The Chemistry of Love(56)

How had I not noticed this when I walked in?

There was a desk with four massive computer monitors, a chair rigged for sound and light, and a computer tower that glowed light blue.

“Marco whatever-your-middle-name-is Kimball, what is this?”

He crossed his arms defensively at my utter delight. “I told you I was a gamer.”

“Uh, no, you told me you sometimes played video games. You did not tell me you had a setup that could program a spaceship launch.” I ran my fingers across the back of his leather chair. Fancy.

“Because it was irrelevant.”

“Right now it seems like the only thing that’s relevant. A man who regularly squires supermodels around town likes video games.”

“The two things are not mutually exclusive,” he said. “And I don’t squire people. I’m not a medieval knight.”

That put an immediate image into my head of him in shining silver armor, and that somehow only made him hotter.

Still in defensive mode, he added, “It’s not that much.”

“Uh, it is. But that’s okay. I know you’re a secret dork at heart.”

He rolled his eyes, and I couldn’t help but laugh at his expression. There didn’t seem to be much to tease Marco about, but this was definitely something I planned on giving him a hard time over.

“It’s Ricci,” he said.

“What is?”

“My middle name,” he clarified.

“Your mother’s maiden name.”

He nodded. That was sweet. “What about you?” he asked.

“Duh, Urban Decay.”

That made him laugh, and the sound gave me inappropriate tingles. I cleared my throat. “Seriously, though, I don’t have one.”

“Really?”

“Some people don’t. We’re not all like you rich people with your six middle names.”

He put his feet up on his coffee table. “I only have the one.”

“Maybe that’s because you’re not as rich as I imagined you would be.”

This seemed to amuse him. “What makes you think I’m not?”

I waved around the room.

His mouth quirked up on one side. “Were you not just mocking me for my expensive gaming system?”

“Any software engineer worth their salt has a setup just like yours. Don’t you have a yacht or something?”

“No. That feels like a waste of money to me. People in my life and my company waste a lot of money.” He let out a ragged sigh. “That’s one of the things I’m going to change at KRT Limited when I become CEO. I’ll start with Minx and make it employee-owned with profit sharing. If everyone’s contributing, everyone should profit. Then I hope to spread it to other divisions.”

“That would be nice. I mean, it would have been if I still worked there. I probably would have had more saved up to start my own company.”

Marco grinned. “You would have blown it all on some expensive piece of lab equipment.”

I shrugged. What could I say? He was right.

He patted the cushion next to him again and this time said, “Have a seat.”

This was making me nervous. I sat down on the couch, but I kept my distance. He gave me that weapons-grade smile of his where he knew he was being hot and charming, and I told myself not to fall for it. My heart softened at that smile, and I couldn’t help but lean my head to one side with a slightly giddy smile in return.

So technically I did fall for it, but in my defense, I tried to prevent it.

“So, Anna no-middle-name Ellis, I wanted to know how you feel about surprises.”





CHAPTER SIXTEEN


I had never really thought about it before. “I guess it depends on the surprise. Like when Grandpa had to do bird CPR on Wil Tweeton or when Catalina set me up with her third cousin who did not understand personal boundaries. Those were not great surprises.” Or Marco Kimball appearing in my bedroom hadn’t felt like a fun surprise at the time, but I was slowly coming around to it. “The mixer, though, that was a fantastic surprise, and I really enjoyed that.”

“Great! So along that vein, and keeping in mind how much you love that mixer and that I am the one who sent it to you . . .” He trailed off, and now I was worried. Nobody brought up things they did for you unless they wanted something.

What more could he ask of me? Some nutso ideas ran through my head, including whether he might want me to be his surrogate to carry his heir.

That didn’t freak me out as much as it should have.

“Remember how I asked you about hair, makeup, and clothes? How do you feel about me getting you some of those things? If I pay for them?” he asked tentatively.

A makeover? I hadn’t expected that. He was right to be tentative. “You want to do a makeover. On me?”

“Yes?” Much more of a question than an answer.

“Pass,” I immediately said.

“Like a montage from a movie,” he said, as if that would convince me.

“It seems sexist and objectifying. I don’t need to change the way I look.”

“I’m not disagreeing with you. I just know my brother. He’s pretty vain and shallow. Shiny things, remember?”

Surely there was more to Craig than that. Annoyed at what Marco was implying, I snapped, “I want him to love me for me. I want to be myself.”