He flipped open his notepad. “I know you like paperwork,” he said, sweetening the pot. “I’ll outline it all right here, give you homework, hell, I’ll even make you a spreadsheet. Let me help you with this, Dr. Fernstone. It’ll be fun.” He jotted down a few notes before she could say no, making a rough schedule for her.
“I don’t know,” she hedged. “What do you get out of this?”
He shrugged. “The pleasure of your company.” When she looked suspicious, he added, “Okay, if you insist, we can trade: you agree to skip phase three and all its red tape with royal approval—which is not cutting corners, we both know all your ducks are in a row and everyone else will too—and I’ll teach you how to date.”
She hesitated a moment longer, then nodded decisively. “It’s a deal,” she said. “If I don’t want to be stuck in a rut my whole life, I need to learn this stuff. And I guess you do have the experience to teach me.”
“Excellent!” He scribbled a few more pages of notes as they finished eating, thrilled with the brilliance of his plan. They’d both gotten something they wanted, and if he was honest with himself, he’d come up the winner on both ends of this deal. Teaching Anna how to date and seduce meant getting to spend more time with a woman who fascinated him, and hey—he wouldn’t mind at all if she was comfortable taking it further than small talk. He’d had a lot of encounters with the opposite sex over his lifetime, but no woman had ever held his attention quite like this one. She was such a paradox: beautiful and bold, awkward and inexperienced. She fascinated him, and, he wasn’t going to lie, turned him on. He wanted to show her how sexy she really was. She was so confident already in the professional part of her life—all he had to do was show her how to apply that to the personal areas, too.
“One more thing,” Anna said as he finished writing his notes. He tucked his pen away and got up, leaving cash with a generous tip for the waiter.
He looked up, pausing, about to reach for his notepad. “Yes?”
She smiled, a little shyly. “You can call me Anna.”
6
Anna marched into the lab the next day, convinced that steam was coming out of her ears. When she found Eric poking at a microscope at a workstation in the back, she slammed the door so hard the walls rattled, stomped over to him, and stabbed a finger in his face.
“You,” she hissed, “are the most infuriating, unprofessional, vexatious man I have ever met.”
He leaned back against the worktable, the surprise on his face fading into an impressed look. “Vexatious,” he said, like he was tasting the word. “You really do have a vintage vocabulary, you know that?”
She pulled his notepad out of her pocket and slapped it on his chest. He caught it, wincing at her vehemence and then in recognition. “Ohhhh,” he said, realization dawning on his face. “I didn’t leave this at the restaurant yesterday, did I?”
She crossed her arms. “You did,” she growled. “And guess who returned it?”
“Ah. From the vexation on your face, I’m guessing it was Martini Guy, and it didn’t go well.”
“Do you know how embarrassing it was, running into him again?” She’d spotted him a block away, and had been so focused on avoiding him that she’d nearly gotten run over by a taxi and had tripped over a group of schoolchildren herself. And then to have him hand her this, with its outline of both her professional and personal deals with Eric… “He said he didn’t read it, but what if he had? This could ruin both our reputations!”
“Well, to be fair, it would probably only enhance mine.” Seeing her incensed look, he held up his hands in surrender. “Although yes, it probably would ruin yours, and I am very, very sorry that I was so careless.”
She wasn’t about to let him off that easily. “How could you leave this lying around for anyone to find?”
“I was…distracted.”
“By what?”
“My lovely lunch companion.”
“Don’t you try to charm your way out of this, mister. From now on, all our correspondence needs to be official. We can’t risk this happening again. Anything you send me about our…arrangement…needs to go through the lab’s secure server as an encrypted memo.”
He lifted an eyebrow. “Sounds sexy.”
She huffed and gave up, settling for a strong exit.
Half an hour later, the first memo showed up in her inbox.
* * *
Dear Anna,
Thank you for your directions earlier regarding the method of communication by which we should carry out our arrangement. I believe it’s high time we get started with lesson one, which is entitled “The Anatomy of a Proper Apology.”
First, after having screwed the pooch, it’s best to acknowledge the wrong you’ve committed and the consequences that arose or could have arisen as a result. For example, I carelessly left my notepad on the table at the restaurant, which resulted in you having to face an awkward encounter (with a man who is, might I note, not at all charming. You made an excellent choice when you broke his heart yesterday), and which potentially risked your reputation.
&n