resolved things pretty well. You ever work for anyone else?"
He nodded and, oddly, his smile vanished. "Yeah. Ages ago. But I only had one other employer—and I'm with Satco now, which tells you everything important about that."
Dayne said, "I've had a couple of those, too. Tell you what." She took the contract back from him. "I'm too tired to go through this right now, and I want to spend some time with you. I'll get the gist of things from the employee handbook." She sighed. "Where do I sign?"
One of his eyebrows slid slowly up, then down again. He shrugged. "The last page. Sign it, date it, and write the time."
Obviously he'd never signed a contract he hadn't read. Well, neither had she, but there was a first time for everything. She turned to the last page. It had a box for a notary seal, and a section of control numbers along the top. In the center was a long block of legalese that said she stated that she had read the contents of the contract and understood them, and agreed to them. Then came the line for her signature, and the place for the date and time—and a line for the signature of the "duly authorized representative of Satco."
She pressed the heavy red fountain pen to the paper, and felt the sharp bite of pain in her thumb—and looked down at her own blood dripping onto the signature line of the contract.
"Damn," she muttered. She grabbed a paper towel to wipe up the blood; the coating on the paper repelled ink. She hoped it would repel blood . . . but it didn't. Instead, it soaked it in, and capillary action drew it into a big, disgusting blot. "Damn, damn!" She sucked on her finger and stared at the mess.
"Just write through it," Adam told her. "I won't care."
But Dayne pulled the back sheet of the contract free, and muttered, "I would." She grabbed the sheet in both hands.
Adam t