She took a deep breath, letting it out slowly. “All right, then. I’m sorry I invaded your space. It was just an idea. My last one, actually, but you sounded promising.” She looked around the cabin. “This has been one of the nicer places I’ve stayed.”
Rubin frowned. “You’re moving on just a little too fast.”
He was reading her body language and everything said she was getting ready to run. She couldn’t help it. Maybe she should have tried to hide her intentions better. She knew he’d tried to be very careful of every word he said, but it hadn’t mattered. She was intelligent and she knew what he meant. At least he hadn’t tried to lie to her. That wouldn’t have worked either.
“I’m not certain what you mean.” She tried to sound neutral, but knew it was impossible to keep her body language from screaming that she wanted out of there.
“We might not be able to undo everything Whitney did as far as enhancements go, but between the three of us, we should be able to figure out ways to ease the situation.”
She shook her head. “I can’t stay in one place too long. I picked up a tail a few months back, after that last convention where you gave a talk on the uses of managing lightning strikes.”
She pulled the edge of her sweater out of her mouth, suddenly aware of what she was doing. It was a bad habit and one she thought she’d overcome a long time ago. “I spent too much time at those conferences trying to learn everything I could. In doing so, I probably attracted too much notice. I was careful not to ask questions or call attention to myself, but …” She trailed off.
She’s ready to run, Diego. Everything in her is in a hurry to leave. I can feel her anxiety. I’m just as anxious for her to stay. If we’re really paired together, why isn’t she fighting to find reasons to stay? Would Whitney have paired only me? Not her? I heard that on occasion he will pair the woman with a man but not the man. Would he do the opposite?
Her looks alone would have garnered attention. Rubin found himself really studying her. There was something ethereal about her. Her skin. Her hair. Even her eyes. She almost glowed from the inside out. Her hair was just that little bit too blond. Her eyes weren’t just blue, they were cornflower blue with interesting silver irises now that he had the opportunity to look closer. Outer silver rings as well as inner silver. She would definitely draw attention, especially if she attended more than one conference. It wouldn’t matter if she stayed quiet or if she tried to stay in a corner somewhere, her energy was too strong, drawing others toward her like a magnet.
That was essentially what she was—a magnet for electrical charges. Human beings reacted to electric fields, even to sensing the fields, much like animals did. Living cells moved along electric fields when healing wounds. The human body had at least one sensor mechanism for detecting an electrical field and was certain to have many more.
I don’t know. She’s skittish, that’s for certain, but she’s too cool with the two of us as her enemies, Rubin. She has to be very dangerous to be so confident in herself.
“Stop looking at me like that,” Jonquille snapped, and dropped both feet to the floor. She wanted to run away and hide from that inspection. She’d spent her childhood under a microscope.
Rubin, tall and good-looking on the podium, delivering a speech that made the most sense of anything she’d heard, had given her hope. She’d actually, for the first time in her life, been attracted to a man. She put it down to what she considered his genius and giving her a real sense of hope. Being in the small room with him gave her claustrophobia. She hadn’t spent time with others in a very long time. She’d had fantasies about this man, and it was a rude awakening to have him look at her as if she were a science experiment—the way Whitney had.
“Stay still,” Rubin ordered in the same mild voice. “I’m figuring this out. The human body certainly produces electromagnetic fields. In organs. In cells. In varying degrees. Your body clearly produced those fields in much higher amounts, and then Whitney in his usual godlike manner boosted those amounts to an alarming rate. How your body keeps from overheating is another mystery altogether, but that is something else to figure out. Right now, at the very basic level, what we’re dealing with is an electromagnetic field. Do you always need a gathering storm to conduct lightning?”
His tone, that same dispassionate, calm tone coming out of this handsome man, upset her beyond comprehension. He had thick dark hair that could use a cut, spilling onto his forehead, accenting his very dark eyes. His shoulders were wide, his body toward the lean side, but all muscle. She’d been attracted to him from the first moment she’d laid eyes on him at the conference, and she’d never been able to get him out of her mind. It was strange that she didn’t feel the same way about his brother when they looked almost identical. She could tell them apart easily and always would be able to.
Rubin’s energy was low-key, which was a good thing. Sometimes when people were angry or violent, or just overly excited, her body absorbed their electrical energy rapidly. Unfortunately, she seemed to feed off a variety of different types of energy, siphoning off dark tendencies and fear as well as flat-out rage. Neither Diego nor Rubin gave off enough energy to even detect it, let alone absorb it. That was good so she could be in their company, but bad if she wanted to know they were around.
“Jonquille?” Rubin’s dark eyes met hers. “Do you need a storm to conduct lightning?”
“You’ve indicated that you can’t help me,” she said, “so there really isn’t much point to these questions.”
The way his eyes remained on hers made it impossible to look away. Her stomach did a strange little flip. She felt, rather than saw, Diego turn to look at her over his shoulder. Apparently he didn’t like the way she refused to answer his brother.
“I’d like to understand what he did to you. How it works.” Rubin’s dark eyes were velvet soft, fathomless, an endless pool one could get trapped in.
She shrugged her shoulders. She made every attempt to look as if it didn’t matter that he couldn’t help her. That he hadn’t shattered her with his casual denial or his treating her like she was a science project.
“I’m sure you understand that after years of being Whitney’s experiment, I’m over having anyone even consider me in that light. I’m really sorry for invading your space. I wouldn’t mind something to eat if you have enough. In the meantime, I can pack fast and be out of here tonight. I’m used to traveling.”
Rubin shook his head. “You didn’t finish telling us about who you thought might be following you.”
“Whitney? You must have escaped his laboratory,” Diego guessed. “He doesn’t like his girls to get away from him. You had to be one from the first group with Lily, Dahlia and Flame, right? They’re all married now.”
Jonquille didn’t react to the news. That was twice they’d referred to Dahlia. She wasn’t certain if they were trying to trick her or not, but she wasn’t going to give anything away. Maybe she shouldn’t stay for dinner. She could go a day or two without food. She’d certainly done so in the past. She could use her hunting and fishing skills once she put distance between them.