Before I can ask her another question, she adds, “And your budget is big enough. Not as big as your ego, but big enough.”
I glance back at my computer. A few more seconds to go.
As though she’s annoyed that I’m ignoring her, the woman sets her handbag down on my desk, right beside my keyboard.
This part of my lab isn’t sterile. There’s a clean room at the back where we analyze soil samples from all over the world. Her purse near my computer isn’t that big of a deal.
It isn’t.
It shouldn’t bother me.
But it does. Because this kind of carelessness could potentially lead to contamination of a sample.
I glare at her bag pointedly, but she doesn’t move it.
At least not off my desk.
Instead, she nudges it aside and props her hip where the bag was a second ago.
And now it’s not just her bag that’s in my space.She’sin my space.
I’m one deep breath away from knowing what her damn shampoo smells like.
Fuck.
“You don’t need more money. What you do need are social skills.”
“I’m a scientist. Not a debutante. I don’t need social skills. And get your bag off my desk before it contaminates my lab any more than your presence here already has.”
She doesn’t move her bag. “Are you saying my bag is dirty?”
“Dirty is a relative and imprecise term. By the standards of a clean laboratory, everything is dirty. Everything is a potential contaminant.” My computer dings, releasing me from the torture. “And your time is up.”
I turn my chair toward my computer and wiggle the mouse to wake it up, dismissing her.
“Oh, you have got to be kidding me,” she mutters.
Since she doesn’t seem to be leaving on her own, I pick up her bag and hand it to her.
But she still doesn’t leave. No.
She arches an eyebrow, somehow managing to get it higher than the rim of her ridiculously huge glasses. She takes her bag and drops it unceremoniously on the floor. She hoists herself onto my desk and sits with her ass about an inch away from my keyboard. That skirt that seemed demure a second ago hikes up to reveal about a mile of pale, creamy thigh. Which is now an inch away from my hand where it rests on my mouse.
She wiggles her ass as if settling in and crosses her legs. Which, through some miracle of physics, exposes even more of her bare thigh.
Jesus Christ. Just kill me now.
“If you refuse to talk to me,” she says slowly, like she’s talking to an idiot. Which, in all fairness, is what I feel like. “It could cost you five million dollars.”
And that’s when I finally connect the damn dots.
Yep. I’m an idiot.
Holly Dolinsky. Not just a communications lecturer.
She’s the ex-wife of Dr. Thorndyke. The dean of Agriculture and Life Sciences. My boss.
No wonder she knows Clarissa.
