Beginner's Luck. Kate Clayborn

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СКАЧАТЬ the devil’s bargain this will turn out to be, when Beaumont uses my research to make some product that is horrible for the environment, or that you put on some weapon that you sell to the government at huge cost? Tell me about all the fine print that says you can terminate my contract if I’m not producing patentable material in the next two years? Listen, no offense to you, Ben, but there’s a reason I’ve avoided private funding in the work I do. There’s a reason I work here.”

      “Two of your colleagues here are backed with corporate funding.” Don’t I know it. Dr. Harroway and Dr. Wagner both have massive corporate support, and there’s no kind of fifty-plus years of dirt on any of their equipment. If my lottery money would have made any kind of dent in what we’d need to match corporate funding, I would’ve donated it all. “And the College of Engineering is exploring avenues for long-term partnerships with industry.”

      I can feel my eyes narrow at him. This kind of guy was the reason academic research was becoming—was already—a patsy for big money. “Let me ask you something about that Metallurgy International article,” I say, rising to my full—not very full, frankly—height. “What did you think of the technique I used to prepare samples for heat treatment in step three of my experiments?”

      It’s fleeting, but I catch it, I think: a flash of something near surprise in his eyes, but he so quickly arranges his features into a sly, I’m-not-ashamed-that-you-caught-me devilishness that I suspect Ben Tucker never really lets himself get taken off guard. To this, I shrug my shoulders casually. “I don’t really blame you, actually. I didn’t write it with a corporate audience—with someone like you—in mind. But this is why I’m not interested in working for your company. I enjoy working with people who really know what it is that I do, and more importantly, with people who know what I really want to do with it.”

      He lowers his eyes for a moment, looking down to where the cabinet handle rests on the floor. Damn, he has long eyelashes, a dark contrast to his light hair, which is actually unacceptable for me to be noticing at this time.

      He looks back up and smiles at me. “I like you,” he says, and I stiffen in surprise and a fair bit of anger.

      Because this is also unacceptable. What does he think, that I’ll roll right over and show him my belly, in gratitude for a little male attention? I’ve known guys like this. I’d taken notes all through general chemistry for a guy like this in my first year of college, stupidly not realizing that for him, the notes were all that I was good for.

      “Oh, is this the part where you skate right over the fact that you didn’t actually read my paper, and instead tell me I’ve got ‘spunk,’ that I’m exactly what Beaumont needs?”

      “No. That’s me telling you. Independent of Beaumont.” He says this firmly, with more conviction than he’s said anything else so far.

      “Well. I know your type, and flattery isn’t going to work, either.”

      “My type?”

      I feel it, right here, that I’m losing a little control over the conversation, but I’m stuck with it, so I barrel on. “Oh, sure. You come in here, with your”—I pause here, to gesture vaguely in the direction of his body—“your suit. And your face, and…” I swallow the rest of it. I want him out of here. I’m afraid someone will come in, Dr. Singh, or any one of the faculty or graduate students who would probably wet their pants at meeting a Beaumont executive who seems to be handing out jobs. “Listen, it’s very kind of you to come all this way. But I did read those emails, so I know something about what you’re offering. I’m just really, really not interested. And I do, actually, have an appointment.”

      He takes a deep breath and nods. His skin is golden-brown, a light tan, but I think I see flags of color on his cheeks. This is his fault, coming in here sleek but unprepared, but suddenly I feel a little guilty for being so dismissive. Before I can say anything, though, he speaks again. “I understand. I’m…” he trails off, long enough to run a hand through his hair, before continuing, “…sorry to have wasted your time.”

      He steps forward a little, holding out his hand. I catch a little scent of something—pine, maybe. Whatever it is, it’s not what I’m expecting. With the suit he’s wearing, I’d expected some upmarket version of that heinous body spray I sometimes get a whiff of when one of the undergrads is trying to compensate for not-very-clean-laundry. Ben, though, he smells—clean. Natural.

      Male.

      I take his hand and shake it, forgetting the glove I still have on. He looks down and chuckles a little at the contact, and I try not to be ashamed of the little shiver that chases down my spine at the sound of that.

      “It was very nice to meet you, Ms. Averin,” he says, and then he turns and leaves the room, as quietly as he’d come in.

      For a minute, I stare after him, a little confused, thrown off. I’ve been recruited before, especially back when I was finishing up my thesis, but never quite that way, never by someone that looked like him. One thing about it was the same, though—that quick-shot feeling of fear that would go through me at the very idea of having to pick up and leave here, start all over again. I can’t do that anymore. I’ve had my fill of it.

      I strip off my gloves and shrug out of my lab coat, cast my eyes up at the clock. There’s no time for me to be distracted by Ben Tucker or by my disproportionate reaction to his offer. If there’s any day when I don’t need to feel threatened by an upheaval, it’s today.

      Today, I’ve got millionaire dreams to make come true.

      * * * *

      “It’s like a four,” Zoe says, peering out the back window to the small, overgrown yard, “on a scale of shithole to ten.”

      It’s Saturday morning, and I’ve been a homeowner now for less than a full twenty-four hours. I’d spent most of yesterday afternoon at the closing, signing a stack of documents that Satan obviously prepared, and then had made my way over, alone, to take it all in and drop off a few boxes—but also, I guess, to get prepared for this, the morning I was showing my two best friends my new place for the first time.

      When I’d first started looking for a place, Zoe and Greer had gone with me to dozens of open houses, had helped me scour real estate websites for prospects. They each had their own opinions about where I belonged—condo, Zoe had said, lobbying especially hard for her own posh downtown building, while Greer said she pictured me somewhere with a big yard, a place to spread out a little.

      Of course I valued their opinions. For the last few years, since the night we’d all literally, hilariously, run into each other outside of the entrance to my apartment—Greer walking home from the pet store with a plastic bag filled with water and a single goldfish, Zoe yelling into her phone outside of the yoga studio next door to Betty’s, and me, trying to wave a bat outside of the doorway with an old hairbrush—Greer and Zoe had been my confidantes, my cheerleaders, my companions. They were family. But buying this house was so important, so personal to me that I was afraid I’d lose my own voice somewhere in the shuffle, and more than that, I’d known almost since I first moved to Barden and drove through its most historic district that I wanted to live in this neighborhood, on this medium-sized city’s southern edge, someday. I think I was stalling, really, until I saw one of the Queen Anne style row houses come available, and when one did, I’d gone on my own to the first showing, fully intending to call them, to have them see it another time, once I’d checked it out.

      But the house was in rough shape—lots to be done, lots of people to be hired, lots of planning and patience required. I was afraid they’d talk me out of СКАЧАТЬ