Since I Saw You (7 page)

Kam didn’t reply immediately, just took a sip of ice water and idly watched the bartender making a milk shake behind the bar. The machine made a discordant
clunk, clunk, clunk
sound.

“He was a bit shocked at the idea that I told you that you take your job too seriously. According to Ian—and to a few other people I’ve talked to—Lin Soong and her work are practically synonymous.”

She sat back. “You were talking to other people about me?”

“Not anything major. People talk,” he said impassively.

“Especially when you ask,” she returned wryly.

“Nobody has explained one thing. Why does a gorgeous, single woman bury herself in her work to the exclusion of almost everything else?” he asked, watching her with a sidelong stare.

“Why don’t you tell me why a good-looking, brilliant man with the potential to do anything he wants in life lives holed up in an underground laboratory for years?” She picked up her menu and studied it, but he continued to look at her. She knew he did because her cheeks heated beneath his steady gaze. He leaned closer.

“Maybe Francesca and Elise and some of the people at Noble have it all wrong. You
do
appear to be secretive,” he mused, choosing to ignore her question. Like it had in the restaurant on Monday night, his low, confidential growl caused the tiny hairs on her neck and ear to prickle in awareness. “Maybe you do have a man stashed away somewhere, someone you carefully hide from Ian.”

She dropped her menu to the bar with a slapping sound. “Why would I do that?”

“You tell me.”

She shot him a glare and really tried to read the menu this time instead of just pretending she was. “For your information, I’ve introduced several men to Ian over the years. Francesca has even met a few of my dates.”

“Several, huh? Nothing sticks?”

She was glad that the round, harried-looking bartender chose that moment to come and get their order. She ordered a salad, ignoring Kam’s frown of disapproval. He ordered a small stuffed pizza, a large chocolate shake, and a rib dinner.

“Hungry, are you?” she asked, chin in her hand, watching him as the bartender walked away. He placed his elbow on the bar next to hers. A prickle of awareness went through her at the feeling of him pressing lightly against her. The fabric of the shirt she’d purchased for him was thick and hardy, a stark contrast to the sheer, insubstantial fabric of her dress’s sleeve.

“I had to order all the specialties since you were being such a spoilsport and ordered a salad.”

“I like to eat light for lunch. You’ll regret not doing the same when you’re served Elise’s food tonight at Frais and don’t have room for it. Your sister-in-law is a fabulous chef.”

“You don’t have to tell me that. I just had one of her breakfasts this morning.” He took a swallow of ice water. “And she’s cooked for us at Aurore Manor when she and Lucien were visiting. I won’t regret a damn thing about ordering this food, though. And don’t think I’m sharing any of my ribs and pizza.”

“Fine with me,” she said with determined unconcern. He rolled his eyes.

“All right,” he said with an air of being strong-armed, his gaze dipping to her mouth. “I’ll share.”

She smiled. Why did she always feel that shift in her lower belly and sex when his stare sunk to her mouth like that? It was like he could stroke the very deepest pit of her being with his eyes. The lighting in the bar probably didn’t change much from day to night given the three solitary windows all the way at the front. In the dimness, Kam strongly resembled Ian. Was that the real reason for that delicious sensation? Somehow, she didn’t think so.

A question wormed its way into her entrancement.

“Do
you
?” she asked quietly. His brows quirked slightly in puzzlement, so she clarified. “Have a woman back in France, I mean? Someone special?”

“I wouldn’t have had sex with you last Monday night if there was someone special.”

“That’s good to know,” she said, her gaze dropping at the mention of them having sex. It sounded illicit and exciting murmured in Kam’s rough, accented voice. Not to mention how him speaking the words caused graphic snippets of erotic memories to flash across her brain.

You want it now,
ma petite minette
? You want it fast and hard?

“Good to know I have a smattering of basic morality, you mean?” he asked.

“
You
aside, Kam,” she said, recovering from the charged memory. “It’s a good thing for any woman in this situation to hear.”

There was a loud metallic grinding sound from behind the bar and the bartender cursed. Kam winced slightly, but neither of them broke their stare.

“Ian never talked to you about it?” Kam asked.

“About what?”

“About me . . . and women.”

Now she was confused. “I thought you said there wasn’t anyone.”

“Not anyone special.”

She blinked. “Oh, I see. There are
women,
in the plural sense. The
non
-special variety. What does Ian know about it?”

His expression went blank. “Nothing.”

She gave an exasperated sigh. “Then what would he have to tell me if he knew nothing? He stayed with you on several occasions at Aurore. Aren’t you suggesting he knew something about your comings and goings?” She flushed.
Comings
and goings. Every word she used with him seemed to take on a sexual tinge.

The bartender was now cursing in subdued tones while the woman who had come to seat them barked instructions at him. Kam’s impassive expression didn’t give.

“Okay, so we’re not going to talk about it,” she said.

He sighed in a beleaguered fashion. “No, it’s not that. Just . . . excuse me for a moment.”

“Okay.” Was he irritated at her probing? Maybe he was going to use the men’s room. She sat forward curiously when instead of walking toward the rear of the establishment where the restrooms were located, he calmly walked around the bar. The waitress immediately noticed his tall, formidable and uninvited form behind the bar, but the bartender kept wrestling with and poking at a countertop shake freezer and blender, cursing. Kam thumped the bartender on the shoulder.

“Do you mind?” he asked, pointing at the machine.

“Be my guest,” the bemused-looking bartender said after a second, stepping aside.

Kam had caught the attention of everyone sitting at the bar now, not just Lin. He stepped up to the machine and opened a utility cover. For a moment, he just studied the whole unit. Lin had the impression he was absorbing the machine somehow. It was a little how she felt whenever he looked at her with his laserlike stare that seemed to see more than just the surface, like he was examining her component parts and analyzing how they all worked together. She couldn’t say precisely what he did next, but if she had to describe it, she’d say he flipped one thing, twisted another, and jerked a third: one, two, three, quick as counting up to something good.

He turned on a switch and the blender made the familiar monotonous roar Lin had heard sporadically when they first entered.

“I hadn’t even noticed it was broken. That was nice of you to fix it,” Lin said in amazement when he sat down again next to her at the bar a moment later, waving off the bartender’s profuse thanks with a look of vague discomfort on his face.

“Not really,” he said, his mouth curled in a self-derisive expression. “I wanted my milk shake.”

“That’s not it,” she said quietly after studying him closely for several seconds. “It bothered you. Having something out of joint . . . broken in your vicinity. Didn’t it?”

He frowned, not replying for a moment.

“I can’t stand to be around a machine that doesn’t work. It’s like they call out to me. Scream at me. It’s been that way for as long as I can remember.”

She recalled him reading her body the other night with his touch. “And with human beings? Is it the same? Is that why you studied medicine?”

“Human beings, animals . . . anything that isn’t humming the way it should. Anything broken won’t let me rest. If something is out of rhythm, I hear it. Feel it. It puts me out of joint, too.”

“That’s fascinating,” she said softly. Strange that such a rugged, bold man could feel the delicacies of the universe so acutely.

“Why didn’t you finish your residency after graduating?” Lin wondered as the bartender put place settings, Lin’s salad, and Kam’s milk shake in front of them.

“My mother got ill.”

“She lived at Aurore Manor, didn’t she?” Lin asked.

He nodded. “She worked there. She grew up in an orphanage in Dublin. After she signed up for a maid employment service, she was transferred to Aurore from Ireland. I think she considered herself a temporary Irish visitor until the day she died, even though she lived in northern France for twenty-seven years of her life. She never really mastered the French language, even after all that time,” he explained with a small smile.

She watched as he lifted the long silver spoon from his shake and ladled some of the thick, white liquid between his lips. He slipped it out. The frost on the chilled spoon vanished in a second by the heat of his mouth. She blinked, mesmerized by the sight. “My father seduced her when she was nineteen,” Kam continued bluntly, “got her pregnant with me, and probably never said a dozen words to her between then and the time he died.”

Lin took a sip of water. He’d sounded brutally honest about his father’s crimes. What a strange, lonely existence Kam Reardon must have lived growing up on the grounds of his twisted father’s home.

“But Trevor Gaines spoke to you,” she said softly after a moment, studying his profile. “He taught you what he knew about machines and computers and watches.”

“Yeah. He spoke to me. He
allowed
me to live on the estate and eat his food and work my ass off for him. When I was eight, I begged him to send me to the public school in the village. He permitted it because he thought the basic knowledge of mathematics might make me a better assistant in his laboratory, and he didn’t have the interest in teaching me myself. When I got older, I bargained with the knowledge of how to improve a couple of his inventions. He sent me to college in exchange for the information, and then resented me ever after for surpassing his mechanical abilities. I guess all that makes him Father of the Year,” Kam said with a dark sideways glance.

She inhaled slowly, trying to dissipate the ache in her chest. “I’m sorry, Kam. Was . . . it better getting that grudging attention from him? Or would you have rather been like Lucien and Ian?”

“Lucien and Ian were better off shot of him altogether. Best thing Gaines ever did for them, ignoring them the way he did,” Kam muttered viciously. He inhaled when he noticed her startled expression.

Not wanting to say something when words would never suffice
or
make him think she couldn’t handle what he’d said, she picked up her fork and mixed her dressing onto her salad. Neither of them spoke for a charged moment.

“Living in the vicinity of Trevor Gaines was like living near a perpetually broken machine,” he said in a subdued tone after a pause, staring straight ahead. “It almost drove me mad to be near him, like living with a relentless
clunk
and
bang
, a grinding on my bones, just from his damn presence. At one point, he requested that I live up at the manor with him. My mother insisted I go—she lived in some kind of dreamworld when it came to him and me—so I went. He had me dressed up like Little Lord Fauntleroy and tried to teach me to be a gentleman,” Kam recalled with simmering sarcasm. “But I knew who he really was.
What
he really was. Who better than me, after what he’d done to my mother? Filthy fucking hypocrite,” he seethed under his breath. “I finally lost it and told him what he could do with his social graces. No,” he concluded darkly. “Ian and Lucien were lucky to never have laid eyes on the bastard.”

Lin didn’t flinch at his sudden flash of savageness. His snarl faded slowly as he seemed to come to himself. They both watched in silence as the bartender set the remainder of Kam’s meal in front of him.

“Sorry,” he said dully after the bartender left.

“You don’t have to apologize. There’s nothing shocking about your anger toward him. It’s very understandable.”

“Are you worried about tonight?” he asked warily after several silent moments of eating.

She glanced aside, surprised. “No. Are you worried?”

He swallowed and shook his head.

“Just be yourself, Kam,” she said quietly.

“I thought that was what you were trying to help me avoid,” he said before he took a swift bite of fork-tender ribs.

“You’re wrong. I wouldn’t want you to be anything but yourself.” She searched for a way to ease his anxiety, grabbing on a thread of advice. “Just talk to people like you do me,” she suggested.

A strange expression came over his rugged features. He set down his fork and knife and took a swallow of ice water.

“What?” Lin asked warily.

He leaned closer until their mouths were only inches apart.

“We’re screwed,” he said, his warm breath brushing her lips.

“What do you mean?”

“I hardly talk to people as a rule. At least not for the past few years.”

“And?” she whispered cautiously, caught in the gleam of his shadowed eyes.

“I’ve said more words to you in the past twenty-four hours than I have to people I’ve known my whole life. I don’t have to think about talking to you. It just . . . happens.”

“Oh,” she said, flustered. She stared at the fork in her hand, wondering how it had gotten there. What was it even
used
for? She set it down abruptly, grasping for the thread of rational thought.

“Well then . . . just listen,” she suggested breathlessly. She looked up into his somber face. “Listen to the Gersbachs like you do the rest of the world, absorb their intentions, feel their rhythms. Don’t feel any pressure to perform. That’s not what this is about. Observe them tonight, and afterward, you can tell me all your impressions. You’ll put it into words then.”

“So I get you afterward? To myself?”

Her pulse began to throb at her throat as she stared at his mouth. She hadn’t prepared for him saying that. She was wide-open to him. His gaze was fixed on her throat. She instinctively pressed her hand to her neck, but he stopped her by wrapping his hand around her wrist. Her breath froze and then burned in her lungs as she watched him slowly raise her hand to his mouth and place a single kiss on her palm. It was a simple gesture, and yet mind-bogglingly complex. Her sex clenched tight at the sensation of his pressing, firm lips and the hint of his heat behind them.