Page 5 of Alone With You
“Jenny?”
“We may as well be informal,” he said, “seeing as we’re going to be roommates.”
CHAPTER TWO
Jenny? He was going to call herJenny?The last person to call her that was her grandmother, back when Jenny was fourteen-years-old. On his lips, it sounded like a call out to the restless tomboy of the girl inside her.
“Students call me Professor Vance.” She pushed the words through the stretch of her throat. “My closest colleagues call me Jennifer. If either of those names is too much of a mouthful for you, Jen would be fine.”
“No, it’s definitely Jenny for you.” He gave her a wolf’s grin. “I think it fits you fine.”
Her pulse jumped as if pulled by a string. What the hell had the kid in the coffee shop slip into her brew that morning? “The point is moot, Macallister. Since we won’t be sharing this cabin.”
“John would have my head on a platter if I shipped you off to a hotel.”
“That’s not an option. A hotel won’t have a laboratory with a hood and gas lines. Dr. Springfield converted the basement of this building into a mini-lab with all the necessary equipment and safety specifications—”
“So?”
“I’m here to work. My work requires a lab.” According to John, this guy was here just to crash, just to take care of the place. Hewing logs and pounding nails, if those muscle-honed arms were any indication “I’ll be doing distillations and wet extractions. I need a hood, the proper equipment. They won’t have those amenities at the local Bed & Breakfast.”
Crossing those arms, he scrutinized her, his shadowed gaze stripping right through the linen and silk for the umpteenth time since she entered the room, heating the surface of her bare skin in a way that baffled scientific explanation.
He said, “You’re angry.”
Great catch, Sherlock.“Anger will not solve this problem.”
“But you won’t be satisfied unless I clear out.”
Satisfaction was a strange word. It reminded her that the sheets on the bed were still rumpled.
“I work best in solitude.” Like at three in the morning when all the graduate students had abandoned the lab, leaving her alone with her beakers and her thoughts.
“I’m not surprised. So do I.”
“Look, Macallister.” How would she work with a brawny cowboy with sleep-mussed hair hovering around, disrupting her concentration? “I have nothing against you personally. I don’t know you.”
“I know why you want me to disappear.” His gaze flickered toward the hallway. “I wasn’t exactly the welcoming committee in the bedroom.”
“Let’s just take things from here and now, shall we?”
“Didn’t mean that to happen, by the way.” He rubbed his stubbly chin. “I’m not sorry that it did.”
Her spine aligned like a row of tin soldiers. Was he trying to unnerve herintentionally? She’d spent her whole professional life cultivating coolness under pressure. She’d be damned if she let this prowl of a man think he could unsettle her by reminding her of a single moment of nudity.
Hell, she looked pretty good without her clothes on.
“We’re both adults.” she said, raising her chin. “But only one of us is acting like one.”
With a sigh, he dipped his head and came toward her. She would have sensed his approach even if blind. Logan emanated an intensity that appeared inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them, like microwave radiation. That freethinking graduate student of hers—Maritza—would interpret this close-proximity sensation as a red-wave aura. Maybe that’s why Jen couldn’t stop the urge to lean back, away from danger.
“I’m not going to lie to you.” Logan dipped his voice and leaned a hip on the back of the couch. “This isn’t going to be easy. I’m used to my own company. Don’t have much patience for visitors.”
“I wouldn’t have guessed.”
She tried to straighten an inch taller. She was used to being eye-level with most men. It helped, in her testosterone-driven world, to be born a long-legged woman. But with this guy, she had to arch her neck to hold his gaze. His eyes were a pale green, and full of strange, shifting shadows.
“I figure,” he continued, crossing those arms until they bulged, “that the house has two bedrooms and two baths. Enough space to share for a couple of weeks without invading each other’s space too much. I’ll stay out of your way. And you can stay out of mine. Sound like a deal?”
