Page 8 of Duty Compromised
Her second attempt was successful, and she disappeared into the lab. Darcy shook her head, clearly amused.
“Brilliant scientist,” she told me. “Absolutely hopeless at everything else.”
“Darcy,” Alex said in a mild warning.
“What? It’s true, and we all know it. She’d forget to eat if someone didn’t shove food in her hands. We’ve considered putting her on a leash.” Darcy gave me an assessing look. “So—security. Is there a specific threat?”
“Just precautionary,” I said, keeping my tone neutral. “Given the sensitive nature of your research.”
Alex nodded. “I’ll have someone prepare a temporary workspace for you.”
“Thanks, appreciate it.”
Alex headed off. Darcy lingered a beat longer.
“Charlotte means well,” she said. “She just doesn’t really…do people. Especially new people. Especially new people who happen to be attractive.”
I arched a brow.
“What? I have eyes,” she said breezily. “Anyway, if you need anything, I’m usually the one who knows where everything is.”
“Got it. Thanks.”
She vanished into the lab, leaving me alone in reception with a ringing phone and no one else in the vicinity to help. I answered the call, transferred it to someone’s voicemail, and wondered what the hell I’d just walked into.
Dr. Charlotte Gifford. Not the elderly man in a tweed jacket I’d been expecting. Not even close.
Brilliant. Accomplished. Utterly incapable of keeping track of a pen.
And, I admitted, kind of adorable—those wide green eyes, the way she flushed when she realized the pen was behind her ear, the total lack of pretense. Just a genius in coffee-stained clothes who’d walked into a door.
The next two weeks were going to be…interesting.
Chapter 3
Charlotte Gifford
Unbelievable.
I was utterly unbelievable.
I shoved through the bathroom door hard enough to make it slam and ricochet against the stopper, the echo bouncing off the tile in a very here lies my dignity kind of way. I set my tablet down on the vanity before my hands found the sink, fingers locking on to the cold porcelain like it might stop me from floating off into outer space on a wave of humiliation. My knuckles were white, my breathing shallow, fast—like I’d just sprinted the hundred-meter dash instead of…failed spectacularly at normal conversation.
The mirror was merciless. The woman staring back looked like she’d just barely survived a tornado, and not the sexy, cinematic kind—more like the your roof is gone and also someone stole your cat kind.
My cheeks were blotchy, climbing all the way to my hairline. My carefully braided hair, which I’d engineered at five-thirty this morning with precision and the help of three mirrors, was already sprouting rebel strands. My pupils were still blown wide from the adrenaline dump. The lab coat was crooked from my earlier attempt to put it on one-handed—not to mention the dampness and coffee stain—and my badge was clipped at an angle so offensive it made my left eye twitch.
“What is wrong with you?” I knocked my forehead against the mirror. Not hard enough to hurt, because I definitely didn’t want to give anyone further reason to stare at me when I walked back out.
If I ever left this bathroom again. I could probably have food delivered and just live in here the rest of my days.
I’d barely managed a coherent syllable out there. Words had clanged around in my head like loose screws in a centrifuge, refusing to arrange into anything resembling intelligent communication. Eye contact? Nonexistent. One look at Ty Hughes and my brain’s operating system crashed.
Blue screen of death. Reboot required.
He walked in, and suddenly I was sixteen again. Not in the romantic young love way. No. More like awkward prodigy sitting in the back row at Stanford, clutching her textbook like a medieval shield, silently praying not to be noticed by the effortlessly normal humans around her.
That was exactly what this felt like—except I wasn’t sixteen anymore. I was a twenty-six-year-old woman with two PhDs who could optimize a quantum encryption algorithm in my sleep. I could reduce a battery management system to code and back again without breaking a sweat.
