New and…Improved? & Andrew in Excess

concentrated or frowned. She was frowning now. “Didn’t your mother ever tell you your face could freeze in that position?”

They’d never touched before.

It was only a finger, and yet the strangest thing happened. A bolt of awareness shot through her. It was so strong as to be almost painful. Her glasses fogged. Even her tongue got into the action, tying itself into knots.

And Becca rendered herself completely stupid.

“That was some strong static electricity,” Kent said, staring, perplexed, at his finger.

“Was that what that was?”

“Definitely.” But now he frowned too, and stepped back, slipping his hands in the pockets of his white lab coat. “Couldn’t be anything more.”

“Absolutely not.” After all, Kent had an aversion to “more,” to anything that tethered his precious freedom.

What she didn’t know was why, but she had other things to think about. Such as her decision to make a major change in her life-style. Really, it was overdue.

She’d spent her entire childhood as a mousy, chunky, sharply intelligent child, playing in the shadow of a vibrant, gorgeous, fun-loving sister.

She’d spent her teens pretending she loved to study more than getting noticed by boys.

Little had changed there, she was afraid.

As an adult, she spent most of her time wearing a white chemist coat, thick glasses, her hair stuffed into a backward baseball cap, peering into a microscope trying to find a cure for the common cold. When she wasn’t at work, she was at school learning more, still pretending it was more fun to work than have a social life.

That’s who she was. Plain-Jane, total fashion nightmare, nose-in-a-technical-book, Becca.

And yet…she had the secret heart of a rebel, she just knew it. So she turned away from Kent, buttoned up her lab coat, sat at her stool and thought, someday I’m going to figure out how to knock a man’s socks off.

“I’m sorry.” Innocently, he looked at her with those deep, unfathomable eyes, which should have been her first hint-he’d probably never been innocent. “Did you say something?”

“No.”

“Yes, you did. Something about my socks, which is very unusual, since I’ve noticed on Monday mornings you’re all work and no play. So there must be something…” His fingers swept aside his white lab coat, and he pulled at the soft, faded denim encasing his powerful, long legs. Two white athletic socks were revealed, tucked into white running shoes with frayed laces. “Hmm. They look fine to me.” He studied them seriously and rotated his ankles. “They actually match today, which is new.”

“They have a pink tinge to them,” she said, as if she didn’t care that even his calves were perfect. “You ought to try bleach.”

“Yeah, that’s what happens when they get washed with red lace panties.”

Her eyes went wide as she jerked her gaze back to his. “You’re kidding.”

“Maybe.” He let out another of those killer smiles. “Maybe not.”

“Humph.” She crossed her arms and turned away, unreasonably annoyed with him.

“You could be happy for me.”

“Might be happier,” she muttered, reaching for her notes. “If I was getting some too.”

“To get some, Becca, you actually have to date.” With wry amusement, he leaned back against the counter as she fussed at her station, the picture of rough and ready trouble.

“How do you know I’m not?”

“Well, you told Cookie, who told Tami, who told-”

“Ah.” She ground her teeth. “The gossip mill.”

He smiled, which only magnified the mischief dancing in his eyes. But there was something about discussing her nonexistent sex life that really got her going, and it was only slightly mollifying to know he actually thought she was rejecting date requests, instead of not receiving any.

“Of course you’d have to break away from work long enough to have a good time,” he added conversationally, reaching around her to flip on a second light over her work station.

He smelled good, she noted reluctantly. Not like cologne, but more an outdoorsy, male sort of smell that made her yearn. And that annoyed her all to heck, too.

“I’d ask you what you did this weekend but I could probably guess.” He smiled. “You worked on school stuff, and for some extra excitement, you came in here to put in a little time on your latest project.”

Was that really what everyone thought? That she was all work? No play?

That it was true didn’t help. “How do you know?”

He waggled a daring brow, every single hard-muscled inch of him oozing sin. “Because you have that not- relaxed, still-tired-even-though-I-just-had-a-weekend look.”

A quick glance in the small mirror over one of three sinks confirmed the painful truth. It was there for the entire world to see. Pale skin, paler green eyes rimmed with fatigue, the hair beneath her baseball cap a dull, nondescript brown.

Who had time to worry about hair? The glasses she wore hid most of her face, which was fine since she didn’t wear an ounce of makeup. Not that she didn’t like makeup, she thought defensively, it was just that when she applied it she had the tendency to resemble Frankenstein’s bride.

Her body was blah, not curvy, not lean. Just average. And totally hidden under baggy jeans, T-shirt, sweatshirt and lab coat.

But that was because she didn’t like to worry about what to wear in the mornings. Thankfully S.S.L. provided the oh-so-bulky lab coats, so really, it hardly mattered how she dressed.

Bottom line though-she wasn’t great date material. Not even average date material.

“Another frown.” He sounded surprised and wary, too, as if he knew he was the cause, but didn’t quite know what to do about it. “Maybe you should work,” he said with genuine concern. “That always seems to cheer you up.”

“Oh yeah, there’s the answer, more work.”

He blinked at her reaction and she felt a spear of guilt. “I’m sorry. I guess I’ve got the Monday blues.”

“No, that’s not it,” he said slowly, cautiously. “You’re different today.”

Yes, she was different. At least, she wanted to be. “Well, to tell you the truth…”

“Uh-oh. You want a raise already.”

“This isn’t about work!”

“Okay.” He leaned back and crossed his ankles, looking totally at ease, while her hopes and dreams gnawed at her. “Shoot.”

But the phone rang, and while Kent studied her thoughtfully, she answered it. “Sierra Labs.”

“Becca!”

Summer, her sister, had a carefree, happy, infectious voice that instantly made people smile. Becca resisted.

“Hey, you there?” Summer asked. “What’s the matter?”

Becca broke eye contact with Kent and shoved her glasses higher on the bridge of her nose. “I haven’t said a word. How do you know something’s the matter?”

“I just know. Work or school?”

“Life,” Becca said without thinking, then wished the words back.

“Well you work too hard. You never give yourself a break, much less a good look in the mirror. But that’s why I’m calling, I have just the thing to fix that.”

“You always have ‘just the thing’,” Becca said. “And the last time I fell for that, I ended up with green hair.”

Kent raised his eyebrows.

“I was just learning to use color effectively,” Summer said into the phone with great dignity. “I’ve come a long way since then.”

From the corner of her eye, Becca watched Kent bend over his own work, his wide shoulders flexed with