Chapter 7
By the time Kaci left her office Monday, her nerves were shot. She needed to go set off a few bottle rockets. Or fling a pumpkin. Or set off fireworks.
Something.
Going into her lab would probably be the wisest course of action, but she didn’t like her grad students to see her flustered.
She didn’t like anyone to see her flustered.
Ron had taken to emailing her daily. Easy enough to ignore at first. She filed his messages away in her Trash folder.
It wasn’t that she was angry with him. She was simply done with that part of her life, and they both needed to move on.
But today’s subject line had gotten her attention.
Suggestion for your next paper, he’d written.
And like a dingbat, she’d clicked.
He’d been very complimentary.
At first.
So proud of her for being selected to give a keynote address at the Stuttgart conference. Really impressed with her papers and articles and also that she’d managed to get both into such prestigious publications.
But he was concerned she’d overestimated a key compression ratio, and his research proved it. They needed to talk before she went to Germany.
Preferably sooner, so she didn’t embarrass herself and James Robert College in the process. He knew how hard it was to be a woman in a technical field—ha!—and he was simply looking out for her best interest if she wanted to make tenure.
Hey, Kaci. You’re wrong, and you’re about to make a fool of all of us. Let me hold your hand and patronize you.
Ron’s research was still hypothetical. Yes, he’d earned his doctorate before she had, but he was only beginning to get his first real research lab up and running, with most of his time before this summer occupied with other academic pursuits in his military career.
Kaci had hard numbers and a year’s worth of experimentation and data to back her up, with three years of preliminary work before that.
Her results had been replicated in two other universities since her paper was published, including in Stuttgart, and she was in contact with chemists at another university who had been integrating her research with theirs.
She didn’t mind collaboration.
She liked collaboration. If she’d done something wrong, she wanted to know, and she wanted to fix it. Make it better. Stronger.
But Ron didn’t have any evidence to back up his assertions. Just theories based on incomplete data sets.
He might’ve read her papers, but he didn’t have day-to-day access to her work.
All he had was his own arrogance.
But she was putting him behind her. Moving forward. Getting out of the office for the day so she could answer him in a dignified manner tomorrow.
She pushed out of the physics building and into the bright fall sunshine. The leaves on the southern maple and pecan trees hadn’t yet turned their fall colors, but the green wasn’t as lush as it had been a month ago. A cool breeze hinted that the best summer days had already passed.
The cracks in the sidewalk passed in a blur as she charged toward the parking lot, alternately composing a response to Ron in her head and ordering herself to forget about him. She was halfway across the lot before she realized something wasn’t right.
And all of that not-rightness simultaneously flooded her veins with panic and made her heart do a swoony number no self-respecting physics professor would ever admit to.
Before she could fully process what she was—and wasn’t—seeing, Zada waved from the other side of the parking lot and jogged toward her.
“Dr. Boudreaux!” Her chin trembled when she drew to a stop beside Kaci.
“Dr. Boudreaux, did the Gellings Fall Fest pumpkin-chucking organizers disqualify that other team?”
Kaci eyed the lone man sitting in the bed of a truck where she swore she’d left her Jeep this morning, then angled away from him and lowered her voice. “Not that I’ve heard. Their webpage say something?”
“No, but…” Zada lifted a delicate finger and pointed toward the student center down the way. “The bookstore has credit for all of us on the catapult team. The exact amount of the prize money.”
Kaci opened her mouth.
Then closed it.
A foreign heat warmed her cheeks.
With all the distractions from Ron, Lance, and Gertrude, she’d forgotten about the bookstore.
“Don’t know anything about it, but I know y’all did an amazing job with Ichabod. My momma would say the angels were watching.” She steered Zada back toward the building. Because even if she wanted to discuss this—which she didn’t—she didn’t want to do it with an audience.
While her Jeep was missing.
And with Lance in the bed of his truck right in the very spot where she’d parked this morning.
“Did y’all get my message about setting up a booth for the Physics Club at Spirit Week?” she asked Zada.
“Yes, but—”
“Great. Let me know what you want to do for demonstrations, or if you need ideas.”
“Dr. Boudreaux—”
“You don’t want to do Spirit Week?”
“We do, but—”
“Oh, good. Y’all will have fun with it. How about you bring a sign-up sheet to our meeting tomorrow, and I’ll bring that binder of ideas we put together for our high school visits last year. Bound to have something good in there.”
Zada stood there a moment longer as though she were debating pressing for more information about the bookstore.
But Kaci needed her game face.
Because her brain was coming up with all kinds of ugly reasons why her car was missing and why Lance Wheeler was parked in her spot, and she needed to find out the truth before she panicked for no good reason.
Or before her redneck side paired up with her feminine side and overruled her common sense. Because if that happened, she’d be offering to mud wrestle him for her Jeep.
And even with her car missing, she couldn’t deny the thrill of anticipation at the prospect of touching the man again.
As far as pranks went, she was facing the losing side this time.
“Okay, Dr. Boudreaux,” Zada finally said. She pushed her wispy bangs out of her eyes while her gaze darted quickly toward Lance. “But if you hear who we can thank for the bookstore credit, can you let them know how grateful we are? I—it’s going to be a lot easier to buy books next semester.”
“I’ll keep an ear out, sugar.”
Zada went back the way she came, curiosity lingering in the long look she cast at Lance while she walked away.
He nodded to her, and she put her head down and kept walking.
But Kaci wouldn’t be running away.
She never did.
Lance was either in for one hell of a good time, or he’d be leaving here in handcuffs.
His squadron buddies weren’t always right, but they were damn certain they’d always win.
So here he was, in the bed of his truck in a staff parking spot, ready to play mediator since he hadn’t been able to stop his buddies’ version of vengeance.
And if he happened to enjoy himself in the process, that was the price he’d have to pay.
He was crunching on corn chips with a six-pack of diet soda and a pack of Mentos beside him, debating breaking into the soda when she finally marched up to him.
Not that he’d minded the delay. Listening in on her conversation had been interesting.
Borderline enlightening even.
And watching her process exactly what had happened to her Jeep had been entertaining.
To say the least.
“Captain Wheeler,” she said when she stopped beside his truck, arms crossed, and some where the hell is my car? warring with some you’re gonna pay for this in her murderous glare.
He suppressed a grin. “Dr. Boudreaux.”
Her nostrils quivered. “There’s a line, and I’m standing here hoping to sweet baby Jolene y’all didn’t cross it.”
Did she know how funny she was, or did she think she was projecting hard-ass? Either way, he gave her credit for not pitching a hissy fit.
“Gertrude is part of our family,” he said. “I’m here to negotiate.”
“This here doesn’t call for negotiation. This here calls for war. And you’re gonna have more luck defying physics than you’ll have proving I have anything that belongs to you.”
“Sweetheart, I defy physics every day.”
Something twisted in her expression, but she straightened it out before he could read her. “There’s no sweetheartin’ in my line of work.”
“Maybe not, but we have security tapes from your apartment building. I know you have what I want.”
A blush flooded her round cheeks. Her pulse visibly fluttered at the base of her throat. “Rather extreme escalation, Captain Wheeler. If your Gertrude is worth a car, she must be practically priceless.”
“She’s very near and dear to our hearts.”
“If you ever want to see her again, you better be fixin’ to offer something better than just returning my Jeep. I can get another one of those.”
He had to swallow a smile again. She might not have twelve guys behind her strong enough to lift a Jeep onto a flatbed, but she carried herself as though she did.
Would’ve been disappointing if she hadn’t.
He lifted the soda and Mentos. “How about this? Got a feeling you’re the type to get a kick out of watching a bottle of pop explode. If that suits your fancy, I can probably find something more too.”
She cocked a brow at him. Her blond hair shimmered in the sunlight, and those perfect tits sat up straighter. “More? Or bigger?”
“Define more and bigger.”
“I’ve never fired a cannon.”
“Cannon authorizations are above my pay grade.”
“Humph.” She swung her hips back into motion and turned around as though she were headed back to the physics building.
Where she could make a phone call that would land all of them in a hell of a lot of trouble.
Car theft almost certainly carried a higher penalty than boar theft.
And he hadn’t been able to convince Pony—or anyone else—that they’d be giving her the upper hand if they took her wheels.
He wanted the hell out of Georgia. Criminal charges would not only keep him here longer, he’d miss his deployment.
“Ever ride in a Cessna?” he heard himself ask.