Beginner's Luck. Kate Clayborn
me tell you what, you don’t spend your life around a bunch of experimental scientists without getting a real skewed sense of what’s awkward. This guy seems completely thrown.
“You’re E.R. Averin?” he says, a little edge of doubt in his voice, and it’s at this point that I get almost relieved to know what I’m dealing with. Not for nothing am I the only female—not to mention the youngest—lab technician to ever work in this department, and in fact the only woman working in a lab tech role in the College of Engineering. I’ve dealt with a lot of dudes who have doubted me.
“I think I’ve made that clear, Mr.…?”
He has the decency to look genuinely chastened. “My apologies, Professor Averin. I’m Ben Tucker.”
He steps forward, holding out his—well, very nice, very large—hand, but I hold up the bottle of ethanol and my rag, shrugging in half-hearted apology. “Hello, Mr. Tucker. I’m not a professor.”
“Right, yes. I apologize.”
“That’s okay,” I say, and I almost feel sorry for him. There’s something about him, some weary feature behind his handsomeness, that gives me the sense I’m getting him on a bad day.
“Please, call me Ben.”
“Okay, Ben. Call me Ms. Averin.”
He smiles at that, and I suspect on anyone else it would seem condescending, that smile. But his seems genuine—wide and a little crooked on the left side, chasing a dimple that appears in his cheek. “Right,” he says again.
There’s a beat of silence, while I take in that smile of his, that dimple. I probably smile back a little, despite my best efforts to look stoic and completely unaffected by him.
“How can I help you, Ben?”
“I’m here representing Beaumont Materials.”
I know Beaumont Materials—anyone who works in my field, who does any kind of work at all in materials science, knows about a company that manufactures everything from pipelines to jet engines to those little plastic thingamajigs you can use to hang pictures without nails. But some additional thread of familiarity tugs at my brain. I generally have a good memory, but probably this guy’s jerk-hotness has scrambled it. I decide not to try and sort it, and head instead over to the steel storage cabinet where we keep supplies, putting some distance between me and my new visitor. “Go on,” I say, appreciating the opportunity to look busy. “I just need to start packing up here.”
“We’ve reached out to you recently, Ms. Averin, regarding the article you and your coauthors published in Metallurgy International.”
Oh. Oh, fuck, I do remember now what that tug of memory is, and my palms go a little more sweaty beneath my latex gloves. “Ah. Yes. I saw a couple of emails. I don’t remember seeing your name, though.”
“I wasn’t part of the original contact team,” he says, stepping farther into the room. “But I read your paper, and I decided I had to meet you, and talk to you about the opportunities Beaumont could offer you for your research.”
“I don’t want any opportunities from Beaumont,” I say, more quickly, more defensively than I intend. I’m immediately grateful for the fact that I’m here alone today—just as I don’t want anyone here knowing about the lottery, I don’t want them catching wind of Beaumont trying to contact me. When those emails had come in, I’d deleted them almost right away, same as I did with any message from potential employers. I’m happy here, and I don’t even want there to be a suggestion to anyone around that I’m otherwise.
He smiles again, and—ugh. I need to get this guy out of here; he is terrible for my self-preservation. “I think we got that message from your silence,” he says, “but I’m afraid we couldn’t let this go without having the chance to tell you what exactly it is we are willing to do for you.” He looks around the lab as he says this, and I suppress a wince—all right, so it may be super clean in here, but it is far from state-of-the art, and to a guy coming from Beaumont Materials, it probably looks budget as all get-out. Even after ten years of being here, Dr. Singh was still the most recent faculty hire, and he’d inherited this, the oldest lab, on a side of the building where the HVAC was unreliable and the floors had never been replaced.
“I’ve got everything I need here,” I say, but at that exact moment yet another handle from the already-dilapidated steel cabinet falls off, clattering on the peeling, faded linoleum. “I mean except for functional handles.”
Hell. That dimple. “We could take care of that.”
“I’m sure you could,” I say, hooking a finger through the hole left by the wayward handle and pulling open the cabinet.
“As I’m sure you know, state-of-the-art equipment is the least of what we’d be willing to do to have you on board. Beaumont is working on alloy technologies that relate directly to your research, and we think we could make a real difference working together.”
I let out an unladylike snort at this, this cookie-cutter pitch he’s giving me. And anyways, I know what alloy technology Beaumont’s been pouring most of its money into in the last five years—big oil and big guns—and I want no part of either. My work’s always been about figuring out weaknesses in old materials, studying bridge or pipeline failures, figuring out how to make what’s already here work better. “I’m not looking to make that kind of difference,” I say, setting the jug of ethanol back in its place.
“Many of the scientists we work with have that reaction initially, I can assure you. But Beaumont’s packages are very attractive—we’re talking a great deal of funding sources for your work. Let me take you to lunch and tell you—”
I cut him off here, bored with everything he has to say, and that’s in spite of the fact that I’m pretty sure I could look at him for a good, long time. “Tell me about the nondisclosure agreement you’re going to make me sign, so I can’t publish research that might hurt your bottom line? Tell me about the devil’s bargain this will turn out to be, when Beaumont uses my research to make some product that is horrible for the environment, or that you put on some weapon that you sell to the government at huge cost? Tell me about all the fine print that says you can terminate my contract if I’m not producing patentable material in the next two years? Listen, no offense to you, Ben, but there’s a reason I’ve avoided private funding in the work I do. There’s a reason I work here.”
“Two of your colleagues here are backed with corporate funding.” Don’t I know it. Dr. Harroway and Dr. Wagner both have massive corporate support, and there’s no kind of fifty-plus years of dirt on any of their equipment. If my lottery money would have made any kind of dent in what we’d need to match corporate funding, I would’ve donated it all. “And the College of Engineering is exploring avenues for long-term partnerships with industry.”
I can feel my eyes narrow at him. This kind of guy was the reason academic research was becoming—was already—a patsy for big money. “Let me ask you something about that Metallurgy International article,” I say, rising to my full—not very full, frankly—height. “What did you think of the technique I used to prepare samples for heat treatment in step three of my experiments?”
It’s fleeting, but I catch it, I think: a flash of something near surprise in his eyes, but he so quickly arranges his features into a sly, I’m-not-ashamed-that-you-caught-me devilishness that I suspect Ben Tucker never really lets himself get taken off guard. To this, I shrug my shoulders casually. “I don’t really blame you, actually. I didn’t write it with a corporate audience—with someone like you—in mind. But this is why I’m not interested in working for your company. I enjoy working with people who really know what it is that I do, and more importantly, with people who know what I really want to do with it.”
He lowers his eyes for a moment, looking down to where the cabinet handle rests on the floor. Damn, he has long eyelashes, a dark contrast to his light hair, which is actually unacceptable for me to be noticing at this time.
He looks