Page 47 of Homebody
“Hello, Dean.” Red smiled wide. “Nice to see you again. You alone?”
“Yes.” He hesitated. Ask? Don’t ask? Screw it. He was going to ask. “You see Tessa around?”
Red’s auburn brows rose high. “Not recently, no. Are you looking for her?”
“I am,” he admitted.
Liam raised one hand. “I might know where she is. If she’s still there.”
Dean narrowed his eyes to glare at his friend. “You do?”
Liam smiled wide. “Yes. But first, I think I should probably introduce you to my girlfriend. Dean, this is Natalie. We’ve been together since…” Liam glanced at Natalie for help.
“Since I got electrocuted and Liam saved my life,” the pretty curly-haired brunette supplied. “A couple of years ago now.”
“It was terribly romantic,” the other brunette at the table added. “Hi, I’m Harper.”
Immensely relieved to know Liam was taken, Dean tipped his head in greeting to the women he’d been introduced to. “Hi.”
“And as for Tessa…” Liam continued. “I hired her this afternoon as my new assistant. She was so eager to get started. I left her at the lab working.”
“You left her in the lab on her first day with the…body?” Harper asked, eyes wide as she stared at first Liam and then Natalie.
“She’ll be okay. Gabe promised to be on his best behavior,” Natalie said.
“Gabe?” Dean asked, already hating the man, whoever he was.
“Gabe is one of my cadavers,” Liam explained. “And don’t blame me about Tessa being there alone. I told her I couldn’t stay, but she was so anxious to get started who am I to say no to her? The girl is brilliant. Have you read her credentials?”
Credentials?
Dean frowned until he figured out what Liam was talking about. Tessa’s side hustle. To get the job Tessa must have told Liam about all those research papers she’d written for the college kids who paid her. Bold move.
“Oh, yeah. The research paper she’s writing. Yeah, she is very smart.”
“So anyway, if she got involved and lost track of the time--” Liam began.
“Like you do when you’re working?” Natalie asked with a smirk and some audible attitude about what was obviously a touchy subject for the couple.
“Yes, like I do,” Liam said indulgently with a squeeze of Natalie’s hand. “She’s probably still at the lab. You know where it is. Go on over if you want. Knock on the door.”
“I think I will. Thanks.” Dean extended a hand toward Liam, feeling better now that he knew Liam was in a serious relationship. And feeling bad he’d acted like a suspicious ass to begin with.
Liam stood and grasped Dean’s hand, pulling him in during the handshake to say low, “Just tell Tessa you like her already, will you?”
Dean pulled back and met his friend’s gaze and saw the amusement there.
Liam was right. He should. And in a perfect world, he would. Unfortunately this situation was far from perfect.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Tessa didn’t know how long had passed by the time she looked up from the screen. It could have been five minutes or just as easily five hours. That was what happened when she got deep into work.
What she did know was that something had disturbed her now. She glanced around the lab, eyesight blurry from having stared solely, single-mindedly, at the screen in front of her.
Through the barred windows she saw the fading light outside. Then she realized what had disrupted her. It was the crunch of a vehicle’s tires on the gravel. The sound preceded the visual of a green car pulling up to park next to the building.
Dean.
