My gaze shot to the door. “Is there someone there?”
“No, it just didn’t recognize your profile,” he yawned.
“My…my profile?”
He nodded, his head falling back on the pillow. “Knight has everyone’s profile loaded in the system so that anyone who enters and doesn’t belong will basically be snuffed.”
Snuffed. Meaning, I would be killed. All because a vacuum didn’t recognize me?
“Rob…can I ask you a question?”
“Yeah.”
“Do you like living like this?”
“You mean in constant fear that a piece of technology will decide I’m a threat and kill me?” He shrugged. “I’ve seen worse.”
“Okay, but I haven’t,” I stressed, flicking the side of his head.
He popped up instantly, his eyes more alert than they were seconds ago. “Hey, no, that’s just—I didn’t mean to freak you out. I’m just tired. It was a long drive and?—”
“I get it, but you do realize that normal people don’t live like this,” I practically screeched. “You have sensors all over the place and machine guns in the peaks of your roof. There’s a vacuum out there with murder written all over his plastic face, just waiting to take a shot at me. And what the hell was that screen that popped up last night with Knight? I mean, he just showed up!”
“He was checking in,” Rob explained.
“We were having sex!”
“Right. I can talk to him about that.”
“It’s an invasion of privacy!” I argued.
It wasn’t that Rob wasn’t upset by this stuff. I knew he was, but he just went with the flow, acting as if this was all completely normal.
None of it was. In fact, this was so not normal that I didn’t even have anything to compare it to.
“Hey, I know this is a lot to take in,” he said, sitting up to hug me. “I’m sorry about the way this was all introduced to you, but I promise, you’ll get used to it, and then you’ll hardly notice any of this stuff is around.”
I wasn’t sure that I believed him, but I didn’t want to seem like I wasn’t willing to give this a try either. “Okay.”
“And hey, that vacuum really does do a good job.”
“Bonus, right?” I said, forcing a smile.
He pressed a kiss to my lips that immediately made me soften toward the whole thing. Maybe I was being too weird about the whole thing. After all, it was an adjustment just like anything else in life. I could deal with this.
“Hey, you know what you need?”
“Food?”
“Exactly, and I know a great cook.”
“In town?”
“Nope. Right on the property. Come on. You’ll love her food.”
I rolled out of bed, quickly getting dressed. After such a long drive and fast food at every stop, I could do with some home-cooked meals. I showered in record time and was out the door before Rob.
I felt a lot better about today. The sun was shining, the temperature was perfect, and most importantly, nobody in town was trying to figure out what to get me for a wedding that already happened.