Under Fire (Love Over Duty #1)(28)

Without wasting movement or words, Louisa efficiently went to the fridge, grabbed a beer, and cracked the cap before handing it to him. Popcorn sat in a bright blue bowl on the counter. Next to it, a glass of white wine, the condensation on it telling him that she'd only recently poured it.

"Sorry, am I interrupting something?" Alcohol and popcorn seemed like such a date thing to do.

Louisa smiled. "Not unless you count scaring myself to death with vintage horror. I was just about to put something else on." She looked up at him, and with her head tilted to the side, he could see her eyes clearly again. "You want to come watch something? I mean, while we chat, we could  …  never mind. You probably have stuff to do, and I have some reports I need to-"



       
         
       
        

"I'd love to," he said, unable to hide the grin at her awkwardness.

"Really?" she asked, those coffee-colored eyes of hers as wide as the stash of Christmas plates he'd seen displayed on her shelves. In August.

"Really. Unless you have chronically bad taste in movies, in which case I'm out, beer or no beer," he said, picking up the bowl of popcorn.

"Oh-kay," she said, drawing out the syllables as if he'd just given her an instruction she didn't understand. It sounded more like a question than an answer.

It was impossible to ignore the subtle sway of her hips as she walked ahead of him. He was such a sucker for hips. And ass. And tits. Especially ones with responsive nipples under thin tanks. Goddamn. Focus.

Louisa set her wine down on the table and opened a door in the built-in unit around the television.

Six couldn't help but laugh as he put his beer and the popcorn down. "Lou, I don't get it," he said. He stepped closer to her and ran his fingers over the spines of movie after movie that were not only organized by category, but also had laminated cards stuck to the shelf telling him where each section started.

"Don't get what?" she asked, the look on her face one of genuine confusion.

"This," he said, gesturing his hand up and down the shelf. "Your kitchen shelves are an eclectic mix of stuff, all piled randomly, yet you organized the shit out of this."

"Well, I don't get this," she said, gesturing up and down him the way he had at her shelf. "Tell me again why you are here."

She was cute when she was prickly. He reached forward and pulled Ocean's Eleven, the original one, from a category titled CAPERS, and handed it to her.

"I heard it's movie night at the North house, so figured I'd come hang out." He moved to the sofa, flopped down, and placed his boots on the glass coffee table.

Once the movie started, she came and sat by him, and he did his best to ignore the way her shorts rode up her thighs. He spent more of his time with company in his bed than not. And that company, whoever she was that given day, usually had no issue whatsoever dropping her clothes the moment she stepped through his door. So naked skin he was totally down with. Yet somehow, just that tiny bit of extra flesh had him feeling giddy, like he was the boy who'd lost his virginity in less than two minutes giving it to Jessica McKade.

Louisa slapped his thigh. "At least take your shoes off," she said before she stuck her hand in their popcorn.

"Yes, ma'am," he said, sitting forward and toeing his boots off.

A week ago, he couldn't have imagined himself ready to take orders again so soon, but back then, he hadn't met Louisa North. 





CHAPTER FIVE

Missing someone she wasn't even in a relationship with because she hadn't seen them since Wednesday, and it was now Saturday, was ridiculous. With a capital R. So instead, Louisa drove to Torrey Pines to collect her mom, then drove them back to Coronado so they could have lunch at the Hotel Del, her mother's favorite spot. The fact that she'd listened to Nina Simone all the way there and back had nothing to do with it. For the first time in her life, it felt good to be out of the lab and away from the invisible band she felt around her chest when she stepped inside.

There'd been no progress, and Liz had advised her that Vasilii was becoming irritated by her constant requests for information. Louisa's gut told her that what had happened mattered, but she'd begun to consider that it was her ego speaking. What if it got out into the research community about her failure? Sure, research was all about test, trial, revisit. Failure was as much a part of a researcher's life as white coats and biohazards. But she didn't want the world to see her dirty laundry. Plus, she'd begun to wonder if it would reflect badly on her personally as head of that specific lab that the sample was stolen from.