by Various
“Well, I know Allie-Larson-lying-flutters when I see them.” Carlee pointed at Lukas and the woman. “Leave those two alone. It’s a party, for God’s sake! Have a drink.
Enjoy.”
“I am.” She lifted her empty glass of soda up for illustration.
Carlee sniffed the empty glass and wrinkled her nose. “There’s the problem.” She dragged Allie toward the bar. “You need something stiffer. How ‘bout a Long Island?
Less Coke, lots of alcohol.”
“Are you trying to kill me? I’ll be flat on my back in minutes if I drink one of those.”
“That’d be better than this. Look at you.”
Allie glanced down, expecting to find food on her clothes, her blouse unbuttoned, something. “What? What’s wrong with me?”
“You’ve got that I’m-gonna-rescue-the-lost-puppy-dog look.”
“Do not.” She lifted her hand to her face. “It’s called the I’m-getting-sick-from-that-appetizer look.” She shuddered for effect. “You’d think the brass could’ve hired better caterers this year. I think these guys are the same ones as last year, and you know what happened then.”
Carlee held her stomach. “Don’t remind me. I didn’t see anything but the bathroom for two days. You’re not eating the macaroni salad, just in case.”
“Haven’t touched it.” Allie forced herself to look away from Lukas and the snoring woman, but her gaze didn’t cooperate for long, and it bounced right back like one of those rubber balls on elastic strings.
“Don’t,” Carlee murmured.
37
Tawny Taylor
She watched him as he droned on and on, his expression as flat as her own breasts…without the Wonderbra. “I won’t. I just feel bad for him. He has no idea what he’s doing. Someone needs to help him. A well-meaning friend.”
“That’s what a mother is for.”
“The man’s in his thirties. I’m sure his mother’s given up on him by now.”
“And so should you.” Carlee dumped the rest of her wine down her throat. “Have you thought that maybe he’s happy being the way he is?”
“Sure. But I don’t think he realizes something’s wrong. Without the glasses and outdated haircut and clothes, I think he’d be a real hunk. And he’s smart. He has a good job—”
“Forget it. You’re not the hostess of one of those makeover shows.” Carlee turned to the bartender. “Another glass of the Two-buck Chuck for me, and my friend’ll take a soda…with less Coke and more rum this time—”
“Just Coke, thanks.” Allie corrected. After last year’s fiasco that started with a few Fuzzy Navels and ended with her tongue in the CEO’s fuzzy navel, she’d vowed never to drink at a company party again.
Of course, she’d never know if she’d earned the promotion that had followed soon after the hard way or not. Some mysteries were better left unexplored.
As she sipped her lukewarm soda, she watched Lukas talk. The bored-to-death woman had either sleepwalked away or dropped in a cold faint somewhere, and so he’d moved on to yet another victim.
It was too bad. He really was a good-looking guy. Dark hair that looked like if it was given a toss with some hair wax it might be sexy. Without the heavy grease he used, in fact, she wondered if it might even have some blond highlights.
And without the glasses making his pale blue eyes look as wide as an owl’s, she guessed his face was proportioned real nice. High cheekbones. Square jaw. Narrow nose. A strong, masculine, manly face.
Oh, yes. There was lip-smackin’ potential in that man. She let her gaze travel south.
His clothes didn’t fit properly. They hung on him funny, like they belonged to someone else. Granted, he was big. Everywhere. But his clothes did nothing for him. She wondered how he would look in a snug sweater and khakis.
He caught her staring, and she felt her cheeks heating.
Clearly seizing the moment, the woman next to him slipped away.
Oh, boy. Now she’d done it. Now she had to talk to him. She’d made him lose his partner.
His gaze still focused on her face, he walked toward her.
“What did you do?” Carlee whispered, returning from wherever she’d wandered.
“I leave you alone for two seconds, and look what’s happened.”
“Shush! He’ll hear you.”
38
Body Chemistry
He made an honest attempt at a smile as he approached her, but it didn’t quite mature into a convincing one. Still, she smiled back.
“Hi,” she said, feeling instantly uncomfortable.
“Hi.” He stared in her eyes, unblinking, until she had to glance away.
“Are you enjoying the party?” She studied his shoes. Loafers like her dad wore. She always believed a man’s shoes said a lot about a guy. Loafers said “practical, responsible, dependable”. Not bad things, but not quite what she was hoping for, either.
“It’s okay. You?”
“It’d be more fun if I were loaded, but I figured I’m better off sober.” She glanced up.
Still staring, he nodded.
Didn’t the man ever blink?
She scrambled to find something to talk about. “Er…uh…how’s your latest project going? I hear good things about it.”
“It’s going well. I have identified several key impurities of my compound and have begun eliminating them. Then I can renew the animal testing. The last round of testing was disastrous, but I believe within a week I should be able to begin again, with better results.”
“Isn’t that interesting. What happened last time?”
“The rats produced anaplastic astrocytomas.”
She shuddered. “Sounds painful.”
He nodded. “It was not pleasant. They suffered vomiting, seizures, focal weakness—”
“Nice.” Pleasant party conversation. She felt herself grimacing. “Those are some powerful side effects for a weight loss pill. I think if I had a choice, I’d stay overweight.”
“You’re not.” His meticulous gaze traveled up and down her body, very slowly.
And she was damn embarrassed. She was sure he could see every lump and bump hidden beneath her clothes. “Oh, I meant…if I were… I mean, who would want to face those side effects just to lose a few pounds?”
“Precisely. Although I’ve discovered a byproduct of the manufacturing process that has some interesting properties.”
She buttoned her jacket even though she was feeling mighty warm at the moment.
“Really?”
“It resembles E-E-eight-ten-dodecadien-one-ol, a primary alcohol containing a straight chain of twelve carbons and two conjugated double bonds.”
What was that? Conjugated what? Was he even speaking English? “Well…” She glanced around the room, feeling guilty as sin for looking for an escape route. But discussing upchucking rats and conjugating anything wasn’t doing her already bubbly 39
Tawny Taylor
stomach any good. “I’ve got to go. My friend—” she pointed at Carlee, who was batting eyelashes at one of the sales guys, “—needs my help. Josh over there is married.”
“Of course.” He took a single step backward.
“It was nice talking with you.”
He nodded. “You, too.”
And as she walked toward Carlee, she glanced back, catching him retreating to the corner of the room, where he stood against the wall. Alone.
What a crying shame. All that body. All that brain. And as much sex appeal as a dead frog.
And then, as she half-listened to Carlee’s sorry attempt at flirting with Josh, she watched Lukas leave.
* * * * *
She was positively gorgeous, that Allie Larson. And she’d spoken to him, shown a genuine interest in what he was saying…until he’d gotten to the part about the rats.
Why did he always do that? Talk about such utter nonsense, it literally chased the women away?
He shrugged into his lab coat. A little playing with t
hat new compound, the one he’d lovingly named Candy, would raise his spirits, not that they weren’t already somewhere up in the stratosphere.
She’d noticed him. She’d spoken to him.
If only there was a pill he could take to make him the smoothest talking charmer of the company! He pulled the test tube rack from the refrigerator and set it on the counter, then turned to light the Bunsen burner under the hood, but as he spun around again to grab a tube from the rack, he knocked the whole thing to the floor. It landed with an earsplitting crash.
Damn it all!
He went to the sink and pulled some paper towels from the dispenser then knelt on the floor to mop up the broken glass and the chemical compound that had him up late at night trying to discover its secrets.
Too damn bad! Now he’d have to wait until the next run of the weight loss compound before he’d get any more.
Now, with nothing to do, he took off his lab coat, returned it to its hook, tossed the last of the paper towel mess in the garbage, and headed toward the door. As he gripped the knob in his hand and pulled, John—the one guy at Case who seemed to understand him—shoved open the door.
“Are you leavin’?”
40
Body Chemistry
“Yeah. I just dropped the last of Candy on the floor.”
“Again? Last week, we had to close the lab for a whole day because of the mercury spill.”
“Don’t remind me.”
“Come on, let’s go get a beer on the suits. They’re paying.”
“Nah. That party isn’t my thing.”
“Oh, come on. I owe you a beer.”
“For what?”
“For covering for me yesterday. Thanks again.”
“Not a problem.”
John tipped his head toward the banquet-room-slash-meeting-room where the partiers were getting louder by the minute. “Sounds like the beer’s flowin’.” He pushed open the door and walked in.
Lukas followed, brushing past Judy, the company’s receptionist, on his way to the bar.
“Well, hello there!” she cooed, catching his hand and giving it a solid yank. “Where have you been, handsome?” She tucked a stray silver lock of hair behind her ear, put on her glasses, which hung from a chain around her neck, and studied him top to toe.
“Who? Me?” Lukas looked behind him. He looked over his right shoulder. No one.
He looked over his left shoulder. Still no one. He looked back at Judy.
She licked her chops and fanned herself with a hand. “Yeah, you. My goodness, if I didn’t know better, I’d swear I was having a hot flash. I haven’t felt like this since menopause.”
“Maybe you should go outside and get some cool air.” He tried to back away, but she wouldn’t let him go.
Instead, she draped herself over his arm like an afghan. “I’ll go anywhere you say, honey. Just lead the way. I’ve been waiting all night to get you alone.”
He sniffed her breath, expecting to get numb from the fumes. Nothing. “You…you have? Me?”
What the hell?
Feeling like he had an anchor tied to his left side, he watched as John went to the bar and ordered a beer, then turned around.
John’s eyes couldn’t get wider, and his mouth gaped.
Lukas half-dragged the clinging Judy as he continued across the floor, but navigating a crowded room wasn’t easy with one hundred and fifty pounds of woman hanging from his arm. He bumped into a couple more women, and cringed as they spun around. “I’m sorry,” he said.
Their eyes bugged and their jaws dropped, and he wondered if he hadn’t metamorphosed into some kind of hideous monster.
41
Tawny Taylor
And then they joined Judy, acclaiming his stunning physique.
“My, don’t you have a broad chest,” said one, tugging at his shirt.
“And take a feel of these arms,” exclaimed another. Wandering fingertips crept up his sleeve.
Female hands stroked and squeezed, female voices ahhhed and oohed, female bodies rubbed against him like cats in heat.
What the hell did they put in the punch?
He put out a silent plea to John for help, but his good buddy did nothing but smile, hold up his beer in a toast and then turn toward the scantily clad woman standing next to him. “You did this, didn’t you?” Lukas murmured to his friend’s back.
“Did what, dear?” Judy purred. “I haven’t done anything yet, but I will.”
He coughed. “Maybe a little catnip would distract you. I bet they have some at the bar.” He lifted his arms over his head to try to wiggle through the crowd.
Not such a great idea.
The women were basically frisking him. And their search wasn’t limited to his decent parts, either. One gave his balls a squeeze, and he yelped.
“Whatever he’s paying you ladies, I’ll pay double if you stop.”
“Paying?” one woman asked. “No one’s paying me.” She ran her hands up and down his chest. “Why would anyone do that? I’m just enthralled by you, how you look, smell, sound.” She stood on tiptoe and whispered, “I’m getting wet just standing next to you. Wanna fuck, big boy?”
Too much information, there. “No, but thanks for asking.”
He glared at John, now more than convinced this was his idea. Paybacks are a bitch!
Someone slapped his ass, and he jumped.
Oh, yeah. Paybacks are a bitch! And if you have anything to do with this, my friend, you’ll pay…dearly.
42
Body Chemistry
Chapter Two
Allie could practically smell the excitement in the air. Sitting at a table watching her best friend get drunker by the minute, she turned to see what all the fuss was about.
Was a movie star making an appearance at the party? Across the room, there was a gaggle of squawking women surrounding someone. And although she couldn’t exactly make out what they were saying over “Tainted Love”—the DJ had excellent taste—she knew by the way they were all jumping around like toddlers on a sugar rage, they were excited.
Curiosity might have killed the cat, but Allie was willing to take her chances.
Something big was happening, and she had to know what it was. “I’ll be right back.
You behave yourself,” she shouted at Carlee. “And drink some coffee to sober up.”
Carlee’s eyes lobbed to one side. “Why would I wanna do that?”
“I’ll be right back.” She stood and shuffled across the dance floor packed with gyrating bodies. But, just as she reached the parquet floor’s end, someone grabbed her arm and pulled. She spun around.
Chuck Marshall, the CEO, had that look.
Surely he didn’t expect a repeat of last year’s performance!
Still holding her hand, he shook his ass, waggled his bushy white eyebrows, and yanked his white button-down shirt out of his pants. “Wanna dance?”
She shuddered. The man looked a whole lot better behind a veil of Peach Schnapps.
“Maybe later, Mr. Marshall.”
He danced, jerking her arm this way and that. “It’s Chuck. Call me Chuck.”
“Okay. But I have to go right now. Catch me later.”
He grinned like the devil. “You know I will.” Then he released her hand, spun around and caught the next woman who happened to dance into his reach. Poor thing.
Then again, that little lady had probably just boogied her way to a promotion.
On a mission now, Allie broke free of the dancing crowd just as the song ended, and the DJ announced a slow song. Good, at least it would be quieter. She’d be able to hear without having to stick her ear on the speaker’s mouth.
“Lukas, dance with me,” a female’s voice moaned.
“No, dance with me.”
What? Lukas? Allie sucked in a deep breath, found a chink in the human wall surrounding whoever was in the center, and wiggled in.
It was Lukas. Vomiting-rats Lukas. Standing-alone-against-the-wall Luk
as.
But now, everything was different.
43
Tawny Taylor
He was sitting in a chair, with women crawling all over him. Two sat on his lap, and others sat at his feet, stood behind him massaging his shoulders, stood at his sides whispering in his ears.
He resembled a king with his harem. Except for one small detail…he looked absolutely miserable. He gave her an empty smile of recognition. “I think I’ve been the butt of a joke.”
She fought a chuckle. “I’d say.”
“Waiting for a Girl Like You” started playing over the speakers and the women on Lukas’ lap started writhing like topless dancers doing a lap dance.
“Want to dance?” he asked Allie, looking as desperate as a drowning man.
She couldn’t turn down a drowning man. Outside of burning to death, it had to be the worst way to go. Besides, she loved this song. “Absolutely.”
He held out his hand and, ignoring the groans of dissatisfaction from the harem, she took it.
A warm zap shot up her arm.
What was that? She ripped her hand free, shook her arm, and checked all five digits for burns. Lifting her hand to her face, she smelled something sweet and musky, and her face warmed, like she’d just downed a shot of tequila.
He rested his hand on the small of her back, and a strange buzz fanned out from his touch, spreading up and out.
On the dance floor, he took her in his arms, and she rested her head against his chest.
Oh…she was in heaven!
Tingles erupted over her whole body, her head got all hazy, her mouth dry. She hadn’t felt so giddy in ages.
It had to be the song.
Pressed close, she swayed to the music, the song’s beat melding with the sounds of his heart thumping in her ear and his breath whooshing in and out.
She fought to catch her own breath, fought to slow her own heart, fought to find her brain. A thought surfaced from the mire and, like a blinking beacon, it kept flashing through her mind. Fuck him! Fuck him! Fuck him!
Her pussy warmed.
“Allie?” His voice was deep and rich, like expensive chocolate.
She tipped her head to look at him. Those soft baby blues were incredible. Gray-blue with flecks of gold, they reflected sincerity. Kindness. Raw sex appeal. Her heart did a little happy dance. “Hm?”
“Thanks for rescuing me…” His gaze lingered at her eyes for a moment then wandered over the rest of her face, and her skin heated.