Not in Love by Ali Hazelwood

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 buttondown 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.