“My proposal is going to kick your proposal’s ass.”
“I beg to differ.”
I wanted to keep going. Tell him his so-called theory was baseless and he’d never get funding for it. But even though I was irrationally lashing out at him, I couldn’t bring myself to lie. Despite my criticisms of his work, I was intrigued by what he’d done. Interested to see if his theory would hold up under proper testing conditions.
But I wasn’t about to admit that to him. Not now.
“You know what? I don’t need your approval.” The heat in his eyes was no longer lustful, and I was hit with an unexpected surge of disappointment. “I don’t care what you think about my theory or my research or how I got my data. I know that I’m onto something. And I’m going to get this grant.”
Pride—stupid, stupid pride—had hold of me and I was too flustered to step away from it and deescalate this rapidly deteriorating conversation. “You’re right, you don’t need my approval. I’ll be sure to make you a batch of cookies to ease the sting of loss when I get the grant and you don’t.”
He let out a frustrated growl. “I have to go. I have work to do.”
“Fine.”
“Fine.”
His eyes swept over me, his brow furrowing. Then he turned and stormed off.
18
Corban
“We all have relationship issues that we’re going to need to work on. All of us. It’s just part of human nature. The only question is going to be with whom.” ~ Esther Perel
So much for our truce.
Hazel and I were right back where we’d started. Rivals. Enemies. She’d only spoken to me in short sentences. No more smiles. No more soft eyes behind her glasses. She was stick straight and all business.
Basically out to destroy me.
And now I was on an airplane to Florida, staring at the back of her head.
At least we weren’t seated next to each other. It was bad enough we were the only two people from our department going to this conference. If she’d have been stuffed into the seat beside me, I probably would have gone crazy.
Truthfully, I was responsible for a solid fifty percent of the tension between us. Maybe sixty. I’d purposefully egged her on. Turned the nameplate outside her office backward every time I walked by. Hid her lunch in the back of the fridge. Sent her terse memos. Threw the memos she sent me in the garbage without replying, crumbling them up while she watched.
But the worst thing I’d done—the thing that had her glaring daggers at me in the airport this morning while we’d been waiting for our flight—was to ignore the batch of brownies she’d brought into work yesterday.
She’d been in the staff lounge, cutting thick pieces of gooey brownie and handing them out on small napkins. They’d smelled like chocolate heaven.
I’d stopped in the doorway. Our eyes had met, hers narrowing, like she was daring me to resist her brownies. My urge to lash out at her had been so strong, I’d turned around and walked right out.
Nope, I wasn’t eating any of Hazel Kiegen’s brownies.
I still kind of regretted it—they’d smelled so good—but I was sticking with it. Or I was a just a stubborn dumbass.
Probably the latter.
But now I was committed. And the fact that we were going to a conference together didn’t change anything.
I spent the flight working on my grant proposal—suck it, Hazel—and reading for a while when I needed a break.
And told myself, over and over, that I was going to stay away from her.
That lasted until we got off the plane.
She walked ahead of me, pulling her rolling suitcase, her smooth ponytail swinging with each step. My eyes drifted to her ass. I was mesmerized by the way her hips swayed. She moved fast, but I kept pace. I could have slowed down. Stopped for a snack before heading to the hotel. Let her get ahead of me so I wasn’t trailing behind her, thinking dirty thoughts about what I could do to her.
About the fact that we were alone, in a city where no one knew us.
Where getting caught wouldn’t matter.
She stopped just in front of the exit to the passenger pick-up area and whipped around. “We should share an Uber.”
Her tone wasn’t friendly, but it wasn’t antagonistic either. I stared at her mouth for half a second, a wild urge to grab her and kiss her almost overtaking me.
Don’t do it, Corban. Make an excuse. Keep your distance.
“Yeah, we can split it.”
She gave a short nod and pulled out her phone.
Powerless. I was powerless against this woman.
The wait for our ride wasn’t long. The driver helped us load our bags and we both slipped into the back seat. The car was small—because of course it was—putting only inches of space between me and Hazel. Between my hand and the tempting skin of her thigh. She’d worn a skirt to fuck with me, I was sure of it. Who wore a skirt like that on a plane?
She crossed her legs and the skirt slid higher up her thigh. Yep. She’d done it to torture me.
It was working.
The confined space of the car heightened my awareness of her. She smelled faintly of vanilla frosting again. It made me want to lick her all over.
Why was everything I felt around her so strong? She didn’t just make me mad, she made me furious. I wasn’t just attracted to her, I was obsessed with her. There was no in-between. Either she was smiling at me and I wanted to kiss her, or she was glaring at me and I wanted to bury her.
Or fuck the fight out of her.
That last one especially.
None of it made sense. I was the guy who’d forget to tuck in half his shirt in the morning and miss lunch because I wasn’t paying attention to the time. But I could recall in perfect detail what Hazel had worn every day in the last week. How she’d done her hair. As we drove down the road to our hotel, I was keenly aware of how many times the driver’s eyes landed on her in the rear-view mirror. The way she fidgeted with her hands in her lap and kept her face angled toward the window.
I was unnaturally attuned to her and it was driving me fucking crazy.
After a short, but silent, ride to the hotel, we got out and retrieved our bags from the back. The air outside was warm and thick with humidity. The resort was right on the beach—a great location for a conference. I tried to focus on that while we went inside. Not on Hazel and her intoxicating scent.
We walked side-by-side to the check-in desk. There wasn’t a line, so we went to the first open attendant. She was dressed in a turquoise top with a pin shaped like a sea turtle.
“Can I get your name, please?” she asked.
“Corban Nash and Hazel Kiegen,” I said.
Her fingers clicked across her keyboard and her brow furrowed. “I’m sorry, we seem to have you in separate rooms.”
Hazel and I looked at each other in alarm.
“No, we’re not—”
“We aren’t together.”
“Separate is correct.”
“We were just on the same flight.”
“We work together.”
“Here for the conference.”
I stopped talking and rubbed the back of my neck.
The attendant’s eyes flicked between us, but she just smiled. “No problem.”