Page 50 of Ruining His Smirk

“What the hell?” Landry demanded.

For one stunned moment, neither of us moved. Then Landry lunged for the handle. He yanked the door open, but Dexter was already halfway down the corridor, speeding away like his tail was on fire.

“DEXTER!”

His brother lifted one hand without turning around and disappeared through the next doorway. Landry stood gripping the doorframe, staring after him.

I managed to swallow my laugh and cleared my throat instead. “Efficient fellow.”

His jaw tightened. Landry closed his eyes. He stood there, breathing slowly through his nose, as though trying to keep every emotion he possessed from escaping at once.

“I’m going to kill him,” he muttered.

“Oh, you brothers are all about committing crimes today.” I didn’t know why I was feeling so cheerful. He looked ready to bulldoze me, but being in his presence was oddly energizing.

It had only been a few hours since I had seen him, and… oh, I had missed him. My belly swooped at the realization.

He closed the door and walked farther into his cabin, turning his back to me. His cabin was similar to mine, though he might be a tidier man than I was. A heavy jacket hung from the back of the chair. A pair of work boots sat neatly beneath the desk. My eyes went to the huge sheets of paper spread across its surface, covered with measurements and numbers.

I shifted closer to have a look. I recognized some of the diagrams. It looked like he had been working on the skeleton recovery project.

“Why are you here?” he asked while still facing away from me. His throat still sounded rough, but not as bad as it had before.

“I wanted to talk to you,” I said in an even tone. I didn’t want to fight him.

He gave a humorless laugh. Landry still would not look at me. He moved around the cabin, fixing the bed, which looked pretty neat to me already. I studied the rigid lines of his back. He was avoiding me. It was not avoidance performed for effect. He seemed genuinely unable to face me. In his fitted black undershirt and soft lounge trousers, his hair still damp from a recent shower, there was something almost disarming about the sight of him, though nothing about the breadth of his shoulders could ever truly be described as soft.

My attention drifted to his desk. I was not poor at mathematics, but as I studied his work, I realized that he was operating at a level far beyond anything I could comprehend. There was no computer terminal in his cabin, nor did I see a laptop. He had entire relationships between weight, dimensions, force, and movement worked out using only his mind.

I was still studying the open notebook when Landry spoke again. “If you want to file a complaint with the captain, go ahead.”

My head snapped up. “What?”

“Just so you know, I already calculated the likely effect of the displacement wave. I didn’t finish making the adjustments because I was ordered out of the data suite and told I wasn’t allowed to work until I was medically cleared.”

For a moment, I had no idea what he meant. Then I looked back at the notebook.

The skeleton.

The wave that had struck the ship had originated from the iceberg. It had likely disturbed the seafloor, perhaps shifted sediment around the whale fall or altered the position of the overhang. Landry had been calculating what that meant.

Embarrassment made my face feel warm, even though he was facing away. The thing was, I had not thought about the skeleton even once since we had gone overboard.

Not once. I had thought only about him.

With the embarrassment came a strange feeling. I couldn’t remember the last time something had clouded my mind to this extent. Then the rest of what he had said caught up with me.

“You were ordered out of the data suite?”

“Your ship medic’s orders.”

“When were youinthe data suite? We were dismissed together with instructions to rest.”

He shrugged without looking at me.

I couldn’t believe it. Had Landry gone straight to work? Had he not taken a nap and eaten like I had?

I was suddenly mad at him. Walking around him, I stood directly in front of him. He tried to turn away again, but I grabbed his bare shoulders and didn’t let him escape.