Page 14 of Making Over Maris

“Think of it as research.”

“Research?” Research, he could handle. He loved research.

“Yeah. Research into the psyche of women.”

“Okay.” Because he couldn’t bear the intensity of her expression—when he could look at her but never touch—he turned his attention to the other books, pawing through the seemingly bottomless bag. It held books on a variety of topics. Body language. Nonverbal cues. Emotional intelligence. The list went on and on. “This is…a lot of books.”

“You have a couple weeks. I want you to study them. Study them all. And you’d better do a good job. There will be a quiz.” She frowned. “Do you understand?”

His throat worked; it was clogged with something that tasted like lust. So clogged he was barely able to form a response. “Yes…” He didn’t say the other word, the word he was longing to say. But it hovered there on the tip of his tongue.

He set his teeth and clenched his muscles to hold it back.

If he said that word it would ruin everything.

And probably piss her off.

She raked him with a scorching scrutiny. “When I get back, I expect to see results. Don’t disappoint me.” And then she stood and left the room.

Jack watched her walk away, trying to ignore the ball in his gut. He wasn’t sure if it was sheer panic at the assignments she’d handed him or the sharp edge of arousal caused by her bossy attitude. Or the pain of watching her walk away.

Whoo, boy. What had he gotten himself into? The next few weeks were going to be pure hell.

And damn it all. She wasn’t even going to be here to watch.

Jack followed her diet plan diligently for two weeks, making it a game to seek and destroy the carbs and fats in his pantry. The ritual sacrifice of his snack cakes was even kind of fun—after he discovered they were extraordinarily flammable. The funeral pyre he built in his fireplace burned for hours.

He filled his fridge with the vegetables and fruits on her list—especially those he discovered he actually liked.

The third week he struggled because word came from Vermont that she was staying another two weeks. He let himself pout—for about five minutes—and then redoubled his efforts.

Whenever he wasn’t at work, he was at the gym. And when that became annoying, he went out and bought exercise equipment and weights, cleared out a space in his basement and created a gym of his own at home.

And then he began taking projects home. So he could exercise when he was stumped, or when he wasn’t. Or when he needed to think. He replaced the comfy leather chair at his desk with a balance ball so he could work on his core ten-to-twelve hours a day.

He was slowly but surely getting used to that hideous low-carb diet, even coming to enjoy some of his meals. Food started tasting…better. He wasn’t sure why.

The interns teased him at first when they saw him eating salads at lunchtime and popping edamame between meals. He ignored them and eventually they laid off.

No one in the office noticed the difference but Jack didn’t let that bum him out. He just worked harder. By the time a month and a half had passed, he’d dropped twenty pounds and could actually see his ribs.

But there was more to it than that. He felt better. Sexier. More attractive.

People on the street—women on the street—actually caught his gaze, held it.

Or maybe it was him. Maybe he was the one not looking away.

He’d read her stupid books too—several times—especially the romances, and then went out and bought some more. To his surprise he found he liked the novels. He liked the sex scenes the best but studied the other parts with equal fervor. He paid special attention to the heroes, highlighting passages and making notes in the margins until his eyes were bleary. And then he finally gave up on notes in the margins and created a spreadsheet to track the data. Then wrote an analytic program to quantify the vectors.

It was all very scientific.

He even casually interviewed his female coworkers, especially Kat and Shannon. Because they were women.

By the time Sara returned, he felt as though he’d made progress. Which was probably why, when she ran into him in the hallway that Friday morning and she studied him…and snorted, he was annoyed.

Hell.

After all that work?