The Price of Scandal (Bluewater Billionaires) - Lucy Score Page 0,79
perfect Sunday in my estimation.
“Take the next left,” she said, nodding toward the traffic light.
The color of South Beach and the bustle of downtown Miami were behind us. Buildings here were less concerned with aesthetics and more concerned with function and durability. Mom and pop convenience stores edged into working-class neighborhoods. Commercial buildings squatted on skinny canals.
“Here,” she said, pointing at a long, low building painted bright white.
DIY AHA, the sign read.
I slid into one of the last remaining parking spaces in the lot next to the building.
“Exactly where have you brought me?” I asked, cutting the engine. “Also, I want this car.”
“You’ll see, and you may not have it,” she said, grinning as she climbed out.
“I could steal it,” I mused.
She snatched the keys from my hand. “And I could have you arrested.”
“What good would that do either one of us? Maybe we could work out a trade?”
She tilted her head haughtily.
The cool queen surveying her subject.
“What kind of trade?”
“Miles for orgasms?” I suggested.
“Hold that thought,” she said with a wink, opening the steel door. “Oh, and no pictures. No documenting the next two hours.”
“You make doing my job very difficult,” I complained.
“Back at you, Price.”
Intrigued, I followed her inside.
Thoughts of orgasms evaporated from my mind immediately at the squeals of pre-teen girls occupying a large lab-like classroom. There were a dozen of them in white lab coats and goggles. There didn’t seem to be nearly enough adults present to contain the unstable, excited energy.
“Emily!” Girls in blue latex gloves waved in delight.
“Hey, ladies! I hope you don’t mind, but I brought a lab partner today. This is Derek.”
“Hi, Derek,” fifteen girls chorused before dissolving into giggles.
“Glad you could come.” A woman in a tie-dye lab coat approached. Her safety glasses were on top of her head acting as a headband to her short bushy gray hair. She was wearing Converse sneakers and a wiener dog t-shirt.
“Me, too,” Emily grinned. “Derek, this is Esther. She’s a biochemist and runs things here at DIY AHA. Esther, this is my friend Derek.”
She stumbled a bit over “friend.” I was selfishly glad she didn’t have an easy label for our relationship.
“A pleasure,” I said, shaking Esther’s proffered hand.
“I don’t suppose there’s time for me to take a peek at the data?” Emily asked her.
“Nope,” Esther said cheerfully. “It’ll keep.” She turned her attention to me. “Let’s get you suited up before these girls eat you alive.”
“And what’s the most important rule at AHA?” Emily asked from the front of the learning lab. She was wearing a white lab coat and safety glasses. Her hair was pulled back in a short tail. Once again, I found the look to be discomfortingly alluring.
“Follow all safety protocols,” a new generation of budding scientists chorused back at her.
“Good,” she said. “Because we’re going to make fire.”
The girls oohed.
I wondered what kind of liability insurance Emily had and if the policy had a rider concerning twelve-year-olds and pyrotechnics.
I watched from a safe distance as Emily explained step-by-step what she was doing as she poured a small amount of ethanol from a beaker into an empty water cooler jug. She swirled the liquid around and around, coating the inside of the jug.
“Who knows what combustion is?” she asked.
About half the hands in the room shot into the air.
Emily beamed at her attentive students. “Combustion is an ignition. A rapid chemical combination that produces heat and light. Once it starts, you can’t stop it until it flames out.”
Her gaze flitted to me and then away again, and I wondered if she thought that what we had was as simple as a chemical reaction.
The energy in the room was reaching a fevered pitch.
Emily, a showman, held the bottle upside down. The girls gasped with enthusiasm when not a drop of liquid appeared.
“I’ve just created ethanol vapor. Turned a liquid into a gas. Now, I’m going to light it.”
We all watched raptly as she lit a long, thin taper with a lighter. “Arm’s length,” she said.
“Arm’s length,” we repeated.
With another grin, she held the taper to the mouth of the bottle, and everyone in the room except for Emily jumped when chemical flames in blues and oranges shot out and up. It burned fast and bright for a second or two and then vanished.
There was controlled pandemonium in the room. It was a much classier version of the fart lighting experiment my brother and I had performed once or twice in our backyard, and I saw from some of the faces