Nerds Are From Mars (13 page)

She sucked in a breath. “Can we skip the cocktail party and the dinner?”

“No.”

“Damn.”

He brought her palm to his mouth and placed a soft kiss in the middle of it. “Sorry.”

“It’s a good thing you said all that in this bar and not standing outside my room, or we’d never have made it to your obligatory events. I can be extremely persuasive.”

“I’m sure you can, which is why I’m not walking you to your room when we leave here. And we’d better get going soon. Harcourt will have my hide if I don’t show up on time, and I have to shower and change.”

“You’re not going like that?”

“Nope. Gotta wear a monkey suit.” The thought of that helped tame his bad boy.

“You’re going in a
tux
?”

“’fraid so. Blame Harcourt. He insists on flash and dash from his people. It’s a royal pain in the ass.”

“Oh, Dr. Bradbury, you have no clue, do you?” Her smile was slow and languid.

“About what?” He didn’t focus on that smile because it had the power to recreate the problem he’d just fixed.

“A woman loves a man in a tux.”

“She does?”

“Oh, yeah. You didn’t know that?”

“Never had a reason to find out. I haven’t had a serious girlfriend since I started working for Harcourt, and prior to that I’d never worn one of the damn things, thank God.” He peered at her. “You’re happy about this tux thing?”

“Extremely happy. Watching you walk around in a tux will be better than foreplay.”

He laughed and pushed his empty wine glass away. “Maybe this cocktail party and dinner won’t be as boring as I thought. Now I can hardly wait to suit up. Let’s go.”

Forty-five minutes later, he knocked on Darcie’s door. Getting into the tux had been as much of a hassle as he’d remembered, but he’d struggled with a glad heart. Thanks to Harcourt, he was wearing a babe magnet outfit.

She opened the door, and her eyes widened. He’d planned to preen a little and enjoy her reaction to his tux presentation. That plan evaporated once his attention moved from her upswept hair and wide eyes to the rest of her. “Wow.”

“I could say the same about you, Dr. Bradbury.” She stepped into the hallway and laid her hand on his white tux shirt. “You’re . . . yummy.”

He gazed down at her. “I don’t have a word to describe you. The language isn’t up to it.” He moved back so that he could take in her incredible beauty. “That’s not a
little black dress
. I imagined something like what the high school choir girls used to wear, those knit things with the flared skirt.”

“It might not be a knit, but it’s not really
that
fancy.”

“Oh, yes, it is. All smooth satin and it fits like a glove. Permission to ogle.”

She smiled. “Permission granted.”

“Turn for me.” He spun his finger in a circle. “I want to see . . . oh, my God. It’s backless. How does that work? How does everything stay where it’s supposed to?”

“A halter top that fastens behind my neck and built in soft cups so I don’t have to wear a bra.”

He groaned softly. “We need to leave. I can’t stand here another second or I’ll lose my job, my career, and my chance to colonize Mars.”

“Let me get my purse.” She ducked into her room and returned with a little black satin thing that matched her dress. She pulled the door shut. “Let’s go.”

He drew in a ragged breath. “And you thought watching me would be better than foreplay. Watching you move in that dress is better than sex.”

“Really?”

“Of course not. We haven’t even had sex yet and already I know it’ll be the best thing that’s ever happened to me in my entire life. But I told you I don’t have the vocabulary to handle the sight of you in that black satin number. Your rhinestone necklace points the way to your cleavage, and your naked back invites me to kiss you all over.
Plus
your hips sway when you walk in those five-inch heels and that’s driving me nuts. All I can think of is dragging you back to your room and throwing you down on that king-sized bed.”

“I’d say your vocabulary’s functioning pretty darned well.”

“Enjoy it while you can. I can feel brain cells dying every time I sneak a peek at you. I’m pacing myself on those glances, because eventually if I keep looking, my language skills will be reduced to nothing but grunts, groans, and tortured sighs.”

“And I thought I was the one who liked drama.”

“You obviously do. That dress is the most dramatic thing I’ve seen besides a gamma ray burst.”

“Still working the vocabulary, aren’t you, Dr. Bradbury?”

“It’ll all be over soon.” He punched the elevator button. “I’ll be a hormone-driven Cro-Magnon before you know it.”

“At least you’ll still be wearing a tux.”

“A knuckle-dragging, tux-wearing, Cro-Magnon.”

“Are you sure it’s safe to be alone together in the elevator with all those primitive urges coursing through you?”

“Come to think of it, not if it’s empty. If it is, we’ll let the empty one go and take the first one that has people in it. We need to get to that party ASAP, so let’s hope this one has someone riding up to the top floor.”

But when the elevator opened to reveal Aaron Blackstone in all his blond glory, Nolan wished he’d been more specific in his wish and had asked for someone other than Blackstone to be in that elevator. The guy’s tux had probably been hand-tailored by somebody with a French accent. Blackstone knew how to wear it, too. Darcie couldn’t help but be impressed.

Blackstone flashed his perfect smile. “Hey, what a coincidence, meeting you two on the way to the cocktail party! Darcie, you look terrific! Great dress!”

Nolan opened his mouth to say he’d forgotten something and they’d catch the next elevator, but Darcie stepped through the opening before he got the first word out. That made sense. Her dress really was a brain-cell killer if he’d ever seen one.

He wasn’t about to let her ride up alone with a womanizer, though. The car had twenty floors to go, and a lot could happen in that time. He hopped on, too, and the elevator doors slid closed.

Everything about Blackstone, even his aftershave, shouted that he was rich, rich, rich. Nolan reminded himself that Harcourt was even richer, but Nolan forgot about that whenever he interacted with the billionaire. Blackstone never let anyone forget that he came from money with a capital M.

“Well, Darcie,” Blackstone said in his most jovial manner as the elevator began its assent. “Now that you’ve spent more time around space geeks, what do you think of the species? Can we be trained to operate in polite society, or should we all be shipped to Mars once we have the technology?”

Darcie eyed him up and down. “I’ve discovered that you can’t lump all space geeks into one category,” she said. “They’re all different.”

Nolan was gratified that she didn’t sound the least bit friendly toward Blackstone. The guy might look like a
People
magazine celebrity, someone definitely from the cool crowd, but apparently Darcie didn’t care about that anymore. She seemed to prefer someone with a little more humility, someone like him, for example. God, that felt great.

“Very perceptive,” Blackstone said. “I mean, here you have Bradbury and me, each of us heading up a Mars colonization project, and we couldn’t be more different.”

“No, you couldn’t. You’re complete opposites.” Darcie subtly implied that was not a compliment to Blackstone.

If Blackstone picked up on it, he must have immediately dismissed it. “We
are
different, which brings me to that panel discussion, Nolan. I screwed up. I get so into my subject that I forget about the time. When you started talking, I got excited and instinctively wanted to initiate a dialogue. But that was inappropriate under the circumstances. I’m deeply sorry.”

Without thinking about it, Nolan put his hand in his pocket to locate the hematite. It warmed in his grip as he assessed the carefully orchestrated regret in his colleague’s expression. “I wish I could believe you, Blackstone, but I can’t. For years I’ve given you the benefit of the doubt when you behaved like an asshole. Until today I would have accepted that load of BS. But I can’t do that anymore.”

Blackstone stared at him. “Now that doesn’t sound like you, buddy. That doesn’t sound like you at all. We’ve had our moments, but we go back a long way, and I’ve always been there for you.”

“No, you haven’t. You’ve always been there for yourself. You’re a good scientist, Aaron, I’ll give you that. You may very well get to Mars before I do. If that happens, I won’t begrudge you the glory. I’ll be happy that someone made it because colonizing Mars will be a huge accomplishment for humankind.”

“I’d feel the same if you made it first!”

“No, you wouldn’t. You’d be beside yourself with jealousy. We’re different in a lot of ways, but that’s the most critical one, because it means I can’t trust you.”

“I’m stunned.” Blackstone managed to look tragic. “And hurt. Deeply hurt. All this time I thought we were just kidding around with each other, taking jabs because that’s what guys do when they’re after the same prize. It’s all in good fun. But instead you were passing judgment on my behavior.”

“No, I wasn’t. Not until today.”

Blackstone looked at Darcie. “Did you put him up to this?”

“No, I did not.”

The blood roared in Nolan’s ears. “Leave Darcie out of it.”

“I don’t see how I can. She arrives on the scene and you suddenly turn on me. I can’t believe that’s a coincidence. Did the stars tell her I was out to get you?”

Adrenaline surged through him. Releasing the hematite, he took both hands out of his pockets and flexed them. As the elevator came to a halt on the top floor, he faced Blackstone.

Except for a buzzing in his ears, he was strangely calm. He looked at the arrogant bastard’s face and imagined blood pouring from his nose and mouth. “Apologize to Darcie.” His tone was almost conversational. “Or I’ll rip your tongue out.”

Darcie gasped and laid a hand on his arm. “Never mind, Nolan. He’s not worth messing up your tux for. And we’re here.”

“I don’t give a damn about my tux.” He’d never felt more sure of himself than at this moment. He stared into his antagonist’s eyes. “Are you going to apologize, Blackstone?” he asked quietly. “Or do we have a problem?”

“Okay, okay!” Blackstone backed out of the elevator, palms upraised. “Don’t go all psycho on me, Bradbury.” He cleared his throat. “Darcie, I’m sorry. That was uncalled for.”

“Apology accepted.”

“Good. You guys do what you want. I’m going to a party.”

Nolan pressed a button for the floor two levels below them. As the doors closed and the elevator began to move, he blew out a breath and leaned against the wall. He was shaking.

Darcie came to him and bracketed his face in her hands. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah.” He looked into her eyes. “I was ready to tear his face off. Literally. I’ve never physically threatened anyone in my life, and I was ready to hurt him. Hurt him bad.”

“I think he knew that.” She smiled at him. “You scared the crap out of him.”

The elevator stopped and the doors opened, but no one was there. Taking a deep breath, Nolan pushed the button for the top floor again. “That was intense. I didn’t know I had it in me to be that angry.”

“I did.”

“Naturally.” He managed a smile and hoped it wasn’t a grimace. “You’ve read my charts.”

The elevator halted again and the doors slid open. Laughter and the clink of glasses drifted from the entrance to the penthouse suite opposite the elevator. Nolan straightened and blew out a breath.

Darcie tucked her hand in the crook of his arm and smiled up at him. “Come on, Dr. Bradbury. Let’s go meet your boss.”

“Yeah, let’s do that.” Nolan’s pulse still pounded, but he was steady again. “He’s going to love you and envy me.” Funny though, Nolan didn’t have the slightest concern that Harcourt would try to steal Darcie. That wasn’t his boss’s style.

As he and Darcie walked across the narrow hall toward the party, he thought about what he’d said to Blackstone and began to chuckle.

“What’s so funny?”

“Oh, I was thinking how much Harcourt would have loved seeing his mild-mannered team leader lose it with the guy from the other side.”

“Are you going to tell him?”

“Not now. Maybe someday, after we’ve had a few drinks. It’s not worth mentioning when I’m about to walk into a party with the most beautiful woman in the room on my arm.”

“You’re exaggerating, but thank you.”

“I’m not exaggerating.” He glanced down at her. “Thank you, Darcie. For all of it.”

“You may not want to believe this, but I think the stone had a lot to do with what’s happened today.”

“Maybe, but more likely it’s you, helping me believe I’m capable of anything, even taking down Blackstone. Did you know he was an All-American quarterback?”

“I only know he’s an All-American bully.”

“And like most bullies, he’s a coward.” Nolan took another deep breath. “It’s already been quite a night, and it’s only beginning.”

She squeezed his arm. “I can’t wait until I see how it ends.”

“Me, either. The way things are going, we’re liable to set the bed on fire.”

Chapter Eleven

Darcie wondered if the incident with Blackstone in the elevator might take care of Nolan’s stalker problem. She hated to think that Blackstone would have resorted to the level of dirty tricks to bully Nolan, but she hadn’t ruled it out, either. Thank God Nolan hadn’t bought the guy’s abject apology, which had probably worked in the past.

Blackstone already had a glass of champagne in one hand and his arm around a pretty redhead while he talked with a slim, gray-haired man in an elegant tux. Darcie wondered if the man might be Thaddeus Sterling because Blackstone seemed to be generously ladling out the charm. Before she could ask Nolan who the slim man was, a waiter came by with a tray full of champagne-filled flutes.

Nolan grabbed two and offered one to her. “To the woman who’s changed my life for the better.” He lifted his glass.

“Thank you. That’s a lovely thing to say.” She took a sip of excellent champagne and was about to finally ask about the slim man with Blackstone when a completely different sort of guy bore down on them.