more perfect at such total exposure.
As the word exposure dragged her mind places it didn’t want to go, she yanked it back and squinted way up at him even from her five-foot-eight height. She mentally kicked herself for not having her sunglasses as a barrier to hide behind, as protection against his all-seeing gaze. But since she always went home long after sundown, frequently not at all, she rarely packed them. As if they would have been an extra burden in her mobile home of a tote bag. But that was what she was—always ready for all possibilities in her work, and the personification of unpreparedness in her personal life. Which she now was in such a close encounter with the monolith before her.
Just as she thought he’d stare down at her until he melted her at his feet, he raised his hand, making her notice the folder he’d been holding all the time.
“I brought you this,” he said. “You must have forgotten it.”
He followed her to give her the folder she’d left behind?
Her mind raced to decipher him and his actions as her senses crackled with his nearness. When she spoke, she sounded exasperated, even if she was more so with herself. “No, I haven’t forgotten it.”
“So you left it on purpose.”
“Apart from omission or commission, are there any other reasons I could have left it behind?”
One corner of his lips lifted in acknowledgment of her chastising logic, intensifying his already staggering effect. She hated to think how he’d look outright smiling or laughing.
“My apologies for the redundant comment. Will asking about the reason you did leave it meet with the same exasperation?”
She exhaled, trying to find the civil, easygoing person inside her who was generally in the driver’s seat...and failing. “From what I read about you, and from the evidence of your achievements and power, you possess an unchartable IQ. I’m sure you need none of it to work out the reason I did.”
“Indeed. Your motivation is quite clear. It was a material rejection to underscore your verbal one. I had just hoped it was a simple oversight on your part.”
“And since you now know it wasn’t, if this will be all...”
His forward movement cut off her backward one, along with her air supply again. “Actually, it won’t be all. Bringing you the folder was incidental to the main reason I sought you out.” He employed another of those pauses he used like weapons, making her bate whatever breath was left in her lungs. “I’d like to further discuss your objections to my policies.”
She gaped up at him. That was the last thing she would have thought he’d say, or want. Not that she could actually think with him so near. She could only react.
Not finding any appropriate reaction, the first thing that surfaced in her mind was another accusation. “You said you didn’t want to hold us up.”
He gave a conceding tilt of his head that made his hair rearrange itself into another pattern of perfection. She could swear she heard the silk swish and sigh.
“I did make it clear I meant those who have a nine-to-five schedule. You’re not one of those. In fact, you’re the only one who almost makes this place your home.”
She stared into his spellbinding eyes as he stared back with the same intentness.
How did he know that?
How? Because the man had a level of intelligence and efficiency she’d never before encountered. It stood to reason he’d researched the staff before he’d acquired them. Though she’d thought they’d be too insignificant for him individually, she had to revise that opinion. To reach his level of success he couldn’t be a detached leader who left details to others. He had to be hands-on. Nothing and no one was too trivial or below his notice.
She wouldn’t be surprised if he had invasive info on everyone who held or would hold any position in his businesses...and had memorized it, too. Thinking that disconcerted her on a primal level. Even if there wasn’t much about her to know, just that he did know it put her at an even bigger disadvantage, if that was even possible.
“Nothing to go back home to?”
His quiet question surprised an unfiltered answer from her. “There never really was.”
Her dismay deepened at the contemplative cast that came over his gaze. She’d exposed herself even more, and she held him accountable for it, him with his damned hypnotic power.
But her consternation was swept away by the surge of memories. Memories of growing up with only her mother, who moved her around so much following her medical career she’d never stayed long enough in one place to form real friendships. Only when Lili had entered medical school herself had her mother finally settled in LA, just before she fell prey to early-onset Alzheimer’s. Lili had gone back to live with her, before being forced to put her in a home for four years before her death a year ago. Her mother’s house remained a place to crash when she wasn’t working. Being a workaholic was what saved her from feeling lonely. It was the only other thing she’d inherited from her mother. Hopefully. Home had always been wherever she worked. This lab had been her home for the past three years. Her haven. Until he happened.
“There you go again.”
“There I go what again?”
His lips spread wider. The ground beneath her tilted. “Using me as target practice for your poison-laced glances.”
Choking on the heart that his smile yanked into her throat, she shrugged. “They’re just dipped in heavy tranquilizers. Or loaded with fifty thousand volts.”
At that, he did something she’d dreaded in theory, but had thought would never come to pass in reality. Not in her presence.
He threw his head back and laughed.
And his laughter was...horrible. It did terrible things to her insides, had her hormones rushing in torrents in her system.
Great. Just great. Just when she discovered she had those kinds of hormones after all, they had to be activated by him of all men. And in broad daylight. When he was laughing his magnificent head off at her, no less.
To make things worse, one big, elegant hand rose to wipe his left cheek. He’d laughed so hard, it had wrung a tear from his eye. Fantastic.
But what was really worth marveling at was how moisture smeared his hewn flesh. Her thoughts caught fire imagining him drenched in exertion, during or after he’d—
Shaking away the sensual images only lodged them deeper into her brain. Her tongue tingled with until-now unknown urges—the sudden longing to drag him down to her, so she could trace that cheekbone, taste his virility. Only his hand combing back the hair that had fallen over his forehead distracted her from those idiotic impulses. The hand of the virtuoso surgeon he was, powerful, graceful, skillful...in every possible way, no doubt—
For God’s sake, stop. Stop noticing his every detail and getting arrhythmia over each one!
But in the absence of others, she had no buffer against his sheer charisma and sensual power—both of which she was certain he didn’t even mean to exercise on her. A man like him must have them on all the time on auto. She’d never
