Cupid Cats by Katie MacAlister & Connie Brockway & Vicki Lewis Thompson

Author:Katie MacAlister & Connie Brockway & Vicki Lewis Thompson
Language: eng
Format: mobi, pdf
Tags: Romance, Fantasy, Anthologies, Vampires
ISBN: 9780451230720
Publisher: Signet
Published: 2010-07-06T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 7

Jim arrived at work the next day as nervous as he’d been the first time he’d asked a girl to the prom. Last night, Melissa had wisely hightailed out of the house as soon as Edie left, Chloe at her side. He’d spent the evening trying to decide if he should call Edie or not. He distrusted the phone. He had learned to read the delicate nuances of her expression. He needed to see her to know what to say.

So he waited—and recalled the feel of her mouth opening beneath his, her arms clutching him tightly, her body arching into his.

He hadn’t slept much.

He didn’t bother going to his office but headed straight for the research floor, moving briskly down the hall, through the double set of doors into the lab area and toward her office. What if she wasn’t in? What if she just shut him down? Shut him out?

“You’ll have to resubmit the data.”

It was Edie’s voice. He rounded the bank of cubicles and spotted her figure behind the open slats of the miniblinds covering her office window. She was standing by her desk, leaning over a computer monitor. She was in her ubiquitous lab coat, the pocket protector with its array of pens sprouting above the name tag she never forgot to put on, as if she thought people might forget her name.

She looked up and caught sight of him. He raised his hand in greeting. She looked behind her, making sure he wasn’t waving at someone else and then, phone still between her ear and shoulder, slowly lifted her hand in a weak reply. Her door was open, so he rapped lightly on the door frame, realizing as he did so that he’d never seen her door closed.

Along with everyone else at Global Gen, he’d always assumed the reason her department had the highest job satisfaction scores in the company was because it was peopled entirely by geeks giddily immersed in high-level geekdom and that the department’s phenomenal retention rate could be traced to the same source. But suddenly he realized it was because of her. Her open door and calm disposition, her ability to cut through the bullshit, her respect for not only what her people did but who they were as individuals—all of those things must draw her people to her as surely as they drew him.

She finished her call and set the phone in its cradle, cocking an eyebrow inquiringly. “May I help you?” She was so formal.

“Yup,” he said. “I’ve come to ask you out on a date.”

“Oh.”

He waited for her refusal, eager to make the rebuttal points he’d been rehearsing since last night. She’d like such clearheaded objectivity.

“When?” she said.

Ah-ha! She was asking for a specific date so she could manufacture a prior commitment. He’d expected that. No go, Doctor. “Whenever you can go. Tonight. Tomorrow. This weekend. Next week. You name it.”

A small smile turned the corners of her mouth. One of her researchers ambled over, sucking on a Tootsie Roll Pop, and stopped short when he heard Jim.

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