Trust Me

finding practical applications for theories derived from the science of complexity. I’m in that field because something in me wants to find patterns. I like to produce useful results. Do you understand?”
    “I think so. You want to bring order out of chaos.”
    “I suppose that’s one way of putting it. The point is, I tend to take the same approach in everything I do. I like to identify patterns. Establish goals. Produce results.”
    She eyed him uneasily. “This is the approach you’ve used in your past relationships?”
    He shrugged. “I suppose so.”
    “Obviously it hasn’t worked.”
    “No,” he admitted. “But I’d like to try a different approach with you.”
    “What does that mean? That I’m going to be some sort of experiment?”
    He looked pleased at her perception. “In a way. With you, I’m going to try to let myself go with the flow. For the first time in my life, I’m going to go into a relationship without being overly logical about it.”
    “Be still, my beating heart.”
    “Hell, this is coming out all wrong. I knew I shouldn’t have started talking. I’m no good at talking.”
    “You noticed?”
    “You’ve got a right to be annoyed,” Stark said. “I’m really screwing this up, aren’t I?”
    “Uh-huh.”
    He braced one hand against the wall and regarded her with an expression of savage concentration. “Look, I’ve apologized. If I swear that I won’t try to rush things between us again, that I’ll give you plenty of space, that I won’t pressure you, will you go to that party on Thursday night with me?”
    Desdemona hesitated. Saying yes would probably be one of the dumbest things she had ever done in her life. On the other hand, her panties were still damp. She had never met a man who had such a lethal effect on her senses. And the siren’s call of the Wainwright intuition was singing in her blood.
    “All right,” Desdemona said.
    Relief flared in Stark’s eyes. “You mean it?”
    “Yes. Provided you stick to your promise.”
    “I will. And you’re still my official caterer?”
    “Business is business, isn’t it?” Desdemona gave him a flippant smile that she hoped would hide her shaky nerves.
    “Sure.” Stark’s expression was one of bone-deep satisfaction. “Business is business.”

5

    It had been a near thing.
    He’d come close to blowing it, Stark thought the following evening. He had a rare talent for screwing up his private life.
    Stark sat in his darkened study and contemplated the elegant, colorful, seemingly random pattern he had created on the computer screen.
    The apparent chaos was a thing of beauty to his eyes. It flowed endlessly from one fascinating shape into another. Impelled by a hidden mathematical imperative, it evolved, changed, and reformed itself until the original pattern disintegrated into nothingness.
    But Stark knew how to retrieve the original pattern, and that was the secret that was going to make ARCANE the most sophisticated encryption and decryption software in the world. At least for a while.
    Given the rapid pace of software design development, no single program could hope to remain state-of-the-art forever. ARCANE would need to be constantly improved and updated. But Stark was willing to bet that it would be a long time before anyone caught up with ARCANE.
    Stark Security Systems stood to make a great deal of money off the security program. The biggest customer would be the U.S. Government, which wanted it to protect several of its most sensitive computer systems and those of its high-tech research labs.
    Stark intended to plow the profits from ARCANE into the development of a variety of other security systems that would, in turn, be suited for the private sector.
    It was all so beautifully complicated and yet so astoundingly simple. A perfect example of the dynamics of complex structures.
    Stark wished he could employ the same mathematics on Desdemona.
    She was entirely different from any other woman he had ever held in his arms. Not that there had been all that many. Long periods of celibacy punctuated by a few sputtering affairs had marked his adult love life thus far. He had not enjoyed the instability of the pattern. He wanted a predictable relationship, just as he wanted predictability in his software designs.
    Marriage had, therefore, been the obvious solution. Except that he hadn’t been able to implement it.
    It was not as though he hadn’t done his best to select a suitable mate. He had applied