He looked up at Kayla and knew, just knew, he needed to know more. He needed to know everything about her, to know her intimately. And he wasn’t giving up.
On the following Wednesday morning, Kayla showed up early at Whittaker Enterprises’ headquarters. She’d arranged with Noah to tour the company’s offices, talk to people, follow him around and, basically, see how things operated.
She’d taken extra-special care with her clothes and makeup. She’d already discovered the hard way that, for a good chunk of the world, young single female meant not to be taken seriously.
So, today she’d paired navy flare-leg trousers with a striped blue-and-yellow open-collar shirt. Her jewelry was discreet and understated, just a watch and some small cubic-zirconia stud earrings.
The look was classy but professional, or at least she hoped so. As Ms. Rumor-Has-It, she had to dress the part, but this was something different altogether.
On the drive over to Noah’s office, she’d reflected again on the research she’d done and the articles she’d read on Whittaker Enterprises—and on Noah himself—in preparation for today’s visit.
Whittaker Enterprises had been started by Noah’s father back in the 1960s and had since metamorphosed into a conglomerate with interests primarily in real estate and high technology. Noah’s oldest brother, Quentin, had taken over the reins of the family company a few years back, when his father had moved into semi-retirement. At the same time, Noah had become the point person for Whittaker Enterprises’ computer business. That was, as soon as he’d quelled his maverick tendencies. After graduating from M.I.T. with a bachelor’s degree in computer science, instead of joining the family business, he’d headed off to pursue a race-car driving career.
She’d found news articles from the time that detailed the surprise with which Noah’s move had been greeted in Boston social circles. It was as if he’d announced he’d rather be the jockey than the horse owner. It just wasn’t done. Not in the rarified circles of Boston old-line families.
Still, he’d entered the Indy car-racing circuit. After three years of heady success had come the accident that had marked the end of his career. Precisely, it had happened on turn three at the Michigan Indy 400. Noah had been fighting for the lead with Jack Gillens, one of his racing buddies. Just as Noah was going by him, Jack had lost control of his car and hit the barrier wall on the racing oval head-on; car debris had gone flying everywhere.
Attempts at resuscitating Jack had proved futile. Minutes after the crash, the race had finished under a yellow flag. Noah had won, only to learn Jack had been taken to the hospital but had been declared dead upon arrival. A later investigation had concluded Noah wasn’t to blame for the crash.
Until the accident seven years ago, Noah had been in the news a lot. He had sex appeal in spades, and that, combined with his high-testosterone racing career, had been enough to net him a dozen magazine covers and have him named one of People’s Sexiest Men Alive.
But after the accident, he’d holed up. Then, after a few months, he’d made a public announcement that he was retiring from racing. He’d gone back to M.I.T., gotten his doctorate in computer science and then joined the family firm.
He dropped out of the public eye for a short time after the accident, but he came back with a vengeance. In his new incarnation as a playboy, he was seen squiring around models, actresses and, yes, even a reality-show contestant. He was back making regular appearances in People magazine, in Us Weekly and in the local gossip columns.
Kayla had known about the accident, of course. People talked, still.
But she hadn’t known the details of the fatal crash or of Noah’s life at the time. She’d still been in college at that point. However, having read the news articles, the past—Noah’s past—was all very fresh for her.
She remembered his reaction back at the book-launch party when she’d brought up the racing accident—he’d shut down immediately—and she cringed inwardly again.
And, as she walked around Whittaker Enterprises with Noah, everything she’d read was at the back of her mind.
“I’ve been doing some research on nanotechnology,” she said conversationally.
“Really?” he said. “What have you discovered?”
“Probably lots of things I should have been hearing from you instead.”
He laughed.
“So,” she said, “instead of my telling you what I’ve discovered, why don’t you tell me what you know?”
“All right. Have you heard of Moore’s Law?”
“No.”
“Okay, well, Moore’s Law basically says data density in computers will double about every eighteen months or so.”
She nodded. “How does Moore’s Law relate to nanotechnology?”
“I’m getting there,” he said, giving her an amused look. “If you’ve done your homework, you know nanotechnology concerns the manipulation of atoms. It gets its name from the fact that the structures it studies—atoms and the like—are measured in nanometers. A nanometer is one-billionth of a meter.”
“Right.” So far everything he’d said was in line with her research.
“The potential applications for nanotechnology are practically limitless, from handheld supercomputers to faster diagnoses for cancer.”
“Wow.”
“Exactly. People in the computing field are racing each other to harness and use nanotechnology, even though it’s still a young field. It wasn’t until the mid-1980s that a scanning tunneling microscope was developed that could study atoms. But now nanotechnology is the biggest thing since computers.”
“Are you saying that Whittaker Enterprises has developed a product that uses nanotechnology?”
He smiled. “I haven’t gotten to that part of the story yet. You’ll have to stay tuned.”
“But—”
“Come on,” he said, interrupting her, “let me introduce you to people and then get out of your way. You’ll start to get a picture of what we’re all about.”
She sighed. At least she’d made some progress. “Okay, great.”
Noah, she soon learned, had organized the computer side of the business into project teams, each headed by a team leader. The teams were small groups flexible enough to make things happen.
She jotted notes as she talked to people. One group had developed a new, ultra-slim handheld PDA that was about to launch on the market. Another was testing a super-light portable DVD player. Small seemed to be the name of the game. However, no one brought up nanotechnology in any detail. She got the sense that information was rather sensitive.