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This man was a Liar McLiarson, and that was that.
She snorted her displeasure at his apology, but a warning look from Lou had her falling quiet. They’d talk about this later. It was clear enough. She could apologize now and move on till then.
“I’m sorry, too,” Grace sighed, looking down at the floor...anywhere but at Anton.
He glowed with pleasure beside her, and she wasn’t sure if she wanted to throw herself at him or maim him. She pursed her lips when she caught herself daydreaming of his capable hands and the husky tone he’d infused his voice with.
Perhaps it was a bit of both? So sue her, she was only human. Just because she was convinced she hated him didn't mean Anton wasn't easy to look at. If anything, it only heightened her awareness of him. Demanded that she not let her guard down around him again, like she had before when she’d gotten her crush on him.
“Good.” Lou nodded at them and cleared her throat. “Now that we’ve got that drama settled, I’ll show you around, Anton.” She met Grace’s gaze with her own. “You’ll be alright?”
Grace prickled at the question, but only because she knew Anton paid close attention to her, and she could just imagine what the man thought a “glorified delivery girl” would do when left in charge of a physics lab.
“Of course. I’m working with David and Bruce on the readings we pulled last night. I’ll have them cross-referenced with the previous two data sets and see if we can pick up any new activity. If we’re not here when you get back, then we’ve gone to see Betsy.”
Grace did her utmost not to give in to the rush of pleasure at the appraising look Anton gave her. He seemed to be reconsidering her.
Grace looked away, refusing to give him a second more of her attention. Only under the duress of a bonafide waterboarding session would she admit how she felt a tiny bit of—okay, no, a humongous Taco Tuesday’s worth of satisfaction at turning his perception of her on its head.
Not that it mattered. Anton's opinion of her was inconsequential. He wasn’t who she’d thought he was, and that was that. Just because she found him attractive—okay,were rakish and handsome permissible descriptors if he wasn’t sporting a cravat on the cover of a historical romance novel? She voted yes, because that was what this man looked like to her, for all of his dismissive behavior.
All that he lacked was a pair of tight breeches, some landed gentry as background characters, and a swooning heroine to complete the picture. She tried not to remember that she had swooned on the lab table to her right just a couple of weeks ago because of this man.
She glanced at him then, meeting those soulful eyes trained on her, and inclined her head to him before she wiggled her fingers goodbye to Lou.
She was not volunteering as tribute for the role of swooning heroine.
Not now.
Not ever again.
That ship had sailed the second he’d talked to her like she didn’t matter.
Ships or not. What Grace did have, however, was a metric ton of coffee to drink and science to do, both of which outranked the opinion of a mannerless urchin, no matter how fine his hands were, or how windswept he looked.
three
“Two things are infinite:the universe and human stupidity.” —Albert Einstein
“Stupid,” Anton muttered. He was in his temporary home for his stay in Geneva, a chic hotel only a short walk away from the labs. Since he had returned to his penthouse suite, he'd been pacing nonstop, wearing a path into the carpeting. The day’s events played nonstop on the IMAX screen that was his brain.
What had he been thinking?
How had he not realized it was Grace?
Okay, to be fair it was easy to not know it was Grace. He’d never seen the woman before, but even if it hadn’t been…
His behavior was so out of line it was almost laughable. He’d acted like his parents for christ sake. That wasn’t a good thing.
He winced, turning away from the window, and yanked at his hair in frustration. He could say that he didn’t know what came over him, but he knew damn well. It was all those jack and cokes he mainlined on his eight hour flight to Geneva. Jesus Christ. He’d been on the tail end of a bender when he’d made an ass out of himself in front of the woman he’d been fantasizing about for a good six months.
He hadn’t even needed to see her face to know that he wanted her. She could have looked like anything. Sounded like anything. It would have been all the same to him as long as her spirit was the same.
This was the kind of longing that reality shows made big bucks off of. He cringed because he knew first hand from binging a season of some show fueled with what looked like sensory depravation pods, proposals, and a lot of booze with Mindy to know that he was a walking talking cliche when it came to Grace.
And he hadn’t given a single fuck.
He thought about Grace Muñoz when he woke up. He thought about Grace Muñoz when he was supposed to be running lab stats. He thought about Grace when he was supposed to be thinking pulsar waves and force of attraction. He thought about Grace when he was in meetings. When he was supposed to be making company saving decisions and it just…it always came back to her.
