the traveler’s mug of coffee he usually downed by the time he got to Redstone.
As he climbed into the passenger side of her sleek—and dingless—blue coupe, he couldn’t help thinking how nice it was that she’d been there at just the right moment.
Chapter 4
“Something wrong?”
At last, Sam thought. “Wrong?”
“You’re…quiet.”
“Maybe I’m just tired of carrying the entire conversation,” she said. “I don’t mind talking, but I don’t usually chatter.”
“Oh.”
He sounded abashed, and she hoped he was, but she couldn’t look at him at the moment and still deal with the cross traffic. This was the third day she’d taken him to work, and it was the third day he’d barely said a word unless in answer to a direct question.
“Sorry,” he said after a moment of awkward silence. “I’m just not used to…”
“Small talk?” she asked, finally completing the left turn.
“Something like that.”
She glanced at him. “Not even with yourself?”
His glasses had automatically darkened in the sunlight, so she couldn’t see his eyes clearly, but she did see him blink. “Myself?”
“I’m not sure I trust people who don’t talk to themselves,” she said, quite seriously.
He chuckled then. “Then I guess you can trust me.”
She gave an exaggerated sigh of relief. “Ditto,” she assured him. “You can even talk to me.”
“I don’t mean to be…uncommunicative. I just never got used to talking about…inconsequential things.”
“So everything has to be important?”
“No, I don’t mean that,” he said, sounding a bit defensive. “I mean I never acquired the knack.” His mouth quirked. “My mother and father were both born with it, but neither of them passed it on to their only offspring, I’m afraid.”
“Your parents sound fascinating.”
“They are,” he said. “And charming. They can hold court for hours, and people still hate for it to end.”
There was nothing but admiration in his tone, but Sam couldn’t help wondering if he’d always appreciated his parents like this. It would be hard to grow up with two larger-than-life parents if you didn’t feel you were able to live up to their example.
But it was harder to grow up without parents at all.
“That made you sad,” Ian remarked.
A little startled at his perception, she shrugged. “I was just thinking of my own parents. And how much I miss them.”
“They’re gone?”
She nodded. “Over seven years ago now. Car accident. It’s not raw, but it still hurts.”
He shook his head slowly. “I’m sorry. My folks may not be around much, but I can’t imagine a world without them in it.”
“Treasure them, Ian. While you have them.”
She shocked herself with her own words. She rarely spoke of her loss, and wasn’t sure why it had popped out now.
“You must have been young when they were killed. What happened to you?”
Somehow she hadn’t thought about what she would tell him about herself. She’d always prepared cover stories before, but this was different, guarding one of Redstone’s own, so she hadn’t done it this time. After a moment she decided the truth would be okay.
“Since I was only nineteen it took some doing, but I won the battle to keep my little brother with me.”
“Little brother? That must have been tough.”
“It would have been tougher if he’d lost me, too. He’s…pretty sensitive, and he was already devastated.”
“I’ll bet.” It wasn’t until after they’d made the turn into the Redstone driveway that he said, “Not every nineteen-year-old would take on a kid like that.”
She slowed the car. He pointed to the side door that was closest to the lab. She nodded and pulled over to the curb there.
“You do,” she answered finally, “when you love him and there’s no other acceptable option. I’ll pick you up six-fifteenish?”
“You don’t have to—”
“I know, but I can, so why not?”
He gave in. “Thanks.”
He pushed open the car door and gathered up his briefcase and cup, and put one foot out. Then he stopped and looked back at her.
“Next time I’ll chatter,” he said unexpectedly.
She grinned at him. “This I want to see.”
He returned her grin rather sheepishly. She watched him walk toward the side door. He stepped into a patch of sunlight, and it gleamed on that thick mop of hair.
He really was, she thought as she watched him, quite charming in a studious sort of way.
“I brought you a sandwich, Professor.”
Ian took a breath, held it for a single second, then answered congenially, “Thank you, Rebecca.”
Her startled look told him he’d been as snarly to her as he’d feared. And her sudden smile made him feel even more guilty about it.
It also made him doubt the suspicions that had become chronic since Josh had planted the idea of a leak inside the lab. Rebecca was simply young and overeager, he thought, not devious. She just thought she wasn’t getting the credit she deserved. But he also feared that she wanted glory without having earned it, and that was a mentality Ian simply couldn’t understand. What was the point of being praised for something you hadn’t really done? For him the joy was in the process and the final success, not in the accolades that came after.
He smothered a sigh as he took a bite of the turkey sandwich. It was from the Redstone Café, so it was much tastier than the vending-machine fare that was standard at most places.
“Did you look at the paper I gave you yet?” Rebecca asked.
For a moment Ian looked at her blankly, then remembered the project paper she’d so excitedly presented him the other day. She’d done that before, come up with some idea she thought they should pursue, and this time he’d made the mistake of telling her to write it up, simply to get her out of his hair for a while.
“I did glance at it, yes,” he said.
“And?” Rebecca asked, hope brightening her angular face.
He tried for tact, feeling as if he needed to apologize in some way for being suspicious of her.
“It’s clever,” he began.
She beamed.
“And the process is very thorough. At first look, I’d have to say it appears solid.”
“Great!”
She looked so thrilled he almost hated to go on. But teaching was part of having a student assistant. He sighed inwardly; he’d told Josh he was no teacher.
“What’s your goal?” he asked.
A crease appeared between her brows. “Goal? Just as it says, to create a new polymer.”
“To what end?”
The crease became a frown, and she gave him a look that hinted that she was thinking him deliberately