Page 3 of Forbidden Professor

Guess the answer is yes.

3

Easton

The sun was pouring in as I unlocked my computer on my desk. Yesterday I got so caught up in going over the reports, I forgot to check my email. This was typical of me. Management knew that I checked my emails one to two times a week, because most were junk emails. If they needed me to know something important, many would stop by and say something.

This clinical trial had been taking up all of my time. Hell, now it was affecting my sleep. Instead of getting six hours of sleep, I was lucky to get four now. I knew this would be stressful, but maybe I needed to take a breather.

I pull up my email and delete all the junk before my eyes landed on one from Paul.

Good morning,

It has come time in the year where we need to focus our resources and we have reached out to an advisor to determine where they should be housed. They will be in today to take a preliminary look around the building and then you will need to email your reports by end of day tomorrow at the latest. Please provide them with any information they ask for without hesitation.

All project leaders are BCC’d on this email.

Thank you,

Paul Goodman

President of Largen Co.

Fuck! The donation dinner didn’t go as well as they hoped apparently, especially if they were needing to cut back on resources. This rubbed me the wrong way because everything was finally coming together, the results, and now someone could come in and destroy all the progress. Years of hard work to get here and it could be wiped out in days. I rested my palms on my desk and closed my eyes, trying to calm myself before I started to spiral. This project was something I had been working on and up to for years. My whole career depended on this clinical trial succeeding. If resources were taken away, they might not give me the chance to pick it back up next year.

Everything was flashing before my eyes now. We couldn’t push this off. Too many people were diagnosed with Parkinson’s every year, and stopping clinical trials now would mean even if everything checked out perfectly, it wouldn’t be out to market for at least three years. So everyday needed to go smoothly, and this was a big ass wrench thrown into my plans.

Hopefully whoever the consultation was with would be able to see how important the project was and take the results into consideration for how little time I’ve had with clinical trials going. Patients were responding and if we continued, there could be a possible cure or at least a medication to help slow down symptoms. Parkinson’s effects hundreds of thousands of people every year. This project was personal to me and I didn’t know how it would effect my mental health knowing all the hard work I had put it into it just got pushed to the side.

Damnit. Okay, I needed the new results on my desk now. If I had to write up a full detailed report, I needed more results to weigh the judgement. Surely, anyone could see the progress made on this project in such a short time. There’s no way it’ll be mine that was chosen. I must stay positive. Right now, it was a requirement or the next few days would eat me alive.

I locked my computer and headed for the lab. Maybe Carrie was there and could rush the results from yesterday’s trials. Please!

“Carrie…” I stopped in my tracks. Whoever this woman was, she wasn’t her. “Excuse me, this is a restricted area. You aren’t allowed in here.” Her back was to me. “Ma’am?”

“I apologize,” she said, twirling around holding her badge up.

Wait? No fucking way. Why was Isla in my lab? What the hell was she doing at Largen Co.?

Her eyes grew wide. “What are you doing here?”

“I work here. This is my lab.”

So many things swirled through my head. Our last interaction. Our last kiss. Fuck! Of course the universe sent her here. “Are you handling the cutbacks?”

She nodded.

This was a fucking nightmare. The woman hadn’t ever left my mind, even after all these years, and she ended up coming here to possibly take away my life’s work. I’m not laughing, universe. This is fucked up.

4

Isla

The universe obviously had a sense of humor. Out of all the jobs I took, it had to put me where he worked. Our past wasn’t exactly clean cut. Now, I was here, standing in his lab, trying to figure out how the hell this was going to work. He didn’t seem that happy to see me, which hurt my heart a little.

“I was brought on to determine where resources should remain. Honestly, I had no idea you worked here.” His eyes ran down my body. I shivered. His shoulders tensed and he ran his fingers through his hair. He wasn’t much of a talker, was he?

“What are you doing in Oregon? I thought you were moving out of state once you graduated?”

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