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Security and the hounds are coming in three, two, one...
He presses a button on his intercom. “Miss Cho, can you come in here, please?”
This is it.
At least he’s using Hannah to send me into exile nicely for having the audacity to suggest we travel into the wild after otters.
I meet his gaze, daring him to lay into me one last time, but instead he raises his gaze as his EA walks into the room.
“Miss Lancaster has just suggested we travel to Olympia this weekend to see the sea otters in their natural habitat,” he says, utterly impassively.
It hits me that I’m holding my breath.
Because I have no flipping idea what he’s really thinking.
“Well,hopefully.Like I said, they’re pretty rare, and sightings are never guaranteed,” I correct in a small voice. “But if we get lucky, we might spot something.”
His gaze lands on me for a burning second before it shifts back to Miss Cho.
“Yes, you’ve made the concept quite clear. Hannah?”
Oh, no.
He’s using her first name?
It must be serious.
“Definitely not.” She answers a question he never spoke out loud. “I’m visiting family in Portland this weekend, Mr. Foster.”
“All weekend?” His forbidding brows descend lower over his eyes.
“I’m afraid so.” She doesn’t sound like she’s that upset by it. “You’ll have to count me out on this one. However, I can make your travel arrangements. I’ll make sure the lab releases a prototype to you personally.”
Wait. What.
Foster groans.
I stare at both of them in disbelief.
“Does that mean... you’re coming?”
“Yes, dammit,” he mutters. “Although frankly, I have no good reason why I’m actually considering it.”
“Like otters aren’t enough?”
The joke fails catastrophically.
But then something resembling a microscopic smile tugs at his lips.
“Otters,” he agrees. His eyes linger on my face. We’ve been in the office so long the sun’s light has finally dimmed and the automatic lights are brightening, painting his face in softer white-orange hues.
Meaning, I can see every gritty detail.
From my research, I know he’s forty-two. That means he’s seventeen years my senior, but he doesn’t look like it.
To say he’s aged well is like calling Taylor Swift a singer. He’s still young and rough in all the right places. More like a mountain carved gracefully by time than a man who drinks his weight in green juice every morning, running from his own mortality at the crack of dawn and choking down a fifty-supplement cocktail.
His jaw is firm and sharp.
