The Spanish Tycoon's Temptress Page 0,6
a stray lock of hair off her cheek gently. “You’ve lost weight, you’re not eating well. What else am I going to find out about you?” he asked.
She cleared her throat and pulled her eyes away, staring at the middle of his massive chest. “Perhaps that I hate you and there’s no way I’m letting you back into my life.”
His hand stilled and for a moment after she spoke…it just hung there in mid air. His eyes were sharp as he watched her carefully, barely moving. And then he sighed and took a step backwards. “Call me when you change your mind.” He pulled a card out of the inside pocket of his jacket and placed it noiselessly on the counter.
The next thing she knew, the door to her apartment was closing and she could hear the silence, the darkness. With a gush of air, she also realized that she’d been holding her breath while he was near and she wanted desperately to run out after him, to scream out that she wasn’t affected by him despite all those little signs that she’d given him.
Instead, she walked to her bedroom on shaking legs, falling into her bed and curling up with the pillow clutched to her stomach while the tears she’d thought had been used up seven years ago came rushing back, spilling over her lashes onto her pillow. She cried out for a future she shouldn’t be desperately wanting any longer. She couldn’t trust Gaston and needed to keep him out of her life. She’d moved on. She didn’t need him or those charming smiles ever again!
She’d find funding some way. She was smart and she had a good reputation. She could get through this just like she’d gotten through all other obstacles in the past seven years. Through hard work and determination.
Four days later, Elana was panicking. She’d been turned down for all the grants she could think of and the lab manager was already making plans for her space to be occupied by someone else. Someone who had funding. On top of that, she had no idea who had sabotaged her work, but there definitely was something wrong with her lab results. If she hadn’t been thinking along those lines, she never would have looked for the little issues that indicated that someone had been tampering with her slides and the bacteria she’d been using.
It gave her a paranoid feeling. She watched everyone. Anytime someone came near her work space, she would guard her work, hiding her results with her body or papers, tense with the anxiety that anyone could be the culprit who was trying to slow down her efforts. It was a miserable four days for Elana who normally didn’t pay a great deal of attention to anything other than her experiments.
Her anxiety levels didn’t slow down her efforts to find alternative funding though. She submitted grant applications to multiple sources, even some that didn’t necessarily tie to her field of work but by that point, she was desperate and running out of options. With each rejection letter, she knew her deadline was drawing closer.
By the time Friday rolled around, she had no alternative. When she walked into her apartment that afternoon, with all of her slides and materials in a box because she no longer had a place to work, she dumped her materials in a corner and stared at the expensive looking business card on the counter. It hadn’t moved since Gaston had left that night. She’d actually been afraid that the card might set her fingertips on fire if she even touched it so it had rested exactly where he’d placed it and she’d just worked around it whenever she was in the kitchen.
But now she had no more options. She had to get a lab where she could rebuild her experiments. Once that was done, she could evaluate what her other options were. Perhaps if she just used Gaston’s space, she might find some answers that would allow her to apply for other grants. It would certainly be nice to be able to shove his charity back at him.
First things first, she thought with dread. She picked up the phone and dialed the number, her finger shaking as she pressed the buttons. It rang twice before his voice mail picked it up and she was so relieved she could barely get a coherent sentence out. “Gaston, this is Elana,” she took a deep breath. So far, she was doing okay. Greetings