Chapter 7      

Working in a temporary office situated in the heart of a university campus sometimes made Moira feel old.

She passed baby-faced students on the quad on her way to Emmits Merriam’s Department of Physics. Since they’d only broken ground on Artemis’ future building three months ago, Evan had worked with the university to find them a place to hang their hat until the facility was complete, hopefully by summer. The various science departments had offered up temporary space, and after looking over both their lab space and security, Evan had selected the third floor, west corner in the physics building. For now, it served their purposes. 

They had six offices, a conference room, a break room, and a high-tech lab, one Evan could use for his projects while his own private offsite lab was being finished. Moira knew they had a long way to go until they reached Artemis’ full potential, but she was fully committed. Sure, it was a little frustrating sometimes to be in the start-up phase, but she reminded herself daily they were building Artemis from the ground up.

She only had one part-time employee helping her right now, but she was finalizing additional positions to hire along with the organizational chart.

Said part-timer was waiting for her when she opened the door, an ever-eager smile on his face. Honestly, it was hard to miss Gary Frehlich. He was six foot seven—one of his favorite jokes was about being too clumsy and gangly to play basketball—with blond hair that practically glowed. Being a PhD student in electrical engineering, he totally geeked out on all things technology. 

“Hey, Moira,” he said. “How’s it hanging today? I heard about Evan’s friend, Chase. Man, that’s rough.”

While Gary was prone to say awkward or inappropriate things like “how’s it hanging?,” he was one of the most easygoing people to work with, had an incredible attention to detail, and would do anything to help Artemis. One, because Evan Michaels was his hero. Two, because he’d rented a room from Evan’s wife before she and Evan had gotten married. And three, because Gary was graduating in the spring and hoping to apply and gain acceptance into Artemis’ first inventors’ class—or get a real job, as he liked to joke, if that didn’t work out.

“In time, he’s going to be all right,” she told him. 

“Are we working on invites today? I have a couple of hours before I meet with my advisor.”

Gary never seemed to let her take coat off before he asked for his marching orders. “I’m going to finalize the design for the invitation, but we’re waiting on Evan’s approval for the guest list.” She made sure not to frown. Gary would only get anxious and ask about it.

“Okay, I’ll work on drawing that org chart you gave me for the institute,” Gary said. “I know you and Evan don’t have all of the positions finalized yet, but we can always add them in later.”

She wanted to sigh. Evan had a vision, all right, but he was short on details most of the time. Like how many people they would need to run the center full-time besides her and what their annual budget would be. He always told her they’d have enough. Not exactly helpful.

They were still learning their rhythm with each other—and while she’d realized there were many things she could handle on her own, without running them by the perpetually busy Evan, some of her ideas and plans required his feedback. Like the organizational chart. They’d already met to discuss it, but he’d grown fidgety after about thirty minutes and told her she needed to talk to Chase. She’d decided to put her ideas on paper first—with Gary’s tech help, of course. Chase struck her as the kind of man who responded better to ideas on paper. But Chase wouldn’t be in a position to comment on her org chart for some time.

“Maybe you should finish up the budget for the fundraiser instead,” she said.

“Do we have a final count yet?” Gary asked, his right leg bouncing, an ongoing sign of his hyperactive personality.

She mentally tallied up the competitors Chase was opposed to inviting with their plus ones. There were fourteen invites in question, more or less. She did the math. “Let’s run one budget for one fifty and one for one sixty-four.”

“Sweet!” Gary exclaimed. “Can I get you a coffee?”

He asked her every day, and while she knew he was happy to do it, she didn’t feel comfortable with it. “I told you you’re not an assistant like that, Gary.”

His shoulder lifted in a shrug. “I know, but you look like you had a tough night.”

She and Caroline had consumed a bottle and half of wine, snickered like school girls over Channing Tatum and his stripper moves, and then fallen asleep on the couch. If it hadn’t been so fun, so needed, she might have been embarrassed.

“I’m fine,” she said, making a shooing motion. “Go work on the budget.”

He saluted her and darted off. She chuckled all the way down the hall to her office. As she was taking off her coat, she heard, “Hey,” and jumped a foot.

Turning around, she gaped at Evan. “You scared me. I didn’t hear you come in.”

He made a face. “Sorry. It’s these Italian shoes—I could be a cat burglar. Thought I’d pop by before I headed to the hospital. I was up there late with Chase, and then I spent the rest of the night breaking the news to everybody at Quid-Atch and redistributing his work for the next couple of months. It’s…a lot.”

She finished taking off her coat and hung it over her chair. “What can I do to help?” she asked.

“Whew! I was hoping you’d ask. Can you look into finding him a furnished rental house? I’ve got back-to-back calls and emails up the wazoo. I knew Chase did a lot, but Jesus… Sorry. It’s a little overwhelming, trying to figure out how everything is going to work without him. But we’re going to do it. Somehow.”

She knew he was saying it more for himself than for her benefit. “Do you have any suggestions for a style of home he might like?”

He scratched his jaw. “Yeah, I’ve been thinking about that. I’d like to find him something that looks like a mountain cabin minus the Lincoln-Logs look. You know. Rustic. One story with wide windows and a large front porch. Open floor plan. Big hearth. Homey.”

Her brow rose. “That doesn’t sound like something Chase would want. He strikes me as more of a modern—”

“That’s what we’re going with,” Evan said quickly. “Assuming you can find one on short notice. Margie assured me it’s a common style of home in the West.”

“It is,” she said, guarded. “Are you sure, though? Chase—”

“May complain about it,” Evan said, “but he doesn’t like anything right now. Ignore his negativity. When you find the house, give me a holler. This is my main priority. I convinced your brother to keep him in the hospital for another night, perhaps two, to give us time to secure a house. If we put him up at The Grand, he’ll refuse to leave. I know him.”

She bit the inside of her cheek. He’d convinced her brother to keep Chase longer? Wow. That must have been an interesting conversation. She wasn’t going to ask.

“I’ll call the real estate broker my siblings and I used to find our houses,” Moira said. “She knows all the properties up here like no other.”

“If Margie and I weren’t so keen on building a new house, I’d ask for her name and number,” Evan said. “Okay, enough of that. I’m off. Make your call and let me know what you find. You have full power to rent the place in my name. If we find something today, I can tinker with the house to make it more Chase-able. He won’t be able to do things normally for a while in that wheelchair.”

Which was going to annoy the crap out of him. “I’m on it.”

The smile he gave her was probably intended to be encouraging, but his own worry showed through. “Trust me, Chase is going to be a hard case for a while, but he’ll grit his teeth and rise to the occasion. He always does.”