It was time to end this uncomfortable meeting. She turned to Hutch. “I need to get inside, and you need to get your brother to his interview.”
He leaned over and kissed her again. “I’ll pick you up at five thirty.”
She started to say she would take the train, but she’d given him the keys to her car for a reason. “Will do. Have a good rest of the day.”
He squeezed her hand before turning away. “Ms. Layne, again, a pleasure to meet you.”
“The pleasure was all mine. I expect to see you around, and Kyle, think about my offer. There are good jobs right here.” Jessica looked at Noelle. “I should check in on you. You’re running the helium project, right? Interesting work. Maybe we’ll have lunch sometime and you can catch me up.”
She watched the woman walk away, perfectly steady in her sky-high heels.
She was on Jessica’s radar now.
“Hey, you did great,” Hutch said. “Go to your lab and work like it’s any other day. I’ll be here this evening and we’ll talk some more.”
She nodded, took a deep breath, and got back to work.
* * * *
Hutch stood in front of Noelle’s building, still thinking about that moment he’d seen the cold gleam in Jessica Layne’s eyes. He’d been quiet on the drive over, letting MaeBe blow off some steam about how no one should ever meet their idols because they turn out to be man-eating tigers who ignored other women when a hot guy was in the room. Kyle seemed to have found his feet again because he sounded confident as he joked about how hard it was to look so good.
“Do you blame her? I work for all this,” Kyle was saying.
But Hutch didn’t feel like joking because he’d seen that look in a woman’s eyes before. He’d seen it in a man’s, too. It was the look of a person who didn’t really see other people as anything but toys for their own amusement.
He’d looked into those eyes and seen Hope McDonald’s. Jessica Layne had touched his hand and he’d remembered how McDonald would put her hand over his chest and call him one of her pretty boys.
Kyle whistled, his head turned up. “Dude, the girl does well.”
“She’s a chemist working for an incredibly successful company.” MaeBe had a bag of groceries in her hand. She’d driven her Prius from the office to Genedyne’s soaring glass building downtown, then to a Whole Foods, and finally to this building in Victory Park. They weren’t far from Michael Malone’s place, and he had oil money. Oh, he didn’t dip into his trust fund often, but he lived like a millionaire in that gorgeous condo. Noelle’s digs looked a little less crazy wealthy than that, but it was still nice.
Jessica Layne was the type of woman who could take it away from her in a heartbeat.
Kyle stretched and grimaced. He’d complained a whole lot about how small that car had been. “I should have spent more time in school.”
He hadn’t even been stuffed in the back of that tiny car the way Hutch had. Kyle had been in the front. Hutch had spent the whole ride with his knees almost to his chin.
And he’d been shoved in with Noelle, so close that he could smell her. She smelled incredible. He wasn’t the guy who went around sniffing a chick’s hair. That guy was a weirdo. That guy was a perv.
But then he’d never smelled Noelle’s combo of laundry detergent and lemon muffins.
When she’d snuggled against him as he’d talked to her boss, he’d found a strange comfort from that smell.
Fuck, but he wanted to eat her alive. She’d tried to keep herself from bouncing into him, but the close quarters had meant they kept brushing against each other.
And then she’d talked about weird sex and how she wanted to stay away from it.
Yeah, he’d backed away. But not for long. Noelle was a treat he wasn’t sure he could afford.
“Isn’t your brother a professor or something?” MaeBe started for the lobby. They had a keycard to get into the building, and a key for Noelle’s apartment.
“Yeah, he’s got a doctorate, but not Noelle’s kind,” Kyle explained. “David’s an associate professor of history. He can barely afford his shitty townhouse. It’s in a crappy neighborhood, and I’m pretty sure it’s going to collapse soon. I love my brother, but I do not get his obsession with dusty old books. Of course I don’t get Noelle’s with all the science stuff.”
“That’s because you’re a Neanderthal and you’re only interested in beer and football,” MaeBe said with a prim wrinkle of her nose.
She walked ahead.
Hutch leaned in and whispered Kyle’s way. “A Neanderthal is…”
Kyle gave him a Neanderthal-like frown that let Hutch know he was probably close to being clubbed. “I know what a Neanderthal is. And I like more things than beer and football.”