for that.”
Megan sighed, resignation clear in her eyes. “All right, Agent Branson. Whether you’re trying to deliberately manipulate me or not, I guess you’re going to get what you want. I’ll get the Ghost Shell countermeasure finished as soon as possible.” Megan stood up again and wiped an imaginary piece of lint off her lab coat. “But I’m not doing it for you. I’m doing it because it’s the right thing to do. I just hope you guys don’t screw it up again.”
* * *
“I’LL MAKE YOU a deal. You get the Ghost Shell countermeasure completed and I will personally make sure nobody on my end of things screws it up.” Agent Branson had such utter confidence in his voice that Megan couldn’t help but believe him.
Megan couldn’t sit there and say she wasn’t affected by Agent Branson. But it wasn’t as if he was trying to talk her into going out with him; he was trying to get Megan to do something she was already willing to do.
Not that she wasn’t willing to go out with him.
But not that he was asking.
Megan had to get herself under control. Him asking or not asking her out was not the issue here. Ghost Shell and saving the world was. Focus. Be professional.
“So should I announce the change in projects to everyone?”
Agent Branson shook his head. “No, we want to keep this to as few people as possible.”
Megan nodded. That was probably best. Although she trusted everyone who worked in the R & D department, the fewer people who knew about all this, the better. “Okay, just my inner team then. That’s seven people including me and Jonathan Bushman, my assistant, whom you met.”
“That sounds good.”
“Great. So I guess I’ll call you in a couple of weeks when we have the countermeasure completed.” Megan stuck out her hand to shake his. The sooner she got him out of her office, the sooner she could focus on other things. Any other thing besides his presence here.
“Actually, I’ll be staying here for a while if that’s okay.”
“For the meeting with the team? That’s probably a good idea.” Her inner team rarely needed to be more focused than they already were, but Agent Branson could provide added motivation to get the Ghost Shell countermeasure completed faster.
“No. I’ll be staying until you’re finished.”
“The whole time? You know, this isn’t going to be done in a day. It’s going to take a while. Plus, we are a secure facility, especially within the R & D vault. You can leave Ghost Shell here and come back in a couple of weeks. I promise it will be safe.”
“Even so, I’ll be staying.”
This was not good. Having him here was going to wreak havoc on her concentration. “It’ll be pretty boring. You understand that, right?”
Megan watched Sawyer’s brows furrow as he nodded curtly, with no enthusiasm whatsoever. Evidently, he didn’t really want to be here. Megan wasn’t surprised; watching a group of scientists do conceptual engineering for days or weeks did not strike Megan as something a man like Sawyer would want to do on his own accord.
“Drew the short straw, huh?” she asked him.
Megan could tell she had surprised him. He laughed, then looked down at her with his megawatt smile. “Something like that,” he finally said. “Maybe I’ll tell you about it sometime while I’m here. You’ll like that story.”
Megan seemed to have forgotten how to breathe at his smile. She finally forced herself to look away and grabbed all the folders on her desk—most of them ones she didn’t even need—and called her inner team to the conference room for a meeting.
This group of people had developed Ghost Shell at one stage or another and was well aware of its potentials and dangers. Without going into the details about what had happened with Fred McNeil and DS-13, Megan explained that developing the countermeasure to Ghost Shell had become a priority for them at Cyberdyne.
Sawyer’s presence in the room couldn’t be ignored, so Megan introduced him.
“This is Agent Sawyer Branson. He’ll be here for the duration of the project. The fact that law enforcement feels his presence here is necessary should be a reminder of how crucial this project is.”
Two of the women on the team—both in their midforties and both married with children—were all but ogling Sawyer. Megan resisted the urge to rap something against the conference table to get their attention.
Branson seemed to be taking it all in stride, smiling easily at the women. Of course, he smiled easily at the men, too. He just seemed to have a way that put everyone at ease.
Everyone except Megan.
Megan dismissed the meeting a little more curtly than she had planned, after they all agreed work would begin first thing in the morning. She left the conference room without waiting to see if Agent Branson was coming with her or not. If he wanted to flirt with everyone in the department, that was his business. As long as it didn’t interfere with their work, Megan had absolutely no problem with it.
Good to see that the FBI had once again sent their very best.
Megan knew she was being unreasonable. What the heck was wrong with her? She sat down and rested for a minute. It had been a long day, made more stressful by the bad news Sawyer had delivered. She had been such an idiot to trust Fred McNeil. Even though Sawyer told her McNeil had fooled everyone, Megan knew she should’ve trusted her instincts with McNeil.
But Megan had never been good at trusting her instincts unless it came to science. Trusting her instincts with men had always brought her a heartache or headache.
Megan rubbed at a knot that was beginning to form in her neck. She took a deep breath and began reorganizing all the mostly unneeded files she had taken to the meeting back into their rightful places on her desk. Then she cleared off and straightened any other items that cluttered it or were out of place. She knew that a clean desk always made her feel better and would help her when she got to work tomorrow with a new, stressful agent on her hands.
Project. New, stressful project on her hands, damn it.
And speak of the devil... Agent Branson was making his way over to her office. He rapped on the outside of her office door, but entered without waiting for an invite.
“Get to meet everyone on the team?” It was the most neutral question Megan could think of.
“Yep. Seems like a pretty solid crew you have there.” He looked around her office. “And looks like you’ve got that desk of yours about as pristine as they come.”
Megan shrugged and smiled ruefully. “Having everything neat and organized helps me work. It’ll help me focus when I get back to work in the morning. But right now I’m going to head home and have a nice glass of wine. How about you?”
Megan watched as Sawyer’s head tilted to the side and he raised one eyebrow. “Sure. I mean, I don’t know you very well, but I’d like to have a glass of wine at your house.”
Megan could’ve bitten off her own tongue. He thought she was asking him out? No. He absolutely could not come over to her house for a glass of wine. She could barely form coherent sentences around him here. She definitely didn’t want him in her home.
“No. I mean—I wasn’t asking you over. I don’t want you to come over to my house. I just meant—” Megan stopped herself—she was just making it worse.
“Oh, well, then, we could go out to a bar or restaurant or something.” Sawyer’s eyes were lit with amusement as he said it. “Just let me grab my stuff.”
“No! I don’t want to go out with you. I just want to go home by myself.” It sounded rude even to her own ears.
Sawyer chuckled. “I know what you meant,