‘In Portuguese,’ she added weakly.
That slow, sexy grin of his was going to be her undoing. She was sure of it.
‘So I noticed.’
It stood to reason that he would know of VenomSci’s work. But the fact that he’d read a piece on her life, and her naturalist goals, and then quoted them back at her...? Well, that was doing insane things to her insides.
She needed to get away. Now. Before she did something as ridiculous as her sister had suggested.
Turning sharply, Flávia lurched off. It was only when she was a metre or so away that she realised he was falling into step beside her.
‘Where are we heading?’
‘We?’ she managed. ‘We are not heading anywhere. I was heading to the gardens.’
He moved with an enviable ease and confidence. A self-awareness as though he expected people—the world—to make way for him. Then again, it probably did, given the way people were hastily repositioning themselves to make way for him.
‘That desperate to escape already, huh?’ His voice actually seemed to rumble through her. ‘Well, sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but the gardens are locked now.’
‘They are?’ She snapped her head around. ‘How do you know?’
He hesitated. So fleeting that anyone else may not have noticed it. But Flávia wasn’t anybody. She hadn’t avoided being bitten by the fast, deadly vipers she had come to love by failing to miss tiny, telltale signs. It piqued her curiosity in an instant, although Jacob had apparently already shrugged the moment off.
‘I tried earlier,’ he answered smoothly. ‘They told me it was closed for the night.’
‘I see.’
There was something else. Something more. She’d lay a bet on it.
‘May I recommend the bar instead? That far end looks pretty quiet.’
She ought to decline.
Her mind was still racing. Trying to fill in that missing moment. And then she shocked herself again by flashing a dazzling smile, which her sister was always telling her to use more often with people other than merely her beloved nieces.
‘Why not? I’m sure we can have quite the party of our own.’
She ought to tell him she wasn’t interested in a party of their own. She ought to be mingling, the way her boss had told her to do. She ought to draw more people into the conversation—she could see a couple of other medical and surgical oncology team members hovering for a chance to talk to the highly respected Dr Cooper.
Yet she didn’t say any of those things, and by the time she reached the bar, Flávia found herself alone with a man who made her body fizz disconcertingly, and an empty countertop.
Then, with nothing more discernible than a diplomatic hand gesture, two fresh drinks materialised in front of them. A glass of champagne for her and, she hazarded a guess from the deep amber colour of the liquid swirling in the tumbler, a top-drawer whiskey or cognac for him. And suddenly, inexplicably, it all felt slightly too...intimate.
Flávia opened her mouth to refuse the drink and take her leave—not that she really believed her single glass of champagne was to blame for this...thing that hummed between them, but why take any chances? And then he thanked the bartender.
She had no idea what it was about the simple gesture, so understated yet so polite, and so unlike too many of the doctors in this room who thought themselves too good for something as apparently irrelevant as good manners.
She turned her head to look at him again and, once again, her heart slammed into her chest for no apparent reason. Was breath truly seeping from her lungs like a popped balloon or was she just imagining it? And never mind the dress feeling constricting and small, right now it was her very skin which seemed to be too tight for her own body.
Flávia couldn’t help it—her eyes scanned over him. Quickly. Then slowly. Like they didn’t know where to start. Or maybe where to stop. And still she stood there. Still. Ensnared.
No man had ever got under her skin like this. Ever. She told herself it meant nothing. That she must just be feeling out of her depth at this welcome gala, and vulnerable after Delgado’s dig.
‘Dr Cooper—’ she began.
‘Jacob,’ he interjected.
She sucked in a breath. ‘Jacob,’ she began, then paused. As ridiculous as it was, his name sounded altogether too intimate on her tongue. She tried again. ‘Jacob...’