Chapter 10
Lance’s plans for Saturday morning had been to ease into putting more moves on Kaci and play a few video games.
Instead, he’d gone and done something he was kicking himself for—he’d found the tough-as-nails, redneck physics professor’s supersecret soft underbelly.
If the woman would’ve told him who her father was, he might’ve gone easier on her.
Maybe.
He still would’ve let her take the controller, but he wouldn’t have told her planes don’t crash. After spending the morning following a hunch and hitting pay dirt on Google, he knew he’d fucked up.
Plain and simple.
She was supposed to be a fun distraction.
She’d just become something more.
Which was why on Saturday night he found himself squatting outside her apartment with two melting hot fudge sundaes when he would rather be hanging out at Pony’s place with the guys.
There weren’t any pumpkin-chucking contests going on in the area or any hog wrestling or pyrotechnic displays, so he assumed she’d be home sooner or later. She hadn’t answered her office phone number, and he didn’t have her personal number.
He’d barely settled on the floor, though, when he felt an ominous presence.
Kaci stopped against the opposite wall, arms folded over the dirt streaks on her Ole Miss T-shirt.
He squinted.
Looked almost like soot. So did the streaks on her tight jeans and her left cheek.
“You lost?” she said.
He’d had a speech planned. Something about pushing too hard. About being sorry about her dad. About…something.
But there was danger written in those sparking blue eyes. As though she were daring him to suggest she’d been a chicken. Or that she needed to be handled with kid gloves.
This woman had been through something. Possibly more than losing her father at a young age.
And he wanted to tear down every last brick in those walls she’d put up, to discover what made Kaci Boudreaux tick.
What made her happy.
What made her sad.
What motivated her. What inspired her. What she’d seen in her ex-husband.
In other words, the woman who was supposed to be his distraction was rapidly becoming a fascination.
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 he thought 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-15 in 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 to them.
Not a single one of them’s laughing now, because she schooled all our 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.
A cat that needed a full minute to lower itself to the ground and roll onto its side while it made the snuffling noise again.
He shoveled a scoop of ice cream into his mouth, because if he didn’t, he was afraid he’d ask what was wrong with the thing.
And he had a feeling Kaci wouldn’t much appreciate that.
She pulled out a can of cat food and a can opener. “My momma wanted me to major in English,” she said to the can. “Thought my prospects would be better that way. She’s a strong believer in the power of making a good home to make a good life.”
He shoveled another spoonful of melted ice cream into his mouth to keep from insulting her momma.
Not that there was anything wrong with a woman wanting to be a homemaker—that was half of what he’d found attractive in Allison, if he were being honest with himself—but Kaci didn’t fit the homemaker mold.
“And you’re right,” she said. “Not many people switch from English to physics. Weren’t many who thought I could do it. But if you’re fixin’ to—”
“It’s impressive,” he said before she could get back on the warpath.
She slid him a suspicious eyeball.
He didn’t blink.
Had a feeling blinking would be a bad thing.
The cat snuffled again. Kaci set its food bowl on the floor, right next to its head.
“I have to go to Germany.” Her words held a ferocity that Lance recognized too well.
“If I let being afraid of flying stop me from going to Germany, I’m missing a chance to show young girls everywhere that they’re smart enough to study science, technology, engineering, and math too.
What good does it do me to be a good physicist if I can’t help pave the way for more women like me who are being told girls aren’t smart enough for math and science? ”
“So let’s get you on that plane.”
She bit down on her lower lip.
“Come over tomorrow.” On second thought, Juice Box would probably be at home tomorrow. “Or I can bring the game over here. You can play it anytime you want.”
“Why are you being so nice to me?”
“I’m a nice guy.”
Her eyes narrowed, and he swallowed a chuckle.
She stalked to the counter between them. “Why did you quit kissing me that night we met?”
This was getting too personal. “Why did you let me kiss you in the first place?”
“I found out I had to get on a plane to Germany, then my ex-husband came sniffing around, and I was out of tequila at home. I needed a distraction. Your turn. Why did you really quit kissing me?”
He swallowed. “I didn’t know your name.”
Any other woman might’ve given him credit for his gallant chivalry.
Not Kaci.
“Then why did you start kissing me?” she said.
“I can’t tell you that.”
“Why?”
“Because if I do, it’ll change the way you’re looking at me, and honestly, I’d much rather have you sassing me and being a bulldog. You’re a sexy bulldog.”
“That’s the most insulting compliment I’ve ever gotten.”
“Mission accomplished.”
“Oh, no, sugar. Not that easy. I know a deflection when I see one. And that was a bad one.”
She had a point.
But she was also close enough for his favorite kind of distraction.
The good kind of distraction.
He brushed his thumb over the tip of her ear. She sucked in a surprised breath. He pushed up on his stool and touched his lips to hers, a soft whisper of a touch, and added the slightest flick of his tongue across her ripe lower lip.
“You’re cheating,” she whispered.
But she didn’t pull away.
He tugged her hair tie loose. The silky strands of her hair cascaded over his fingers while he angled his head and went in for a long, slow, deep kiss. She whimpered in his mouth and gripped his T-shirt, holding him in place while he tickled and teased her mouth with his tongue.