Only Uni (9 page)

“So does it work?”

It took him a moment to realize she’d asked a question. “She says it does, but when she drinks it, she looks like she’s in pain.”

Trish hooted. “That’s what my cousin’s mom looks like, too.” She tucked her hair behind her ear and applied herself to her work, a smile still hovering on her mouth.

He’d never really noticed her features before, how pretty she was. And she was fun to be around.

She handed him the last plate. “I need more coffee.”

“You had three cups this morning already.”

She rolled her eyes. “Nag, nag, nag. I’m going to get something from the cafeteria.” Her face lit up at the prospect of something nuclear-strength and venti-sized from the espresso bar.

He looked her in the eye. “Your coffee addiction is scary.”

She laughed and left the lab.

The lab seemed darker without her in it.

She’d be a fun date.

In his office, Spenser studied Trish as she stared at her calendar, as if daring it to defy her careful planning. Her arched brows scrunched under a smooth forehead, already a bit shiny by mid-morning and framed by the straight dark hair that fell from her middle part, with wisps softening her face. She was always well dressed, but usually untidy by noon.

Spenser tended to prefer tiny, delicate girls. Trish was short, but not delicate. However, her jeans showed off nicely curved hips that weren’t unattractive. She didn’t walk — she bounced with confidence and energy. While she wasn’t as trendy as his other girlfriends had been, she didn’t dress like a slob, either. He wouldn’t mind being seen with her on his arm.

So why not? He wasn’t proposing marriage or anything. A date would be a casual way to get to know her better. If it didn’t work out, he knew it wouldn’t faze her efficient work ethic.

She didn’t bother to look up at him. She frowned at her calendar. “Spenser, do you think we’ll see any alkaline phosphatase on day three? Should we collect samples on day five instead?” Her head tilted, as if she still thought about her question even as she waited for him to answer.

Spenser heard a voice that sounded like his own. “Are you doing anything tonight? Let’s go out to dinner.”

SEVEN

N
o. Way.

Did six-feet-of-gorgeous just ask her out? She must be hearing things. Was he asking out someone else?

No, he was looking right at her. Aside from the fact there were only the two of them in the room, guys generally didn’t make direct eye contact with one girl while asking out another.

When the shock wave receded, her heart started to pound. Six-feet-of-gorgeous had asked her out! He hadn’t even asked that Hong Kong intern to go out to dinner! (She knew because she’d rather slyly asked.)

Wait a minute, why had he asked her out? Miss Hong Kong was at least thirty pounds lighter and five years younger. Plus, Spenser was always talking with women in the hallways.

“Uh . . . you mean on a date?”

Spenser’s smile grew a little strained. “Sure. Why not?”

Oh no, had Trish been flirting with him? She’d been trying so hard the past few days to
not look
. It had taken a while for her to get used to the new Trish — the non-animated, proper, and rather boring good girl version. Maybe she’d unconsciously been spewing pheromones, hence this surreal moment.

Rats! Six-feet-of-gorgeous had asked her out! She had been working so hard to keep rule number one, but then he had to go ahead and drop this bomb in her lap. This was too much temptation for a girl to bear.

Because she had to say no.

“You’re serious?” She chewed her inner lip. Was she crazy? What was she doing? She couldn’t refuse the very man she’d been ga-ga over for the past two weeks!

“Yeah, I’m serious.” His brow wrinkled and his tone buzzed with annoyance. “Why? What’s wrong?”

“I’m flattered, but . . .”

“But . . . ?” Spenser’s mouth tightened.

Trish stood. She hated needing to look up at him so far. “Well, no offense but . . . you’re not Christian.”

Okay, that hadn’t come out sounding very good. Had she really said that?

He grew very still. Very, very still. He didn’t even blink. Trish couldn’t quite decipher his expression, and that scared her a bit.

“I, uh . . . I want to date only Christian guys. You see, God is my top priority, and I want to date someone with the same priority.” Trish gnawed the inside of her cheek, her eyes darting everywhere but at him, while she reached up to fiddle with all three of the earrings on her right side. “It’s like a San Francisco 49ers fan dating an Oakland Raiders fan. Or a Giants fan dating an A’s fan. Well actually, God’s more of a priority for me than a football or baseball team, but you get the picture, right?” She lifted pleading eyes to him.

Was she crazy? The past two weeks had been horrible. A zillion times a day, she had to drag her eyes away from his dimpled smile and the adorable way his hair waved down over his forehead. It was soooo hard to ignore his muscular grace when he sat on the edge of her desk to discuss something.

“Ahem. Yeah, sure.” His face seemed rather neutral. Was that good or bad? “So if a Christian guy asks you out?”

“Well, um . . . I’m trying to commit myself whole-heartedly to God.”

“And that means?”

“I want to become a better person and leave it to God to give me the right man, because on my own, boys make me do all kinds of crazy thi — Um, anyway, I came up with three rules.”

“Three rules?” His eyebrows hit his waving hair.

“If I can follow them, eventually God can change my heart so I’ll have undivided devotion to Him.”

“So what are your three rules?” His mouth worked in and out. Almost as if he were trying not to laugh.

Trish crossed her arms and glared at him. “You’re making fun of me.”

He opened his eyes wide and held up his hands. “No, I promise I’m not.”

She didn’t trust that glint in his eye. “Okay, rule number one — no looking at guys or encouraging them. No drooling, no roving eye, no scoping them out as boyfriend material.”

“Hmm.” He looked like a clinical psychologist. Or rather, what she imagined a clinical psychologist would look like when confronted with, say, a patient who claimed that aliens had taken over her brain.

“What do you mean, ‘Hmm’?”

He shrugged. “Nothing. What’s rule number two?”

“Tell others about Christ. Be bold and on fire to spread the Word.” Oops, maybe she shouldn’t have said that with such relish in front of a non-believer, to whom she was supposed to be witnessing at some point.

“Ah.” More head nodding. “Number three?”

“Persevere and rely on God in hardship. God will give me strength through trials, and I need to persist and trust Him no matter what happens.”

“Oh.”

Was she being a good witness for Christ in telling him her three rules, or did it make her seem like an idiot? “You think I’m just spouting off. I’m serious.”

“I believe you.”

She shot him a look that should have squished him like a grape under a car tire. “No, you don’t. You’re making fun of me.”

“I wasn’t making fun.”

“You were trying to swallow your chortles of laughter.”

“Chortles of laughter?” He waggled his eyebrows as he said it. “You’re reading too many romance novels.”

“Oh yeah? How would you know unless you read them too?”

“I read serious stuff. Like
Star
magazine.” He gave his little-boy grin.

That stopped her mid-breath. She coughed. “You read
Star
?”

“I got a subscription free.”

“Oooh, can I borrow it when you’re done?” Goodie. She couldn’t get herself to actually pay money for it, but she couldn’t help reading it. It was more entertaining than reality TV.

“Is it in your rules?”

She wanted to smack that sarcastic smirk off his face. “My rules will work.”

Spenser snorted. “You won’t last a week.”

“What are you talking about? They’re good, biblical rules.”

“They’re legalistic. Rules don’t change people.”

“I told you, God will change my heart.”

“You’re being optimistic and idealistic. Think about it. No looking? Resisting basic animal attraction? Everybody’s programmed with it.”

Her words sliced out clear and slow. “Maybe
some people
think with their lower regions, but not everyone acts on their lust.”
Like you did, chickie-babe?
She tried to slam a lid on the insidious voice, but it echoed through her empty places inside.

He snorted. “Not looking is like trying not to read. And the telling everyone about Christ? Most people are plain scared to even talk about God.”

“I’m not.” She really wasn’t.

He loosed a superior smile. “Sure.”

“I’m not — ”

“And then,
persevere
? Everyone’s inherently lazy.”

“I told you, God will help me — ”

“If rules could have made the Israelites faithful, they wouldn’t have had to wander in the desert for forty years instead of entering the Promised Land.”

“But my rules are good.” She needed those rules to remind her, because otherwise she wouldn’t think about God at all in the course of a day. “Wait a minute. How do you know about the Israelites?”

For a second he froze, as if thinking about his answer. “You assumed a lot, considering you don’t know me very well.”

“Assumed what?”

“That I’m not Christian.”

“What do you — ” It dawned on her like the undead-destroying morning sun in a vampire movie. “You’re Christian?”

His face was neutral again, as it had been when she first turned him down. Now she knew why. She had totally blown it. “How can you be Christian?” It flew out of her mouth before her brain had a chance to censor it.

He looked like he’d swallowed a frog. “What do you mean?”

Was he trying to deny it? “You’re always flirting with girls. Everywhere. In the hallway, in the parking lot, on the phone. Even on email, I’ll bet.”

A glowing red the same shade as New Year’s firecrackers started sparking upward from his neck. “I do not flirt.”

“Oh, sorry. You don’t flirt — you smile excessively when you talk.”

“How is my
friendliness
so bad?”

“Who are you trying to kid? You love women.” Just like her father, who always got along with everyone — especially the women who came into Grandma’s bank. She’d always thought he just liked working with new people, but look how faithful he was. “You’re either dating
all
of them or you’re leading them on.”

Okay, that sounded completely irrational even to her heated brain, but she didn’t care anymore. She was tired of men like her dad, like Spenser, who
got along
with lots of women. She wanted to date some socially inept geek who’d be too shy to even finish a sentence in another woman’s presence. She didn’t want to deal with someone she couldn’t trust completely.

Spenser’s face turned pinker than her aunty’s neon-red
char siu
pork. “I am
not
leading them on.”

“Faithful men don’t flit from woman to woman. They stay with one wife their entire lives and don’t have affairs with their wife’s old college roommate and then pretend nothing happened and cause stress and headache for their children!” Oops, that sounded distinctly screech-like.

Spenser looked at her like she was certifiable. “What?”

“I would never trust a boy like you. I’d be the flavor of the week.”

He froze except for a faint tremor that somehow seemed of earthquake magnitude. His color paled, and his jaw muscles started ticking.

Okay, that might not have been the smartest thing for Trish to say.

Spenser turned away from her slowly, as if every inch of movement took extreme effort. Uh, oh. Trish watched him, frozen to the floor, gnawing on the inside of her lip and tasting blood. She had to say something. But not just anything or he’d go nuclear. What could she say? There had to be something.

She didn’t have the right to accuse him, considering her own male-laden past (although hers was
past
, while his was
present
, or at least as present as last week). She ought to say something, or she’d be just hypocritical and wrong. But what? Her brain wasn’t working.