Not in Love

RUE

I arrived just in time to see Arjun, the man I desperately wished would take Matt’s place as my supervisor, step out of the conference room. He approached me with a smile, and bent his head to my ear to say in low tones, “I was nervous as shit to go in there, but they’re decent.”

“Who’s they?”

“I forgot their names, honestly. Two of the dudes?”

A sixty-six percent chance of Eli, then.

“They’re approachable,” Arjun continued. “I was sure they’d be looking for reasons to say that everyone’s position is redundant, but they seem genuinely interested in the science. Asked lots of questions.”

“About what?”

“The scale-up stuff I’ve been working on. I got to complain about the whole pH saga we had last quarter. The initial hydrolysis step. They got my pain.”

“They understand hydrolysis?” I knew how arrogant the question sounded, but I couldn’t picture a normie having a working knowledge of it. Then again, I barely spoke with non-Tisha humans, so what did I know?

“Oh yeah. I started giving them the crayon version, but they nipped that real fast. They must have some kind of chemistry background, because they know their shit. Maybe—”

“Are you Dr. Siebert?”

I glanced past Arjun’s shoulder, at the person idling stiffly by the conference room. “Yes, I am.”

“I’m Sul Jensen. Come on in.” He was a square, stocky man who looked like he’d last smiled in the early 2000s. Not quite rude, but stone faced and glaringly uninterested in exchanging pleasantries. My first impression of him was probably highly similar to others’ first impressions of me—with the caveat that serious, unsmiling men tended to be considered consummate professionals, while serious, unsmiling women were often written off as haughty shrews.

Oh well.

Sul Jensen’s frostiness suited my inability to perform extraversion just fine. He gestured me toward the room, his movements jerky, with a slight animatronic quality, and I followed, bracing myself for impact.

Finding Eli Killgore inside didn’t surprise me, not as much as the jolt of heat in my stomach. He wore black jeans and a button-down shirt, the sleeves rolled up to the tops of his strong forearms, and now that I saw him up close, I just couldn’t reconcile it—the way he could be, at once, the man I’d met last night and someone completely divorced from that; the air of disheveled elegance as he riffled through a stack of papers, when a few hours earlier I’d thought him rough enough around the edges to cut deep and draw blood.

The glasses were certainly interesting. His face was already complex, a dissonant combination of rugged and refined, and with their frames added to the mix, there was suddenly one too many elements to parse. But there was something undisputably magnetic about him, something that could catch and trap. The fact that his attention was too focused on the papers for him to look at me felt like a small, temporary mercy.

“Sit?” Sul closed the door and pointed at the closest chair, like this was his house, instead of the conference room where Tisha and I held journal club and drank beer once a month. Resentment twitched in my belly.

“No, thank you,” I said, and Eli…he must have recognized my voice. His neck straightened and his eyes rocketed to mine, widening behind the glasses.

I was ready for him. I met his gaze, watched the shock play on his features, savored the disorientation in his parted lips.

Yup. That’s exactly what it felt like, seeing you up there.

Unhurriedly, I turned to Sul. “Florence mentioned that you wanted to see all team leaders, but I probably shouldn’t be included. My position is nontraditional. I spend twenty percent of my time—one full day per week—working for Matt Sanders on regulatory compliance.”

“Rue?” Eli said. Sul glanced at him in confusion, but I powered through.

“The rest of the time I lead my own project, unrelated to the biofuel tech.”

“Rue.”

“I do have a couple of lab technicians helping me, but aside from that I’m a team leader in name only—”

“Rue.” Eli’s voice cut through the room, snapping the thread of my speech, forcing me to turn. He was staring at me, equal parts disbelief and a million other things.

“Yes?” I asked. It came out almost sweetly, and Eli seemed just as taken aback as I felt. He didn’t spare a single glance for Sul. Instead he slowly took off his glasses, as though they might be the means through which he was conjuring me. The dull sound of them clicking against the conference table reverberated inside my bones, and so did Eli’s soft words. “Leave us, Sul.”

Sul looked between us, seemingly tempted to protest, but after a few beats, he left as rigidly as he’d come in—conspicuously leaving the door open behind him.

The room plunged into a long, unpleasant silence that ended only when Eli said, once again, “Rue.” Not What are you doing here? Not Why didn’t you tell me? Not Did you know about this? It was nice, since they would have been stupid questions, and I doubted either of us was a fan of those. “You seem less surprised to see me than I am to see you,” he said.

“I had the advantage of standing in a crowd,” I conceded.

He nodded slowly. Regrouping, or maybe just buying time to stare with hungry, eager, calculating eyes. Take in the shape of me in the light of this new day.

I doubted it flattered me.

“Rue Siebert,” he said, seemingly more in control. Then repeated, “Dr. Rue Siebert,” with the tone of someone who’d found the answer to a crossword cue.

Somewhere in his head, or at the very least on his phone, this man had a list of my sex preferences. He knew that I didn’t enjoy penetrative sex, but didn’t mind being held down. That I wasn’t interested in threesomes or humiliating language, but I was open to incorporating toys.

I refused to be ashamed of what I enjoyed, but it still felt discomfiting. Like being ripped open.

“Did you know who I was when you contacted me on the app?” he asked, and I wished I could have scoffed or dismissed it as deranged paranoia on his part, but my mind had initially gone there, too.

This cannot be a coincidence.

Except, it could be. It had to be, because I had been the one to message him. I had chosen not to reveal my real name. I had given him my phone number. It put a real damper on all the conspiracy theories my mind wanted to craft.

“No. I didn’t know Harkness existed until this morning. And I didn’t…” I hesitated. “I didn’t look up your full name. Not even last night, after.” It had felt wrong, when he hadn’t known mine. Plus, I wasn’t used to this. Wanting to know things, about a man.

“Okay,” he muttered, running one hand through his hair and leaving it no more mussed. Some kind of ceiling effect, clearly. “I didn’t know, either,” he said, clearly aware that I’d contemplated the possibility, as ridiculous as it was. If Eli had been inclined toward corporate espionage, I’d have been a terrible choice. I was utterly, fantastically irrelevant in the grand scheme of Kline.

And yet, here he was. Looking at me like nothing else existed in the world.

“It’s okay. It doesn’t matter.” He made a gesture with his hand, and I noticed the number I’d scribbled last night on his palm. Just the faint, illegible shadow of it, like he’d washed his hands several times in the interim, purposefully avoiding scrubbing hard enough to erase all traces. “It changes nothing,” he added.

“Nothing?”

“Between us.” He smiled. That knockout, nice-guy, grown-up-surrounded-by-love-and-confidence-and-the-certainty-of-his-worth smile. “I’ll talk to HR, but I don’t think this causes any conflict of interest. We…”

He paused, so I cocked my head and took a curious step toward him, entering a new gravitational field. His body was not the reason I’d chosen to message him, but I couldn’t deny that it was beautiful. Big frame. Full biceps. More what I’d expect from a pro athlete than from someone who sat behind a desk for a living. “We?” I asked.

He looked down at me, eyelashes fluttering. “You seemed interested in we, last night.”

“I was.” I bit the side of my cheek. “But last night I had no idea you were trying to steal the company I work for.”

Abruptly, the temperature in the room dropped. Tension pulled, instantly hostile.

Eli’s jaw twitched, and he took a step forward. His expression was outwardly amused, but his muscles were taut. “Steal the company.” He nodded, making a show of considering my words. “That’s a big accusation.”

“If the shoe fits.”

“Remarkably poor fit for a shoe.” He held my eyes. “Did Harkness barge in wearing ski masks? Because that is what thieves do.”

I didn’t reply.

“Did we take the property of someone else without offering compensation? Did we obtain something through subterfuge?” He shrugged. With ease. “I don’t think so. But if you suspect foul play, by all means. There are several authorities to which you can report us.”

I thought of myself as a rational person, and rationally I knew that he was right. And yet, Eli being part of Harkness felt like a personal betrayal. Even though we’d barely spent an hour together. Maybe the problem was that I’d shared about Vince with Eli, shared more than I should because…because I’d liked him. I’d liked Eli, and that was the crux of it. Now that I’d finally admitted it to myself, I could let go of it. Of him.

How liberating.

“We didn’t steal anything, Rue,” he told me, voice low. “What we did was buy a loan. And what we’re doing is making sure that our investment pays off. That’s it.”

“I see. And tell me, is it normal for the highest-ranking members of a private equity firm to be on-site interviewing employees?”

His mouth twitched. “Are you an expert on financial law, Dr. Siebert?”

“It seems like you already know the answer to that.”

“As do you.”

We regarded each other in silence. When I couldn’t bear it any longer, I nodded once, silent, and turned around so that—

His hand closed around my wrist, and I hated, hated the scorch of electricity that traveled up my nerve endings at the contact. Even more, I hated how he instantly let go, as if he, too, had been burned.

What I felt was bad enough. The thought of Eli experiencing the same was a recipe for disaster.

“Rue. We should talk,” he said earnestly, any pretense or hostility dropped. His fingers returned to my wrist. “Not here.”

“Talk about what?”

“About what happened last night.”

“We didn’t even hold hands. Not much to discuss.”

“Come on, Rue, you know that we—”

“Eli?”

We both turned. Conor Harkness was leaning in, palms against the doorframe, watching us with the air of a shark who could smell blood from miles away. His gaze focused on our closeness, on the way Eli’s eyes seemed unable to let go of me, on his hand, still circling my wrist.

“A moment,” Eli said.

“I need you in the—”

“A moment,” he repeated, impatient, and after another raised eyebrow and infinitesimal hesitation, Conor Harkness was gone, and I remembered myself.

I stepped back from Eli, taking in the strong set of his brow, his beautiful blue eyes, the tension in his jaw. Someone had to put an end to this. Me—I had to put an end to this, because he clearly would not. “Goodbye, Eli.”

“Rue, wait. Can we—”

“My number.” At the door, I spun on my heels. “Do you still have it?”© 2024 Nôv/el/Dram/a.Org.

He nodded. Eagerly. Hopeful.

“It might be better if you got rid of it.”

Eli dipped his head and let out a silent exhaled laugh. I left the room, not quite sure where his disappointment ended and mine began.