“Aren’t you in luck then because I’m a halfway decent cook. I learned young.”
“Did your mom teach you?”
“No, my mom died, and my dad wasn’t big on doing things he considered feminine tasks. I learned to cook, or I didn’t eat.” He sat back, his chair moving with him. “I’m not a brilliant chef, but I have some skills. I’ll stop by the grocery store before Kyle and I head to your place. Anything you don’t eat?”
He slipped that tragedy in like it didn’t matter, like it was nothing more than a factoid on a report. She wasn’t sure what to say so she simply answered his question. “I eat pretty much anything.” She felt horrifically awkward. Moments before she’d been angry with him, and now she wanted to ask about his childhood. It was better to focus on the job. “Do you really think this is necessary?”
“Can you honestly tell me you weren’t going to investigate the accident in the lab?”
“I don’t like to ask for help.” She didn’t like to feel small. She’d felt it much of her life, had learned exactly how fragile it all was at a young age. She’d also learned that the minute she asked for help was the minute everyone around her started thinking she needed it all the time.
“I can understand that. I need you to understand that despite my earlier impression, I don’t tend to underestimate people. I don’t judge a book by its cover, though the cover might be awfully pretty.”
He’d obviously decided to go the charming route. It wouldn’t work on her. “Sure. The first thing anyone notices about me is that I’m pretty.”
“Well, if I’d noticed the cane first, I wouldn’t have made an ass of myself,” he pointed out. “So you need to understand that you probably manipulate a lot of men with those eyes of yours, but it won’t work on me.”
Outrage sparked through her and then she caught a ghost of a smile on his lips and realized the jerk was fucking with her.
No one fucked with her. Not like teasing. No one in her world treated her with anything but the utmost respect. Except Madison. God. Was that why she wanted to investigate? Because Madison had at least respected her enough to play rough. Madison was the kind of woman who would have ignored her utterly if she hadn’t felt threatened.
This man already zeroed in on a weakness Noelle herself hadn’t realized she had.
“I’ll remember that.” She wasn’t going to give in to the need to spar with him.
The grin disappeared. “I know you’re independent and that’s important to you, but someone absolutely is spying on you through your computer. I found some sophisticated software that was uploaded five days ago. What else happened that day?”
A chill crept across her skin. “Madison died. All right. I can make connections when they’re that obvious. So I’m supposed to tell my coworkers we’re high school sweethearts who reconnected and now we’re together again?”
“How close are you to your coworkers? Have you talked a lot about your past?”
She could lie and tell him this plan of his would never work. She should have told him she already had a boyfriend, but she’d lost that chance. And yet she found herself leveling with him. “I’ve got a couple of people I have lunch with at work. Sometimes we go to happy hour. I’ve spoken very little about my past. I find coming from a small town puts me in a box with a lot of people in my industry. I talk about my time in Austin. I talk about the awards I’ve won and the papers I’ve written.”
“So they don’t know much about your life,” Hutch mused. “I promise I can handle this. I can handle your friends and make them believe I’ve cared about you for a long time. I can make them comfortable, and I’ll make you comfortable, too. I’m sorry we started off the way we did.”
Something about the words put her on guard. “I’m not looking for a boyfriend.”
Hutch shrugged. “And I’m not looking for a relationship either, so we’re good.”
“But you’re flirting with me. I don’t like it.” It threw her off. No one in her life flirted with her. She got asked out from time to time, but the men who asked her always seemed serious. Hutch was different.
“It’s a part of who I am,” Hutch conceded. “I’ll try to not do it outside of our cover. I’m sorry. I think flirting is a coping mechanism. I spent a lot of years surviving by making people like me. I did some time in foster care and on the streets as a teen. I’m only telling you because you should get to know me. I’m not trying to get sympathy.”
“Yes, you are.”
The slight grin was back on his face. “Is it working?”