To my satisfaction, that actually earns a real smile this time. Not the restrained almost-smile. A full one. And wow. It should honestly come with some kind of warning label. It transforms him completely. It eases him just enough that I suddenly understand why women go for quiet types like him.
“You’ve made several assumptions about me tonight,” he remarks.
I tilt my head, letting my hair fall forward to screen the full force of my scrutiny. “You invited it with when you approachedme dressed like a Banana Republic mannequin. You gave me all the ammo I needed.”
He cocks one eyebrow. “I fail to see how my choice of slacks is relevant to a scientific partnership.”
“Trust me, it matters.” How, honestly, I’m not really sure, but it’s getting a rise out of him. “Had you approached me in dirty jeans, a t-shirt, and boots, I’d have taken you more seriously from the start.”
His laugh catches me off guard. Rusty, like he doesn’t do it often. And for some deeply unfortunate reason, I want to bottle that laugh, or maybe smash it to see what’s inside. Instead, I lean in, elbows braced on the bar, and let my curiosity run wild.
“So what happens,” I ask, leaning one elbow against the bar toward him, “when your very expensive algorithms tell us to drive directly into a tornado?” I can hear the dare in my own voice, the way it challenges him to rise to my level.
He doesn’t flinch. “They wouldn’t.”
“You say that with a concerning amount of confidence,” I prod.
He sets his club soda back onto the bar. “They’d tell us to reposition strategically around the tornado.” The way he says ‘strategically’ with the sort of adoration that other people would use for sacred texts or the birth weights of their children.
I grin. “See? That’s exactly the kind of sentence that gets people killed.”
He doesn’t bristle at the jab. Instead, he studies me, and for a second, there’s a flicker of something I can’t place across his face. His gaze drops briefly to my mouth for the briefest of seconds. Long enough to notice that if I were somebody else, with different wiring, I might have leaned in and let him keep staring. I doubt he would know what do if I did that, and part of me, a very small part, wants to test the theory.
“I was under the impression you enjoy dangerous situations.”
Something in my stomach gives, hot and sharp, and I realize–horrifying–that I want him to say more things in that voice. “Was that flirting, Professor?”
His entire body freezes. He blinks once, twice, as if rebooting, and then his expression flattens so hard and fast that it almost leaves a bruise. “No,” he answers in a tone that could freezer mercury.
Liar. Because now his ears are turning pink at the tips, and his left hand is flexing, as if he wants to either reach for me or run away.
“You know,” I say lightly, stepping a little closer under the excuse of reaching for my fresh beer, “for someone who claims this is strictly professional, you keep staring at my mouth.”
His breath catches. Actually catches. It’s tiny. Most people wouldn’t notice it. I do. And suddenly I’m having a very hard time remembering why I was determined not to like him. Dammit.
His eyes stay on mine a beat longer than they need to before he straightens, recalibrating. “That would be unprofessional.”
“But not inaccurate?”
A muscle jumps in his jaw.
There’s a specific frequency at which Dr. Reed starts to come apart at the seams, and clearly, I just found it. I’m not proud of how much I want to stay right here and keep tuning the dials.
“Do you do this will all your research partners?” he asks.
“Only the cute ones.”
I hear it leave my mouth. I don’t take it back.
He full-body pauses, like a computer glitching. He fingers shift around his club soda. Then his eyes come back to mine.”
“You think I’m cute.”
Not quite a question. Like he’s reading it back to himself to check the data, which is insane. The man looks like someone filed a grant proposal to build him. Like academic personally handcrafted him in a lab somewhere.
I take another sip of beer to hide my smile. “Don’t let it go to your head, Professor.”
That low laugh escapes him again, warmer this time, and he ducks his head when it happens, like he’s not quite sure what to do with it.
