by Piper Lawson
“I can’t be the first person to tell you you’re good-looking.”
“When my mother does, I ignore her.”
His low deadpan catches me by surprise, and I can’t stop the grin. Maybe he has a sense of humor after all. “Do you know how to take a compliment?”
“People should know who they are and not need validation.”
“So you don’t take compliments or you don’t give them?”
Wes cocks his head, sending the fall of hair back over one of his eyes. “I suppose I give them better than I take them.”
His mouth twitches as if my smile’s contagious but he’s fighting the virus.
“In any case. You are similarly...” He makes a gesture with his hands. “Attractive.”
“Thanks.”
My thighs clench together and I uncross and cross my legs under the table, bumping his shin lightly in a way that makes him frown.
I force my attention back to the menu. “So how do you want to do this?”
Tapas are the ultimate first-date test. It’s like you need to collaborate to solve a giant puzzle of what the other person wants while still getting what you want while you don’t even know yet whether you care what they want.
“There’s cauliflower. Which I believe you passed on. And steak.” He points, and I nod.
“What about oysters?” I lob.
We agree on six dishes, half of which are vegan and all of which I’m going to try, and once the waiter’s retreated, I shift forward.
“So, tell me everything about you,” I say. Guys love talking about themselves. “Let’s start with the easy stuff. What do you do?”
“I’m a doctor.”
My dad’s a cardiologist. He fixes people’s hearts but can’t take care of his own. He hits on women at parties. My mom had his Porsche painted the color of a penis. It’s a dance they do.
I take another sip of wine. “You’re in hospital or private practice?”
“I have a PhD in genetics.”
Yikes. Probably clones farm animals or tells people what to eat for their body type.
“My research focuses on cancer,” he goes on as if I asked. “The factors that cause it. I conduct longitudinal heritability studies.”
If I was hoping Jake would set me up with an easy-breezy “What sports team do you cheer for?” type, I was clearly off-base.
The waiter brings a basket of bread. It’s a “carbs, yes” kind of day, so I reach for one.
“I stumbled on something I didn’t expect: you can predict which individuals from the sample are compatible on the basis of a few alleles. The implication being that people could, in theory, find partners based on their DNA.”
I freeze with a piece of roll halfway to my mouth. “Wait. You’re a matchmaker?!”
“No.” I could have ignored the edge in his voice if it wasn’t accompanied by the flash of irritation in his gaze. “It’s not the focus of my research.”
I butter my bread and take a bite of it, chewing slowly as I watch him. Now I’m interested. “So, you’re in it for the money.”
He takes a drink, and I watch his throat work before he straightens in his chair as if he’s bracing himself. “I’m interested in the commercial applications, yes.”
I feel as if there’s a “but,” but it never comes.
The first two plates are delivered, and I’m grateful for the moment’s break because I’m not sure what to make of Wes Robinson.
He’s not what I expected. He seems like the kind of guy my friend Haley used to hang out with in college, the spectacularly smart kind.
But as I watch Wes take a bite from the first shared plate, I don’t remember any of them looking like him, or having his deliberate composure. He’s not naïve like the interns we had at Closer this summer who were green as the trays of wheatgrass down at Booster Juice. He’s smart. He knows it.
Wes seems to sense something’s changed because after the first bite, he barely glances at the plate as he shifts back and folds his arms over his broad chest. “So, you work in relationship marketing. What does that entail?”
“Today it entailed getting passed on by a client I spent the last two months courting. Because I didn’t get the nuance of their product. Tell me something, Wes Robinson. Would you love having shorts that keep your testicles cold in the summer and warm in the winter?”
Those blue eyes clear as he considers my question. “I’d love it if you never said the word ‘testicles’ again.”
A laugh bubbles up from deep inside me.
I’ve caught him off-guard too, because his mouth curves, reluctantly.
And shit. If Wes Robinson gives good serious? He’s heart-stopping when he smiles.
It’s terrible news because I’m guessing those grins are a rare occurrence, and after tonight, I’ll probably never see the guy again.
Which suddenly feels like a shame of epic proportions.
“Are you always so candid?” he asks.
“Lies are overrated.”
“There’s a difference between candor and lying.”
“Not as much as you’d think.”
More plates come, and I toss back an oyster and close my eyes.
“Good?” he asks.
“Yeah. Yeah, it’s good.” I slant him a flirty look. “You know they say oysters are an aphrodisiac.”
“I thought that was cashew-cheese cauliflower.”
The laugh’s out before I can stop it, and the couple at the next table looks over.
I don’t care.
We talk more, and I enjoy his company. We start with work, segue to music, current events. He’s a good conversationalist once he relaxes a bit.
A blinking red notification comes in on my phone.
Just like that, the anxiety’s back.
“What’s wrong?” Wes asks.
“My car. It’s moving.” I follow the dot on my screen.
“It’s being stolen?”
“Yes. And no.” I suck in a long breath. Let it out as I shut my eyes.
I should be leaving. Doing something to try to figure out my tanking career, my family drama, or the fact that my car left my parents’ garage without permission.
But when my eyes blink open, I don’t see the restaurant. All I see is Wes Robinson. He looks like the beautiful answer to every problem I have, and I almost wish our dinner wasn’t over.
But there’s something I need more.
I take a final sip of water, then tuck my hair behind my ears. “Can I borrow you?” I ask, shifting out of my chair and dropping the napkin on my seat without waiting for a response.
I weave through the tables out into the hall, which is quiet. When I turn, he’s right behind me.
I take a second to check him out again. Yup, he’s just as good-looking as before, and it’s not the wine.
“I need to tell you something,” I say in my sexiest whisper.
But his gaze narrows on mine, wary. “If you killed someone and buried them under this restaurant, I don’t think I can take that level of candor.”
The dry humor would normally make me laugh, but now, I’ve got a one-track mind.
Even in my heels, I have to tilt my face up to look him in the eye.
I wonder what he’s like in bed. Whether he brings the same deliberateness to making a woman come that he does to having a conversation.
“It’s been a crazy week.” I play with the knot of his tie, loosening it.
“It’s Monday.” But he lets me do it, and his tone lowers to match mine.
His shirt’s pressed, and though it’s not designer, it fits him well. But the clothes aren’t on my radar.
I’m hoping they’ll be on my floor.
I smile, stretching toward his ear. “Points for the dinner. It’s classy. But I don’t think I can wait until dessert.”
I pull back enough to look in his eyes, which are working over mine with desire and a hint of panic.
Then I shift up on my toes and press my mouth to hi
s.
2
Wes
I hate the word “crazy.”
It’s imprecise.
Crazy could mean the vending machine ate your change. Or the editorial committee rejected the paper you’ve spent three years honing to perfection.
But if the woman offering me her tongue in the hallway of this Midtown tapas place is right about one thing? It’s this—it has been a crazy week.
No. It’s been a crazy year.
Three months ago, I dropped everything I’d worked for to move back to New York.
Then my father died.
He was here one second and gone the next. I don’t care how much time I spent in a classroom—there was nothing in my education on how to pick up the pieces after the most important man in my life vanished from it. Especially given the way things ended between us.
When the woman Jake wanted me to meet crossed the restaurant he’d suggested, my first thought was, She’s pretty. Not beautiful, because that implies a kind of untouchability reserved for elves in Lord of the Rings movies.
My second was, She’s not here for me.
But she’d come to my table, her cheeks flushed, her green eyes settling on me under thick lashes.
Her hair was straight with a hint of bend, dark near her head and white at the ends through some feat of modern chemistry.
Despite the fact that my interest in all things had been next to zero for weeks, I couldn’t resist dragging my gaze down the rest of her.
Spending months on end in a university lab in Seattle doesn’t typically mean encountering women wearing sleeveless tops clinging to perky breasts or sky-high heels and black leather leggings that hug every slow curve. Not to mention the red lipstick that somehow resisted wearing off on her wine glass.
Yeah, lips like that weren’t usually on campus.
Even before my dad got sick again, my short list of priorities didn’t involve women. Everything in my life for the last ten years has been directed toward one goal: getting a faculty position at a university with an excellent life sciences research program.
In fact, it’s been months since I last got laid, and I didn’t care that much until about three seconds ago.
I’m thinking about it now.
Because she smells like vanilla and tastes like wine.
Maybe I should’ve been more prepared by the glint in her eyes, the flush in her cheeks, the way I swore she checked me out more than once.
I’d dismissed it as my imagination.
But nope.
We’re kissing. In the hallway of a tapas place I can’t afford and really don’t like.
I haven’t touched another person in forever, but somehow she’s in my space and I don’t hate it. The signals running down my spine are nowhere near disgust and alarmingly close to pleasure.
Even though my dopamine has been down-regulated for months, my dick isn’t getting the message. And when my tongue brushes hers, I realize one of us just took this up a notch. I’m going to lie awake staring at the ceiling tonight, deconstructing it until I can point to exactly the moment our civilized conversation went to shit.
It was probably the oysters.
But assigning blame takes a backseat to something so improbable it blows everything that came before it out of the water.
She’s playing with my hair.
Her nails are dragging over the nerves as if she’s dragging a finger along the bars of the tiger cage at the zoo.
Taunting. Teasing.
Rena sways against me, and I swallow. Not because I don’t know how to kiss a woman—it’s like driving stick or making over-easy eggs; once you’ve done it a few times you can’t fuck it up much—but because I’m not sure where we go from here.
In sixth grade, I learned an important lesson: it doesn’t matter where you start; it’s where you end.
My instinct is to do what I did in my first science fair when my volcano broke.
Take an awkward prototype and weave it into something exquisite.
I’d change the angle, part her lips more. Not so I can press my tongue inside, just so I can learn the shape of her mouth.
Back her against the wall, find out what her fascinating curves feel like flush against my chest.
I’d capture the ends of her hair between my fingers, offer a definitive opinion on whether it’s waved or curled.
But I’m not about to paw a woman in the hall of an exclusive tapas place—which shouldn’t be a thing—because my dad died three weeks ago and took everything I’ve built and everything I am with him.
I pull back.
The light stings the backs of my retinas as I blink my eyes open, finding her flushed oval face a few inches from mine.
Before I can be grateful for the fact that we’re on equally uneven footing, she yanks the ground out from under me again.
“I live eight blocks from here.” It’s the same teasing voice she used earlier, plus a promise underneath that goes straight down my spine.
Half of me wants to check the clock to make sure it’s still seven on a Monday.
The other half wants to follow her off the edge of a cliff. Probably the same half that’s responsible for the pulse I can feel thudding in my clenched fists and the fact that there is an evolving situation threatening the zipper of my dress pants.
She’s waiting for me to say something. Because conversation requires two people.
“I can’t take advantage of a business meeting.”
My voice is unusually rough, but I sense it’s my words she’s focusing on when her lashes blink once. Twice.
The warmth evaporates from her gaze, replaced by confusion. “What?”
“Jake thought you could help me market the application of my compatibility research. That’s why he arranged for us to meet.”
Cue the record scratch.
She’s looking at me as if I’ve grown another head, and I have the same awkward feeling as when I realized as a first-year grad student during my first presentation at the national conference for genetic epidemiologists that I’d forgotten to control for exposure to a known environmental toxin in my GWAS study.
I reach up to rub a hand over my suddenly hot neck. “Didn’t he tell you that?”
She clears her throat. “Not so much. Although I might’ve been multitasking when he called… I thought you were friends from Baden.”
“I didn’t go to Baden. I teach there. I met Jake at an alum mixer this summer when I joined the faculty.”
Something tells me this just got worse, though I can’t pinpoint why, and feeling as if I only have partial information is starting to piss me off.
“You’re a teacher at Baden,” she echoes, then squeezes her eyes shut. “This is perfect. My mother’s right. I can’t even... oh my God.” Rena’s hands shove through her hair, and for a moment I’m distracted by it again.
This awkward moment is interrupted when our waiter comes down the hall, looking between us. “Are you finished your meal?”
“No,” I say firmly, even as she insists, “Yes.”
He bustles off, and by the time I turn back, she’s shouldering her bag and turning for the door.
I touch her wrist. “Rena, wait.”
I’m startled by the little buzz along my skin even before she turns back.
“Thank you for dinner. And I’m sorry about the misunderstanding.”
Misunderstanding?
There’s no way that explains what went down and the only thing bugging me more that the fact that the woman who kissed me is looking at me in abject horror is that I have no idea what the hell is going on.
But before I can challenge her, she trots for the door, her hair swinging behind her.
She’s gone before I realize this is the first time I’ve felt something other than numb for weeks.
“Shit, Robinson. You sure your old man was a librarian?” Jake demands as he absorbs my right hook.
“You don’t hit like yours was in the jewelry business.”
“He wasn’t. My father ran an auction house. Three.”
I throw two jabs and a cross, cushioned by the pads he’s holding.
I never pictured myself boxing, but I need the friends and the workout. This particular friend likes to shadowbox and spar at this members-only club. Which is why I’m here, throwing punches while Jake holds the focus mitts, an unhealthy amount of adrenaline dosing my brain and body in pulsing waves.
“Twenty years,” Jake continues. “Best in New York. Lost it on account of his best friend turned rival.” He lowers the pads and picks up his water bottle, sweat running down his lean face and sharp nose. “But there’s a way we can still end up on top. If my brothers would play ball, which isn’t happening because Aiden’s too busy painting and Liam’s God knows where.”
He sets the water down and resumes his position. My shoulders are aching, but I don’t mind it today.
I’m not sure why I’ve been working out with him twice a week all summer except that seeing my father deteriorating in bed for three months, I needed a physical outlet. I think Jake knew it too.
When I met Jake during my first orientation event at the private high school, he insisted I join him at the club as his guest.
I’d balked at first—I was here for my father, not to make friends—but I realized that even though my professional and family life had gone to shit, I could control my physical shape.
What I didn’t expect was to respect the man. He might run a jewelry company, whereas I’ve never set foot in a jewelry store in my life, but we have more in common than I could’ve guessed.
“You think tragedy runs in the family?” His dark eyes glint as he holds out the mitts, and we switch positions.
“No. And if it did, there’d be gene therapies in our lifetime to address it. To insert and delete the smallest pieces of human programming.” He raises a brow. “But I’m a scientist. It’s not my job to play God.”
I help Jake into his sparring gloves, then I pull on the focus mitts.
“Do you believe in God, Wesley?”
“I have respect for what is.” I glance toward the ring, where two men are full-out boxing. “That is the opposite of respect. For life or for God.”