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My quick movement broke the tension between us and Hale sat up straighter, his face clearing and retaking the passive mask he seemed to wear most of the time. “Fair enough,” he said. “We have that in common.” He didn’t offer anything else, just an edge of anger in his words that surprised me.
“Should we focus, maybe?”
“I’ve been trying,” he said, his voice suddenly lighter. “You keep distracting me, wanting to know everything there is to know about me. Not that I can blame you. Iamdelightful. Andveryinteresting.” He pulled the laptop nearer in an exaggerated motion and I couldn’t help but laugh.
“Ha,” I laughed. “I’m distracting you?”
He shot me an indignant look, wide-eyed with those incredible lips pressed primly together. “Yes,” he said. “And I have important work to do here.” He waved a hand at the screen and then turned his attention pointedly toward it.
“Right,” I said, happy to have the air between us less serious suddenly. “Let’s get to it.” I leaned in and explained the first few slides, giving him an idea of the narrative I imagined myself putting with them as I presented. I let my brain turn as I talked, making notes as I thought of important points to hit as I introduced an old technology with a new twist, tried to build the anticipation for my idea. After a moment, I trailed off. Hale wasn’t looking at the screen, he was watching me, and his dark eyes were fixed intently on mine.
“You really are distracting,” he murmured, his voice deep and low. “Everything about you,” he added.
I wasn’t sure what to say. He was watching me, leaning toward me slightly, his eyes so intense it felt like everything else around us had faded away. I had a sense of his power again, his ability to control things, command them. The thing that surprised me was the desire I felt inside—to let him command me. I didn’t know what to make of it. Men didn’t have this effect on me. I’d never been the girl who wanted a strong, powerful man to take care of her, to protect her and keep her safe. I hadn’t wanted any of that since I’d been a little girl with unrealistic daddy dreams.But now here I was, sitting next to what felt like a force field of masculine power, and I felt myself drawn inexplicably toward it, my desire to lose myself growing by the second.
I forced myself to pull my eyes from his before I climbed into his lap like some kind of mindless infatuated automaton. I’d analyze this reaction later. For now, I needed to focus.
“So here,” I said, pointing to the screen, my voice urging Hale to focus on work. “What do you think the main point should be as I introduce the concept?”
He took a deep breath and turned back to the screen. I got a sense of him realigning his intensity to focus on work. I was at once both relieved and oddly let down to be out from under his scrutiny as he stared at the laptop screen.
For the next hours, we talked through the slides, coming up with presentation points for each, and ruling out some of the ideas I’d had initially.
“You don’t want to give them too much, too soon,” he said, sitting back in his chair and putting his hands behind his head to stretch. The movement made his biceps bulge in the cotton shirt, and his chest expanded as he inhaled. “Right, Holland?” My eyes were not staying where they belonged, and I snapped them back to Hale’s face too late to pretend I hadn’t been ogling him.
He grinned at me. “Maybe we’ve done enough for today?”
“We haven’t even gotten into the application.” My frustration was clear in my voice.
“Break for lunch, then? There are a millionrestaurants nearby. We could walk down to Ocean.” He raised an eyebrow.
I looked around, surprised to find the sun high above the street as afternoon overtook Santa Monica. “Sure,” I said, acknowledging that I was actually hungry.
It was strange walking down Ocean Avenue with Hale, the Pacific spooling out to one side of us. Without the excuse of work between us, things felt awkward, and I didn’t know where to look, what to do with my hands, how to be. Was this a date?
“Hey,” Hale said, leaning close.
My eyes caught his, which didn’t help the sudden nerves I’d developed. God, his eyes were dark. And what color was in them now? Flecks of amber, some green? I could spend hours searching those dark eyes . . .
“It’s just lunch,” he said, sensing my confusion.
“Right,” I agreed. Needing to remove his intent gaze from my face, where it felt like he was somehow uncovering my deepest secrets without my consent, I decided to focus the conversation on him. “Tell me about your time with Cody Tech,” I suggested. Maybe it was the wrong thing to ask. His face shuttered, and he looked hurt for a moment before regaining himself.
“Sure,” he agreed. But something in the guarded tone of his voice told me I wasn’t going to get the whole story.
I waited for him to start talking, but he was silent as we strolled side by side. It occurred to me that we looked like any other couple out for a walk near the ocean. I hadn’t been part of a couple in so long the thought was unsettling. “Start at the beginning,” I suggested, pulling my jacket around me.
“I started working at Cody Tech early,” he said, his words slow, thoughtful. “Right at the beginning, really. That’s how I know StrokeStat so well.”
“Right,” I said, encouraging him.
“I loved it there. It was everything I wanted in a job, a company. The people were smart, driven . . . and while I was there, it felt like I had a place. Like I fit.” He was silent a long moment as we walked. “And I was there a long time, until about eight months ago. And then I kind of realized I hadn’t ever really made a choice to be there. It had kind of just happened,” he said, his words speeding up as he talked. “Look, can we talk about something else?” He’d started walking faster, as if he was trying to escape the conversation. Talking about Cody Tech made him uncomfortable—even sad, maybe. I just wasn’t sure why.
“Of course.” I found myself wanting to reach for his hand, to smooth his brow, to do something to comfort him. But I kept my hands to myself. It would have been too forward to touch him. And that wasn’t what this was about, this thing between us. It was about work, wasn’t it?
We didn’t talk after that. We just walked, and eventually we found ourselves taking a table on the sidewalk outside a trendy hotel, with a soundtrack of Ocean Avenue traffic, tourists, and the steadfast Pacific filling the air around us, making conversation unnecessary as we stared down at our menus. Once the waitress had come and gone, when it was just us again, I found Hale staring at me. Hisdark eyes carried that sadness I’d seen before, glowing and deep. He was watching me with his head slightly cocked to one side, like he was trying to figure something out.
“Where did you come from, Holland?”
