“That’s what I want,” he concluded. “And that’s just a start.”
She nodded. “I want that, too.”
“But if I’m really honest…” He glanced around again, as if the cars could help or change things. “I’m worried you won’t be satisfied because I can’t… you know…”
He indicated the front of his hips with a gesture. “I mean, I’m not capable of—”
“Daniel.”
As she said his name, he stopped with the rambling. He’d never had a problem talking about sex, about his body, about what he wanted or needed—but it was a whole different ball game when the syllables came out with so much shame and embarrassment.
“No matter how far it goes, it’s you,” she said. “And that’s what matters.”
Her smile was so beautiful to him.
Then again, acceptance was better than any kind of makeup, wasn’t it. Especially on the face of the woman you loved.
* * *
As Gus St. Claire rode up in the lab’s main elevator, he was in a ripe mood, as his grandmother would have called it. In a perfect world, he would have been alone so he could talk to himself. No such luck. He was ascending with several colleagues, one of whom he’d hired a mere month before, all of whom were leaving after a very, very long night’s work. Fortunately, none of them were talking because they were exhausted and all of them got off at the level that would take them out to the parking area. He continued onward.
But stayed quiet.
Glancing up to the camera’s eye in the corner, he knew it was the better move, and besides, he didn’t have to bother with the composure for much longer.
When the elevator bumped to a stop, he leaned into a sensor and got an eye scan, after which there was a pause, because for all of the state-of-the-art everything in C.P. Phalen’s world, entrance into her house was still manually reviewed—and given who she was and what she was doing, he didn’t blame her.
Nope, he blamed her for other shit now.
After the doors opened, he took a right and started walking. The corridor to the mansion’s entry point was good and long, and he used the distance to get his face arranged while people on the other side of mirrored glass watched him—at least, he was assuming fully armed guards were what were behind the panels.
His Zen session worked. By the time he finally passed through the last of the security checks and entered by the back door next to the servants’ quarters, he was good and balanced, everything where it should be, where it needed to be: nothing but perfectly-fine, showing the world—and his boss—that he was just as he’d been when he’d started at her company.
Before he’d fallen in love with her.
Emotions. Biggest pain in the ass there was—and considering who he worked for, that was really saying something. C.P. Phalen was like a nightmare he couldn’t wake up from, the damn woman haunting him during his waking hours and in the dark as well.
“Hey,” he said as he nodded to one of the security guards in whatever corridor he entered. He wasn’t tracking the trip.
There was no response. They never responded. Which was why he greeted them.
As he came to the next armed uniform, he hit the guy with a “H’w-r-ya.”
He passed by three more sentries on the way to his boss’s office. Jesus, it must be like living with a football team, just with semiautomatics. The food bill for on-duty, on-site snacking must be goddamn enormous.
As he made another turn and found himself in the kitchen, he halted. Across a field of stainless steel counters, a chef in whites looked up, and that was when Gus realized he was taking the long route on purpose: He was looking for the guard who had been fucking her.
Wow. That was insane. Because what the hell was he going to do if he found the bastard?
Nothing that made any sense, that was sure.
Fast-tracking the way to her study’s door, he reached for the stainless steel—or was it sterling?—handle. Except then he stopped himself, remembering what he’d walked in on before. And noting that he hadn’t found her piece of gym equipment.
Maybe another Orgasm Theory workout was going on.
He knocked loudly and made sure his voice was good and clear. “I’m here. And I’m not interested in waiting for—”
There was almost no delay in the entry opening—but what the hell was on the other side? He wasn’t sure what he was looking at.
“What the fuck did you do to your hair?” he blurted.
When the great C.P. Phalen didn’t answer him, he glanced over his shoulder and then backed the woman up. Closing them in together, he took her forearms in gentle hands and eased her over to the sofa in the sitting area. When they got within range of those black cushions, he released his hold—but she just stood there, staring at him like she wasn’t seeing him.
“Hello?” He waved a hand in front of her face. “Okay, so aliens are real and you’ve just come back from an abduction.”
In the past three years, since he’d come on board and started developing Vita, the woman had been all about her buttoned-up, ultra-professional, ice-madam bullshit: Hair in place, black-suit-wearin’, high-heeled, whatever. But here she was with her hair hanging in her face like she’d been trying to pull it out of her skull, her shoes off, her jacket opened like she’d needed more air than there was around her.
“Sit down,” he said gently.
Second time today he’d told a woman he respected to do that. Maybe he needed to add the skill to his résumé.
As C.P. did what he told her to, she nodded, like she was a child following the orders of a teacher in school.
“What’s going on?” he said as he sat down as well and brushed the blond out of her eyes. “Talk to me.”
Her stare took its time focusing on him, and for a moment, she didn’t seem to recognize him—to the point where he almost took out his badge and flashed his ID at her.
“Gus?” Then she shook herself. “Gus, I mean.”
Right about the time he started thinking he needed to do a medical assessment, he caught sight of the closed bathroom door over her shoulder.
What a fucking idiot he was. He knew damn well who was in there, and that she wasn’t in crisis. Her polish had been fucked out of her.
Gus got to his feet in a rush, jacking up his jeans, slapping the simp out of himself.
“You asked me to come up?” he demanded.
There was another pause and then she snapped back into place—or seemed to try to—her manicured hands going to her mop of hair like if she could just get the shit back into order, magically she wouldn’t look like she’d just been fucked twelve ways to Sunday.
Losing patience with the bullshit, he marched over to the bathroom, ripped the door open, and got ready to take the fucking guard to church. They had better things to be doing than—
No one was in the bathroom.
He looked back across the room. C.P. was eighty percent put-together, that hair in a better semblance of order, her jacket rebuttoned, but the undone was still graffiti all over her aura.
“Did you get my email?” she asked in a low voice.
“Yeah, I did. That’s why I’m here. So you’ve found our patient one?”