The Bed You Make
Chapter 18, continued
Dara put a firm hand in the center of Russell Lee's well-defined chest. “Can we not do this?” she asked, halting his approach. “I called you here to discuss business.”
Lee glanced around the room. “I thought you asked me here because you had gotten rid of your husband.”
“That's funny,” Dara replied. Her exasperation made her words sharp. “Not coincidentally, that's what Stefan would prefer to do to you . I'm beginning to think he's right.” She gave the handsome Asian chemist a hard stare. “Can we finally stop with the games?”
Lee took a seat on the couch. He was clad in faded blue jeans and an equally worn Georgetown sweatshirt. The clothing gave him a boyish look. ““Talk. I am listening. For now,” he added. Lee wriggled his eyebrows suggestively.
Dara gritted her teeth and handed him a handwritten sheet of paper. “I would like you to undertake these projects.”
Lee looked over Dara's list. He did not rush through the items; he read each thoroughly before moving to the next. “These are reasonable projects,” he nodded. “I have no problem adding them to my list of things to do.”
“For the time being,” Dara informed the chemist, “my requests are your list of things to do.”
“Is that you or your husband talking?”
“That really doesn't matter,” Dara noted. “Stefan and I are on the same page in this matter.”
Lee tilted his head and examined Dara with all the attention he directed to his scientific experiments. “I think that this is your husband speaking. He is a man concerned with results only. He does not appreciate the process of creativity.” He shrugged. “I will get to your ‘requests' the moment the muses inspire me.”
Dara smiled, more a baring of her even, white teeth than any expression of pleasure. It was a gesture the young attorney had perfected over her years in the criminal justice system. “Please don't disregard me, Mr. Lee. Trust me when I say that I am the only thing standing between you and a laboratory in some remote part of the globe.”
Russell Lee rose from the couch with lazy grace. “So…,” he drawled, “you have gone to bat for me with your husband? Interesting.”
Dara ignored the comment. “We have strayed from the reason I called you here,” she said. “I have given you your instructions, Mr. Lee. Please see to it that they are carried out.”
“So…I am being dismissed? Very well.” Lee rose and followed Dara to the door of the hotel suite. “In the interest of fair play, though, I should warn you. You fascinate me, Mrs. Cassadine. Very few things fascinate me anymore.” He leaned in until Dara could feel his breath move softly across her face. “When I run across such rare things, I don't just let them pass.”
Dara stood her ground. She was all too aware of Stefan conducting business just feet away in the other room. He had reluctantly agreed to stay there only after Dara had argued that she needed time alone with Russell Lee to set the boundaries they would need to make a working relationship possible. “You don't have a choice, Mr. Lee,” she reminded him. “For one thing, I am not in the least interested. And of course, there's that other little detail you seem to have forgotten. I have a husband.” The ease with which she used the term ‘husband' nearly derailed Dara's train of thought.
“Your husband is a technicality.” Russell Lee grinned. “And for the record,” he stepped out into the hallway, “I don't believe that you aren't interested.”
