Page 27 of Ruining His Smirk

Or designer clothes.

Or rich sugar daddies.

Good. Because I wanted nothing to do with men like him.

Our worlds were never meant to intersect.

7

Garrett

The days had blurred into an endless cycle of working, eating, and working. Rinse and repeat. When I got into a project, I usually became lost to the world. That wasn’t new. It was just the first time I was doing it on a ship, surrounded by strangers.

I leaned back from the conference table and rubbed my eyes. Across from me, Braddock sat exactly where he’d been all day. He’d traded yesterday’s sweater for another one. This one was… salmon? Maybe. Hell if I knew what color a salmon actually was. Pinkish. Orange-ish. Whatever the proper name for it was, it somehow suited him just as well as the blue one had. People had colors that looked better on them than others. Braddock apparently wore whatever he pleased and looked unfairly good in all of them.

I flinched at my own thought. Where did that come from?

I glanced at the wall of giant displays that had so fascinated Dexter. Numbers streamed continuously, accompanied by softchimes and beeps, all day and night. I had learned that the ship fed all data collected by various external sensors to the data suite but also throughout the ship. A scientist could be anywhere on the ship and still pull up the same information. It was a damned efficient setup.

The data suite had become my favorite room aboard the ship. It didn’t feel much like a science room at all. A row of large circular portholes ran the length of one wall, pouring Antarctic daylight across the room. People came and went throughout the day. Dexter spent at least part of the day holed up in a corner with the latest exciting experiment he had been given access to. My brother was having the time of his life.

Even now, there were clusters of people in the data suite, discussing and working together in low voices. I found it strangely soothing even though it was nothing like my workshop.

I found myself looking up again. Every now and then Braddock glanced up to think through something before looking back at the screen, and every time he did, those eyes caught the ambient soft light of the room.

What the hell was I doing? I’d never spent this much time thinking about another man’s eye color in my life. Or anybody’s eye color.

A strand of dark hair had escaped from where he’d tied it back and fallen across his forehead. Long eyelashes cast soft shadows across the tops of his cheekbones beneath the recessed lighting.

Why the fuck was he such a beautiful man?

Get a grip.

I jerked my attention back to my blueprints. I’d come all the way out here to build a recovery platform, not sit around admiring the face of the man who’d cheated me. And then insulted me. I went back to tapping my calculations with twofingers on the table surface. The faster I finished my job here, the faster I could be out of here. I’d left my pen back in my cabin, and I didn’t want to go back just for that. So I used my fingers to draw invisible numbers on the conference tabletop, trying to hold each one in my head.

Something brushed against the back of my hand. I startled. When I looked up, Braddock was standing beside me. I stared at him, almost afraid he had somehow heard all the shit that was going on inside my brain. The man in question gestured down. I followed his gaze to see that he was holding a pen out in my direction. It was golden and glinted under the lighting. Like the studs in his ears.

Huh.

I took the pen.

Without a word, he crossed back to his chair, sat down, and resumed typing on his laptop. The soft clicking of the keyboard felt loud in my ears. I watched him for another moment before looking back down at the pen. Well, that certainly beat tracing calculations with my fingertip across the conference table. Time to get to work.

I clicked the pen. Nothing. I tried to uncap the fancy-looking thing, but it had no damn cap. What the hell. I really wasn’t in the mood to figure out how a damn pen in this damn ship worked. I brought the pen close to my face. The lettering on the side was just the name of the ship. There were no instructions. Of course, there weren’t. It was a damn pen.

The sound of a cough made me look up. The fucker was trying to cover up a laugh. I should have just killed him when I had the chance. He held up a similar-looking pen in his hand and gave it a shake. Lo and behold, the tip appeared.

I copied his movement, and yep, this fucking pen apparently needed a shake. I stared at the nib with a scowl. It was gold too. Why? Who thought pens needed an overhaul?

“Do we have to shit gold on your fancy ship too?” I bit out.

He burst into laughter. He threw his head back and his shoulders shook. His face was transformed and …fuck my life, why did even his laugh have to be so…so… pretty?

When I laughed, Dexter said I sounded like a bull.

He wiped his eyes and said, “As long as you do shit regularly.”

I fought with everything I had not to return the smile. Great, now I wanted to banter with him? Had I no standards left at all?