Page 21 of Love in the Lab
Molly inches closer to me at the wheel. The cockpit is enclosed but the slide windows are open. It’s noisy with the engine roaring and the wind whooshing past us, so I can’t quite hear her when she shouts.
“What?” I gesture to my ears and shake my head.
She leans closer, the hair on the top of her head tickling my jawline until she tilts her chin up so that her mouth is just below my ear. My body tenses at her nearness, yet I lean closer.
“How do we know where to go to get the glider?” she asks.
I’m still stuck on her proximity; it takes my brain longer than normal to process the question and shout out an intelligible answer. “When it finishes its mission, it surfaces automatically and sends its coordinates.” I point to the GPS screen embedded in the console. “I enter the coordinates, and the GPS creates a waypoint.”
She nods thoughtfully at the screen. The wind whips her hair so it’s flowing behind her, dancing along with the peaks and valleys of the moving air. I guess she didn’t bring a hair tie on this expedition either. When a strand blows across her face, she flicks it away impatiently.
“How long will it take to get there?”
I study the GPS screen. “About another hour, maybe. We’ve got to go past Grand Island and through the Chandeleur Sound. The glider’s out in the Gulf.”
With this information, I think she’ll go sit on the bench seat or even below deck. There’s nothing fancy down there, but it would be an ideal place to hide away for someone uncomfortable on boats. Instead, she pushes up on her tiptoes to sit in the captain’s chair directly behind where I’m standing at the wheel. She’s not touching any part of me, but I feel her behind me, and it’s extremely distracting.
I slow thePulse, and the noise from the engine and wind slow with her. I turn my head. “Do you want to learn to pilot the boat?”
Molly’s instantly back on her feet. “Can I?” she asks.
I shrug. The water is calm today; our navigation is set. Piloting at this point is really just a matter of steering to keep us aligned with the GPS waypoint. “Sure. It’s not hard.” Molly frowns at my words, so I rush to add, “And even if it was, you’d catch on in no time.”
“That’s right; I would,” she mutters.
I bite my lip to keep from smiling. I lift one hand off the steering wheel and use it to nudge Molly in front of me. Her back is aligned with my chest, not touching, but close enough that my heart rate jumps up, and I’m sure she can hear it pounding in my chest. I grasp her hand and, ignoring the tingling on my skin as my nervous system goes haywire, guide it to the throttle.
“This is called the throttle,” I explain, my hand covering hers. “You push it forward to go faster and pull it toward you to slow down. If you like your speed, you don’t have to touch it.” I move her hand to the steering wheel, and she lifts her other hand to the wheel, too. “This is the steering wheel. If you know how to steer a car, you’ve already got this down, except the wheel is bigger. No tricks to it; you turn the wheel right to go right andleft to go left.” I bracket my hands on either side of hers. “You just want to keep us following the course marked out on the GPS screen. See?” I point to the route laid out in front of us.
Molly tips her head back to look at me, her hair once again tickling my chin. “That’s it?” she asks.
I nod. “You have to watch for currents. They can make it harder to steer.”
She chews her bottom lip and stares up at me through her eyelashes. “Maybe you better keep your hands on the wheel, too, for now. In case we run into a current.”
She turns forward again, and as she does, she leans her shoulders back into my chest. I stop breathing, stop moving, stop anything that could disrupt the status quo. I grip the steering wheel as Molly pushes the throttle forward bit by bit to increase our speed. The wind picks up again and her hair goes wild, strands flittering into my mouth, sticking to my lips.
Can’t breathe. Erratic heartbeat. I could collapse right here on this deck and die a happy man.
Molly reaches up to smooth her hair. When her fingers hit my chin, her head snaps back. “Oh my gosh, I’m so sorry!” Her cheeks turn pink. “You can take the wheel.”
She lets go of the steering wheel and quickly ducks under my arm to stand to the side. She combs her fingers through her hair and holds it against the back of her head in a fist. “I forgot to bring a hair tie,” she explains. “I didn’t realize it was hitting you in the face.”
I find my voice. “It’s no problem.” Highlight of my week, actually.
Her face is still flushed, so I shift my focus to the water in front of us and the route highlighted on the GPS screen. In my peripheral vision, I see her hesitate in front of the door leading below deck. Then she disappears down the stairs.
Guess piloting lessons are over.
Chapter eight
Molly
This is bliss, I think as I sit near the front of the boat. The wind blowing through my hair, the sea spray hitting my face, the sun warming my skin. We’ve slowed down as we get closer to our destination. I’ve felt so settled today out here on the boat. Everything about this trip has been appealing and stimulating to my senses and my mind, sometimes perhaps a little too much.
The proximity to Jonathan feels both intoxicating and dangerous. I’m leaning into the weighted, charged moments between us instead of shutting them down like I normally would.Being attracted to my archnemesis is an inconvenient problem to have, especially when he’s really not a bad guy. Especially when I have no room in my life or routine for relationships of any kind other than my family. Hating him is safer.
I close my eyes and focus on the sensations of being out on the water. My breathing slows and a content, closed-mouth smile creeps across my face.
