The Spanish Tycoon's Temptress Page 0,11

table anxiously, wondering what he was thinking. Why was he so silent? It was as if he were waiting for something, waiting for her to speak. And then she remembered the presentation and gasped, reaching down to her purse. “Sorry,” she said with a slight, awkward smile.

She pulled out the papers, but then had to wait until the wine steward poured the wine. It was an irritating delay and she wanted to hurry through her presentation. The sooner she finished, the sooner she could end this dinner and get away from this enigmatic man. She hated sitting across from Gaston, trying to second guess his moods that seemed to be swinging from one extreme to another.

“Well, the experiments are for…” she started to say, then stuttered, not sure where to go. If he’d approached her about offering her a grant, he probably knew all about her experiments and her goal.

“Why did you stop?” he asked softly, his eyes watching her carefully.

Elana cringed with the look he was giving her and her embarrassment over the gaffe. “Well, because…I don’t want to waste your time on things you already know.”

He leaned forward and took a sip of his wine. “Continue. I’ll let you know if I need you to stop for any reason.”

She could feel the heat stealing up her neck and was glad that the lights were low and the only light between them was the candlelight in the middle of the linen covered table. She didn’t want him to know how much his words, his voice affected her.

The waiter arrived to take their order and Elana looked up at the man, trying to hide her irritation at the interruption. She wasn’t really hungry and just wanted to get this over with. “I’ll just have a salad,” she said, not even bothering to look at the menu to figure out which salad she wanted. She was sure that there were probably several salads, all with creative designs and interesting ingredients. But she didn’t care, just wanting to ensure that she received the grant money. In order to do that, she needed to convince this inscrutable man that her work was worthwhile.

Gaston’s eyes glared at her, but she didn’t even notice since she was looking down at her charts and graphs once again, waiting impatiently for the waiter to go away.

“She’ll have the Pollo al Forno with the oysters and pearl soup. She’ll be having dessert as well, so when we’re finished with the meal, be sure and bring over something with chocolate. I’ll have the sea bass with the tiramisu for dessert.” With those instructions, Gaston handed the menus back to the waiter who bowed away from their table quickly.

Elana almost rolled her eyes but she knew she was in a precarious position. She didn’t want to argue with a man who was potentially going to fund her project, but she also didn’t want to eat something that he’d ordered for her. Especially the dessert. How could he remember about her chocolate obsession? She hadn’t had chocolate in….wow, she couldn’t remember how long.

She bit her lower lip, remembering how Gaston would bring her small boxes of ornately decorated chocolates from around the world. Wherever he traveled, he’d find some extraordinary box of chocolates and present them as soon as he came back.

At the time, she hadn’t been so in love with the chocolates but more in love with him for the gesture. It was his way of letting her know that he was thinking of her, that he might be half a world away, but she was on his mind.

Shoving that memory away and deciding to ignore his mandate about her food choices, she cleared her throat again and started over, telling him about the bacteria that she’d found and how it was hurting the crop production, the economic impact to the farmers in the various regions in which this particular bacteria would grow, how she planned to stop it, the experiments she was using to ensure that her results wouldn’t cause other environmental issues and the long term monetary and environmental benefits of what she was trying to prove.

Despite his dislike of her personally, Gaston really couldn’t fault her professionalism. When she finally finished her presentation, he was enormously impressed. She was thorough, she’d thought of various angles that could be problematic and provided solutions to those issues and she was experienced, knowing how to proceed without creating additional environmental problems. Overall, he was amazed.

They discussed the outcomes she’d reached