My appearance has changed quite a bit since we last met.”
Aw, hell. Why did women always do that to a man? Normally, he was quite observant. But he rarely felt his observational abilities reached the level expected by women in male-female dynamics, particularly those of a romantic nature. “For instance?”
“My hair.”
“Longer? Shorter?” He hazarded a guess, though guessing didn’t come naturally to him.
She shook her head. “Lighter. It was a lot darker before. But I’ve gone back to my natural coloring.”
Relief flowed over him like a comforting blanket. Okay, that explained it. No doubt the computer program disqualified her based on that minor detail. He’d have to speak to Pretorius about tweaking the parameters. Maybe he’d been a shade too rigid in his requirements.
“I could live with dark hair.” Especially if it meant Daisy agreeing to become his apprentice/wife.
She tilted her head to one side, clearly puzzled by his comment. “Could you?”
Perhaps that sounded a trifle odd. Hadn’t Pretorius warned him about inviting a woman for a cup of coffee in one breath and proposing to her in the next? Time to slow things down. After coffee he’d settle for propositioning her. She’d indicated a level of interest in pursuing that angle of their acquaintance, at least he hoped he’d made a correct interpretation of her interest. And if he were strictly honest with himself, if he didn’t get her into bed soon he might give in to the temptation to bite more than just those lush lips of hers. He suspected such an action would be frowned upon given their current venue.
“Did we meet at a previous engineering conference?” he asked.
“Oh, I’m not—”
Their waitress appeared at his elbow and offered them a wide smile. “Good afternoon. My name is Anita and I’ll be your waitress.” She stated the obvious considering that she wore a uniform that clearly identified her occupation and her name tag had “Anita” written in bold black lettering. “Would you care for a drink from the bar?”
“I’ll pass,” Daisy said. “Though I’d love some iced tea, extra lemon please.”
A sense of familiarity swept through Justice. Something about the extra lemon. And then it passed. The sensation happened all too frequently since the accident. Sometimes he couldn’t summon the memory no matter how hard he tried. On other occasions—more and more often to his profound relief—the memory exploded into his mind in full vivid color, as though his brain had forged a new pathway through the neural wetware that held that precious information, avoiding the congestion and confusion left behind by his accident. But not this time. No matter how hard he tried to avoid it, he found himself square in the middle of a mental traffic jam, unable to maneuver his way to the coordinates that contained that particular node of memory.
He accepted the failure with his usual stoicism and switched his attention to the waitress. “Coffee. Black.”
“I’ll be right back with your drinks and to take your order.”
The instant Anita left, Justice returned his attention to Daisy, homing in on her with laser-sharp focus. “Are you ready to give me another hint?”
She waved that aside. “I have a better suggestion. Why don’t you tell me what you’ve been up to in the past few years? After all, you are the best in the business when it comes to creating robotic sensors and actuators.”
They were on more familiar ground now. “Yes, I am.”
“No false modesty, I see,” she commented.
The observation made no sense. “What would be the point?”
He’d never met a woman who enjoyed laughing more than this one. He should find it annoying. Instead, it arrowed straight through him, bringing an unexpected surge of desire. “You crack me up, Justice. Still logical to the end.”
He hesitated. “Is there something wrong with being logical?”
Everything about her seemed to soften, even her voice. “No, of course not. So long as you also remember to feel.”
Feel? He didn’t quite know how to respond to that, a rare occurrence and one that threw him off stride. He reached for Rumi, only to realize he’d left the sphere in his room. It also brought home to him how much he’d come to depend on his creation whenever he found himself in a quandary. And Daisy certainly left him in a quandary.
With most engineers, he knew exactly what to expect and how to speak to them. But not with this woman. Even her name seemed wrong, and yet … Right somehow. She had the same appeal as her namesake, a splash of color that brightened even the plainest, most barren landscape. She made him hesitate along his appointed path, encouraged him to pause in order to admire and while away the hours in ridiculous pursuits rather than the business of … well … business.
But it was more than that. She roused feelings in him he thought long dead, a want that eclipsed everything else. Right now sitting with her, he didn’t give a damn about the conference, or the work he’d been unable to complete for the past year, or asking the necessary questions to ensure he’d found the perfect apprentice/wife. All he cared about was allowing spring to thaw the ice encasing his heart. To heat the blood flowing through his veins. To find the man lost in an endless winter and breathe new meaning into his life.
Daisy could do that for him. If he believed in intuition, he’d have blamed the abrupt, blazing certainty he experienced on that. But since he didn’t, he decided his brain had been subconsciously working the problem and just now reached a rational and inescapable conclusion.
This woman was the answer to his problem.
He didn’t question the newfound knowledge since he’d experienced something similar whenever he came up with a new idea in robotics. He’d learned to trust those moments of sudden enlightenment and proceed to the next step without delay.
She waited patiently for him to speak again, content with the silence. He found that an unusual attribute in a person, regardless of gender. While she waited, she smiled with what he interpreted as contentment and cupped her chin in the palm of her hand. She had pretty hands, he realized, the fingers long and supple. For an instant his brain short-circuited, and not as a result of his accident.
He flashed on an image of how Daisy’s hands would look and feel on his body. Good God, where the hell had that come from? He wasn’t normally the imaginative sort, and yet that one stunning picture caused an unmistakable physiological response, one far beyond his ability to control. No doubt because it had been so long since he’d been with a woman.
Something in his expression must have given him away. Daisy straightened in her chair. “Justice? What’s wrong?”
He cleared his throat. “You’ll have to forgive me. This hasn’t happened since I was a teenager, but perhaps because of my recent isolation, I’m receiving an unusual amount of visually stimulating input which is having an adverse affect on my central nervous system. If you could strive to be a little less visually stimulating, my body will release an appropriate amount of nitric oxide to the corpora cavernosa which should cause my muscles to relax.” Dear God, could he sound any geekier?
Sure enough, she blinked at him. “Excuse me?”
“You’re giving me a hard-on.”
The waitress chose that moment to return with their drinks and based on the unusual clumsiness with which she juggled her tray, he had a sneaking suspicion she’d overheard his final comment. Damn.
“Are you ready to order?” she asked, struggling in vain to maintain an impassive expression.
Justice didn’t hesitate, but took the only reasonable course of action. “No. The check, please.”
She handed it over, throwing a cynical look in Daisy’s direction. For some reason that look stirred a fierce, protective instinct in Justice. Odd,