Page 38 of Ruining His Smirk

I was so damn proud of her. My girl had completed the migration back to the Southern Ocean with a calf beside her, a journey fraught with predators, not to mention the dangers of such a months-long swim.

But she was here now. Her first documented calf.

I had followed Lady for years, watched her migrations appear and disappear across maps, learned the shape of her fluke well enough that my sketchbooks were littered with drawings of it.She was the protagonist of my illustrated children’s book series and had quite a following among elementary school children.

Stretching my back, I reached for my cuppa, only to realize it had grown cold again. Time for some fresh tea. After saving the image from the microscope, I removed the slide and dropped it into the rigid biohazard container beside me.

The analytical lab was where I had holed up over the past two days. Compared to the data suite, I found it less appealing, and yet I had avoided the data suite like the plague since we had returned from the Zodiac outing.

On my way to the tea station, I passed the centrifuge machine, silent for the moment. There was no one else using the analytical lab, so I had privacy to mope to my heart’s content. Scientists aboard a research vessel were permitted a certain degree of eccentricity where time was concerned. No one questioned a person emerging from a laboratory at half past three in the morning. Obsession was not considered a character flaw aboard the ship. It was practically an employment requirement. That was working in my favor now.

I had gone back to my cabin only for sleep, although sleep was perhaps an ambitious word for what I had managed there. Most of it had been spent fucking myself with the largest dildo I owned. The one that matched his girth.

Apart from that, I had showered. Changed clothes. When hunger became impossible to ignore, I slipped into the galley between normal meal hours and assembled whatever could be eaten quickly, standing at the counter rather than carrying a tray into the mess.

All of this elaborate avoidance was not in service of science, though. It wasn’t why I was spending my days here instead of in the much more comfortable data suite. The reason was… Landry would be there.

I sighed like a theatrical belle. At the tea station, I made a new cuppa while I went over the moment in the Zodiac for the millionth time.

I had kissed him.

And Landry had kissed me back.

Then he had kissed me.

I had kissed him back, too.

Obviously, after this inexplicable sequence of events, it was entirely reasonable to avoid all human contact for the rest of my days. Especially Landry.

I did not know what I would say if I saw him.

I did not know what he would say.

Worse, I did not know what I wanted him to say.

The door to the lab opened, and a head full of short dark hair peeked in.

“I’m not here. Go away,” I groaned loudly.

Keith did not go away. Instead, he opened the door fully and inserted himself into my precious sanctuary. My dark circles and artfully tousled greasy hair had not fooled Keith. He had figured out very quickly that Lady was not the reason I was lurking like a ghost in the ship’s labs at night.

He closed the door behind him, leaned against it with his arms crossed over his chest, and raised an eyebrow. The quintessential pose of a friend about to grill you.

“What?” I asked, scowling at him.

“Won’t you offer me some coffee?”

“It’s two in the morning.”

“Hmm.”

I made a point of sipping my tea with a loud slurp. Mum would have fainted at such uncouth behavior.

Keith didn’t react. Sadly, he was not only American, but as a former soldier, I doubted I could do anything disgusting enough to repulse him.

He remained where he was, studying me with the patience of a man trained to wait for his enemy for hours.

“What?” I repeated.