Page 17 of Colombian Chemistry

She scoffed. “I’ll say. I knew I shouldn’t have come here. I should have just finished up the semester in Cambridge as planned and locked myself in the laboratory to finish up my doctoral thesis. Of course, my father had to plead with me to come down here, and he even dangled me getting hands-on research experience to support my thesis to get me on that plane.”

“Research?”

She inched a little closer to the fire. “He’s a chemist, and I’m working on my Ph.D. in chemistry right now. My father has been researching a project using natural and sustainable plants in various things like medications and materials, and he finally got the funding to support the hands-on research and move forward with the project. That’s why he came down here. It’s really incredible stuff he’s working on, and using sustainable, natural resources to replace harmful chemicals is part of the angle I’ve been using for my thesis at Harvard. It was too good of an opportunity to pass up getting some hands-on research of my own, so I agreed to join him. Of course, my project is going in a different direction than his, so my research is completely my own. I don’t want to ride on his coattails to my Ph.D. I want to make sure I do it on my own merits.”

“You’re a chemist?” My eyebrows shot to my hairline.

Those baby blues lifted to meet mine and she frowned. “Yeah. Why does that surprise you?”

I blew out a puff of air. “No reason. Just surprising.”

“Because I’m a woman?” She pursed her lips together as she leveled me with a glare. “I’ll have you know that there have been many women chemists before me. In fact, I’m named after Irène Joliot-Curie. She was a French chemist and physicist. She and her husband even won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for their work on radioactive elements. Her research was an important part in the discovery of uranium fission.”

“Well, thank you for the history lesson, but I wasn’t questioning whether or not you could be a chemist because you’re a woman. Some of the smartest, most capable people I know are women.”

“Then why did you have that look on your face when I said it?”

I paused while searching for a better answer than the truth, then just decided to roll with it. “Because you’re super-hot, and I expect chemists to be nerds. Not to mention spoiled rich girls generally aren’t that driven to achieve and are more often found club-hopping and shopping.”

“Oh,” she said quietly. “Well, that’s also stereotyping and slightly offensive.”

“I suppose it is. But everything anyone says these days is offensive, and I’m not one to worry much about hurting people’s fragile feelings, so get over it, Sweetcheeks.”

My words set her back, but she didn’t argue.

“So, you’re a chemist working on your Ph.D. Good for you.”

“Yep. If I don’t fall on my face with my thesis, I should be a doctor by the end of the year. I’ve spent six years in graduate school at Harvard working toward this goal, and I just hope I don’t trip and fall at the finish line. My father is a world-renowned environmental chemist, and I hope to someday follow in his footsteps. I want to help make the world a cleaner, safer, better place.”

“Well, aren’t you just an overachieving do-gooder.”

She smiled, and that damn heart of mine sped up once again. It startled me each time it happened, and I wondered when her smiles would stop inducing such strange rumblings from beneath my ribcage.

“And what about you? You mentioned you’re used to being in dangerous situations often. Are you military? Special forces, maybe?”

I didn’t answer, having been trained to keep my mouth shut about any personal details of my life.

“Oh, come on. You’ve got to give me something. I’m trusting you with my life. Shouldn’t I at least know your credentials?”

I paused and then shrugged. I supposed it wouldn’t hurt to give her something. “Okay, valid point. Yes, I was in the military. Yes, I was special forces.”

“And you’re not anymore?”

“Nope. Retired.”

“But you look so young? What are you, thirty? Thirty-five?”

“Thirty-six.”

“I didn’t think soldiers got paid enough to retire at such a young age.”

I searched for an answer to give her. Military men weren’t paid enough to retire mid-thirties, but what I did wasn’t just military shit... it was much more dangerous and came with a higher paycheck. A much higher paycheck.

Instead of telling her all that, I just shrugged and answered, “I worked in the government for a time after my service. The pay is much better.”

Her eyes widened. “Like the CIA?”

I couldn’t give her the real answer... the answer that said, “I was an assassin on the Alpha team of Elite Stealth Force, a team of highly trained operatives run by the US government that take out any and all threats to national security. Even POTUS didn’t know who we were so he had complete deniability. Only the Vice President and a couple higher-ups knew of our existence, so they’d have complete deniability if shit went south.”