It was his turn to nod as a smile slowly formed on his face.
“He must have been pretty good then,” he said, trying to look lascivious, and overdoing it just a bit. “I know he’s no me, but still . . .” He shrugged and attacked the donut again.
No, he wasn’t, she agreed, and then immediately scolded herself. It was all too easy to imagine allowing herself to be seduced by this attractive man-child. From what she had both seen and heard, a lot of women had that same problem, but without her rigid self-control to resist giving into it. What she had told . . . Max the night before had been true. She made it a point never to sleep with the boss. At least, not while he still was one in her immediate organization.
“He was . . . no one,” she finally managed to say, immediately regretting how that sounded.
Thad grinned.
“You didn’t even get his name?” He nodded approvingly. “You have learned well, my apprentice.”
She wanted to scowl at him, but his non-mocking laughter was infectious and she found herself trying not to grin instead.
“Max,” she said, still fighting back a smile. “His name was Max.”
“Sure it was,” Thad agreed.
He stared at her for a moment. His expression gave her no idea what he might be thinking. His eyes, for a change, seemed focused somewhere other than on some particularly female portion of her anatomy. After a moment, he rose, taking a last thoughtful bite of the donut.
“A package is supposed to be delivered this morning,” he announced, suddenly all business. “Let me or Scott know when it gets here, okay?”
“Of course,” she nodded, studying his face for a moment. She knew better than to ask what it might be; they would tell her if she needed to know.
Thad then gave her a coy wink and headed back into the short corridor that led to the lab.
Turning back to her computer, Allison then considered that she really did not know anything about “Max”. She tried to remember if he had given her a business card, but if he had—and she had actually managed to hang onto it—it was probably back in her apartment. Even the card would not be proof of anything. It would contain his company’s name and the name he conducted his business under. There was no reason to believe that it was any more his real name than that belonging to a movie star might be.
As tempted as she was to begin a search on him right then, she forced herself to turn her attention to the task of sorting through the queue of what was now 102 messages. The mystery of who “Max” really was would have to wait a bit.
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