Off the Grid Christmas by Mary Ellen Porter

Author:Mary Ellen Porter
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3, mobi
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2017-10-19T04:00:00+00:00

TEN

Arden had always wondered if a person’s heart could actually stop from fear.

Now she knew.

It could.

Hers had.

It started again when a woman screamed, the high-pitched sound like a jolt of electricity to Arden’s flagging cardiac muscle. Arden jumped, her grip on Sebastian loosening. Sebastian yowled and twisted out of her arms.

Arden grabbed for him. Missed. Started after him as he rushed across the room.

“Sebastian!” she yelled, her heart pounding over the sound of other voices.

“Stop!” Kane commanded, and Sebastian did, plopping his furry body down on a pretty throw rug near the kitchen sink. Arden skidded to a standstill a couple of inches from Sebastian.

“What in the world,” a woman said, “is going on here?”

Arden whirled around, found herself three feet from an older couple. Flannel pajamas, bare feet, salt-and-pepper hair. They were a matched set. The man clutched a baseball bat. The woman held a huge tome that probably outweighed her by several pounds.

“Is that The Iliad?” Arden asked, and the woman glanced down at the book.

“Why, yes! It is,” she responded.

“Light reading before bed, Mom?” Kane asked, slipping his gun back into the holster beneath his coat.

“Mom?” Arden repeated, but no one seemed all that interested in responding.

“This was one of your grandfather’s books. It was the first thing I could find that could be used as a weapon.” The woman set the book down on the counter. “We were certain we were about to get murdered in our beds.”

“Except that we’re not in our beds, dear,” the man pointed out. He leaned the baseball bat against the wall and let it rest there. “We would have been murdered in the kitchen. It’s good to see you, son. It’s surprising, but good.”

“I’m as surprised as you are.” Kane ran a hand over his hair. “I thought you were overseas.”

“We flew back a few days ago,” the woman said, her gaze darting to Arden. “We got to our place and a pipe had burst. They’re fixing it and drying everything out, so we decided to stay here until the work was finished. You did say that we could use the cottage any time.”

“Right. I did.”

“So...” Arden cut into what seemed like an awfully awkward conversation. Shouldn’t they be hugging? Throwing themselves into each other’s arms and talking about how much they’d missed each other? “I guess these are your parents?”

“Julia and Henry Walker,” Kane said. “Mom and Dad, this is Arden DeMarco.”

“DeMarco...” Mr. Walker mused. “Why do I know that name?”

“Because my business partner is Jace DeMarco, Arden’s...”

“No, no. That’s not it,” Mrs. Walker interjected. “Remember, Henry? That paper we read on quantum computing?”

“Oh, that’s right! Superb work. Real cutting-edge stuff.” Mr. Walker smiled broadly. “Are you that Arden DeMarco?”

“Yes,” she admitted, surprised that they’d read any of her work. “It was part of my dissertation.”

“Your theory on error-correction algorithms was groundbreaking. Were you really able to use only four qubits?”

“To a point,” Arden answered. “Unfortunately, as you are probably aware, interference is still an issue, even with the use of trapped ion qubits with intense magnetic fields.

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