by Day Leclaire
“No, thanks.” Prim. Businesslike. But murmured in a voice as sultry as hell. A voice, moreover, that belonged in a bedroom, not conducting an interrogation in a public restaurant.
“No, huh?” He sighed. “A shame.”
“Well?” She peered over the tops of her glittery frames. “How many dates does it take before you sleep with a woman? Keep or discard?”
“Honey, that’s not a question most men are gonna be comfortable answering. You must know it depends on the woman and the circumstances.”
“But on average?”
“Forget it, Jane.” He shoved the tzatziki to one side. “Are you really going to keep that one on your survey? Is that a question you’d want to answer?”
“Six.”
“Excuse me?”
“I wait precisely six dates before sleeping with a man.”
“You’re kidding.” Flynn reached for his glass, almost tipping it over.
“Not at all,” Jane insisted. “We kiss on the first date. No tongues. I allow that on the second. On the third date, some light petting. Heavy petting on the fourth. On the fifth date, anything goes except actual lovemaking. That comes on date number six.”
He stared at her in open disbelief. All he could think about was Jane and Barstow, working their way up to date number six. Had they made it that far before the SOB had hurt her? Or had she realized he didn’t have the qualities she needed in a mate before then? Hell, he hoped she’d seen through him by the third date. Check that. By the second. Just imagining the jerk unbuttoning Jane’s ugly gray dress and putting his hands on her—A choked sound from the far side of the table distracted him and Flynn caught the unmistakable gleam of laughter in her eyes. “You should see your face. You believed me, didn’t you?”
Believed her? As methodical as she was? Hell, yes, he’d believed her. He shook his head, grinning. “You got me good, sweetheart. I’ll give you that. Six dates before— Damn.”
“As if. That’s what you get for making assumptions about me,” she scolded.
He held up his hands. “Okay. Fair enough. What are some of your other questions?”
“Nothing you’ll want to answer.” She checked her notebook. “How sexually experienced are you, the frequency of your sexual encounters, and how long it’s been since the last one.”
Dishes rattled ominously. For a moment, it looked like their salad would be decorating the floor. At the last instant, Kelly righted her tray. “Horiatiki for two,” she announced, struggling to keep a straight face.
With more speed than grace, she dumped the salad plates in front of them. Crisp slices of cucumbers and peppers were accented with red tomatoes and white chunks of feta cheese. Jane diligently dug in to see if it tasted as good as it appeared. After several minutes, she lifted her head and peeked cautiously around.
“Just so you know, those were legitimate questions on the survey.”
Flynn tore apart a crispy bread roll and popped a chunk into his mouth. “Do you really want to know how long it’s been? Or are you more interested in how the encounter went?”
“No, of course not! You don’t have to answer any of the questions.” She cleared her throat. “Unless you want to.”
“To be honest, I’m a little touchy about some of these subjects.”
“Like your last sexual encounter?” she dared to ask.
“Yeah. Like that one.”
“I gather it didn’t end well?”
“Is that another of your survey questions?”
“No,” she admitted. “I was making a stab at normal conversation.” She peeked at him over her glasses. “How am I doing?”
Tension gave a rigid set of his shoulders and his fingers clenched his champagne flute. “Not bad, considering.”
“You mean, considering how lousy I am at this?”
He actually smiled. “Yeah. Considering that.”
Going for broke, she asked another. “So your last relationship ended badly. I take it that one was an exception?”
“I do my best to please. Some relationships are more successful than others.”
“I can sympathize with that.” Slowly she removed her glasses. “Mick... Mick Barstow was my last relationship.” She fought to open up to him, to be as frank as he’d been. “It didn’t end well.”
“Mick’s your scientist friend?”
“Yes.”
“Am I getting the fallout from that?”
“Probably.” She moistened her lips. “It’s not fair to color you with his paintbrush, I know.”
“But you’re still hurting.”
“My pride is. The rest of me will survive.”
“Want to tell me what happened?”
She shrugged, drawing the atomic structure for hydrogen in the tablecloth with the earpiece of her glasses. It was a distraction she employed whenever her emotions threatened to get out of control. For the first time, her technique failed. Hydrogen was too simple an element to successfully distract her. With Flynn, she suspected she’d have to sketch a far weightier element. One that had four or five orbitals instead of just a single ring.
“It’s nothing new. I thought he’d fallen in love with me. Instead he’d fallen in love with my research. By the time I discovered my error, he’d convinced me to make him my partner and had attached his name to as much of my research as he could.” She spared Flynn a quick look. “Nice little scam, huh?”
His expression closed over and he avoided her gaze. Didn’t he believe her? Jane almost laughed at the irony. From the moment she’d first met Flynn Morgan, she’d doubted and questioned every word he’d uttered. If she’d thought about it, she’d have justified her reaction to him as natural skepticism, an appropriate trait in her line of research. But it didn’t go over very well in their current setting. And even though she tried to convince herself that dinner was business-related, it certainly felt personal.
Too personal.
“What did you do once you found out what Mick wanted?” Flynn asked.
“I kicked him out.”
“Had he contributed to any of your research?”
“Yes.”
“How did you handle the division?”
At some point, the inquisition had done a one-eighty. Now she was answering the questions Flynn fired at her. “I returned his notes, kept my own. The parts that we worked on jointly will bear his name, as well as mine. The rest will have mine alone.”
“Seems fair.”
“I thought so. He didn’t.”
“Why are you telling me all this?”
“Because I wanted to,” she admitted. And it was true. “Person to person, instead of scientist to lab rat.”
He rewarded her with a grin that set off warning sirens. “I hope you don’t regret it in the morning.”
“I hope not, either.”
But she suspected she would. Something was happening between them and it had little, if anything, to do with her experiment. If she didn’t call a halt to it soon, she’d regret it—regret it far more than anything she’d experienced after Mick.
* * *
JANE STOOD IN THE LADIES’ ROOM and stared at the atomizer she held. Okay. She didn’t dare wait any longer to give this a try. She’d had an opportunity to judge Flynn’s behavior quite a bit this evening, to observe how they’d interacted and how he treated her as a person and as a woman. Now she could see if that changed after she used the perfume.
She hesitated. Of course, she could always wait until the next time they were together and try it then. She didn’t have to wear it tonight. She could use this opportunity to ask her questions and let it go at that.
“Oh, stop it, Jane,” she muttered. “You know why you don’t want to use the perfume.” Flynn didn’t like manipulative women. And if this wasn’t manipulative, she didn’t know what was.
“Excuse me? Did you say something?”
Jane looked up, not realizing someone had joined her. “Sorry. I’m just talking to myself.”
“I...see.”
She held up her perfume. “I was trying to decide whether or not to wear this.”
“Pretty bottle. Whose scent is it?”
“It’s my own.” She sprayed it into the air.
The woman sniffed. “Oh, my. That’s wonderful. You created this yourself? Are you serious?”
“Do you like it?”
“I love it. Why in the world would you hesitate using it?”
Jane thrust her glasses farther up on the bridge of her nose. “Because I don’t want to unduly influence the man I’m with.”
The woman stared. “You don’t want to—”
“No.” Jane frowned at the atomizer, tossing it lightly from hand to hand. “Wouldn’t you rather have a man respond to you naturally, based on who you are as a person, instead of reacting to how you smell?”
“No. Anything that helps reel in your fish is fair game as far as I’m concerned.” She eyed Jane’s dress. “And you, hon, need all the help you can get. I suggest you give that stuff a squirt, unbutton your dress, pull your hair out of that bun and ditch the specs.”
“I need my glasses to see.”
“That’s why they invented contact lenses.”
“These are reading glasses.”
“Try squinting.” The woman caught Jane’s atomizer midair and sprayed herself with it. “Thanks, sweetie. That really is a great scent. You ought to market it.”
“Oh, dear. I’m not sure you should have—”
The woman held out the bottle and blasted Jane with it, too. “Now you can honestly say you aren’t responsible for unduly influencing your man. I’ll be happy to take the blame and you can tell him I said so.”
The woman returned the bottle and sauntered out the door, hips swinging. Jane sighed. Well, that settled that. Apparently the second half of her experiment would continue on schedule. She turned and stared at herself in the mirror, her frown deepening. It wasn’t that she disagreed with the woman’s comments. But attracting a man wasn’t her goal. She needed to judge Flynn’s reaction to her with the only variable being her perfume. If she wore her hair down and unbuttoned her dress at this stage, it would taint the results.
Stop procrastinating, Jane! The deed was done. If Flynn felt she’d manipulated him, she’d deal with that later. Before she could find another excuse for postponing her experiment, she returned the atomizer to her purse. Too bad, she thought. Now she’d never know for certain whether Flynn would have been attracted to her without undue influence.
Snapping her purse closed, she hesitated. Whipping off her glasses, she dumped them into the purse, as well. Now she really was being ridiculous. It had to stop. It would be weeks before she had new test subjects. Flynn was her one-and-only chance to prove her uncles’ support hadn’t been misplaced. And after her experience with Mick, she was crazy to consider indulging in another romantic relationship. Spinning away from the mirror, she reentered the restaurant.
Time to get to work.
CHAPTER SEVEN
“HOW WAS THE SHRIMP?” Flynn asked.
Jane offered a gut-twisting smile. “Incredible,” she enthused. “If I’d known Niko’s meals were so good, I’d have tried this place ages ago.”
“You’ve never been before?” Now, why didn’t that surprise him? “Do your keepers lock you in that lab twenty-four hours a day?”
“No. I set my own hours.” She evaded his gaze, which told him all he needed to know. “I just like to work.”
“Yeah, right. What you mean is, you don’t function well in the real world, so you avoid it whenever possible. Work comes first, right?”
She cleared her throat. “Speaking of which... Are you ready to finish the survey?”
Aw, hell. He should have seen that coming. Whenever she got flustered, she retreated into that damn notebook. He stabbed a final bit of lamb wrapped in filo pastry. “Sure. Why not?”
“There’s just a few more questions.”
The lenses magnified her dark green eyes, softening them, making them incredibly vulnerable. He didn’t think he’d ever known a woman with eyes quite that shade. They were unusual, just as she was unusual. Her head bent as she studied her notebook, revealing the pale length of her neck. A tiny mole resided just behind her ear. God, it was sweet. He hadn’t noticed it before, but it served to emphasize the graceful curve of her neck.
For the first time, he appreciated the fact that she wore her hair up instead of hiding that tempting little freckle. How would she respond if he kissed his way from mole to shoulder? Would she react like a woman or revert to scientist-mode?
“Here we are.” She scribbled a quick notation. “What do you consider to be a successful date?”
“I don’t see why anyone would object to that question. Now, you answer me a question.”
“But—”
“Hey, it’s only fair.” He waited until he had her full attention and asked the question that had been driving him crazy for the past half hour. “What do you have on under that dress? Silk or cotton?”
Her deliciously wide mouth dropped open. “I beg your pardon?”
“Do you only dress like a nun on the outside? Or does it go right through to the skin?”
Her mouth closed, forming a very unkissable straight line. “This is your way of getting back at me for asking those questions, isn’t it?”
He sighed. “I guess that means you also won’t tell me whether you’re a panty-hose woman or the lacy-garter sort.”
“You’re right. I won’t.”
Kelly appeared at his elbow, her face carefully expressionless. “Would you care for anything else?” she asked blandly as she removed their dinner plates. “Coffee? Tea? Dessert? A fire hose?”
“Coffee,” Flynn requested.
Jane folded her arms across her chest. “Tea.”
He snorted. “That figures.”
Silence reigned until Kelly returned with their drinks. Jane busied herself steeping her tea. He busied himself blistering his tongue on his coffee. Apparently satisfied with the viscosity of her tea, she next fussed over adding an impressive amount of sugar to her cup before squirting everything in sight with lemon.
“Sorry,” she murmured.
He sighed, swiping the juice from his mouth and chin. “Forget it. I deserve it for being so rude.”
She bit down on her lip, a lip he’d gotten damn possessive over. “You weren’t rude.”
“Sure I was. And you were right.” He gave her a direct look. “I suspect I was getting back at you for some of those questions you asked. A little quid pro quo. I apologize.”
She took a quick drink of tea, the cup clattering against the saucer. “To be honest, I’ve realized something.”
“What’s that?”
“Mixing business with pleasure doesn’t work. And it’s a mistake to try.”
“You know something? You’re right.” He finished off his coffee and stood. “Ready to go?”
She didn’t argue. “All set.” He yanked his wallet from his back pocket and removed several bills, dropping them to the table. She gestured toward the money. “I’m supposed to pay for the evening.”
“Not when you’re with me.”
Flynn didn’t say a single word the entire way to the car. Once there, he opened the door for her—ever the gentleman—and waited while she slid into her seat. Was it her imagination, or did he sniff her? She clutched her purse between her fingers and wished with all her heart that she hadn’t been squirted with the perfume. Maybe the evening would have ended differently if she’d just stuck to business, as she’d planned.
“I’m sorry tonight didn’t go well,” she said the minute he climbed into the car.
“Forget it.”
“I...” She made a futile gesture. “I’m not much of a people person.”
“Yeah. I noticed.”
“I’m far more successful in the lab.”
“I’ll have to take your word for it.”
“I’m serious, Flynn.”
“I’m well aware that you’re serious.”
They were fast approaching her house and she didn’t want the evening to end until she’d had an opportunity to make amends—or at least, amend things the best she knew how. “Right now, my research is everything. Maybe you think it shouldn’t be, but that doesn’t change the fact that it is. And...” Was it her imagination or did the small bottle of perfume nestled within her purse weigh more heavily than normal against her thighs? “And those questions, as explicit as they were, are necessary for my research.”
“It’s not the questions I objected to.”
“It was trying to keep the evening on a business footing, right?” A strand of hair came loose from the knot at her nape and she tried to slick it back into place. It sprang stubbornly against her temple, curling uncontrollably. “We should have gone for social.”
“Honey, can you even tell the difference between the two?”
She responded to his irritation with a little of her own. “I’m not that oblivious.”
“Keep telling yourself that. Hell, you can’t even conduct a conversation without reverting to science-speak.”
“Science-speak? Oh! How sophomoric. I should have known trying to keep tonight strictly business wouldn’t work. That’s why I don’t like mixing the two.”
“You don’t get it, do you?”
“Get what?”
His hands tightened on the wheel. “You were right earlier. You should have put business aside for just one damn night.” He shot her an infuriated look. “But I suspect you wouldn’t know how.”
They turned into the driveway and she swallowed. How odd. Her throat felt tight and she fought the unexpected rush of tears. Why? It wasn’t as if Flynn had told her anything new. It was just... Coming from him it hurt more than it should have. He switched off the engine and climbed from the car. This time she didn’t wait for him to open her door, but jumped out and hastened around the hood to his side.