She blotted the corners of her mouth with a white linen napkin. “There’ve been millions. I can’t remember them all.”
“Ah. I believe that.”
She glowered at him. “No, you don’t.”
Since they were putting a few straight cards on the table, he ventured a few more. “My guess is that there’ve been very few men…and none who you really loved. None who you really trusted. And since casual friends don’t count, I’d guess the number is right around, well…one.”
She blinked. “One?”
“Yeah. One. Me. You trust me, Cate.”
She sucked in a breath. As he could have expected, she got that fight-or-flight look in her eyes again. Given a puff of wind, the scent of roses, the wrong kind of smile, she’d have bolted for the exit so fast it’d make his head spin.
But this time…she didn’t bolt. She only looked as if she wanted to. “Don’t flatter yourself, Connolly. But don’t feel insulted, either. I don’t trust anyone, not at a certain level. That’s the way it is for me and always will be. I’m not the girl you take home. Trust me.”
He’d already managed to take her home, Harm thought.
But not to win her. And for a man who had a full-scale trauma about to catch up with him, no time to even sleep, no way to keep her beyond a few more days…Harm was beginning to doubt there was any way he could force her to see what they were together.
What they could be.
Chapter 11
As they left the restaurant, Cate pulled her patience together and forced herself to say calmly, “Harm, you seriously need rest. I slept on the flights. You didn’t. It just makes sense for you to get a few hours’ sleep before we go to the lab.”
Harm dug in his pocket for the car key. “I think it’d be a good idea for me to drop you off at the house. You catch some z’s. I’ll go to the lab.”
Cate didn’t kick him with one of her three-inch heels, but she was tempted. The man was more stubborn than a hound. He’d been cave-in tired by the time they’d finished dinner; she knew he couldn’t keep going. But then his cell phone rang when he was paying the restaurant bill. She didn’t know who called, only that he’d discovered Yale and Purdue had managed to catch an earlier flight.
None of the others were scheduled to arrive home before Sunday morning. Now, it appeared that two of them would be landing in Boston a full day earlier-as soon as fourteen hours from now.
“But,” she reminded Harm, as he opened the passenger door for her, “they’ll be exhausted. I’m sure they’ll go to their own homes first, if only to drop off their gear and catch some rest. So we still likely have all day tomorrow before having to worry about them. And we’ll get much more out of the day if you had some sleep.”
“No.”
That was all he said before closing her door. She simmered while he crossed the front of the car, climbed in, and started the engine. The problem with Harm, Cate had long realized, was that everyone had kowtowed to him for so long that he’d forgotten how to listen to anyone else. More relevant, no one had put a foot on his head and made him behave.
“Okay,” she said sweetly. “This is the new plan. You said the lab was only a few miles from here, so we’ll go there now. You can show me around, show me the whole setup. Then we’ll go home. You get four hours’ sleep. I’ll wake you, we’ll come back. In the meantime, you can call your security people and tell them no one’s allowed in the lab without you getting a call.”
Harm hesitated, and then admitted, “That’s good thinking.”
“But?”
“But…I’m going straight to the lab.”
So, she mused. Next time she needed him to see reason, she wouldn’t waste time talking to him. She’d just hit him on the head with a baseball bat.
“I heard that,” Harm mentioned.
“What?”
“You were mumbling. Loud enough for me to hear. This is the issue, Cate…you’re safe while my men are still in the air. You’re not safe once they land in Boston. So there’s only one option here, and that’s to find out everything I possibly can before they arrive. After that…”
“After that, what?”
He shot her a warm, possessive glance before returning his attention to the road. “After that, I’ll figure out what I’m going to do about you.”
“You might be strong, Harm, but it’ll take more than you and an entire spare army to make me do anything I don’t want to do.” Her voice failed to pump up the volume she wanted to. Darn, it was hard to fight with him, partly because making crazy love with him on his kitchen table before dinner was still on her mind…and partly because of the way he kept looking at her.
She kept thinking about his ex-wives. She’d been so certain his divorce tales would be some version of today’s usual horror story…two people who couldn’t get along, who crucified each other in the divorce, who carried scars from the grief and the bitterness, who seemed to discover the worst of themselves and their chosen mates in the process.
She’d sort of expected that one marriage had to be a really young one-but not how warmly or honestly Harm had talked about that first love.
And she’d never imagined the scope of the second marriage, that he’d offer a ring to save a young woman’s life. For Pete’s sake, that was straight out of the archaic age of chivalry.
He was so adorable and so rich-and so arrogant-that she’d just assumed he was a player. Now…well…Cate sucked it up and figured she was stuck being nicer to him. At least to a point. “Well, you’re not going to drive if you’re overtired.”
“Right on that. In fact, soon as we get to the lab, I’ll give you the car keys. Then if you want to drive back to my place and crash, you can. Directions are easy.”
True to his word, they were barely parked before he handed the keys to her. She climbed out of the car, nearly tripping on her three-inch heels because her attention was so riveted by the place. The small, subtle sign for Future, Inc. was barely visible from the road. Old maples and walnuts formed a canopy above the drive to the building, which was a sprawling redbrick with a couple of wings, a massive porch in front, landscaped grounds that wound around the place. It looked more like a gorgeous old home than a place of business-much less like a lab.
“My uncle’s idea was for the place to fit in with the local historical look. Not to draw attention. A cold stone- and-glass type of building tends to make people think that the people and business are cold and stone-like, instead of caring. That was his theory, anyway. Of course, once you step inside…”
From the front door on, it was all high-tech. They could barely walk through a hallway before Harm had to identify himself with a key code, then a fingerprint code, and security alarm buttons were visible in every hall.
“We don’t have any live guards,” he said, “because the security system is so tight. Or we thought it was tight until the formula disappeared. Still, it’s almost impossible for an outsider to get into. You’ll see.”
She did see. The first wing didn’t hold just one lab, but a half dozen of them, each requiring a different set of security key codes. To Cate, the rooms looked something like ultra-contemporary kitchens, with stainless-steel tables and work counters and sinks-except for all the strange-looking equipment that she had no way to identify. The floors were spotless, and the air actually smelled fresh, with no hint of chemical or solvent that she could detect.
The last lab, at the end of one wing, had Yale and Purdue’s name on the door, and required both handprint and eye identification to enter. It was the only lab that Harm opened, specifically so she could see how it fit into their ongoing crisis. “This is where the formula disappeared from.” He motioned to a vault at the far end of the lab. “The computer work for it was on those two systems.” He motioned again. “Of course, the factual data was also backed
