Camry glared at him, even though his eyes were closed. But then she also let out a yawn. She started to shove the tray toward him to make room for herself, only to suddenly remember his bruised ribs. She set the tray on the floor beside the bed, slid down under the blankets, and turned her back to him.

Maybe instead of ion propulsion, she should work on the science of men having babies, so Mother Nature could screw with their hormones for a change.

Chapter Seven

Luke sat sprawled on the couch four days later, watching the infomercial explaining how mineralbased makeup would make his skin feel like he wasn’t wearing anything, so bored out of his skull he was damn close to tears.

How in hell did Camry do this five days a week, week after week?

Granted, the dogs were entertaining—for all of ten minutes—but how did she just hang around this house all day, doing virtually nothing? How does anyone with even half a brain not justify the air they breathe by at least trying to be productive?

When she’d mentioned her e-mail argument that first morning, Luke had felt guilty that he might have been responsible for Camry’s walking away from her work. But as he’d gotten to know her over the last four days, he’d come to realize that her little midlife crisis had more to do with her mother—and her concept of family in general—than it had to do with him or her work.

He now believed that Camry was afraid of being just like her mother instead of wanting to emulate her, afraid that falling in love with a man and having babies would addle her brain, and afraid of losing her passion for the sciences—which she readily admitted she’d acquired in the womb—just like she believed her mother had.

And Luke was pretty sure that being afraid of anything was as mind-boggling to Camry MacKeage as doing nothing all day was to him.

That’s why he’d spent the last four days trying to figure out how he might jump-start Camry—not only back into her work, but also back to her family. Admitting he was Lucian Renoir certainly might do the trick, but he wasn’t convinced it wouldn’t just as easily push her in the opposite direction.

Unless he also confessed that he’d destroyed her mother’s satellite. Because if that didn’t make her want to kill him in his sleep, maybe she’d at least try to kill him in the scientific arena.

Not that it mattered, considering he’d committed professional suicide the moment he’d started eavesdropping on Podly.

Luke drove his hand into the cellophane bag Fiona had given him before she’d gone to help Camry take a shower, and pulled out a fistful of corn chips. Four heads lifted and eight ears perked up. Four drooling tongues appeared, and eight hopeful brown eyes locked on his hand moving toward his mouth.

Luke suddenly lifted his hand over his head, then darted it to the side, then quickly shot it over to his other side—all the while watching the canine eating machines track his movements with the intensity of a guided missile locked on its target.

“You are such uncomplicated beasts,” he muttered, tossing the chips to the floor.

While they were occupied chomping down the junk food and inhaling stray crumbs up their noses, Luke quietly reached into the bag again and quickly filled his own mouth as he absently watched the magical transformation as a woman’s face went from blotchy red to visibly flawless.

Camry MacKeage certainly didn’t need this product; she hadn’t been wearing any makeup that first morning he’d awakened beside her, and her skin had looked damned flawless to him—except for the bruise on her left cheek and around her eye, which was only now starting to fade.

She’d felt pretty damn good in his arms, too, when she had recklessly kissed him right there in the bathroom, and he had just as recklessly kissed her back.

When he’d decided to come to America, Luke had known Camry was somewhere around five feet three, but had hoped her weight had blossomed to four hundred pounds. And it wouldn’t have hurt, either, if she’d sprouted horns soon after the photo had been taken that he’d found of her on the Internet. Considering his track record with women, he’d have preferred that Dr. MacKeage be anything but gorgeous, because he hadn’t wanted even a hint of sexual tension to creep into their work.

So much for that pipe dream. Hell, if they both hadn’t been so beaten up that first morning, he wouldn’t be bored to tears right now because he would have spent the last four days making love to her.

Not that he hadn’t tried.

It had become somewhat of a game between them—or maybe challenge was a better word—where they flirted right up to the edge of fullblown passion, then withdrew into what Luke could only describe as salacious hell. He was so sexually frustrated, and so damned in lust with Camry MacKeage, that the next time she kissed him he wasn’t going to care if the dogs watched, he intended to take her right here on the couch.

Hell, he’d nearly nailed her this morning, when he’d awakened to find her in his bed. Looking him straight in the face with the same piercing green eyes as her father, she’d had the nerve to say she’d heard him whimpering in his sleep but had fallen asleep before she could return to her bed.

Fiona, apparently not the least bit impressionable, had breezed in, popped a pill in each of their mouths, and told them she was running out to buy groceries. Beginning to suspect the romantically inclined teenager was keeping them drugged so they would keep playing musical beds, Luke had started hiding his pill in his cheek, then slipping it behind the headboard the moment the girl turned her back.

If Camry had a mouse problem, they were certainly happy rodents now.

In an attempt to distract himself from his raging lust, Luke had tried focusing on Fiona instead, specifically on finding out her last name so he could locate her parents. But apparently teens today were much sharper than he had been, because when he had run away from home, he hadn’t made it ten miles before his stepfather had found him. André had dragged Luke home, handed him a crosscut saw and ax, and made him cut, chop, and stack eight cords of firewood by hand while he contemplated the hell he had put his mother through.

Luke hadn’t run away from home again until age twenty-four.

He heard the bedroom door open and knew that Camry—likely armored in lilac-scented soap for another one of their salacious battles—was heading over to sit down beside him while Fiona took the dogs out for their morning walk. The winter solstice was only a week away, and Luke figured he had only one or two days left to talk Camry into going home before she claimed he was fully recovered and kicked him out on his sexually frustrated ass.

He sighed, scooting over to make room for her on the couch as he patted his pocket to make sure he’d remembered the condoms. It was time, he’d decided this morning while shaving, to launch a full frontal attack: first on Camry’s body—because he really, painfully wanted her—and then on her conscience.

“I’m heading out to walk the mutts,” Fiona said as she put on her jacket. “Is there anything either of you need before I go?”

“A beer would be nice,” Luke said, not caring if it was only ten in the morning, because he was so damned bored. Dave had brought him a six-pack, but Fiona had hidden it, claiming he couldn’t mix beer with the drugs she thought he was still taking.

“If you don’t take your afternoon pill, you can have one tonight with supper,” she promised, snapping leashes on the four tail-wagging dogs and heading outside.