“When will you know if it works?” Ashley asked, obviously anxious for some good news.
“It’s hard to say,” Megan told her. “The subjects will undergo testing at prescribed intervals throughout the next twelve months.”
“A whole year?”
Megan knew her sister felt as if she’d been waiting for forever already, and to wait another twelve months seemed interminable.
“Well,” Ashley said philosophically. “At least you have a reason to look forward to going into work every day.”
“I’ve always enjoyed my job,” Megan reminded her. “But, yes, I am anxious to see the results of this trial.”
Her sister smiled. “I wasn’t referring to the trial. I was referring to you spending a lot more time with Gage Richmond.”
Megan refused to admit how much she was looking forward to that. Because she would never hear the end of it if her sister had the slightest clue about how hard and how fast her heart beat whenever Gage was near, how her knees got weak if he stood close, and how everything inside of her felt all hot and quivery if he so much as smiled at her.
No way would Megan admit any of that to her sister. She wasn’t sure she was ready to admit it even to herself.
Chapter Seven
It had been years since Gage had worried about asking a woman out on a date. Maybe he’d been spoiled in that it was rare for an invitation he’d issued—be it for dinner or dancing or a more private evening—to be refused. Or maybe he hadn’t really cared one way or the other. When he thought about calling Megan Saturday afternoon, though, he was unexpectedly apprehensive.
But he’d promised her a rain check, and he intended to deliver. Of course, she might already have plans, and he could accept that. Or she might simply not want to go out with him, but he didn’t want to acknowledge that was a possibility.
When the phone rang, he was both annoyed and relieved by the interruption. He snatched up the receiver. “Hello?”
“Gage Richmond, it must be my lucky day that I managed to catch you at home.”
The sultry feminine voice was vaguely familiar, but Gage was having trouble filling in the details. “Who is this?”
The laugh was rich and warm. “I should be offended that you have to ask, but it has been a while. It’s Norah Hennesy.”
Norah Hennesy.
Tall…dark hair…luscious curves…and very, very flexible.
They’d dated for a few months more than two years earlier, and had gone their separate ways when she grew frustrated by Gage’s refusal to commit.
“It has been a while,” he agreed.
“Much too long.”
Gage didn’t need to be hit over the head to figure out why she was calling. And while he’d occasionally rekindled affairs with ex-lovers in the past, he wasn’t in the mood to go another round in the mating game with a partner who was looking toward a radically different finish line.
“So I was thinking,” Norah continued, “that we could maybe get some dinner at Chez Henri and get reacquainted.”
Chez Henri was an exclusive and expensive French restaurant where they’d frequently dined in the past. Gage had never quite figured out if Norah liked the food as much as she liked being seen there, but he’d never objected because the restaurant was close to Norah’s apartment and dinner had inevitably led to drinks back at her place and, if he felt like staying, breakfast in the morning.
It had been a long time since he’d had…breakfast with a woman, but her offer did little to pique his interest. Or maybe it was the fact that when he tried to picture the slumberous and satisfied morning-after look in her eyes—he simply couldn’t. Because he couldn’t remember the color of her eyes. He only knew that they weren’t violet.
Whoa—where had that thought come from?
“Gage?”
He forced his attention back to the woman on the other end of the phone. “That’s a tempting offer,” he lied, “but I already have plans for tonight.”
“Oh.” He could hear the disappointment in her voice. “Maybe another time?”
“Actually, I don’t think so, Norah.”
“You’re seeing someone,” she guessed.
He started to deny it, but then he thought of Megan again. “Yeah, I am.”
“Well, then, maybe I’ll try again in a few weeks,” she said.
He frowned at her response, at this confirmation that everyone knew his reputation, and that no one ever expected his relationships to last—least of all Gage himself.
Even after he ended the call, he wondered how to define his relationship with Megan, or even if it could be called a relationship. She was a coworker, and maybe she was becoming a friend, but beneath everything else was an underlying physical attraction that was as baffling as it was intriguing.
He’d never known anyone like her—sweet and sexy and blissfully oblivious to her own appeal. And maybe it was this uniqueness that fascinated him.
Not that he had any intention of getting himself all tied up in knots over a woman just because she had eyes that haunted him in his sleep and lips that were so soft and sweet and so incredibly and passionately responsive.
No way. Especially not with the vice-presidency on the line.
He picked up the phone again and dialed her number, anyway.
Megan was caught off guard by Gage’s phone call. It was the only excuse she had for saying yes when he asked if she wanted to catch the movie they’d missed a couple of weeks earlier.
Still, she hated that she was a nervous wreck waiting for him to show up. In the lab, she wasn’t quite so intimidated by him because they were on a more equal footing. Over the past few weeks, she’d gradually become accustomed to working closely with him. But outside of the lab, she was all too aware of how completely out of her league she was with him.
“You’re not wearing your glasses,” he commented when she answered the door.
“My sister stepped on them, snapped the arm off.”
And Megan wasn’t convinced it had been an accident. Of course, Ashley denied that she’d broken them on purpose, but in the next breath she’d accused her sister of hiding behind the thick lenses and claimed she’d done her a favor by breaking them. Whether Ashley’s actions had been intentional or not, the end result was that Megan had to put her contacts in if she was going to see anything.
“How is your sister?” he asked now.
“She’s feeling much better.”
“Was it that nasty cold that’s going around?”
She shook her head. “No, it was just, uh, a female thing.”
“Oh,” Gage replied and, thankfully, left it at that.
Uncomfortable with the direction of the conversation, Megan ducked her head and lifted a hand to push her glasses up. Then she remembered they weren’t there and rubbed a finger over the bridge of her nose, as if to assuage an itch. But the corners of Gage’s mouth lifted, and she knew she hadn’t fooled him.
“I don’t wear contacts very often,” she admitted. “So I keep trying to push up glasses that aren’t even there.”
“I like when you wear your contacts,” Gage said. “It’s easier to see your eyes.”
She dropped her gaze again.
“You have beautiful eyes, Megan.”
She felt her cheeks flame. “Thank you,” she managed to respond.
“And lips so soft a man can sink right into them.”
She absolutely would not get all weak and flustered just because that smooth, sexy voice tempted a woman to forget all reason. “How many lines like that have you memorized for the sole purpose of making a woman go all warm and quivery inside?”
He only smiled. “Are you all warm and quivery inside?”
She was hot and trembling and very close to melting into a puddle at his feet. Recognizing that fact, she drew in a deep, calming breath and moved away to pick up her purse. “Yes, but Vin Diesel always has that effect on me.”
Gage chuckled. “I guess that put me in my place.”
>
But the real problem for Megan was that his place was right beside her through the movie.
He did his best to make her comfortable, keeping the conversation light and easy while they waited for the feature to begin. It wasn’t his fault that her heart sped up when the lights dimmed, or that her pulse raced when his fingers brushed against hers inside the tub of popcorn they were sharing, or that she felt shivers down her spine when he leaned close to whisper in her ear during the movie. It wasn’t his fault, but by the time the final credits rolled up on the screen, every nerve ending in her body was tingling with awareness.
And he seemed completely unaffected by their nearness. Of course he would be—he had dated a lot of women, beautiful and sophisticated women.
Which made her again wonder: What was he doing with her?
And what had happened to the guy who was reputed to go out with a different woman every night?
Because the man she was slowly getting to know didn’t bear any resemblance to the Casanova he was reputed to be. Or maybe it was simply that he wasn’t interested in anything other than friendship with her.
And that was okay, because she enjoyed being with him and talking to him and maybe, as they spent more time together, she would gradually stop acting like a silly schoolgirl with a crush on the captain of the football team.
Except that every time he touched her—a casual touch of his hand to her arm or an accidental brush of his shoulder against hers—she couldn’t help thinking about the not-so-casual or accidental full-body contact that had occurred at Ashley and Trevor’s engagement party.
Just the memory of the kiss they’d shared had enough power to steam her glasses, even when she wasn’t wearing them.
After the movie, they went for pizza.
While they waited for their medium deep dish with hot sausage and hot peppers, they chatted casually about current events. While they ate, the conversation veered to work topics, and Megan asked him, “When you were growing up, was it always your plan to work at Richmond Pharmaceuticals?”
Gage shook his head. “First I wanted to be a firefighter, and then a baseball player…or maybe it was a baseball player then a firefighter.”
She smiled. “Seven-year-olds are so indecisive.”
“I was eight,” he told her.
“And when you got a little older?”
He thought about the question, about the career options he’d considered through the years. There had been several, though none that he’d considered too seriously—aside from the microbrewery his friend Brian wanted them to start in college, when beer was very serious business to them. And he knew that he’d never thought too long or too hard about anything else because Richmond Pharmaceuticals had always been there.
The insight made him uneasy, but he responded casually to her question. “When I got a little older, I decided I would rather be a doctor or a rock musician.”
“A doctor or a rock musician?”
“It was a tough call—help sick people or get lots of girls?”
“And somehow you manage to do both while working at R.P.”
His smile was wry. “So the rumor goes.”
“Does it bother you—being the subject of company gossip?”
“It didn’t used to,” he admitted. “Or maybe I was just unaware of it before. But recently it seems to have become an impediment to my career advancement.”
“How so?”
“I had a conversation with my father recently,” he admitted. “And he told me that my inability to commit to a relationship has given some members of the board cause to question my maturity and commitment.”
He didn’t specifically mention Dean Garrison’s retirement because an official announcement hadn’t yet been made—and because he realized, perhaps belatedly, that Megan might very well be his competition for the job.
“So long as you do your job well—and no one could argue against that—your personal life should be irrelevant,” she said.
“I agree,” he said. “But there are others who don’t, and their opinions carry a lot of weight.”
“How are you supposed to counter that?” she wondered.
“Show them that I can make a commitment.” It was something he’d been thinking about since his conversation with his father and a decision that he hadn’t made lightly.
“You’re going to get married to impress the board of directors?”
“I have no intention of letting things go that far,” he assured her. “I wasn’t thinking of exchanging wedding vows but of getting engaged. At least temporarily.”
“I don’t think you can rent a fiancée as easily as a tuxedo,” she cautioned.
“You’re right, of course. But I was hoping, of all the women I’ve dated, one of them might be willing to do me a favor.”
“That’s quite a favor.”
“I know,” he agreed. “And even if I knew someone who was willing, the truth is, none of the women I’ve dated in the past is the type of woman I would settle down with.”
“What does that say about the type of women you’ve dated?”
“None except one,” he clarified.
She wiped her fingers on a paper napkin, then dropped it on her plate. “It still seems a little drastic to me,” she warned.
“Desperate times call for desperate measures.”
“Then I’ll wish you luck.”
He appreciated the sentiment, but he didn’t need luck.
What he needed was to figure out a way to convince Megan to go along with his plan.
One of the reasons Paige went into her office on Saturdays was for the quiet. With the answering service handling all of the calls and most of the other lawyers and support staff away, she was able to focus on her work and catch up on anything that had slid during the week while she was busy with court appearances and settlement conferences and client meetings.
In each successive year since she’d started at Wainwright, Witmer & Wynne, she’d been given more clients and greater responsibilities. She enjoyed the work and believed she was providing an important service to her clients, many of whom were too emotionally distraught by the breakdown of their marriages to think clearly about their rights and entitlements. But the side effect of her professional success was personal disillusionment with respect to marital relationships.
This realization was weighing heavily on her mind as she drove out of the parking lot beside her building and spotted Trevor Byden walking down the street. Going to work, she assumed, since her cousin’s fiancé’s office was a few blocks north of her own.
But then she saw him stop to talk to a woman who had come from the other direction, and take the grocery bags she carried. The woman smiled and rose up to kiss him—full on the lips.
The honk of a horn alerted Paige to the fact that she was stopped at a green light. She tore her gaze away from the disturbing scene and pulled through the intersection. As she merged with the traffic on the highway, she began to doubt what she had seen.
Maybe it hadn’t been Trevor.
It couldn’t have been Trevor.
Because Trevor was engaged to Ashley and she trusted that he was in love with and faithful to her cousin.
Still, she thought about what she’d seen the entire way home, and considered whether or not to mention it to Ashley.
But what could she say?
“I saw a man who I thought was Trevor kissing another woman?”
Because the truth was, she’d caught a glimpse of his profile, and the sense of recognition combined with the proximity to his office had made her think he was her cousin’s fiancé.
She wasn’t 100 percent certain the man was Trevor and she couldn’t tell Ashley it was, not without proof.
And she didn’t want any proof. She wanted to believe Trevor was truly devoted to Ashley.
But as a family-law attorney, she’d dealt with far too many cheating spouses. Whether infidelity was the cause or effect of the marriage breakdown wasn’t her judgment
to make, she only knew that, far too often, there was a third party involved. And she was determined to ensure that Ashley not end up an unhappy statistic.
If it wasn’t Trevor that she’d seen, then her cousin’s fiancé had nothing to worry about. If it was Trevor—
No, Paige refused to acknowledge the possibility. She wanted to believe that her cousin’s fiancé was one of the good guys, because she needed to believe that there were at least some of them left in the world.
Over the next few weeks, Megan and Gage spent a lot of time together. Most of it at the lab, as the clinical trial for Fedentropin finally got under way and they both put in a lot of overtime hours, but they began to hang out after work, as well, frequently going somewhere to grab a bite to eat or, if they’d ordered in at the lab, just for a drink to chat and unwind. It was never anything formal or fancy—certainly nothing that she would say qualified as a date—but she believed they were becoming friends.
So Gage’s invitation to a barbecue at his parents’ house didn’t seem any more significant than any other meal and more shared conversation. Until she made the mistake of mentioning it to Ashley and Paige at one of their scheduled Friday night get-togethers.
It was Paige’s night to cook, which meant actual home cooking. When it was Ashley’s turn, they usually ate something that advertised “from freezer to oven to table” on the box, while Megan generally opted for pizza or Chinese or something else that could be delivered.
Paige was putting the finishing touches on her lasagna when Megan told them of her plans for the following night.
“He’s taking you home to meet his parents,” Ashley said, and while the statement wasn’t inaccurate, there was something in the way she said it that made Megan think the words were all in capital letters and flashing lights.
“He invited me to a barbecue at their house,” Megan clarified. “It’s not a big deal. His brother’s family will be there, too.”
“The extended family,” Paige said, in the same capital letters, flashing lights tone.
The Engagement Project Page 8
