Finally Darcie had had enough and decided she’d voice a complaint. But as she prepared to do that, Nolan turned to Blackstone.
Nolan’s demeanor was pleasant, but his smile had an edge to it. “Although I appreciate your willingness to contribute, Dr. Blackstone, I have to ask you to stand down. You’ve usurped more than your share of this hour, and I can’t allow you to take any more time.”
Blackstone looked surprised. “But I’m only –”
“Sabotaging the Harcourt team effort? I can’t believe you’d do that when you’ve told me privately you support cooperation instead of competition.”
“I do believe in cooperation. I just –”
“Then shut the hell up, Blackstone.” Nolan’s dimpled grin got a laugh from the audience, if not from his colleague. Then Nolan continued his presentation uninterrupted.
Although the audience had enjoyed Nolan’s comment and might assume it was all in good fun, Darcie knew that he’d drawn a line in the sand. She wanted to stand up and cheer for her gutsy nerd. He’d challenged the bully and come out a victor.
The question and answer session went completely in Nolan’s favor. The audience didn’t seem impressed by Blackstone anymore. After the hour ended, Darcie watched Blackstone working hard to make amends with Nolan. Her sweetie was friendly but reserved. Darcie was dying to talk to him about what had taken place.
She waited in the back of the room. Nolan walked toward her, but unfortunately so did Blackstone, who was raving about Nolan’s behavior during the panel.
“Did you hear this guy take me down a peg?” he said to Darcie. “I was flabbergasted, but then I thought wow, Bradbury has balls. Who knew?”
“Everybody knew,” Darcie said. “Except you, apparently.”
Blackstone laughed uneasily. “Yeah, well, I know now. I’ll be on my guard next time I share the podium with him.” He turned to Nolan. “We’re still friends, right? No hard feelings?”
“No hard feelings.” But the expression in Nolan’s gray eyes had changed. There was a steeliness there that hadn’t existed before. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I have some things to discuss with Darcie.”
“Absolutely. See you both tonight at the banquet. Unless you’ve changed your mind about that.”
Nolan glanced at Darcie. “Are you good with the previous plan?”
“I am.”
“Then we’ll see you there, Blackstone.” Nolan placed a hand in the small of Darcie’s back. “Come on, you. We’re going to the bar for a drink.”
She laughed as they started out of the room. “And I’m buying.”
“No, I’m buying. I might buy a round for everyone in the bar.”
“Please, don’t.” She glanced up at him. “I want some private time with my hero.”
He smiled. “You liked that?”
“I loved that. But we have to talk.”
“Yeah, I know. This is getting complicated.”
Chapter Ten
Nolan discovered he loved being a conquering hero in Darcie’s eyes. Once they had their wine, she insisted on toasting what she called his Blackstone Smackdown. He had to admit that had a certain ring to it.
“I know you want to like him.” She sat across from him in a small booth. “But he’s not your friend.”
“I’ve finally realized that. I haven’t wanted to think of him as a glory seeker, but I can’t ignore the evidence.”
“Spoken like a true scientist.”
“And Blackstone’s a true scientist, too. A huge ego doesn’t preclude excellence in the field. Thomas Edison promoted himself shamelessly. Blackstone’s team may be the first to colonize Mars. I have to give the devil his due.”
“Maybe, but you don’t have to take his shit.”
Nolan laughed. “Not since I got my magic stone.” He pulled it out of his pocket and set it in the middle of the table. “You’ll make a believer of me, yet. The whole time he was hogging the spotlight, I sat holding onto it while it got warmer and warmer. Whether it was the stone’s influence or not, I saw Blackstone in a totally different light. I’m sure he’s behaved that way before but I was oblivious. Not today.”
“Clarity is good.”
“Damn straight. Of course, it’s always possible the stone worked for me because you said it would. You planted the suggestion and my imagination took it from there.” He wondered if she’d leap to the defense of her belief system.
Instead she merely smiled at him. “Could be. Does it matter?”
“No.” He looked into her eyes and basked in the warmth shining there. “All that matters is that he won’t be kicking sand in my face anymore.” He pocketed the stone. “But I’m keeping this handy.”
“I’m glad. I feel better knowing you have it.”
“Me, too. Even if it isn’t a magic stone, you gave it to me and every time I touch it, I’m reminded of you. And speaking of touching . . .” He laid his arm on the table, palm up. “Give me your hand.”
She placed her hand in his. “Don’t forget we’re still in a very public place.”
“I won’t, but the happy hour crowd isn’t here yet.” He brought her hand closer and cradled it in both of his. She had such soft skin. He hadn’t paid attention to her nail polish before but now he saw that it was pale lavender, which suited her non-traditional take on life. He turned her hand over. “I’m going to read your palm.”
“Sure you are.”
“Do you know how to read palms?” He traced the creases in hers and was gratified by her involuntary shudder. Glancing up, he caught the flare of desire in her blue eyes.
She cleared her throat. “I remember some of the basics from having it done a couple of times, but I’m no expert.”
“Neither am I.”
“Really?” Her voice was still a little husky. “I’m so surprised to hear that.”
That husky note in her voice was a major turn-on. “It doesn’t take an expert to read your palm. It only takes a man with a little inside info. And it’s a great excuse to hold your hand.”
“Then proceed. I can’t wait to hear what you have to say.”
“Okay, here goes. See this line, here?” He drew his forefinger in an arc across her palm and she shivered again. This had been a great idea.
“Yes, I see it.”
“It means that in less than an hour, you’ll meet a tall, dark stranger. Actually, he’s tall, but his hair’s more brown than black, and he’s not exactly a stranger.”
“If you ask me, he’s getting stranger by the second.”
“Very funny. Now pay attention, because you need to know what I’m about to tell you. This tall, brown-haired, semi-familiar stranger will escort you to an obligatory cocktail party, followed by an obligatory dinner.”
“Cocktail party?”
“Yeah. I forgot to mention that.”
“Good thing I brought my little black dress.”
“It’s for speakers and their guests. Starts at five-thirty. Anyway, this line here . . .” He followed another curve. “See it?”
“Yes. You’re tickling me.”
“Let me trace it one more time to be sure we’re on the same page . . . I mean palm.”
“I suppose you realize you’re also turning me on.”
“I certainly hope so.” He looked into her eyes. “Because the line I just traced indicates that you’ll be bored silly during the cocktail party and the dinner. You’ll have to draw on this palm-reading experience to get through it.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.” She held his gaze. “How and when did you get so sexy?”
“When you weren’t looking. I’m what’s known as a late bloomer.”
“In that case, thank heavens for Space Expo.”
“I’m pretty damned grateful for it, too, and I’m about to tell you why.” He studied her palm again. “This deep crease right here . . .” He dampened his finger and slid it slowly along the indentation a few times.
Her breathing quickened. “As you well know, I�
�m very sensitive to touch, so you’re driving me crazy with that routine.”
“Good.” He lifted his head. “Because that crease means that after the boring cocktail party and the boring dinner, the tall, brown-haired, semi-familiar stranger . . . is going to strip you naked, take you to bed, and kiss every inch of your sweet body.” And he currently had an erection that would make leaving the booth a bit of a problem.
She sucked in a breath. “Can we skip the cocktail party and the dinner?”
“No.”
“Damn.”
He brought her palm to his mouth and placed a soft kiss in the middle of it. “Sorry.”
“It’s a good thing you said all that in this bar and not standing outside my room, or we’d never have made it to your obligatory events. I can be extremely persuasive.”
“I’m sure you can, which is why I’m not walking you to your room when we leave here. And we’d better get going soon. Harcourt will have my hide if I don’t show up on time, and I have to shower and change.”
“You’re not going like that?”
“Nope. Gotta wear a monkey suit.” The thought of that helped tame his bad boy.
“You’re going in a tux?”
“’fraid so. Blame Harcourt. He insists on flash and dash from his people. It’s a royal pain in the ass.”
“Oh, Dr. Bradbury, you have no clue, do you?” Her smile was slow and languid.
“About what?” He didn’t focus on that smile because it had the power to recreate the problem he’d just fixed.
“A woman loves a man in a tux.”
“She does?”
“Oh, yeah. You didn’t know that?”
“Never had a reason to find out. I haven’t had a serious girlfriend since I started working for Harcourt, and prior to that I’d never worn one of the damn things, thank God.” He peered at her. “You’re happy about this tux thing?”
“Extremely happy. Watching you walk around in a tux will be better than foreplay.”
He laughed and pushed his empty wine glass away. “Maybe this cocktail party and dinner won’t be as boring as I thought. Now I can hardly wait to suit up. Let’s go.”
Forty-five minutes later, he knocked on Darcie’s door. Getting into the tux had been as much of a hassle as he’d remembered, but he’d struggled with a glad heart. Thanks to Harcourt, he was wearing a babe magnet outfit.
She opened the door, and her eyes widened. He’d planned to preen a little and enjoy her reaction to his tux presentation. That plan evaporated once his attention moved from her upswept hair and wide eyes to the rest of her. “Wow.”
“I could say the same about you, Dr. Bradbury.” She stepped into the hallway and laid her hand on his white tux shirt. “You’re . . . yummy.”
He gazed down at her. “I don’t have a word to describe you. The language isn’t up to it.” He moved back so that he could take in her incredible beauty. “That’s not a little black dress. I imagined something like what the high school choir girls used to wear, those knit things with the flared skirt.”
“It might not be a knit, but it’s not really that fancy.”
“Oh, yes, it is. All smooth satin and it fits like a glove. Permission to ogle.”
She smiled. “Permission granted.”
“Turn for me.” He spun his finger in a circle. “I want to see . . . oh, my God. It’s backless. How does that work? How does everything stay where it’s supposed to?”
“A halter top that fastens behind my neck and built in soft cups so I don’t have to wear a bra.”
He groaned softly. “We need to leave. I can’t stand here another second or I’ll lose my job, my career, and my chance to colonize Mars.”
“Let me get my purse.” She ducked into her room and returned with a little black satin thing that matched her dress. She pulled the door shut. “Let’s go.”
He drew in a ragged breath. “And you thought watching me would be better than foreplay. Watching you move in that dress is better than sex.”
“Really?”
“Of course not. We haven’t even had sex yet and already I know it’ll be the best thing that’s ever happened to me in my entire life. But I told you I don’t have the vocabulary to handle the sight of you in that black satin number. Your rhinestone necklace points the way to your cleavage, and your naked back invites me to kiss you all over. Plus your hips sway when you walk in those five-inch heels and that’s driving me nuts. All I can think of is dragging you back to your room and throwing you down on that king-sized bed.”
“I’d say your vocabulary’s functioning pretty darned well.”
“Enjoy it while you can. I can feel brain cells dying every time I sneak a peek at you. I’m pacing myself on those glances, because eventually if I keep looking, my language skills will be reduced to nothing but grunts, groans, and tortured sighs.”
“And I thought I was the one who liked drama.”
“You obviously do. That dress is the most dramatic thing I’ve seen besides a gamma ray burst.”
“Still working the vocabulary, aren’t you, Dr. Bradbury?”
“It’ll all be over soon.” He punched the elevator button. “I’ll be a hormone-driven Cro-Magnon before you know it.”
“At least you’ll still be wearing a tux.”
“A knuckle-dragging, tux-wearing, Cro-Magnon.”
“Are you sure it’s safe to be alone together in the elevator with all those primitive urges coursing through you?”
“Come to think of it, not if it’s empty. If it is, we’ll let the empty one go and take the first one that has people in it. We need to get to that party ASAP, so let’s hope this one has someone riding up to the top floor.”
But when the elevator opened to reveal Aaron Blackstone in all his blond glory, Nolan wished he’d been more specific in his wish and had asked for someone other than Blackstone to be in that elevator. The guy’s tux had probably been hand-tailored by somebody with a French accent. Blackstone knew how to wear it, too. Darcie couldn’t help but be impressed.
Blackstone flashed his perfect smile. “Hey, what a coincidence, meeting you two on the way to the cocktail party! Darcie, you look terrific! Great dress!”
Nolan opened his mouth to say he’d forgotten something and they’d catch the next elevator, but Darcie stepped through the opening before he got the first word out. That made sense. Her dress really was a brain-cell killer if he’d ever seen one.
He wasn’t about to let her ride up alone with a womanizer, though. The car had twenty floors to go, and a lot could happen in that time. He hopped on, too, and the elevator doors slid closed.
Everything about Blackstone, even his aftershave, shouted that he was rich, rich, rich. Nolan reminded himself that Harcourt was even richer, but Nolan forgot about that whenever he interacted with the billionaire. Blackstone never let anyone forget that he came from money with a capital M.
“Well, Darcie,” Blackstone said in his most jovial manner as the elevator began its assent. “Now that you’ve spent more time around space geeks, what do you think of the species? Can we be trained to operate in polite society, or should we all be shipped to Mars once we have the technology?”
Darcie eyed him up and down. “I’ve discovered that you can’t lump all space geeks into one category,” she said. “They’re all different.”
Nolan was gratified that she didn’t sound the least bit friendly toward Blackstone. The guy might look like a People magazine celebrity, someone definitely from the cool crowd, but apparently Darcie didn’t care about that anymore. She seemed to prefer someone with a little more humility, someone like him, for example. God, that felt great.
“Very perceptive,” Blackstone said. “I mean, here you have Bradbury and me, each of us heading up a Mars colonization project, and we couldn’t be more different.”
“No, you couldn’t. You’re complete opposites.” Darcie subtly implied that was not a compliment to Blackstone.
If Blackstone picked up
on it, he must have immediately dismissed it. “We are different, which brings me to that panel discussion, Nolan. I screwed up. I get so into my subject that I forget about the time. When you started talking, I got excited and instinctively wanted to initiate a dialogue. But that was inappropriate under the circumstances. I’m deeply sorry.”
Without thinking about it, Nolan put his hand in his pocket to locate the hematite. It warmed in his grip as he assessed the carefully orchestrated regret in his colleague’s expression. “I wish I could believe you, Blackstone, but I can’t. For years I’ve given you the benefit of the doubt when you behaved like an asshole. Until today I would have accepted that load of BS. But I can’t do that anymore.”
Blackstone stared at him. “Now that doesn’t sound like you, buddy. That doesn’t sound like you at all. We’ve had our moments, but we go back a long way, and I’ve always been there for you.”
“No, you haven’t. You’ve always been there for yourself. You’re a good scientist, Aaron, I’ll give you that. You may very well get to Mars before I do. If that happens, I won’t begrudge you the glory. I’ll be happy that someone made it because colonizing Mars will be a huge accomplishment for humankind.”
“I’d feel the same if you made it first!”
“No, you wouldn’t. You’d be beside yourself with jealousy. We’re different in a lot of ways, but that’s the most critical one, because it means I can’t trust you.”
“I’m stunned.” Blackstone managed to look tragic. “And hurt. Deeply hurt. All this time I thought we were just kidding around with each other, taking jabs because that’s what guys do when they’re after the same prize. It’s all in good fun. But instead you were passing judgment on my behavior.”
“No, I wasn’t. Not until today.”
Blackstone looked at Darcie. “Did you put him up to this?”
“No, I did not.”
The blood roared in Nolan’s ears. “Leave Darcie out of it.”
“I don’t see how I can. She arrives on the scene and you suddenly turn on me. I can’t believe that’s a coincidence. Did the stars tell her I was out to get you?”
Nerds Are From Mars Page 10
