my team. Ian asked me to take this case because I’m the best.”
“I thought his wife asked you because she wants to marry you off,” Noelle quipped.
“Or it could be me,” Kyle offered. “He said he wasn’t sure. I am single, too.”
Kyle was married to his weapons. Hutch shook his head. “It’s me, and I still think Charlotte had a hand in this, but I was given the case and I’m keeping it. I’m also the senior agent. I’m in charge.”
“I’m the client,” Noelle began and then frowned. “Who isn’t actually paying anything, so I’ll take what I can get. You should know, Mr…Hutch, that I am not interested in being set up. I won’t be throwing myself at you or expecting anything beyond your help in one specific situation. You’re perfectly safe. Also, I think you’ll find your part of the job is pretty simple. I brought my laptop with me. We might be able to figure it all out this morning and go our separate ways. I do think my dad’s being paranoid. He also warned me you’re a horndog and I should stay away from you.”
“I’m a what?” He’d never heard the expression.
Kyle snorted. “From some of the stories I’ve heard, it’s a pretty accurate description.” The doors opened and there was the entrance to McKay-Taggart. “Come with me, Noelle. I’m more than happy to show you around while Hutch sets up our briefing. And those muffins smell delicious. Would you like some coffee?”
“I would love some. Thank you.” Noelle completely ignored him as she walked off with Kyle. “It’s a lovely office.”
She had a lovely backside. And muffins. And she smelled like vanilla.
That was a good thing to remember. It hadn’t worked with a vanilla woman. He could have tons of vanilla sex, but it didn’t fill his soul the way it should. He needed more control than most women were interested in handing over.
He took a deep breath and followed. Sometimes mistakes were made for reasons. He had to hope that was the case here.
And he had to figure out what a horndog was. He sighed and moved toward the office. His day was already going bad.
* * * *
Did he have to be so cute? Noelle sat across from the man her father had warned her about and wished he wasn’t pretty much her exact type. If she was going to build a guy she found attractive, Hutch checked off all her superficial needs. He was gorgeous, had that strong jawline that made her heart go all girly. From the look of his forearms, he spent a lot of time in the gym. And he had beautiful eyes. He wasn’t so big that he overwhelmed her, but he also looked solid. His emotions seemed to play across his face. In the short time since she’d met him, she’d seen what he looked like when he was frustrated, embarrassed, and angry. She’d caught sight of him grinning with some of his coworkers, and that smile of his lit up the room.
Why couldn’t she like the Kyle Hawthorne, superhot and broody type? Any one of her friends would have taken one look at him and been a puddle at his feet, but she’d merely felt an artistic appreciation for the man’s perfection.
She didn’t like perfect. She liked laid back and fun. She liked a guy she could read, who didn’t constantly hide everything he felt.
“So you work for Genedyne?” Ian Taggart’s deep voice brought her back to the reason she was here, which was absolutely not to stare at Hutch while he stared down at the screen of his cell.
Her dad had told her Taggart had recently turned fifty, but he didn’t look it. He was hot, too, though in the Kyle Hawthorne way. He looked like a man who regularly dodged bullets.
He’d asked her a question. It was a tribute to how flustered Hutch had her that she couldn’t focus. She always had to focus. She had to be the smartest person in every room because not only was she a woman in a male-dominated field, sometimes her coworkers saw her in a wheelchair.
How to explain what Genedynamic did. “Yes, I hired on straight out of college. One of my professors had worked with Jessica Layne when she first started out. It’s pretty much my dream job because Ms. Layne is known for funding some big ideas and letting her researchers kind of go wild. She’s got several labs around the country, but Dallas is