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I could easily skirt his question. Of course I’m lucky. Just getting a position with the FDA is something to be proud of. But that’s not what I was talking about.
What is it about him that makes me feel so comfortable? I never willingly talk about my mistake, upon pain of death.
“I’m pushing, sorry.”
“No. I mean . . . it’s just not something I usually discuss,” I say honestly.
But those sexy eyes stare back at me. Compelling me.
I have no real reason to trust Hayden Tanner, but I do.
“Four years ago, I was working on a research project for the FDA. My dad doesn’t work for them anymore, but I was able to pull him in as an advisor, which was basically the highlight of my career. My dad . . .”
Where do I even start?
“He’s the reason I entered this field, although he never pushed me. He’s brilliant. Anyway, the focus of the project was a drug that had been approved a few years earlier, one that reduced hospitalizations from heart failure. We were looking at its long-term efficacy and how its use could be expanded into other areas. The thing was, I didn’t work on the original case.”
A familiar pit begins to form in my stomach.
“Basically, I accepted a report from a colleague without double-checking his data on getting this drug into a whole new trial.”
I remember that day so clearly. It seemed like such a little thing. I really hadn’t given it much thought. Except he’d lied. No one had looked at the numbers.
“It ended up costing us more than a year’s delay. Not to mention I’d been up for a chair position, one that probably would have seen me in my current job two years earlier.”
The minute I say “delay” Hayden’s eyes widen. Which reminds me of why I should not be here, telling him this story. But he doesn’t comment on that. Or talk about his own drug.
“You’ve beaten yourself up over one bad decision for four years?”
“One really bad decision,” I remind him. And then fess up. “And I may have been dating said colleague. When this position opened up in New York, I took it.”
Did I have to transfer? Away from Maryland, away from my family? No. But I did, so here I am, determined not to make another similar mistake.
“So an ex clouded your judgment. It happens. One mistake of many you will likely make over the course of your career. And do you want to know how I know that?”
“How?”
“Because you’re fucking human, Ada. We all make mistakes. How much data have you checked and rechecked and triple-checked since then to make up for it?”
If he only knew.
“See? You learned from it. That’s all that matters.”
“Says the emperor of bad decisions.”
He smirks, and good God, lips that full on a man should be illegal. “I’ve made some good ones too.”
The devilish twinkle in his eyes scares me.
“Such as?”
Instead of answering, he comes around the counter toward me. Heart pounding, hair still wet and piled on top of my head, looking like a drowned rat, I’m sure, I try to prepare myself for the inevitable. He’s looking at me way too intimately for any misinterpretation.
I stand without thinking.
As always, the air between us charges up, the brief touches we’ve shared a precursor to what we both knew might happen here today. Pretending I don’t want this won’t do any good.
I do want this. I want him. And so I don’t move a muscle. Instead, I breathe in the heady scent of the shirt I’m wearing—of him—and anticipate what it might feel like.
