Page 9 of Her Captivated Hero

“Do you like working with her?”

Riya’s eyes lit up. “Hell yeah. She’s kick-ass.”

“Have you seen her in action? From what Griff tells me, on rare occasions she has been known to eviscerate someone who’s tried to undermine a project she’s in charge of.”

“Susan calls it the Porter Surgical Strike.”

“I like it,” Gray said admiringly.

“I’ve only seen her do it once. The woman deserved it. She’d been undermining one of the men on our project for months, but he’d never said anything. We were in a staff meeting when it became obvious what she was doing. In three sentences Miranda handed this woman her ass. Miranda was professionally contemptuous, and you could see this woman shrink in her seat. She stuttered out an apology to Bill. It was beautiful.”

“Did this woman ever try to undermine you?” Gray asked.

“She tried. But I’m not as easy of a target as I look. More than that, she couldn’t really understand what I was working on, so there was no way she could try to take credit for what I was doing.”

“So what’s your second doctorate in?”

“Microbiology.”

“Were you always a science geek?” Gray immediately regretted his teasing question when he saw Riya pick up another random coaster off the table. He knew she was going to start ripping it to pieces.

“Hey, Steven Hawking is one of my idols.” He smiled as he pulled one of her hands across the table and forced her to drop the coaster. Gray rubbed his thumb along the line between her heart and life lines. “The way your head line curves, you’re a creative thinker who imagines many approaches and outcomes to a situation. Is that you, Riya?”

She tried to pull her hand away, but he continued his gentle hold. “I wouldn’t have thought a military man would read palms. How do you know the characteristics of the head line?” He watched her hunch her shoulders.

He continued to caress her palm. “I didn’t mean to upset you.”

“I’m not upset,” she protested. “Why do you like Steven Hawking?” Riya questioned.

“Are you changing the subject?”

She hunched her shoulders further and shook her head, her long black hair flew around her, shielding her face.

“I guess.”

“I read A Brief History of Time. Some of it made sense, some of it didn’t but most of it made me think of things in a much broader context. Then I watched the movie The Theory of Everything and realized how that disease was ravaging his body…” Gray shook his head. “He was an amazing man.”

Riya smiled. “You’re right. I met Dr. Hawking once. His spirit is overwhelming.”

“Now will you tell me what I did to upset you?”

She gave him a wry smile. “I have issues,” she admitted. “I guess questions sometimes feel intrusive. It reminds me of when I was little and all the tests they used to administer.”

“What tests?” he asked gently.

“I.Q. tests,” she sighed.

Again she tugged at her hand. This time he released it and watched her cup her water glass with both hands that trembled ever so slightly.

“Sounds a little like Sniper training. You’re tested all the damned time. I’ve never been through such intense training and testing in my life.”

He watched as she relaxed enough to pick up her glass and take a sip of water. “Really?”

“Oh yeah. Less than half of us would graduate, and trust me it was a rigorous selection process to get in.”

She smiled slowly. It was a punch in the gut. “But you graduated.”

Gray nodded.