And he wasn’t entirely certain that was a bad thing.
Good thing he was leaving in four weeks.
He slowly climbed to his feet, watching every nuance of her stance and expression. There were tight cords in her neck, a slender but defined bulge to her biceps, and a sweet heat rolling off her.
He held out a sundae. “Nuts?”
She eyed the sundae toppings with a flat, blue-flame gaze that he guessed probably left some of her male students more than a little uncomfortable from time to time. “You’re pushing it, sugar.”
“Got one without nuts too.” He lifted the other sundae. “Take your pick.”
She shifted those baby blues between his eyes and the ice cream. Just when hethought she would give him the boot, she plucked the sundae with nuts out of his hand and pushed past him to unlock her door. Without a word, she held it open for him.
Kaci being quiet—this was borderline terrifying.
Lance stepped into her apartment and followed her to the small kitchen. He caught a whiff of something girly, along with something that almost smelled like sulfur.
No telling if that was a good or bad sign.
He popped the plastic top off his sundae and settled on a stool at the countertop separating her kitchen from her living room. She slid him another unreadable look before digging into her own ice cream while she leaned back against her white cabinets.
Based on what he’d learned sniffing around the internet today, Kaci was about six years older than he was. She’d been in grade school when her father sank his F-15in the Persian Gulf during the first Gulf War. She’d graduated as valedictorian from her high school in Cotton Blossom, Mississippi. And she was one of the featured speakers scheduled at a conference in Germany, presenting her breakthroughs in her research on efficient combustion.
But that wasn’t all he’d discovered.
He took a slow lick of hot fudge and melted ice cream, watching her eyes narrow and those tendons in her neck stiffen tighter.
“You come here to talk, or you one of those horn-dogs who gets off on watching a woman eat ice cream?” she said.
“Some of both.”
The corners of her lips flicked upward as though she were amused by his honesty.
He dipped his spoon back into the soupy mess of his sundae. “So, Miss Grits, huh?”
“You might want to switch back to just the ogling. Safer that way.”
He grinned. “How’s a beauty queen go from planning on majoring in English to being asked to fly across the Atlantic as the smartest professor at a physics conference?”
“The question you need to be asking yourself is how dumb you’re fixin’ to look when you walk out of here with your rear end where your face goes.”
God, this was fun. “Just saying, English to physics is a big leap.”
“And I’m just saying it’s none of your business.”
He stirred his melted ice cream and watched the fudge swirl into the milky substance. “Went through pilot training with my sister,” he said. “Watching the shit they put her through for being a woman made me wonder what year we were living in. And she wouldn’t let me fight her battles for her, because she needed to prove herself tothem. Not a single one of them’s laughing now, because she schooledallour asses. She had to. Nobody thought a woman could keep up. Changed her. And she loves flying fighters, but I still wonder how much she had to give up that I’ll never know about.”
She was poking her sundae but watching him closely as though she were puzzling him out.
He lifted a shoulder in a casual shrug. “Going out to Jim-Bob reminded me of how few female professors I had in college. Thought maybe you and Cheri had something in common.”
She slid the spoon into her mouth, and his groin twitched at the sight of her tongue. Behind him, something snuffled.
“Oh, Miss Higgs, I know.” Kaci set her ice cream down and crossed to the living room, where she picked up a massive white ball of fluff. “But you can’t have ice cream.Doctor’s orders.” She carried the thing—an oversized ferret? A mutant lab rat?—to the kitchen, then deposited it next to the fridge. “How about some kibble, kitty cat?”
Ah.
She had a cat.
