Page 9 of Love in the Lab (Delaneys in Love #2)

Chapter seven

Jonathan

M olly and I have been working together for about a month now, and it’s time to ramp up the fieldwork.

Today, we’re going out on the boat. We’ll pull some water samples from the Gulf and pick up one of our gliders that has finished its mission.

Ocean gliders are autonomous underwater vehicles about six feet long that look like torpedoes from old war movies.

They collect and transmit ocean data like temperature, salinity, pressure, and pH.

We’ll be out on the boat all day, just me and Molly.

The sea air, the salt spray, the warm early-September sunshine—and the gorgeous coworker who still seems to hate me.

And because I’m an idiot and apparently a masochist, I suggested she wear a bathing suit under her board shorts and long-sleeve UPF shirt.

Yes, it’s the practical thing to do. We’re going to be on a boat, and we’re going to get at least a little wet.

But seeing Molly in a bathing suit is the last thing I need when I’m still trying to tamp out this crush before it gets out of hand.

Fortunately, I’m all business on the boat, especially with a newbie onboard with me.

When we get to the marina, I focus on introducing Molly to our research vessel.

The Ocean Pulse , as she’s been dubbed, is not a sleek and comfortable leisure boat.

She’s a dull gray aluminum, practical and fully equipped with the research tools we need.

And expensive—forty feet of Class 3 research operations that we are responsible for bringing back to shore safely.

If Molly is afraid of boats, I don’t want to freak her out more, but she does need to be aware of the basics of boat safety. As soon as we’re on the Pulse , I point out where the life jackets, throw ropes, and flares are kept and walk her through emergency procedures.

Again, though, Molly isn’t acting like she’s worried about being out on the boat at all. In fact, she’s in the best mood I’ve ever seen from her. She’s smiling and teasing, asking questions about the Pulse and the instruments aboard.

“Remind me,” she says, “which is port, and which is starboard? And isn’t there an aft, too? Which way is that?”

“Starboard is right. Port is left. Aft is the back of the boat, and forward is the front of the boat.”

Her eyes twinkle. They actually freaking twinkle. I didn’t know Molly Delaney’s eyes could twinkle, but I’m seeing it for myself right now. It’s captivating.

“Will I get to drive?” she asks.

I frown. “It’s ‘pilot,’ not ‘drive,’ but yeah, I could teach you.” I run my hands through my hair and tilt my head to study Molly’s face. She doesn’t look scared at all.

“Are you always this serious on the boat? I thought you said work should be fun.” And she giggles.

Freaking giggles. If Molly with twinkling eyes caught me off guard, Molly giggling blows me completely away.

It magnifies her cuteness factor by about one thousand.

Not enough to knock me off course, though.

I narrow my eyes, suspicious of where she’s going with this. “Hey,” I say in my most austere voice, “No pranks on the boat, Molly. It’s too dangerous.”

Molly stares at me with wide, innocent eyes. “Pranks?” she asks. “I’m not sure what you mean.”

I stoop until our eyes are level. “No. Pranks. On. The. Boat. Clear?”

Her pupils dilate, her eyes a dark island ringed with pools of cool blue.

“Clear,” she says, her voice husky. She clears her throat and takes a step back.

I blink. What just happened? If I didn’t know better, I would think Molly felt attracted to me just then. What a weird, exhilarating day. Her eyes are twinkling, she’s giggling, and she’s acting like she’s attracted to me. Plus, she doesn’t seem at all worried about being out on the boat today.

I scratch the scruff along my jawline. “Molly, are you okay? Everyone says … I mean, I think … Look, the talk around the lab is that you’re afraid of boats. That’s why you never want to do fieldwork.”

Molly’s eyes widen, and her cheeks turn red as she ducks her head. When she looks at me again, her apathetic mask is back in place.

“Don’t worry about it,” she snaps. “Mind your own business.”

Ohh-kay. I guess I’m minding my own business, then.

I walk her through the rest of the launch checklist. We have plenty of fuel, the anchor looks good, the radio is working. The weather is supposed to be clear and dry today, so we don’t need to worry about that.

I plug the coordinates of the glider into the navigation system, do a final check, and then we’re off. We motor slowly through the Rigolets and under the railroad bridge into Lake Borgne.

I slow the boat and anchor. We need to collect a water sample from the lake before we venture out to the Gulf. The process of collecting the sample works differently out here than when we were wading in the bayous because we need to get water samples from several different water depths.

I call Molly over and demonstrate how to use the equipment that will help us do that without cross contamination.

Then, I let her take the lead on pulling samples from the other depths we need.

Of course, she’s a natural. She even reminds me we need a surface sample, too.

That’s one we can just scoop out of the water with a sample bottle without using the specialized equipment.

The freeboard—or distance between the waterline and deck—for the Pulse is about four feet, except in the back where the swim platform sits right on top of the waves for easy access to the water from the boat and vice versa.

As we work, the boat bobs on the waves, and though I’m sure Molly isn’t used to it, the motion doesn’t faze her.

Why? Everyone believes she’s afraid of being out on the boat for fieldwork.

She hasn’t seemed afraid or even hesitant at all so far.

She seems to be loving it, actually. But when I asked her about it, she lashed out.

I watch her as she zips the sample bags closed. My curiosity is building. I must be missing some of the puzzle pieces here because the ones I have are not fitting together to create any kind of whole.

“All set,” Molly says, her head still down as she cleans up the equipment. When she lifts her gaze, she’s smiling, at least until she catches me staring. The smile turns into a scowl.

I blink and refocus on the task at hand. Piloting the boat. Right. That’s what I’m supposed to be doing. I take my place at the helm and resume our trek toward the glider’s coordinates.

Molly inches closer to me at the wheel. The cockpit is enclosed but the slide windows are open. It’s noisy with the engine roaring and the wind whooshing past us, so I can’t quite hear her when she shouts.

“What?” I gesture to my ears and shake my head.

She leans closer, the hair on the top of her head tickling my jawline until she tilts her chin up so that her mouth is just below my ear. My body tenses at her nearness, yet I lean closer.

“How do we know where to go to get the glider?” she asks.

I’m still stuck on her proximity; it takes my brain longer than normal to process the question and shout out an intelligible answer.

“When it finishes its mission, it surfaces automatically and sends its coordinates.” I point to the GPS screen embedded in the console.

“I enter the coordinates, and the GPS creates a waypoint.”

She nods thoughtfully at the screen. The wind whips her hair so it’s flowing behind her, dancing along with the peaks and valleys of the moving air. I guess she didn’t bring a hair tie on this expedition either. When a strand blows across her face, she flicks it away impatiently.

“How long will it take to get there?”

I study the GPS screen. “About another hour, maybe. We’ve got to go past Grand Island and through the Chandeleur Sound. The glider’s out in the Gulf.”

With this information, I think she’ll go sit on the bench seat or even below deck.

There’s nothing fancy down there, but it would be an ideal place to hide away for someone uncomfortable on boats.

Instead, she pushes up on her tiptoes to sit in the captain’s chair directly behind where I’m standing at the wheel.

She’s not touching any part of me, but I feel her behind me, and it’s extremely distracting.

I slow the Pulse , and the noise from the engine and wind slow with her. I turn my head. “Do you want to learn to pilot the boat?”

Molly’s instantly back on her feet. “Can I?” she asks.

I shrug. The water is calm today; our navigation is set. Piloting at this point is really just a matter of steering to keep us aligned with the GPS waypoint. “Sure. It’s not hard.” Molly frowns at my words, so I rush to add, “And even if it was, you’d catch on in no time.”

“That’s right; I would,” she mutters.

I bite my lip to keep from smiling. I lift one hand off the steering wheel and use it to nudge Molly in front of me.

Her back is aligned with my chest, not touching, but close enough that my heart rate jumps up, and I’m sure she can hear it pounding in my chest. I grasp her hand and, ignoring the tingling on my skin as my nervous system goes haywire, guide it to the throttle.

“This is called the throttle,” I explain, my hand covering hers.

“You push it forward to go faster and pull it toward you to slow down. If you like your speed, you don’t have to touch it.

” I move her hand to the steering wheel, and she lifts her other hand to the wheel, too.

“This is the steering wheel. If you know how to steer a car, you’ve already got this down, except the wheel is bigger.

No tricks to it; you turn the wheel right to go right and left to go left.

” I bracket my hands on either side of hers.

“You just want to keep us following the course marked out on the GPS screen. See?” I point to the route laid out in front of us.

Molly tips her head back to look at me, her hair once again tickling my chin. “That’s it?” she asks.

I nod. “You have to watch for currents. They can make it harder to steer.”

She chews her bottom lip and stares up at me through her eyelashes. “Maybe you better keep your hands on the wheel, too, for now. In case we run into a current.”

She turns forward again, and as she does, she leans her shoulders back into my chest. I stop breathing, stop moving, stop anything that could disrupt the status quo.

I grip the steering wheel as Molly pushes the throttle forward bit by bit to increase our speed.

The wind picks up again and her hair goes wild, strands flittering into my mouth, sticking to my lips.

Can’t breathe. Erratic heartbeat. I could collapse right here on this deck and die a happy man.

Molly reaches up to smooth her hair. When her fingers hit my chin, her head snaps back. “Oh my gosh, I’m so sorry!” Her cheeks turn pink. “You can take the wheel.”

She lets go of the steering wheel and quickly ducks under my arm to stand to the side. She combs her fingers through her hair and holds it against the back of her head in a fist. “I forgot to bring a hair tie,” she explains. “I didn’t realize it was hitting you in the face.”

I find my voice. “It’s no problem.” Highlight of my week, actually.

Her face is still flushed, so I shift my focus to the water in front of us and the route highlighted on the GPS screen. In my peripheral vision, I see her hesitate in front of the door leading below deck. Then she disappears down the stairs.

Guess piloting lessons are over.