Free One Night with her Boss by Noelle Adams Page B

could, as she brought his
coffee back over. “Is your uncle doing all right?”
    His uncle, Cyrus Damon, had founded a
multi-billion dollar conglomerate of hotels and restaurants, and his four
nephews were the heirs to his fortune. The other nephews were more in the
spotlight than Jonathan. He’d buried himself for years at school in MIT and in
the lab here, which he’d opened seven years ago with funding that came
primarily from his uncle.
    “You heard, huh?” He shook his head as
he took a swallow of coffee. “He never changes. He’s unhappy with me, as
usual.”
    “I’m sorry to hear that,” she murmured,
looking back at the DNA sequence blindly. “I didn’t know you were engaged.
Congratulations.” She couldn’t help but wonder how he’d found the time to date
and get engaged to someone. The one long-term relationship she’d had was with
Matt Turner, who’d been hired at the lab at the same time she was. Their
relationship had dissolved after a year, in part because they just hadn’t had
time for each other.
    She’d thought Jonathan had nothing in
his life but work. Evidently, she was wrong.
    There was silence beside her, stretching
out so long she finally turned. She caught the strangest expression on
Jonathan’s face.
    Half-reluctant and half-guilty.
    “What is it?” she prompted. He usually
didn’t express any emotion at all, his face always relaxed, even when focused
deeply on the most minuscule of genetic details.
    “I’m not really engaged.”
    “What?”
    “I lied.”
    Her belly clenched with a weird
combination of relief and excitement. “But he’ll have to find out eventually,
won’t he?”
    “I know,” he admitted, rubbing his chin
in a habitual gesture. She could hear the faint sound of his bristles against
his hand. He shaved every day, but he was always bristly again by lunchtime.
“It wasn’t the smartest of lies. Now he wants me to bring my fictional fiancée to
my cousin’s wedding.”
    “I guess you could make up an excuse
about why she couldn’t come.” She tried to sound normal, but she almost felt
giddy.
    She indulged in daydreams all the time
about Jonathan, but she didn’t have any realistic hopes about a future with
him. He was brilliant, handsome, and would be a billionaire when his uncle
died. He commanded attention everywhere he went—so compelling was the force of
his intellectual confidence and the depth of his commitment to his goals. It
wasn’t arrogance or intimidation, and it was completely unconscious on his
part. But she’d seen him at conferences and symposiums, and she’d seen the most
skeptical of stodgy academics look at him with respect, despite his youth and
despite the fact that he wasn’t affiliated with a university.
    Jonathan Damon could have any woman he
wanted. Sarah was smart and was good at her job, but otherwise she was nothing
special. She could be content with what she had—a career she’d always dreamed
of and working daily with a man as brilliant and amazing as him.
    Anything more was a Cinderella-dream,
and she’d always known that could never happen to her.
    “Yeah,” Jonathan replied, sitting down
on a stool and turning back and forth on it restlessly. “Hopefully, he’ll
accept the excuse. He threatened to pull our funding because I was too focused
on research to settle down and get married.”
    “I heard,” she said, surprised he’d told
her something so personal. They talked all the time, but it was almost always
about work. “It’s probably just a passing whim,” she added, “brought on by your
cousin getting married. You can just make up an excuse for her now and then
later claim that she broke the engagement. You don’t really think he’ll stop
funding us, do you?”
    He didn’t answer immediately, just
looked away, which was answer enough.
    “Is he really so…so old-fashioned?” She
chose her words carefully, since she didn’t want to offend him. “I mean, to
insist that you not stay