“I did make it clear I meant those who have a nine-to-five schedule. You’re not one of those. In fact, you’re the only one who almost makes this place your home.”
She stared into his spellbinding eyes as he stared back with the same intentness.
How did he know that?
How? Because the man had a level of intelligence and efficiency she’d never before encountered. It stood to reason he’d researched the staff before he’d acquired them. Though she’d thought they’d be too insignificant for him individually, she had to revise that opinion. To reach his level of success he couldn’t be a detached leader who left details to others. He had to be hands-on. Nothing and no one was too trivial or below his notice.
She wouldn’t be surprised if he had invasive info on everyone who held or would hold any position in his businesses...and had memorized it, too. Thinking that disconcerted her on a primal level. Even if there wasn’t much about her to know, just that he did know it put her at an even bigger disadvantage, if that was even possible.
“Nothing to go back home to?”
His quiet question surprised an unfiltered answer from her. “There never really was.”
Her dismay deepened at the contemplative cast that came over his gaze. She’d exposed herself even more, and she held him accountable for it, him with his damned hypnotic power.
But her consternation was swept away by the surge of memories. Memories of growing up with only her mother, who moved her around so much following her medical career she’d never stayed long enough in one place to form real friendships. Only when Lili had entered medical school herself had her mother finally settled in LA, just before she fell prey to early-onset Alzheimer’s. Lili had gone back to live with her, before being forced to put her in a home for four years before her death a year ago. Her mother’s house remained a place to crash when she wasn’t working. Being a workaholic was what saved her from feeling lonely. It was the only other thing she’d inherited from her mother. Hopefully. Home had always been wherever she worked. This lab had been her home for the past three years. Her haven. Until he happened.
“There you go again.”
“There I go what again?”
His lips spread wider. The ground beneath her tilted. “Using me as target practice for your poison-laced glances.”
Choking on the heart that his smile yanked into her throat, she shrugged. “They’re just dipped in heavy tranquilizers. Or loaded with fifty thousand volts.”
At that, he did something she’d dreaded in theory, but had thought would never come to pass in reality. Not in her presence.
He threw his head back and laughed.
And his laughter was...horrible. It did terrible things to her insides, had her hormones rushing in torrents in her system.
Great. Just great. Just when she discovered she had those kinds of hormones after all, they had to be activated by him of all men. And in broad daylight. When he was laughing his magnificent head off at her, no less.
To make things worse, one big, elegant hand rose to wipe his left cheek. He’d laughed so hard, it had wrung a tear from his eye. Fantastic.
But what was really worth marveling at was how moisture smeared his hewn flesh. Her thoughts caught fire imagining him drenched in exertion, during or after he’d—
Shaking away the sensual images only lodged them deeper into her brain. Her tongue tingled with until-now unknown urges—the sudden longing to drag him down to her, so she could trace that cheekbone, taste his virility. Only his hand combing back the hair that had fallen over his forehead distracted her from those idiotic impulses. The hand of the virtuoso surgeon he was, powerful, graceful, skillful...in every possible way, no doubt—
For God’s sake, stop. Stop noticing his every detail and getting arrhythmia over each one!
But in the absence of others, she had no buffer against his sheer charisma and sensual power—both of which she was certain he didn’t even mean to exercise on her. A man like him must have them on all the time on auto. She’d never even thought men like him existed outside of legends and fairy tales.
After she’d become a jumbled mess, he sobered, the wattage of his smile dazzling her.
“So you don’t want me dead, just incapacitated.”
She fidgeted, her tote getting heavier by the second. “Ideally, long enough to remove you from my path. I want you gone from my world, not the one at large.”
“That’s big of you.”
Nerves jangling at the outright teasing she could no longer mistake, she sighed. “When it doesn’t come to my lab—yours now—I do recognize that, even if it’s to your humongous advantage, you are a formidable force for good.”
His eyebrows shot up. “Considering your views of me back there it’s unexpected to hear you admit that.”
“I’m a surprise a second. To myself most of all today. I sure didn’t mean to say any of the things I said back there.”
“So you didn’t mean them?”
“I said I didn’t mean to say them.”
“So you did mean them.”
“Can’t mean anything more, in the context of my own concerns.” She shot him a defiant glance, this man who’d detained her because he could do anything he wanted and have the world bend over backward to accommodate him. “You’re sadly misguided if you think you’ll get an apology or a retraction.”
“You’ve given me both when you deigned to recognize my worth to the world.”
“Still doesn’t change the fact that I wish I had the power to make you disappear.”
He shook his head, his grin widening, wreaking more havoc with her already compromised nerves.
“What do you find so funny now?” she mumbled sullenly.
“Not funny, delightful. You’re definitely not the first person to wish to eliminate me, but you’re the first to tell me so to my face.”
“Hey, watch your terminology. You go around using words like poison-laced and eliminate, and if something ever befalls you, I’m a prime suspect. I only wish to be rid of your disruption. All I want is to go back to work tomorrow to the news that you’ve withdrawn your bid and let us be.”
“And if a way presented itself for you to make this happen?”
“I wouldn’t hesitate.”
He gave another chuckle. “It doesn’t seem you were handed discretion at the cosmic assembly line. Are you this blunt with everyone?”
Noticing the watchfulness that entered his gaze at this question, getting the feeling that he somehow didn’t relish the idea, she shrugged a shoulder. “Not since I was a kid. Or at least I thought so, until just before you arrived and Brian told me I’m transparent. I thought it was only my expressions that everyone could read, that I wasn’t as incontinent verbally, then you started your hypnotic session and I felt my colleagues being assimilated into your hive mind, and I...well, any tact I thought I cultivated evaporated.”
“You don’t like this about yourself.” It was a statement, not a question. “You should. In fact, you should continue being as outspoken about the grievance you have with me. I have a feeling it goes beyond objecting to the change in course I’m proposing.”
She almost snorted. “Proposing? You mean dictating. And you think that’s not enough for me to consider you and your takeover the worst thing that could happen to this place?”
“I didn’t get the impression anyone else shared that unfavorable