Don't the optics manuals tell you never to do this? Why isn't this thing blowing up in his face?" She started tracing the wiring in her mind, trying t... develop a mathematical schematic for the optics before her. She dimly realized that Basel had cleverly cross-wired the holo-scanners in such a way that none of their collectors ever made the critical mistake of allowing a loop oscillation. Was that possible? And what was the purpose for all this madness? She finally shook her head in. Never in their conversations about relationships had she heard him say that he loved any of them. Never had Nathan expressed more than a passing interest in any of them. It then dawned on Charlie that he always made it a point to come back to her after each one of those women left. Their relationship post-mortems always included a bottle of wine and a fresh pizza. For her, it was crying and getting a hug. But with Nathan, he seemed almost happy that his relationships had failed. Of course he. " Yes si ... Mr. Sam." Come here and give me a hug." I opened my arms.Pat came forward and hugged me, "Oh Mr. Sam, for you I'll try real hard." That's better." I told her stepping back. "Now let's see if I can find Maria."I found Maria where Pat told me I would. She was bent over with her back toward me but I could see a polishing rag in her hand which she was using to apply wax to one of the many mahogany vertical balusters attached to the banister handrail. She was dressed in another of the. Neither can this go on. Jeff and those men and women with him risked their lives to save us. He looked away from us when he saw we were naked. They covered our bodies as soon as they could. He and his team did everything they could to maintain what little modesty we had left. We saw tears in his eyes when he let his visor retract as Kayla was taking us out of that cage. They treated us like we were precious to them. Us. Three orphans who had nothing — were worth nothing."We want to be his.