where it had been, just in case. Of course, it had been blown up. Why did their headquarters continually get blown up? Maybe leasing the high-rise office wasn’t a bad idea. “It’s beautiful.”
“Yes.” She tossed her jacket over a chair and yanked several notebooks out of her briefcase. “I need to get to work.”
“Um, how about dinner?” he asked, studying her. The flimsy silk blouse followed her contours as she tossed the notebooks onto the coffee table, and his mouth started to water for anything but food. He paused and turned to survey her place. Muted colors, artfully arranged, clean and uncluttered. Even the bedroom had been so.
“There are delivery menus in the right-hand drawer on the other side of the island.” She pointed toward the kitchen and settled herself on the sofa.
Delivery? He walked around the island and past the stove. “How about I cook something?”
She looked up and blinked a couple of times until her eyes focused on him. “You cook?”
“Yeah.” Taking up the hobby had been part of his recovery the last three months, and he found he liked the exactness of it. And he enjoyed eating, so it was a practical hobby too.
“I don’t have much food,” she said, not seeming concerned about it.
He moved to a quaintly old-fashioned refrigerator to find several batches of vegetables already cleaned. The woman probably took them raw to eat as snacks at work. “I’ll make it happen.” He found a pot and filled it with water to start boiling before searching for a knife. Then he started chopping.
She glanced away from her notebooks. “You are remarkably fast.”
He slowed his knife to a more human range. “I just make a lot of noise.” He smiled and scanned her home. Besides a few framed photographs of her with her parents and her as a student with other kids, there wasn’t much of her in the place.
“What?” she asked, finally concentrating fully on him.
He shrugged. “Dunno. Figured your house would include rich colors and wild paintings.”
She smiled, twirling a highlighter in one hand. “Direct opposite of what I show the world?”
“Yeah.” He’d also imagined her in a scarlet-red panty set but figured she wouldn’t appreciate that revelation. He couldn’t tell what she wore beneath the pink silk, but it obviously wasn’t bright red. Or black.
“No. What you see is what there is.” She looked into the quiet living room. “Hired a decorator right when I moved in, and she bought the pieces. Said they were tranquil and went well with the ocean outside.”
Books were lined neatly on the shelves, and no television was visible anywhere. She drew him in a way he didn’t understand, especially since they seemed too much alike to arouse any “opposites attract” flow of hormones. Although her choice of vocation might negate that theory. There was more to her than he could see—he just knew it. “What do you do for fun?” he asked, dumping the vegetables into the water.
“I work.” She kicked off her shoes. “My few friends are colleagues, really. We’ve come up with new experiments together.” She mulled it over. “I play some VR multiplayer games online sometimes.”
“Dealing with science?” He grinned.
“Of course.” She shrugged and rolled her feet around.
He swallowed. There was just something about her ankles. He searched through the cupboards and found a set of herbs that remained protected by their plastic coatings. Had probably been a gift. “I see.”
She shrugged, her face turning a lovely pink. “Must seem boring to you. Cold and logical.”
“No,” he said, relaxing for the first time that day as he sprinkled in different herbs. His brain finally made the connection. “You’re a romantic, Promise Williams. You just don’t show it.”
Her chuckle was low and feminine, and he felt it right in his balls. “A romantic? Not in a million years.”
Her lack of self-awareness was intriguing. He nodded. “Not true. Anybody who studies the cosmology of extra dimensions, supersymmetry, and dark matter is truly a romantic. All of you deep thinkers are big dreamers.”
She rubbed her nose, her gaze meeting his. “Nobody has ever called me either a romantic or a dreamer.”
“Then they don’t see you clearly,” he returned, moving to the freezer and finding a decent pack of meat he could use for the stew. He tossed it into the microwave to defrost, his gaze trailing back to the woman. What was it about her?
She glanced down at a page in her notebook. “I don’t wish to take advantage of your business group, but I really