When Sparks Fly: Love and Rockets Read online

  She turned and met his eyes coolly from her position by the bar. The eyes that boldly met and held his glowed like jewels.

  Amethyst, Jay thought in distraction. Beautiful.

  He admired her undulating curves as she approached and held out her hand to him. Jay took it and carried it to his lips, continuing to hold her unusual eyes as he did.

  “We haven’t been introduced.”

  She had a voice like warm honey. It was too much. Was there anything she didn’t have? Jay’s appreciation for her various attributes grew.

  “Miss Firecracker, isn’t it?” He stated her nickname boldly. “Jay Whitman at your service. Or maybe I could persuade you to be at my service, since things seem to have gone wrong with your patron, there.”

  Something indefinable glittered in the jeweled depths of her eyes.

  “My patron?”

  Heat spread through him at the thought of her fiery kisses burning his skin and her honeyed voice crying out in passion.

  “Are you asking if I’m for sale?” Her smooth voice had gone even and tight with anger but Jay didn’t notice.

  Instead, he laughed.

  His dark eyes gleamed with mingled desire and amusement as he informed her soberly, “Honey, there’s no doubt about what you’re here for. Just who.”

  “Really.”

  She gazed at him thoughtfully and Jay noticed she matched his considerable height easily in her heels.

  She continued, “And what is that?”

  With a straight face, he indicated her generous cleavage.

  “With a body like that, you wouldn’t be mistaken for a rocket scientist.”

  Eldon was now choking in the throes of some kind of apoplectic fit but Jay didn’t notice.

  His attention was all on the flame-haired wench he intended to get to know better. Intimately, in fact. Repeatedly. One night wouldn’t be nearly enough. Eternity might not be long enough to realize the promise of passion in those sweet lips.

  “I see. You want to know my price?” She considered him for a moment, her face unreadable. “One million dollars.”

  Jay made the mistake of laughing again.

  “Annually,” she added sweetly.

  She was funnier than he was, he thought in envy. Amazing. All that, and a sense of humor, too.

  “A million dollars?” He kidded back. “You must be some kind of specialist.”

  She nodded graciously. “Yes, I am. Lyle is very generous but one million would top the standing offer NASA made me.”

  For the first time, Jay sensed that something had gone wrong somewhere.

  “NASA?”

  His formerly sniggering cohorts were cautiously shuffling away.

  “Yes. You’ve heard of it, haven’t you?” Sympathy glimmered in her violet eyes. “The letters are an acronym. That means a word made up of initials,” she explained in the tolerant voice one might use on the mentally deficient or the very young.

  “It stands for the National Aeronautics and—”

  “I know what it stands for,” Jay broke in. “Now why would a nice group of letters like that make an offer to a woman like you?”

  He thought there must be all kinds of hidden benefits to federal funding.

  “Well.” She colored prettily and cast a humble glance down at her shoes. “They’d make me an offer like that because I am a specialist. An interior ballistics specialist.” She blinked thickly lashed violet eyes at him, the picture of innocence, just before she delivered the topper. “A rocket scientist.”

  “You’re not.” The denial escaped him unthinkingly.

  “Oh, I’m afraid I am. So unless you’re willing to make me an offer like that, then we don’t have anything to discuss.”

  “Grant doesn’t pay you a million a year,” Jay accused.

  He knew it for a fact. He’d seen the figures himself. He was now in charge of marketing and he’d spent the past week with Eldon going over the company’s financial picture in detail. He didn’t know her name but nobody had a salary in that range.

  Then it struck him: A. Leslie. The elusive, reclusive research scientist. The bombshell was A. Leslie.

  He’d expected A. Leslie to be a man.

  Thank God she wasn’t.

  In her own sweet time, Miss Firecracker responded to his statement. “No, he doesn’t,” she agreed. “But that is what you’d have to pay me to work for a patronizing, hormone-ruled, IQ deficient, arrogant and mannerless cretin with delusions of self-importance like you.”

  Her honeyed voice never rose a decibel. That her words crashed over him like thunder was some kind of auditory illusion.

  He’d never been insulted so thoroughly. And so politely. Another of her impressive accomplishments.

  “Nice to meet you, Mr. Whitman. Now I know who to avoid.”

  Having delivered her parting shot, the fatal beauty turned on her magnificent heels and walked away.

  Jay gazed with rapture at her retreating back. From any angle, she was something to see. She had the body of a goddess, an amazing sense of humor, great taste in clothes, enough brains, evidently, to compete with Einstein’s memory.

  And some kind of natural chemistry.

  He tingled all over from the charge of merely standing next to her. He could imagine the fires she’d ignite with one touch.

  He was entranced.

  He was on fire.

  He was in love.

  He gazed after her with something approaching worship and declared prayerfully, “What a woman.”

  Beside him, the accountant was practically weeping.

  “Now you’ve done it. You insulted her. You called her a-a—” Eldon couldn’t bring himself to even say it. He rounded on Jay, completely overwrought, and clutched his lapels wildly. “Do you know what you’ve done? She invented the Golden Galaxy. The Screaming Scarlet Siren. The Fantasy Fountain.” Eldon listed her credits with rising hysteria.

  The first vague hint of alarm stirred.

  “You’re talking about our best sellers,” Jay observed.

  Eldon nodded so vigorously that Jay feared whiplash.

  “Yes! That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you! She’s the head of R&D, Frontier’s resident wizard. She’s Grant’s pet and he’ll do anything to keep her happy, including replacing a certain vice-president with—what did she call it? Delusions of self-importance? Her creations have put Frontier on top and Grant knows it.”

  Eldon having hysterics looked something like Elmer Fudd on speed, Jay thought. The man was trembling, wire-rimmed glasses askew, normally straight and neat hair sticking out at all angles, his eyes wild.

  “Eldon, Eldon. Relax,” Jay said in an effort to calm the overwrought accountant.

  “Relax? I can’t relax. What if she quits? What if she goes to the competition and takes her patents with her?”

  Eldon was rough on tuxedo jackets, Jay mused.

  “Come on, calm down. What’s this about patents?” He asked the question in an attempt to steer the conversation into more quiet waters.

  The accountant released Jay’s thoroughly subdued lapels and ran shaking hands through his pale hair, smoothing down the worst of the cowlicks.

  “The deal she has says that she holds the patents to anything that she invents. In return, she grants Frontier exclusive rights to develop her brainchildren. It’s a clause that protects her from losing on profits she’s rightfully entitled to and protects Frontier from paying for R&D facilities to advance competitors,” Eldon explained.

  Jay thought that over for a moment.

  “So she couldn’t take anything to a competitor, then, right? Because Frontier has exclusive rights to the work she’s done here?”

  Eldon calmed visibly, considering that. “Yes. Right. But losing her new work would be just as bad,” he added unhappily. He gazed mournfully after the redhead as if watching a dream drift away and crumble to dust. “She was making a new blue this year.”

  Jay didn’t even try to make sense of that myste
rious remark.

  “I think you’re worrying about nothing. She doesn’t seem all that upset to me,” he pointed out in soothing tones.

  As a matter of fact, he thought she looked like she was having fun, drinking champagne and dancing.

  If she wanted to have fun, he was the one she wanted. He was a good time on legs. And off them, if he could persuade her to explore the possibilities.

  In fact, the more he thought about it, the more certain Jay became that it was his duty to the company to entertain the resident wizard. And certainly he owed it to her to rescue her from the unwanted attentions of other men.

  “I think I’ll go ask her to dance.”

  Eldon stared at him as if he’d lost his mind.

  “I don’t think she likes you,” he informed Jay.

  “Of course she does.” Confidence oozed from every pore as Jay boasted, “She made eye contact. She came over to meet me. She was standing close.”

  Eldon gaped at him for a moment in stunned silence before cautiously repeating, “I really don’t think she likes you.”

  With a pitying glance at the man, Jay explained, “You just don’t understand women.”

  “She called you names. She said you’d have to pay her a million dollars to put up with you.”

  Oh, yes, she had. She had spirit. The thought warmed his already heated blood.

  “I know.” Jay smiled cheerfully. “She’s playing hard to get.”

  Eldon gazed at him in palpable doubt. “What makes you say that?”

  “Elementary, my dear Eldon. Consider what she evidently spends her days playing with,” Jay suggested.

  Eldon considered. “Explosives?”

  Jay shot the man an impatient look. “No. Rockets, Eldon. And rockets, my friend, are widely recognized as phallic symbols of the most potent order.”

  Eldon gasped. “You mean—”

  “I mean,” Jay interrupted smoothly, “I think it’s time she dedicated some research to the real thing. Eldon, I’ve decided to give my body to science.”

  Eldon let out a low sound of despair.

  He gazed after Jay’s departing back with a doomed expression on his face.

  Anna was fox-trotting with Bill Whittaker, who seemed to have recovered from his initial shock, when the obnoxious man who wanted to be her “patron” cut in.

  She was still fuming over his insulting comments and for a moment she actually considered leaving him stranded on the dance floor. But that would be running away and she was determined to stand up for herself and confront trouble head-on.

  She would not be bullied by him.

  If she backed down, she’d be setting a bad precedent and she’d have only herself to blame if the work relationship caused her problems. That he worked for Frontier in some capacity was obvious. She couldn’t hope to avoid him. In fact, it was surprising that they hadn’t met sooner.

  He was the kind of man others looked up to, a natural leader. He’d had that group of testosterone junkies hanging on his every word.

  If she was going to have to deal with him, she might as well start now. So she called on reserves of patience she hadn’t known she possessed and graciously continued the dance with her new partner.

  If he gave her any trouble, she could always wield her stiletto heels on his feet. The leather dress shoes he wore looked rather thin.

  “So you’re the elusive A. Leslie,” the tall, dark and obnoxious stranger commented. His hungry ebony gaze took her in, surveying the effect of her red-on-red ensemble.

  “That’s right.” Anna kept her tone carefully neutral. She would not be provoked.

  “Well, A. Leslie, if you always look this good, I can see why you stay out of sight. Productivity would grind to a halt.” The insufferable lecher grinned at her, obviously highly entertained by his own scintillating wit.

  “Thank you.”

  The sarcasm was evidently wasted on him, however. He appeared to take her reply as encouragement.

  “No, thank you.” His smile broadened, a feat she wouldn’t have thought possible, and he tightened his hold on her as he continued, “That’s some dress you’re almost wearing. I hope your last dance partner doesn’t have a history of heart trouble.”

  She looked at him in suspicion.

  He looked back at her in lustful anticipation.

  “Since you’re a rocket scientist, it seems appropriate that you have one heavenly body.”

  He drew her even closer and continued, “Did I tell you how happy I am to meet you?”

  It was embarrassingly obvious to Anna that at least one part of him was very happy to meet her, indeed. And inappropriate as it was, his interest sparked her own. There was something about his nearness, his sheer relentless sexual confidence, that planted ideas in her gonads, if not her head.

  She tried to pull away slightly in an attempt to salvage the situation and to stop the unwanted sensation of heat curling through her abdomen.

  Jay gripped her satin-covered waist and molded her fully against him. Heat built from every point of contact and contracted into a hungry throb.

  This had to stop.

  Anna placed the lethal heel of her lovely new red pump on top of his foot and ruthlessly ground down. His shoes proved to be as inadequate against attack as they looked and with a startled yelp, he stumbled and lost his hold.

  “Sorry,” Anna murmured, completely unrepentant. “I guess it was an accident. Like the way you accidentally got a little out of line.”

  Unbelievably, admiration instead of contrition or even a hint of dismay gleamed in his dark eyes.

  “Whoa. You’re one dangerous bundle of love.”

  “Mr. Whitman, I would appreciate it if you didn’t refer to me as a bundle of love, or any other little endearments you have in mind. We work for the same company.” Firmly, Anna took the bull by the horns and asserted herself.

  “Don’t tell me you have a rule against mixing business and pleasure?” Mock horror lit the overly handsome face that nature may have intended as consolation for the vacuum behind it.

  He’d certainly been shortchanged in the wits he nevertheless seemed so fond of, Anna thought sourly. She was attracted to a cretin. It must be nature’s law of balance in effect, seeking intellectual equilibrium in their offspring.

  He gave up on impressing her with the evidence of his virility in favor of showing off his dancing skills as he led her through a series of flashy steps, ending with a deep dip.

  As he bent over her, he winked and offered, “Why don’t we cut to the chase. My place or yours?”

  Before she could answer that, he returned her to an upright position and spun her expertly in a move that brought her hard against him, trapped by his long arms.

  “You feel what’s happening between us. I know you do.”

  Seductively, he back-stepped and took her with him, plastered against his front.

  She certainly did feel it and it was beyond her social skills to cope with. Of all times for her libido to decide to wake up and pay attention, this had to be the worst. “Ah, Mr. Whitman,” Anna began, only to be cut off.

  “Jay,” he corrected with a wolfish flash of white teeth. “You can hardly call me Mr. Whitman. It would sound ridiculous.”

  He nuzzled her cheek and murmured naughtily in her ear, “Harder, Mr. Whitman. Yes, Mr. Whitman. Deeper. Oh, Mr. Whitman!”

  Anna nearly choked.

  He smiled at her innocently. “You see? It doesn’t work.”

  Clearly, she needed more time with her new research project. Anna was completely out of her depth in this area of communication.

  Then she recovered her determination.

  No. She wasn’t going to hold back any more.

  She was the bold, confident woman in the red dress she’d seen in the store mirror. She was comfortable with her body. Secure in her sexuality. Sure of herself and her value, as a woman, as a person, as an individual.

  She’d struck Lyle speechless.

  She could handle
one leering, libidinous lunatic.

  “Hmm. I’m not sure,” Anna mused, dancing closer and nestling her generous curves against his male length. A treacherous wave of heat and weakness struck her at the intimate contact but she had a goal and she stuck to it. Her mouth was level with his ear and she murmured into it, “Oh, Mr. Whitman. Oh, yes, Mr. Whitman. Like that. Deeper, Mr. Whitman. Oh, yes! Yes!”

  Thoroughly enjoying herself now, she groaned with feeling, “Oh, my God, Mr. Whitman.”

  It shut him up, she noted in delight. He was staring at her with glazed eyes and his breathing had grown labored.

  “Do you like it like that, Mr. Whitman?” She nipped at his earlobe to be sure she had his complete attention.

  A shudder ran through his lanky frame.

  “Or is this better? Jay. Jay, I want you. Now, Jay,” she begged sweetly and blew in his ear for good measure. “Oh, yes, Jay. Take me. Take me to the stars.”

  His eyes darkened even further with desire and he promised hoarsely, “I will, honey, I will.”

  Anna placed one manicured fingertip against his lower lip and slowly, regretfully shook her head.

  “No, I’m afraid not.”

  “Why not?” he asked against her fingertip with a persuasive kiss.

  “Oh, Mr. Whitman. You can’t take me to the stars.” Wickedly, Anna let her body brush tantalizingly against his as she spoke. Tender hands framed his face and she rubbed her nose against his in a teasing gesture, continuing, “You wouldn’t know how to calculate the escape velocity. You aren’t a rocket scientist.”

  With a theatrical sigh of regret for what might have been, she turned and strolled away, leaving her thoroughly defeated adversary behind.

  Which was harder than it should have been.

  Chapter Three

  Anna was still surging with energy from the sexual skirmish when she reached the elevators and pressed the down button with unnecessary force.

  She nearly jumped when a tentative voice behind her called a faint, “Excuse me.”

  She whirled, ready to resume battle.

  And relaxed. It wasn’t him. Which she should have known, from the polite greeting. He didn’t know the meaning of polite. It was a totally foreign concept. Of course, if Jay Whitman had been polite she would never have felt the force of his masculine interest and she wouldn’t be feeling an unaccustomed thrill of feminine power in response now.