Page 42 of Love and Gravity
Grace sighed and looked up at him. “They grow up so fast, you know?” She looked out at the scene in front of them. It was chaotic at best. The bonfire was less a fire and more a pile of smoldering wood everyone was now working to put to rights. He saw others packing up the party supplies and he nodded at the crowd.
“Party over then?” he guessed.
“No coming back from an explosion. Plus, once I lose my cool the night is done. I’m ready for bed and these little monsters are too.”
They stood together watching the teams work for another minute before Grace looked his way with a sly smile. “Listen, we’re going to need to chip in here soon if we want to get out of here, but before then how about we ditch for a minute?”
Anton felt his heart speed up. “Ditch?” he asked. He would go anywhere this woman wanted him to, anywhere, any time.
She nodded and reached over, grabbed his hand and pulled him with her back towards the path. “We got interrupted, and I have months worth of kisses to get out of you before I’m going to be close to satisfied.”
“Who am I to deny you.”
“For not being in a relationship before you sure do catch on fast, Kovalev.”
He smiled, but said nothing and followed her down the path. He’d give Grace whatever she wanted. All she had to do was ask.
* * *
“I swear by Odin, these antics are going to drive me to an early grave.” Grace stared out at the lab from where she sat beside Lou. The pair drank their morning coffee while the labs came to life around them, the scientists nursing the coffees Grace had distributed in relative silence—mostly because she was certain they were trying to decipher if they were one of the unlucky ones who had been served decaf.
“There’s no rhyme or reason to it. Half are leaded and the other half unleaded. Enjoy,” Grace had announced that morning when she deposited the three stacks of coffee onto the table at the center of the room. Normally, she made sure to get a cup into each and every science minion’s hot little hand, but today?
No. Not happening. Not after their stunt to bring Lab Wars back. It was self-serve, and with the added threat of decaf.
“You’re cruel,” Elisha sighed, walking by with a cup in her hand. She sipped with a grimace. “Don’t think I don’t know that you just gave us all decaf.”
“Did I?” Grace tapped her chin before she drank from her own cup. “I mean, it tastes normal to me. What do you think, Lou?”
“Completely normal,” Lou chimed in, raising her cup in solidarity.
Elisha rolled her eyes. “That’s just because she’s the boss and you would never under-caffeinate her.”
“I have to,” Grace replied, already paging through a stack of paperwork that needed her attention. “She fakes her naps, and you know how she gets when she hasn’t slept. It’s either coffee or we all die.”
Elisha pouted but said nothing more and turned on her heel, stalking back to her workstation where several other scientists sat and stared at their coffees with frowns.
Lou chuckled and leaned back in her chair. “Be careful or the natives might revolt.”
“I’d like to see them try,” Grace murmured, her pen moving over the forms.
“How did things go with you and Anton?”
Grace’s pen froze. “What do you mean?”
“You two disappeared together.” Lou drummed her fingers on the table as she continued. “For a while. And if I remember correctly it was twice, not once last night that you were missing. Together.”
“Were we?” Grace resumed signing the papers before she took her time arranging the stack on her desk. “Must have both had calls to take or something, you know how it goes.” When Lou didn’t respond she sighed and looked up at her friend to see the smaller woman wiggling her eyebrows at her. Eyebrow wiggling was Lou’s go-to response when anything remotely sexual occured. Grace was certain she’d been doing it nonstop while she waited for Grace to look at her.
“That a new face workout regimen to stay limber?”
Lou gasped but kept wiggling her eyebrows. “You know what this is. This is my ‘you’re being racy and semi-indecent with Anton’ face.”
“I most certainly am not,” Grace argued, though she wasn’t sure why she denied it. She had proposed for him to date her, after all—a bona fide relationship with all the trimmings—so it was a little too late to deny it.
“Are too.” Lou increased her eyebrow wiggling to maximum capacity. “And after I explicitly told that idiot no seduction. Twice in one night!”
“Your face is going to get stuck like that,” Grace pointed out.