She bit her lip, peering at Sam’s beautiful face out of the corner of her eye. Why did it feel so good to talk shop with him? She’d never done this with Logan—his eyes had glazed over despite his politely interested smile every time she’d tried. In the scheme of things, her job was a silly one… but it mattered to her. She loved it. It meant so much that he was genuinely interested in what she had to say about it.
“What solutions are you working on?” he asked.
She leaned in, pointing to a section of DNA.
“I’m trying to create redundancy in these genes. It could go horribly wrong,” she admitted wryly. “Sometimes, repeating genes too many times results in a weird expression, but if I can pull it off, I think I can convince the plant to make more of the enzyme than it can use during its lifespan, meaning I can improve the longevity of the resulting glow to the limit of the molecule’s degradation.”
“What do you need to do to make it happen?”
“Right now?” She gave him a wry look. “Nothing. I used up my last graft on Friday. I have to wait for one of my cultivated plants to produce a bud so I can test my theory. That’s the downside of working with plants. There’s a lot of waiting.”
“I’d like to take you to lunch,” he said more loudly than necessary.
A few curious colleagues turned to look.
“It might run long since I plan to pick your brain. If your supervisor doesn’t object…” He gave Brenda, one of the snooping onlookers, a questioning look.
“Please, take her!” Brenda said without hesitation. “Keep her, in fact! She’s all yours today.”
CHAPTER 25
Ophelia smacked his shoulder a dozen times the moment they were out of the building. “You’re deranged!”
He grinned. “Perhaps, but you like it.”
He put a hand at the small of her back and steered her into the human traffic on the sidewalk.
She didn’t argue with him, despite the downward bend of her mouth, so he knew he was right. Ophelia didn’t like to lie unnecessarily. A compunction he did not share, but admired nonetheless.
“Where are you taking me?” she asked.
“Someplace nice.”
They stopped in front of a French café he’d found bookmarked on her phone. He’d hacked it last night while she slept for something to do. The dirty look she gave him suggested she knew exactly how he’d come across it.
A little harp strummed as he opened the door, and the redolent scents of rosemary and freshly baked bread spilled out onto the street. Her resistance left at once.
“Reservation for Nolan,” he told the young hostess, who tripped over her own feet as she led them to their table.
“I haven’t seen you here before,” the hostess said, smiling shyly up at him. “Have you been in the area long?”
He gave her a flat look that made her clear her throat and look straight ahead.
Ophelia elbowed him.
Be nice, she mouthed.
He rolled his eyes.
Apparently, the cost of keeping Ophelia would be summoning a veneer of nicety for every stray human he crossed paths with.
He pulled out a seat by the window for Ophelia, and she sat after a moment’s hesitation. He took the seat beside her. Sunlight spilled through the window, turning the stormy gray of her eyes to a luminous silver.
“So, I take it you’ve been snooping,” she said, picking up her menu.
“Yes. Does that bother you?”
“Of course it does!” She scowled over the top of her menu. The expression faltered. She blew out a harsh breath, looking away. “It should. What you did was intrusive.”
