by Tawny Weber
That kick-back guy was still invading her dreams and making her want what she couldn’t have. And the railroading scientist? He was using her career aspirations to put that very career at risk.
She hadn’t seen him since he’d shanghaied the project yesterday morning. Not because she’d managed to avoid him, but quite the opposite—now that she had plenty to say to the renowned A. A. Maddow, he was the one avoiding her.
Drucilla stepped into the posh hotel restaurant and greeted the maître d’ with a smile that she hoped didn’t look as shaky as she felt. This was insane. Instead of being happily ensconced in her lab or her office, she was here playing beggar in Alex’s patron hunt. And not any normal patron hunt, either. She wasn’t using her brain, the lab’s nice sterile equipment or even pretty color-coded flowcharts for this hunt.
Nope, she was stuck with nothing but her charm.
Shyness shuddered through her like a chill. But she forced herself to stay instead of turning and running.
Normally, she’d have been happy enough to dress up and go out. But not like this. Hell, she didn’t even know what this was. It was an in-between event where one of her standard beige faculty-event dresses was too lackluster, but one of her colorful vacation dresses would be inappropriate.
So she’d been stuck relying on datewear.
The ubiquitous little black dress.
Her most conservative, the crepe de chine fabric molded comfortably to her slight curves. It was sleeveless and cut in a tantalizing vee at the neck, so she’d paired it with a metallic brocade jacket. The boxy cut took the edge off the neckline and, she hoped, made it modest enough for a business dinner.
She couldn’t do anything about the hemline, though. And stubborn pride had made her wear stiletto pumps, even though she knew she’d probably tower over most of her dinner companions.
“Right this way, Ms. Robichoux.”
She followed the maître d’ through the gentle sounds of upscale dining. Crystal gleamed, carefully arranged greenery provided a semblance of privacy and the even the occasional laugh was muted and refined.
A good place to troll for money, she had to admit.
And there he was, the troll himself, she thought with a little smile as she saw Alex rise from a corner table. She told herself it was hunger that made her stomach tumble to her toes and not the sight of him in his dark suit.
Her step hitched when she realized he was alone at the table. The clients hadn’t arrived yet? As much as she didn’t want to play tonight’s game, she wanted alone time with Alex even less.
But maybe it wasn’t a bad thing?
Maybe there was still time to convince him not to risk their scientific reputations on a flight for the stars and, instead, settle for some solid down-to-earth kudos.
Then she reached the table and noted the bucket of champagne chilling, the caviar already waiting.
How was she supposed to explain to this gorgeous rock star that success, to her, meant a steady job, a regular paycheck and a solid shot at advancing in her career? Not glitter and accolades.
She couldn’t, of course. Not without appearing even stupider than she already did.
“Drucilla, you look lovely,” he said. His gaze swept over her, taking in the loose bun, more a collection of curls than a controlled style. He studied the conservative jacket and raised a brow as if to ask if she wanted to remove it so he could feast his eyes on whatever was beneath. She thanked the maître d’ before slipping into the chair he held out.
Setting her tiny evening bag on the table, she glanced up to catch Alex admiring her legs. A quick surge of feminine pride tingled through her.
Unable to resist stoking the embers a little, she slowly, seductively, tilted one leg to the side to maximize the view. Then she trailed her fingers from the curve of her knee to the hem of her dress where it had risen temptingly high on her thigh.
His eyes went black. She reveled in the dual sense of power and desire settling low in her belly. She let the maître d’ help push her chair in, so her legs and the view they provided were hidden beneath the white linen tablecloth.
By the time Alex managed to pull his eyes back to her face, she’d plastered on an unassuming expression.
“Problem?” she asked.
He gave her a long look, a tiny frown of confusion creasing his brow. Then, with a nod of thanks to the maître d’, he slid into his own seat next to her.
“You look lovely,” he repeated suspiciously. “Why?”
Dru pressed her lips together to keep from laughing, instead raising both brows as if she was shocked.
“Why do I look lovely? What kind of question is that?”
“The kind I feel compelled to ask given that you’ve gone out of your way to blend in with the wallpaper for the last few days.”
Her amusement dissipated in a flash. Wallpaper? Sure, she’d taken a little extra care to distance herself from her colorful beachy persona, the one he’d screwed six ways from Sunday, but that didn’t mean she was trying to blend in with the wallpaper.
“Maybe I wanted to impress your potential backers,” she suggested tightly.
“No, you didn’t,” he rejected. He stared through narrowed eyes, then shook his head. “You don’t want this deal to go through, so the only impression you’d be trying to make is a bad one.”
Dru was actually offended at that. “You think I’d go out of my way to make a bad impression?”
He had the grace to look contrite. “I’m sorry. I was just shocked to see you again.”
“You just saw me yesterday,” she dismissed, still irked.
“No, I saw Toasted Science Girl yesterday. Tonight I’m seeing you.” He stopped abruptly and clamped his lips shut. If he’d been a girl, she figured he’d have slapped his hand over his mouth.
Well, that sure burst the little bubble of anger she’d been nursing so diligently.
Trying to keep a straight face, she had to swallow twice before she could ask, “Toasted?”
“Your beige outfits remind me of unbuttered toast.”
The laugh escaped before she could stop it.
His answering smile had just a hint of gratitude in it. As if he’d expected her to jab him in the hand with her fork and wouldn’t have even blamed her for doing it.
He reached over and took her hand. Before she could reset her defenses or even start her mental lecture on the million reasons he was off-limits, he gave it a quick, friendly squeeze and released her.
“I’m sorry I put you in this position. I realize this is probably more than you can handle—”
“More than I can handle?” she interrupted, a little confused. Did that have something to do with being beige?
“I checked you out before I agreed to take this project.” At her shocked look, he nodded. “I might not have put sexy beach babe Drucilla together with D. M. Robichoux, noted up-and-coming astrophysicist, but that doesn’t mean I don’t know what you’ve done. Actually, to tell you the truth, I thought you were a guy. All the people I talked to referred to you as Drew.”
Dru stared, her mind racing. She wasn’t sure what to think about that confession. She supposed it was easy enough to see how he’d make the mistake. What she didn’t see, though, was how it applied to his thinking this evening might be more than she could handle.
She was pretty sure she’d already proved to him just how well she handled everything he had.
Although that probably wasn’t what he’d meant.
“That’s your excuse for not realizing who I was when we met in Mexico,” she said slowly, trying to establish the point.
“No, that’s my reason for not realizing who you were at the beach. And it’s my way of reassuring you that even though I know you’re a solid scientist, I can understand why you’d be a little worried about being able to handle a project the scope of which I’ve proposed.”
Dru stared.
“You think I can’t handle it?”
“I think you’re afraid to tr
y.”
“I’m not afraid, I’m irritated that you swooped in like a rock star, insisting we change to a bigger stage to accommodate your ego,” she retorted.
“Because you don’t think you can keep up.”
“Bullshit,” she snapped, stung.
“Bet?” he suggested silkily.
Bet? This was their career, not a Monday-night football game. It affected their entire lives and he wanted to put money down on it as if it was a horse race?
Was he crazy?
“Terms?” she accepted, unable to resist.
His smile was a slow, wicked curve of his lips. She didn’t have to hear the clang of bars slamming shut to realize she’d just been trapped. All she had to do was look at the satisfaction in his eyes.
“You spend the evening being charming and agreeable while I pitch the deal to Buck Blackstone. He’s about as nonscience as you can get, but he’s rolling in oil money and desperate to get his name on as many projects as he can,” he explained. “We act like we’re a team and you pretend you’re actually on board the supertelescope proposal. Then, if after pretending to love it and listening to me pitching Blackstone, you’re not sold on it being the best route for Trifecta, you win.”
“I win…what?”
“I’ll back off and accept the government grant.”
Ooh, wouldn’t that be sweet?
But…
“And if you win?”
“You ride with me back to my hotel tonight.”
She narrowed her eyes.
“That’s it? A ride?”
“That’s it,” he agreed.
Dru knew there was a catch in there somewhere. She knew the man had a brain the size of Rhode Island and surely had some sneaky strategy all planned out.
Somehow, that only made the challenge more irresistible.
Forty minutes later, Dru was doing her damnedest to win Buck Blackstone over. She’d lost sight of whether she was trying so she could win the bet or simply because the argument had hooked her.
“But think of it,” she told the aging cowboy sitting next to her. “The Buck Blackstone Telescope Project,” she improvised. “This is going to be the scientific find of the decade and you can be a part of it. Imagine, your name, backing a project of this stature. It would definitely bring even more shoppers to your malls.”
Right. She mentally rolled her eyes at that particular line of bullshit. Like any self-respecting teenage shopper would give a rat’s ass about a telescope. She noted Alex’s smug look.
She notched up the wattage of her smile and leaned closer to Buck.
By dessert, she had him eating out of her hand. And Alex eating her up with his eyes.
“Young lady, I insist you take a ride on my yacht, the Lady Bountiful. Nothing like it in the world. You can even bring your sidekick, here, if you’d like.”
Noting the way Alex’s mouth tightened, she quickly slid her hand out from beneath Buck’s, careful to keep her smile both cool and friendly at the same time.
Who knew her laid-back beach boy could get that rip-a-man’s-throat-out jealous look in his eyes?
“What an interesting invitation,” she sidestepped. “And you’ll have to visit the labs at Trifecta. I’ll admit, I’m more comfortable there than I would be on a boat. Seasickness, you know.”
Buck gave one of those idiot-man nods, part disappointment, part condescension, part smug satisfaction. Alex’s look was all ego. She couldn’t really blame him. Considering how many ways they’d done it on the waves, he knew damn well she didn’t get seasick.
“Well, I have to say, I wasn’t as much interested in the actual project as the write-off when I came into the restaurant tonight,” Buck said. “But between the two of you, you’ve definitely convinced me. What do you think this little project will actually cost in dollars and dinero?”
Alex offered a charming smile and began outlining the financial options while Dru leaned back in her chair and took a cooling sip of champagne.
She couldn’t blame Alex for his smug smile. She felt the same. Not because they’d sold the backer on the deal. The guy was as dim as the candlelight in this room, so that hadn’t been a hard sell.
But, Dru reluctantly admitted to herself, somewhere between fending off flirtations and volleying the pitch back and forth with Alex, she’d actually started getting excited.
Not about Alex, she lied to herself. About the idea of taking the cosmic string study from a safe, simple process to a more concrete, decisive approach. Doing it her way wouldn’t hurt, but it wasn’t going to lead anywhere astonishing, either. Not for science, not for Trifecta and definitely not for her career.
And dammit, she wanted excitement.
“Shall we share a cab?” Alex invited a half hour later, his smile wickedly amused.
She gave him a hard look, still trying to figure out when and where he’d outmaneuvered her. One minute she’d been firmly behind government funding. The next she’d been explaining the long-term benefits and myriad options of the telescope as if her life depended on it.
“I drove myself.”
“Good,” he said, wrapping his hand around her waist as he led her from the restaurant. “You can give me a ride to my hotel.”
10
“I’M NOT SLEEPING with you,” Dru muttered to him for the third time as Alex followed her out of the restaurant.
He’d love to tell her he wasn’t interested just to see that stubborn frown wiped off her face. But he figured the fact that he couldn’t keep his eyes off her deliciously long legs would prove him a liar.
“If she won’t, I will,” an attendant said, giving him a naughty sort of look as if he was imagining Alex naked. It was the first time Alex had ever had that happen, he admitted, unsure if he should be flattered or not. The kid gave him a wink as he took Drucilla’s valet stub. “I don’t get off until ten, though.”
Dru smirked as Alex waved the guy away with an embarrassed grimace.
“I didn’t ask you to sleep with me,” Alex pointed out. “I asked for a ride to the hotel. The ride you owe me, given that I won the bet.”
“You didn’t win the bet.”
“You sounded pretty convincing back there.”
“I agreed to sound convincing,” she pointed out in a tone that dropped the temperature about five degrees.
He was starting to understand her better, though. She went for the chill when she was nervous and trying to stay in control.
“You sounded convincing because you were convinced. You believe the project would be stronger if we switched to a practical model using a supertelescope. Admit it,” he urged.
“That was subterfuge.”
“Hardly.” He rolled his eyes. “I’d know if you were faking it.”
She gave him a long, considering look. It was the kind of look no man ever wanted to see. For one brief second, he had actual doubts. Could she have faked it with him? Ever?
His ego shuddered.
“I’d know,” he repeated firmly.
She just smiled and leaned back against the flagstone-covered wall next to the valet station.
His head filled with visions of her smiling, just like that, as she was poised over his body. As she leaned in for his kiss. As she rolled away from him with a satisfied sigh. Really satisfied, dammit.
He gave her a narrow-eyed look as he considered the images. His gaze swept from the top of the hair he’d felt draped like silk over his naked hips and down to the lips that’d sucked him like a tasty lollipop. His eyes drifted over the body he’d felt shudder—shudder, dammit—down to the legs that’d held him in a vise grip during those shudders.
No way she’d been faking it, Alex decided. If he knew one thing, it was that people wanted what he had to offer. After all, he’d spent most of his life being used for one thing or another. His brains, his name and, dammit, his prowess.
She was just messing with him. Another brick in that wall she was building to try to keep him away. Or maybe it was revenge
for his taking control of the project.
As if he’d let that work. Alex had promised himself two things when he’d seen Drucilla walk into the restaurant on those glorious legs. That they’d be substantiating the string theory with concrete evidence provided by a supertelescope.
And that he’d feel her long, silky legs wrapped around his waist again.
“Are you giving me that ride?” he asked, challenging her to deny he’d won the bet.
Her jaw worked. Then she heaved a deep sigh that did interesting things to whatever she had going on beneath that glittery jacket and straightened from the wall.
“Fine,” she said as the valet pulled up with her reliable blue Volvo. “But if you’re looking to get off, you’ll have more luck waiting for this guy.”
The valet grinned and waggled his brows. Alex gave him a rueful shake of his head as he slid into the passenger seat. He gave the interior a quick glance and grinned. Tidy and well preserved, the ten-year-old car’s leather was obviously regularly conditioned, the carpets vacuumed and he was sure the engine was perfectly maintained.
But there, hanging from the rearview mirror, was a dried lily that he knew had once been red, wrapped in a silky ribbon.
Faking it, his ass.
She saw him grinning at the flower and pressed her lips together but didn’t say a word. Not that he’d believe her if she’d try to deny that was the same flower he’d given her on their first date. Instead she flicked the ignition on with an irritated slap of her hand, making his smile even bigger. Just yesterday he’d been doubting his judgment and thinking her an ice princess.
“Why physics?” he asked, needing to know what made her tick and figuring that was as good a key as any.
“Why not?”
“A woman like you?” He gave her his most charming smile. “Gorgeous, smart, ambitious? You had plenty of options. Why physics?”
After shooting him a suspicious look, she pulled out of the parking lot. So much for charm. She drove a whole mile before glancing at him again, then shrugging.
