The Spanish Tycoon's Temptress Page 0,23
laughed, thinking he was referring to Tom’s comment that she’d been in the laboratory pretty often lately and her lack of sleep was apparent with the dark circles under her eyes. “I think I’m just getting used to sleep deprivation,” she joked. “It will help once I decide to have kids, right?” she laughed, but the sound came out harsh. Fake.
He hated the idea of another man keeping her up late each night, making love to her and touching her beautiful body like he wanted to do. Pushing the image of another man in her arms out of his mind, he focused on the conversation and his ultimate goal. “Is there a prospective father on the horizon?”
She laughed again. It was a pretty pathetic reality that no man had kissed her since Gaston. “No. No prospective groom or father.”
“Aren’t those the same thing?” he asked harshly.
She glanced up, surprise by the vehemence in his voice. “Of course,” she confirmed, not sure where this bout of anger came from. “I spend a great deal of time in the lab so it isn’t as if there’s a large social network of prospective candidates among the other lab geeks.”
He raised his eyebrows, but didn’t have a chance to comment because their meal arrived at that point. He was relieved when she dug into the chicken. At least she wasn’t averse to eating. She just didn’t think of it, he realized.
“So how are the experiments coming along?” he asked, thinking to change the subject to something less controversial and with a few less explosive possibilities.
She smiled and nodded her head. “They are going extremely well, thank you.” She was genuinely grateful for his assistance here. “You were right. The original bacteria samples I was using were contaminated but because of that, I was able to isolate several different strains and….” She went on talking about the bacteria and her progress, answering all of his questions eagerly and with enthusiasm. This was her baby and although the previous tampering was a setback, it had provided her with new ideas and greater insight which she was now applying to her work. The last six months hadn’t been a waste at all, but had possibly spurred greater success.
By the time they finished their conversation, she’d eaten all of her meal and felt enormously better. “Thank you for lunch,” she said shyly, glancing up at him through her lashes. “I didn’t realize how hungry I was.”
He shook his head. “It’s one of those issues that not many people suffer from. The bigger problem in the world is stopping people from eating but you have this problem with remembering to eat.”
She laughed, feeling energized and ready to take on the world. “I guess I get a little too enthusiastic about my work.”
“A little?” he teased as he passed the waiter his credit card. “Perhaps too much.”
She shook her head. “That’s calling the kettle black,” she countered. “What time did you finish working last night?” she asked, knowing that he was just as much of a workaholic as she was.
“About midnight.”
“So?” she replied, her hands flat in the air as if to say, “Don’t you see the similarities?”
“There’s a difference,” he countered.
“What’s that?” she asked as she stood up and let him lead her out of the restaurant with a hand on the small of her back, feeling the heat of his hand but it didn’t feel horribly threatening at the moment.
“I didn’t forget to eat,” he explained plainly.
Elana opened her mouth to argue with him, but then she stopped, thought back to the previous night and tried to remember what she’d eaten for dinner. When she couldn’t think of anything, she simply closed her mouth once again and walked out into the sunshine again, ignoring his smug satisfaction.
Her shivering didn’t start up again until she was standing by the curb and the limousine rolled up, his driver jumping out to open the car door for them. “I don’t mind catching a cab back to the lab,” she said, taking an involuntary step back from the dark interior of the vehicle.
“Nonsense,” he replied, putting a hand to the small of her back and almost pushing her into the car. “We’re both going to the same place. It makes no sense to drive separately.”
She disagreed with him, but she wasn’t sure she could convince him of her need to stay away from him. With a sigh of resignation, she ducked into the car, taking the seat opposite him again.
She blushed when