A Crazy Kind of Love by Maureen Child Page B

who can keep saying nanotechnology all the time?”
    The exit for Chandler was just a mile ahead and Lucas spared her another quick look. She was still smiling and damn if she didn’t look good. Too damn good.
    “So are you working on nano stuff here? At your place?”
    “No,” he said, pointing the car toward the exit. The curve in the freeway exit was bordered on both sides by towering trees with leaves just beginning to change color. “I’m on a leave of absence. I’m writing a book about the research being done and—”
    “Sure to be a best seller,” she murmured, lifting both eyebrows.
    At the end of the curve, he stopped at the traffic light and looked at her. “Some people are actually interested in what the future’s going to be made of, you know. In what we can do to make that future better.”
    She just stared at him, and for some reason, Lucas felt compelled to go on. As usual, when talking about the work that had fascinated him for so long, his excitement colored his voice. “Think about it, Mike. In ten years, twenty, we could wipe out cancer.
All
cancers. This could be a cure for the modern plague. And it’s not just medicine that nanotechnology will affect. This science will be used in everything from plastics to making better, cleaner engines for cars . . .”
    A slow smile spread across her face. “You really think you could cure cancer?”
    He eased back into his seat. Adrenaline still pumped inside him and Lucas reminded himself to dial it down. No one ever got it. No one ever understood what the research meant to him. “Maybe not me. But someone like me will. One day, people will get anticancer shots as easily as they get tetanus boosters today.”
    She nodded slowly, pushed her hair back from her face, and said, “You know something, I believe you.”
    He looked at her and took off his sunglasses to get a better view of her clear, summer-sky blue eyes. “Yeah?”
    “Yeah,” she admitted quietly. “I just wish it had been around nine years ago.”
    “You lost someone?”
    “My mom.” Mike took a deep breath and blew it out again. When she spoke, her voice was low, soft, and hinted of pain that still had the power to tear at her. “She died of cancer nine years ago. Still feels like yesterday sometimes.” She dipped her head, then looked up at him again. “You know?”
    “Yeah, I do.” He put the car in gear and turned right, heading for downtown Chandler. “I lost my folks five years ago. Car accident.”
    “I’m sorry.”
    “So was I.” His own pain reared up and reminded him of the emptiness he carried around inside him. He was alone now. Alone, except for Justin—so,
alone
.
    “It’s hard,” Mike said, letting her fingers play with the rubber stripping along the edge of the car window as she added, “If I hadn’t had my sisters, and Papa, I don’t know what I would have done. As it was, I—” She broke off and looked at him. “Do you have brothers? Sisters?”
    Everything in him tightened up. “No sisters. One brother.”
    “Where’s he live?”
    He lifted one shoulder in a careless shrug. “I don’t know.”
    “What’s that mean?” Mike looked at him and saw that his jaw was clenched and his hands were fistedaround the steering wheel tight enough to make his knuckles white. Probably not a good sign, but hell, if they were going to talk, then he couldn’t just shut up whenever the hell he felt like it. “You have a brother and you don’t know where he lives?”
    “Yes.” He shot her a sidelong glance then slipped his sunglasses back on—but even from behind those dark lenses, Mike felt the chill in his gaze. So she backed off. For now. Lifting both hands, she said, “Hey, no problem. Not my brother, although in my family, if everyone doesn’t know where everyone else is at any given moment, the earth shakes and the skies thunder.”
    “Not all families are like yours,” he said, and there was as much regret as anger in his voice now. Mike