Lauren (Silicon Valley Billionaires 1)

But my instinct—which had gotten me this far—told me that a proceeding in federal court was going to take years, which would end my dream of launching the patch and revolutionizing healthcare. Because in high tech, if you didn’t move fast, you were dead.

If I chose to prosecute Clive Warren and Jiàn Innovations, I would be effectively eliminating myself from the game. Some other startup would produce technology similar to the patch, eventually. But they might make it expensive, chasing the profit.

That was the opposite of what I wanted.

I could probably, eventually, collect billions of dollars in damages and lost royalties from a lawsuit. But the money wasn’t important. Providing affordable medical testing to the masses was all I’d ever cared about. I wanted to change the world.

If I was tied up in litigation for the next few years, the world was going to move on without me. I didn’t believe that was for the best. I believed making my technology available as soon as possible was for the best.

Sighing, I picked up my phone and called my security manager, Eddie, at the lab. “Is Gabe’s tech guy there? Dave?”

“Yes. We had him background checked. He’s clean. I took his fingerprints, and I also had him cavity searched.” He grunted. “I don’t think he liked that too much.”

“Probably not,” I agreed. “You had to do it, though. I don’t want any third parties on the premises unless I directly clear them, okay?”

“Got it.”

“Thanks, Eddie. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

I closed my computer. I couldn’t read about Li Na or her company anymore. Becoming more anxious wasn’t going to help me have a clear head tomorrow. I got up and stretched, padding over to where Gabe was engrossed in his laptop. “I need to go to bed.”

He scrubbed his hands across his face. “That sucks, because I just had a deal blow up. I have to do damage control.”

I tried to hide my disappointment. Gabe had been spending plenty of time with me and dealing with Paragon. He had his own multibillion-dollar company to run. “Of course.” I kissed him on the cheek and headed toward the bedroom.

“Lauren.”

I stopped, turning to him. “What?”

His eyes brightened. “It’s nice having you here.”

“It is nice…especially with everything going on.”

“Way to add the disclaimer.” He turned back to his screen with a grin. “I still know you like me.”

I sighed as I headed into the bedroom. The thing was, I’d told him—only the day before—that I wanted to keep our relationship strictly business on the one hand, and strictly physical on the other. And there I was, climbing into his four-poster bed, an assortment of my belongings moved neatly into his house.

If I remembered correctly, I’d additionally promised to be “his.”

He also knew I liked him—a lot.

I wasn’t doing a great job of avoiding emotional messiness.

I closed my eyes against all of it, waiting for sleep to give me a reprieve.

The reprieve was brief.

Gabe nudged me. “Lauren.”

“Tomorrow,” I wailed, rolling over. All I wanted to do was sleep. “I’ll have sex with you tomorrow.”

“I’m looking forward to that, but that’s not why I’m waking you up. You need to see this.”

I sat up immediately, sensing the urgency in his voice. Disoriented, I rubbed my eyes and squinted at him. “What’s the matter?”

He pushed his laptop toward me. “I need to show you something.” He hit a button, and the screen came to life, showing pictures of us together. There were two of them—one of us leaving the restaurant the first night he took me to dinner, and one of us standing near his car. There were also dozens of other photographs of us individually, headshots and press photos.

I scrolled through them all, not understanding, until I reached the bottom of the document. There was biographical information about me, the history of the formation of Paragon, as well as information about my board of directors. There was similar information about Gabe and Dynamica.