The Chemistry of Love(21)

“No, it’s okay,” I said, shocked at my own reaction. I had honestly thought I could write off my responses to him last night to my inebriation. It turned out that wasn’t even a little bit true. Although, to be fair, there was probably still residual ethanol in my body that I hadn’t gotten rid of yet. Not to mention that I might have possibly damaged dendrites in my brain by overindulging, and it was making it harder for my neurons to communicate correctly.

So the champagne might still be to blame.

He cleared his throat and offered with a weak smile, “I hope that was edible glitter.”

“Technically, all glitter is edible.”

I had been shooting for light and funny, but somehow that made the air between us feel charged and even weirder.

“Do you want me to help you clean up?” he asked, breaking the tension.

“No. I would like you to tell me why you’re here.” A topic he’d successfully evaded so far.

“Right. I wanted you to come to lunch with me.”

“Lunch?” I asked, surprised. “Don’t you have a company to run?”

“Yes, but I let myself take a break every day to eat. I let all the other employees do it, too. I’m generous that way.”

I was kind of digging the snark, but I was still uneasy about the whole why of the situation. “This feels like some kind of joke or setup.”

“No,” he said with a concerned tone, and I couldn’t blame him. Most of the women he asked to eat with him probably didn’t automatically assume it was a joke.

“Or . . . do you want me to make you something?” That was a typical occurrence in my life. The ladies in my grandfather’s bird-watching club had me whip things up for them all the time. That half an ounce of moisturizer that cost three hundred bucks online? The materials to make it cost less than six dollars and a little bit of my time. I was normally happy to do it, but if Marco was after something like that, he was going to be disappointed.

He didn’t qualify for the friends and family discount.

“No, I’m good on both exfoliant and self-tanner,” he told me.

The only other reason that came to mind as to why a guy this good looking would want to take me out was, “You don’t have any homework you want me to do, do you?”

He must have been able to hear my serious tone, because I saw the way he pressed his lips together, as if he were trying not to laugh. “I’m twenty-nine years old. I don’t have homework.”

“But why do you want me to come eat with you?” It couldn’t just be the pleasure of my company.

“I’ll tell you that at lunch.”

“I don’t go to lunch with strange men.” Even though I kind of knew him already.

He called my bluff. “I’m not a stranger. Last night you confided in me that you’re in love with my brother. Your deepest, darkest secret. If that doesn’t make us friends, I don’t know what will.”

“I told you that under duress!” I protested.

“From me?”

“No, from the bottle of champagne!”

He smiled at that. “Regardless, I think you’ll find what I have to say intriguing.”

“I don’t know. I’m kind of feeling like I’m stuck in a battle with the second law of thermodynamics today.” I noticed that intelligent men tended to back down once I used a term they were unfamiliar with.

“Then let’s get you to stop from falling into entropy and make you not be an isolated system by coming out with me.” At that, I gawked at him, fully in shock. One, how did Marco Kimball know about the laws of thermodynamics well enough to throw them back at me and two, why was he pushing this so hard? I obviously wasn’t interested.

I mean, I was interested in what he had to say. Just not in him as a person. Or a potential romantic partner.

“But if I were you,” he continued, totally oblivious to my train of thought, “I’d be more worried about Newton’s first law of motion. A body at rest staying at rest and all that.”

“You are really going for the hard sell here.” What with his quoting science at me.

“I am. And I’ll explain everything.” His voice was edged with exasperation—not enough to make me think he was really unhappy, but it was probably because women didn’t generally turn him down.

I wanted to tell him no. Maybe I’d even be the first woman to ever do that. I wished I could say that I wasn’t interested in his mystery box. But my curiosity had always been a driving force in my life, and it was hard to resist the invitation.

“I’m not really dressed up to go anywhere.” I could only imagine the kind of restaurants Marco Kimball frequented.

“Okay. Tell you what,” he said. “I drove your car here. I’ll call a rideshare and meet you at the restaurant in an hour. If you want to come, do, and if you don’t, well, it was nice having met you.”

“You brought my car?”

He handed me my keys, and I was careful to make sure that no part of him touched any part of me. If I got another electrical shock like the last one, it was going to stop my heart. Cardiac Arrest City, population me.

“Yes. Why do you say it like that?”

“Because it’s suspiciously nice,” I said.

“Or it’s just regular nice.”