by Lucy Monroe
Elle bit her lip. Why had she offered that bit of information? “Yes.”
“How long?”
“Four years.”
“And you don’t date?”
“I date.” Well, you could sort of call it that.
“Just not men your mother approves of.”
“Right.” Though some of the men she had gone out with for her job in the past four years would have thrilled her mother, her father and her baba. What they disapproved of was that she wouldn’t bring any man home to meet them, thus proving she was not seriously pursuing a relationship.
They were oh so correct in that. Elle’d had had her heart shattered once. She’d managed to glue it back together enough to function, but that had left the organ brittle. No way was she putting it at risk again. She was perfectly happy committed in a long-term relationship with her job.
“So, if you knew why I was in my brother’s office, why did you keep asking me about it?”
Again that odd look. “I wanted to know if you’d tell me the truth.”
“What? Why?”
“You are redesigning the security for my company. I don’t just work here, I believe in what we’re doing…in the vision of ETRD. Most of our projects are highly classified and some could be misused in the wrong hands. Is it so strange that I want to make sure you are trustworthy?”
“I would think you would trust Frank and your mysterious benefactor, Mr. Smith. After all, they chose me for the job.”
“Frank hired the security guard who turned out to be dirty, as well. Frank’s as fallible as the next man.”
“And Mr. Smith?”
Beau shrugged. “Let’s just say that I’m more comfortable testing and calling my own plays than someone else’s.”
“I thought it was the quarterback who called the plays.”
“I started out as a quarterback. I took our high school team to state three years in a row. It wasn’t until I got to college that the coaches decided I was even better at catching and making touchdowns than I was at throwing.”
Well, he’d certainly caught and held her that morning. She had a feeling if he ever touched her with intent, he’d score just as easily as he had on the field.
And that scared the bejeebies out of her.
Sex had not gone beyond physical release for her in four years. It was fun, but not necessary. She could always walk away. However, if Beau bent his considerable brainpower—and yes, charm, darn it—toward seduction, Elle wasn’t sure she’d be able to do that.
Chapter 4
Another foreign curse came from the new project manager’s end of the lab.
Chantal bit her lip and looked over her shoulder to find Mat scowling at one of the technicians. Again. The poor tech looked ready to cry.
Who could blame the tech? Mat was well over six feet tall with the solid muscles found in many Ukrainian men. The only colors she’d ever seen him wear were black and shades of gray. Even his lab coat was a special-order slate gray. When she’d told him the monochromatic dressing made him look like a hit man for the Russian mob, Mat had admitted he was partially color-blind—after giving her a lecture on the difference between the two nationalities. He’d told her that dressing like this was his way of preventing himself from leaving the house looking like a circus clown. But added to that, his black-as-coal hair, trim mustache and close-cropped beard gave him a decidedly intimidating look.
Especially when he was angry. Like now.
Mat never had been the warm-and-fuzzy type. Calling him a people person was a stretch even she hadn’t been able to make when she was head over heels for the man. He wasn’t the worst manager in the world. In fact, he was actually pretty decent at it and even better when his scientists and technicians were efficient. Only he had an abrasive way of dealing with them if they weren’t.
Abrasive as in almost scary until you got to know him better.
Deciding their department really couldn’t afford to lose another team member after their former PM’s disappearance, Chantal got up from her lab stool and headed toward the minicontretemps.
“Wake up on the wrong side of the bed this morning?” she asked Mat, with a smile and a nod for the technician.
Mat turned his scowl on her while the tech he’d been upbraiding stared at her as if she’d just stepped in an electromagnetic field and then tried to use her electron scan microscope.
She turned up the wattage on her smile and made sure it included both men. “Is there a problem here, gentlemen?”
“I…uh…” The technician swallowed twice and gave Mat a sidelong glance before continuing. “I was trying to explain to Dr. Chernichenko that we’d already done the tests on mercury reclamation from fluorescent bulbs and that the ROI was too low to make it a viable project.”
Chantal remembered the tests. “Unless a different reclamation process can be developed, I agree.” She looked up at Mat, trying to ignore how being this close to him made her body go haywire. “Were you thinking of trying a different process?”
“I want more information on the one already tried,” he said, with a stubborn tilt to his chin.
“No problem,” she said.
It was the technician’s turn to glare at her.
“I can get that for you and fill you in on the preliminary trials if you like,” she added.
The sense of relief from the tech was palpable as he realized she wasn’t setting him up for more of the same with his new PM.
Mat frowned, however. “I don’t want to take you away from something important.”
“Bringing the project manager for Material Reclamation up to speed on all our current and recent projects is important.”
Mat sighed and rubbed his eyes, a gesture she remembered from their college days that meant he was more stressed than tired. The man was almost inhuman when it came to getting tired—he could go for hours. In more arenas than academia. The thought brought the heat of a blush to her cheeks while her thighs clenched together involuntarily. Thank goodness for lab coats that hid embarrassing reactions.
“Thank you. I would appreciate that,” Mat said.
The look of shock the technician gave Mat’s polite response was comical, but Chantal didn’t crack a smile. Mat might think she was laughing at him, and even she wasn’t going to beard this bear in that way.
To stop herself from reaching out and touching that particularly tempting bear, she crossed her arms under her chest. “It’s past lunchtime and I don’t know about you, but I could use something to eat.”
Mat nodded, his gray gaze skimming her body like a barely there caress. “We could meet in the cafeteria…or we could go off-site.”
“The cafeteria would probably be better.” Less chance she would make a fool of herself. “We can talk freely without worrying about being overheard.”
Mat’s scowl was back. “I suppose.”
“Would you rather eat off-site?” And if so, why didn’t you just say so?
He shut his eyes and tensed his jaw like he was trying to bite back words.
“We could eat in your office,” she suggested, wanting to take that look of strain off his features. “We’d have privacy without the distractions.”
Which wasn’t going to do a thing for her own strain, but she had to deal with her attraction to him or quit her job. And she had no desire to leave Environmental Technology Research and Design.
“You’d think so, wouldn’t you?” He opened his eyes, the irises storm-cloud gray now.
She remembered that shade, but not from frustration at work. Stifling a groan, she gave herself a strong mental shake. Her attempts to deal with her reaction to him were not going to succeed if she couldn’t stop memories of the past from intruding on the present.
The reminder should have been enough to bolster her flagging self-control. It wasn’t. The problem being that she’d been using the same self-lecture for two weeks and it wasn’t getting any more powerful with repetition.
“What do you mean?”
she asked.
“Nothing you need to worry about.”
“Okay then. We’ll meet in your office.”
“Yes.” The clipped single-word response wasn’t all that he was thinking, but typical for the stoic scientist, he wasn’t sharing whatever else was on his mind.
Chantal had enough of her own worries; she should not be concerned with his. Only it never worked that way. By nature, she was too empathetic to others, and it was even worse when it came to this man. She had to watch it to stop his moods from dictating her own, even when they hadn’t said a single word to each other.
The last two weeks had proven one truth beyond the shadow of a doubt: she was not and probably never would be completely over Matej Chernichenko.
Not that she was going to do anything about that fact, but facing the truth was the first step in dealing with it. Isn’t that what someone had told her after her parents’ deaths? She’d hidden in her room, wanting to pretend that they were still alive, that the world was not what it was.
She hadn’t been allowed that luxury. She’d known the people around her, the ones forcing her to face reality, were only trying to help. She just hadn’t understood why truth had to hurt so much.
She forced a smile. “Good. I’ll pick up lunch at the deli and bring it to your office.”
“Good, that will give me a chance to finish up here.”
The technician who had looked so relieved got a worried expression on his face again and turned to hurry off without another word.
Mat ignored his defection. “You remember what I like?” he asked her.
“Yes.” She remembered far too much.
Her suggestion they meet in his office was probably the height of idiocy. Off-site would have been better, even if they had spent the hour whispering over a table in some dark corner of a crowded restaurant. But making bad choices when it came to men was a failing of hers, she thought cynically.
Matej Chernichenko had been her first object lesson in how poor her judgment regarding men was, but he hadn’t been the last one.
She was absolutely not going to let him be a repeat, though, lunch date in his office notwithstanding. She might be unforgivably gullible where men were concerned, but even she was savvy enough to know that the same man was bound to hurt her the same way if she gave him the chance.
She wasn’t about to do so, no matter how foolish some of her choices in the past might have been.
“I’ll see you in about thirty minutes then.” She turned to walk away.
“It wasn’t waking on the wrong side of the bed that made me cranky this morning, little one.”
The endearment she had not heard in ten years stopped her more forcefully than if he’d grabbed her physically. She looked back over her shoulder at him. “It wasn’t?”
“No.”
“Are you going to tell me what was?” she asked fatalistically.
“Waking up alone.”
Mat almost felt guilty about the way he terrorized the scientists and technicians under him. But was it really that hard to answer a few simple questions? Chantal was ready to do it. And she was willing to tease him to boot. She wasn’t afraid of him and that pleased him.
She might be shy, but Chantal Renaud was no wilting flower.
The petite blonde had grown more beautiful with maturity. Once kept in a haphazard ponytail, her golden hair now framed her delicate features in a straight silk curtain. She dressed with more style as well and had replaced her thick and geeky-looking glasses with frameless lenses that did nothing to detract from her hazel eyes. Those eyes still changed color with her emotions, and she still blushed like a virgin for no apparent reason whatsoever. It was cute. Sweet. Arousing.
Too much so. He didn’t relish spending his working days with the boner from Hades. And no hope of alleviating it.
Which was why he’d made that comment to her about sleeping alone. It was the truth. Probably a truth that should have remained unsaid, however, if the speed of her exit was anything to go by.
He muttered a curse.
“Still using the swearwords your dad taught you?” The sexy, soft voice with a very slight French accent he had never been able to forget came from his doorway.
Mat couldn’t count the number of times in the last ten years he had woken with a hard-on and the memory of dirty words being uttered in that exact tenor. Words he was sure that sweet-as-candy mouth would never utter in a million years.
He looked up to find Chantal standing just inside the door of his office, her laptop in one hand and a bag from a local deli in the other.
“Thanks for picking up lunch. As for the swearwords, they protected me from censure from my teachers for a good many years.”
Chantal set the laptop on the two-person conference table he kept in the corner of his office. “I bet they got you in trouble with your mother, though.”
“And my baba.” He took the bag with their lunch and apportioned the food. “Would you like a soda or water with your lunch?”
“Water please.” Chantal sat in the chair facing her computer. “I remember the stories you told about your grandmother. Is she still living?”
Mat grabbed two bottles of water from the minifridge behind his desk before detouring to shut his office door. “Yes. She’s ninety, but she’ll live to see her centenary and then some.”
“I bet she’s a crackerjack.”
He opened Chantal’s water and handed it to her. “More like the bouncing ball you play jacks with. She’s never still.”
“She sounds wonderful,” Chantal said wistfully.
He remembered that her parents had died when she was a teenager. She’d come from France to the United States to live with family she barely knew.
“Do you still see your aunt and uncle?” he asked, twisting the cap off his own water before taking a sip.
“They’re my second cousins.”
“That’s right.” He felt an unfamiliar sense of embarrassment wash over him for forgetting. “Do you see them?”
“Every few years we manage something.”
“Why so long between visits?” he asked, not caring if it was nosy and none of his business. He wanted to know.
“They retired the year after I finished university, sold their place and bought a motor home the size of a small house. They’ve been on the road ever since. We see each other when they make it back to this part of the continent.”
He sat down and their knees brushed. She visibly jumped and he found himself smiling. “You could fly out to see them wherever they are.”
He couldn’t imagine a family so disconnected. His drove him nuts, but he loved them and would never go even a whole year without seeing them. Which was why Elle’s infrequent visits hurt so much.
He tried to understand, but he missed her—they all did.
“They’ve never invited me and I don’t make an issue of it. They chose not to have children for a reason. It was more than decent of them to take me in; it was amazingly unselfish. But I’m a grown woman now and there’s no reason their retirement should shape up differently than they’d always planned.”
“I’m sure they miss you, even if they don’t say so.”
Chantal’s lips quirked in a small smile. “Whatever you say.”
“You’re a sweetheart, Chantal. Of course they miss you.”
“A sweetheart?” she asked, her voice tinged with humor.
“Yep. A total sweetheart.”
That blush he found so distracting tinged her face a soft pink and her lips opened and closed with nothing coming out.
He grinned. “You must be. Only a woman as sweet as honey would have saved that hapless tech from the big, mean PM. Not to mention manage to undermine my fully justified snit.”
“You admit to having snits?” she asked, her face now a fire-engine red.
He grimaced. “Baba says I have them, and no one messes with that woman.”
“So you take her word in all things?”
“
Pretty close to it.” Everything but that one demand he always pretended not to hear—the one about him getting married already.
He was beginning to suspect the reason he had not found the right woman was that he had left her behind ten years ago. And he didn’t mean the faithless witch he had almost asked to marry him either.
“I’ll have to remember that the next time you start terrorizing the staff.”
“And how will that help you?”
“I know how to look up a phone number online. How many Chernichenkos do you suppose there are in Southern California?”
“Two, and one of them is unlisted.”
“I’m guessing that’s yours.”
“Yes.”
“So, Grandma should be easy to track down through your dad, yes?”
He tapped her pert nose with his forefinger. “You are one sneaky scientist.”
Chantal blanched, flinching back, her teeth clamping on her bottom lip with what looked like painful intensity.
He reached out and brushed under the abused lip with his thumb. “Hey, you okay?”
She nodded, but then tears filled her eyes. Jumping up, she grabbed her laptop. “Uh, I need to go. We’ll have this meeting later, okay?”
Then she was gone, the sound of him calling her name echoing in the empty office.
What the hell had just happened?
“That is one sweet ride,” Beau said as he got out of the passenger side of Elle’s Spider.
“I like it.”
“It’s easy to see why.”
They’d pulled up in front of a sprawling mission-style home an hour east of L.A. in the desert. The neighboring houses were far enough away to ensure real privacy. Used to the cramped and crowded conditions of Los Angeles, even in their smaller community to the south of the city proper, Beau took a deep breath, enjoying the sense of space. “Nice.”
“It was a good place to grow up.”
“It reminds me of home.”
“Where is that?”
“East Texas.”
“So, that’s where that sexy drawl comes from.”
“You think my drawl is sexy?” he asked, purposefully stretching his syllables with Texan twang.