but which was unfortunately rife in the cloistered environment of a lab—he was the original tall, dark and handsome. Gossip also said he was autocratic, intelligent, intensely private and didn’t suffer fools gladly.
Good. She’d hate to be working for an easily distracted, laissez-faire pretty boy, content to appeal only to the lowest common denominator. The dermonecrosis project she was heading up was too important for that.
Way more important than his appearance. And if his reputation was anything to go by he would resent the hell out of being gossiped about as if he was a prime piece of meat at a market. She better than anyone knew how insulting it was to be judged on physical appearance. The man was utterly brilliant, owning a string of highly successful labs all involved in cutting edge research.
Her own project was a typical example. It was more exciting than anything she’d ever done in her life—including walking a catwalk in Paris. It was ground-breaking stuff. He could look like the Elephant Man as far as she was concerned, and it wouldn’t matter.
She realised she was still holding the phone, and replaced it as if it had scorched her palm. She had a busy day and she would not spend it thinking about her mysterious boss and his too-sexy-to-be-real voice. She had the sample to catalogue, a literature review to begin, and the finishing touches to put to the presentation Reg was giving at the symposium he and Alex were attending at the end of the week. She had more than enough on her plate.
Things didn’t go according to plan, however. It seemed everything this morning was conspiring against her to prevent her from doing her work. The computer system kept crashing, necessitating several reloads of lost data, and when she went through the symposium presentation, the slides were for some reason all jumbled. To cap it all, it took her ages to find online articles for the literature review she was undertaking.
And of course her mind kept wandering to the owner of that voice, and the fact she would be face to face with him by day’s end. Thank God she lived far, far away from that voice. The voice that had talked in her ear two or three times a week for the last two years. The voice that, despite its faultlessly businesslike, asexual tone, was in her dreams most nights.
Her mood grew blacker as the morning progressed, and when everyone started to leave for lunch she was grateful for some peace and quiet. She liked it best when she was alone in the lab. In fact her favourite part of the day was when everyone had gone home and there was just her, her microscope, and the background hum of the electronic gadgets that surrounded her.
Her stomach grumbled loudly. She’d been too nervous to stomach breakfast this morning—a most unusual occurrence for her. Thanks to a blessed metabolism she was always hungry, and right now she was starving! She pulled a muesli bar from her bag and munched at it as she tapped away at her keyboard.
She wouldn’t be missed in the staffroom as she rarely ate lunch with her colleagues. It wasn’t that Isobella didn’t like the people she worked with; it was more that she resented wasting time away from her microscope. She loved to eat, but food and other human necessities came a poor second to the project. She could eat just as easily on the job.
Plus, being an intensely private person, she preferred her own company. Yes, here in the tropical medicine lab they were a team, a unit, all working towards a common goal, but the self-directed nature of her work appealed to the loner in Isobella.
In a lot of ways the lab was her refuge—a place where she could hide behind her glasses and white coat without censure—and whilst she was forced to share it with others, it didn’t mean she had to make her life an open book.
In fact Isobella had a reputation at the lab for discouraging any form of interaction that didn’t directly involve the project. She was polite, but distant. She’d never fostered close relationships or socialised outside of work hours. She didn’t indulge in gossip or innuendo. In short, she was invisible. Which suited her just fine.
Oh, she knew in the beginning there’d been speculation about her. No one had been able to pigeonhole her, and that had obviously been intriguing. She’d have to have been stupid not to have known that her colleagues had talked about her behind her back. And, having rebuffed some early advances from male colleagues, she didn’t need her science degree to figure out that her sexuality had been called into question.
But she had steadfastly ignored it all, concentrating on her work, weathering the gossip with aplomb, and gaining a good deal of respect in the process. And eventually, through quiet indifference, she’d dropped right off their radar.
Hmph! If only they knew. She’d walked the catwalks of Paris and Milan from the age of fourteen—the bitchiest workplace in the world. She’d suffered far greater insults.
‘Hello? Anyone home?’
Isobella felt the hairs on the back of her neck stand to attention as the gravelly enquiry from the work area wrapped itself around her body. Alex? She leaned to the side slightly, looking around the partition that hid her desk from view.
‘Hello?’
That voice again. It was him. Alexander Zaphirides. And it seemed as if the rumours had been spot-on—even in profile the man redefined tall, dark and handsome. He was dressed in an impeccably tailored navy pin-striped suit, with a pale lemon shirt beneath, left open at the neck, and devoid of a tie.
He wasn’t supposed to be here yet.
Her hand clutched at her throat in a familiar comforting gesture, then she grabbed the edge of her desk and forced herself to her feet, stepping into the lab proper on shaky legs. ‘Ah, yes—sorry, Dr Zaphirides.’
Alex turned slightly towards the voice. ‘Isobella?’
Oh, God! His voice was even sexier in the flesh. She nodded, walking towards him, her outstretched hand trembling slightly. ‘I didn’t think you were due in till later?’ Isobella hoped her voice sounded normal, because to her own ears it sounded high, practically a squeak.
‘The airline managed to get me on an earlier flight,’ Alex replied, shaking the proffered hand as she drew near, quickly assessing her baggy white coat and huge glasses. So this was Isobella Nolan? ‘We meet at last, Isobella.’
Alex bowed his head slightly, and Isobella was curiously charmed by the old-fashioned gesture. She swallowed, her mouth suddenly parched, and forced a polite smile to her lips, ignoring the warmth of the big hand enveloping hers. She felt a silly flutter in her stomach.
‘Nice to meet you, Dr Zaphirides,’ she murmured.
At five-eleven Isobella didn’t usually have to look up too far, but Alex had a good few inches on her. She blinked as she took in his features, her gaze zooming in on the splendour of his face. The man looked as if he really had just descended from Mount Olympus. His face was a work of art. Nobel and statuesque, with two indentations bracketing the chiselled perfection of his mouth.
He could have sat for Rodin. He certainly could have modelled for GQ. The planes of his face were sublime, his bone structure magnificent. His square jaw was dusted with dark stubble and his head was crowned with dark, lush locks styled into just-got-out-of-bed tousled glory, completing his god-like stature.
Alex dropped his hand. ‘I think it’s about time you called me Alex.’
His husky request brushed along her nerve-endings as his gaze captured hers. She was forced to concede that his eyes were almost as compelling as his voice. They were blue—a surprise, given his bronze
