors.” He grinned broadly. “Maybe I could barter with them for a few golf lessons.”
    Getting those parts may seem mundane, even humorous, to Chris, but Melanie saw it as an answer to her prayers. No longer would she have to make do with second-rate equipment, hoping that Einstein’s overworked circuits would last until her next paycheck. With tolerance worries behind her, she could increase Einstein’s processing power, enabling his hardware to operate at full capacity. He’d become the computer she’d hoped he could be, the computer she’d known he could be if given half a chance.
    Chris was giving him that chance. Gratefulness forthe man beside her warmed her heart. She knew she was being foolish. Chris was willing to help Einstein only because he could use her computer to advance his own business career. E was a means to an end for him, nothing more. He didn’t care about Einstein, and he certainly didn’t care about her. Reality set in. The glow in her heart faded, leaving cold disappointment in its place.
    “Melanie?”
    She didn’t answer. She knew he was going to ask her if she accepted his offer, and she knew she would have to say yes. She had no choice. Chris’s plan to put Einstein in front of the most powerful men at Sheffield Industries was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. If those men agreed to fund Einstein, her computer’s future would be assured. She needed Chris’s help, for Einstein’s sake. Even if the thought of working closely with him threw her into a panic.
    “Melanie—”
    She couldn’t answer, not just yet. Her alliance with Chris wouldn’t be a long one—just for the three weeks until the board meeting. Surely she could minimize his corporate-climber influence on Einstein for three short weeks.
    Minimizing Chris’s influence on her was an entirely different matter. Just thinking about the man made her emotions more tangled than Einstein’s wiring. Still she was, after all, a scientist. She could use