“Me, too.” Celeste’s laugh was shaky.
Cal and Brian didn’t say a word.
Be sure to catch WATCH OVER ME by Lucy Monroe, available now from Brava…
“Dr. Ericson”
Lana adjusted the angle on the microscope. Yes. Right there. Perfect. “Amazing.”
“Lana.”
She reached out blindly for the stylus to her handheld. Got it. She stared taking notes on the screen without looking away from the microscope.
“Dr. Ericson!!!”
Lana jumped, bumping her cheekbone on the microscope’s eyepiece before falling backward, hitting a wall that hadn’t been there when she’d come into work that morning.
Strong hands set her firmly on her feet as she realized the wall was warm and made of flesh and muscle. Lots and lots of muscle.
Stumbling back a step, she looked up and then up some more. The dark-haired hottie in front of her was as tall as her colleague, Beau Ruston. Or close to it anyway. She fumbled with her glasses, sliding them on her nose. They didn’t help. Reading glasses for the computer, they only served to make her feel more disoriented.
She squinted, then remembered and pulled the glasses off again, letting them dangle by their chain around her neck. “Um, hello? Did I know you were visiting my lab?”
She was fairly certain she hadn’t. She forgot appointments sometimes. Okay, often, but she always remembered eventually. And this man hadn’t made an appointment with her. She was sure of it. He didn’t look like a scientist either.
Not that all scientists were as unremarkable as she was in the looks department, but this man was another species entirely.
He looked dangerous and sexy. Enough so that he would definitely replace chemical formulas in her dreams at night. His black hair was a little too long and looked like he’d run his fingers through it, not a comb. That was just so bad boy. She had a secret weakness for bad boys.
Even bigger than the secret weakness she’d harbored for Beau Ruston before he’d met Elle.
She had posters of James Dean and Matt Dillon on the wall of her bedroom and had seen Rebel Without a Cause a whopping thirty-six times.
Unlike James Dean, this yummy bad boy even had pierced ears. Only instead of sedate studs or small hoops, he had tiny black plugs. Only a bit bigger than a pair of studs, the plugs were recessed in his lobes. They had the Chinese Kanji for strength etched on them in silver. Or pewter maybe. It wasn’t shiny.
The earrings were hot. Just like him.
He looked like the kind of man who had a tattoo. Nothing colorful. Something black and meaningful. She wanted to see it. Too bad she couldn’t just ask.
Interpersonal interaction had so many taboos. It wasn’t like science where you dug for answers without apology.
“Lana?”
The stranger had a strong jaw too, squared and accented by a close-cropped beard that went under, not across his chin. No mustache. His lips were set in a straight line, but they still looked like they’d be Heaven to kiss.
Not that she’d kissed a lot of lips, but she was twenty-nine. Even a geeky scientist didn’t make it to the shy side of thirty without a few kisses along the way. And other stuff. Not that the other stuff was all that spectacular. She’d always wondered if that was her fault or the men she’d chosen to partner.
It didn’t take a shrink to identify the fact that Lana had trust issues. With her background, who wouldn’t?
Still, people had been known to betray family, love and country for sex. She wouldn’t cross a busy street to get some. Or maybe she would, if this stranger was waiting on the other side.
The fact that she could measure the time since she’d last had sex in years rather than months, weeks or days-which would be a true miracle-wasn’t something she enjoyed dwelling on. She blamed it on her work.
However, every feminine instinct that was usually sublimated by her passion for her job was on red alert now.
Karen Kelley
