Harm… She tried not looking at him again, but it wasn’t her fault that he was sitting right next to her. Their eyes kept meeting. A total accident, she was sure, not interesting or meaningful or anything…but damned, if he didn’t have killer eyes. Blue as the sea. Hawk eyes, narrowed, perceptive. For no sane reason in the universe, heat shimmered up her pulse. What was it about the darned man that kept disarming her? Tons of guys were good-looking. It didn’t make them any less problematic than the homely ones. Sometimes the opposite was true.

Still…the more she didn’t look at Harm, the more she happened to notice that the shadows under his eyes spoke of a very real exhaustion. And unlike his staff, who were generally decked out with the most expensive labels REI and Patagonia sold, Harm’s shirt was untucked, his pants wrinkled-as if he hadn’t had time to do more than throw clothes in a suitcase. And he rarely took his eyes off his men.

And he still wasn’t eating.

If there was one thing Cate couldn’t stand, it was a man who didn’t appreciate fabulous cooking. At least if it was her fabulous cooking.

She didn’t see any sign of the huge problems with Harm’s men that he’d implied, but she did pick up a bunch of information. The guys looked ultrabright for apparently darned good reasons. Plump Fiske was the financial VP. Tall Arthur was the head of “projects.” Yale and Purdue were lead scientists. Cate wasn’t sure what all that meant, but she gathered their lab was located in a quiet, wooded area somewhere outside of Cambridge, and that they created some serious, heavy-duty medicines.

The tension around the table only turned itchy when the subject of some new cancer treatment came up. Cate sensed that easily enough, but more, she was stuck rethinking her first impression of Harm. Sure didn’t sound as if he were just a money monger or a suit. He was obviously involved in something real and serious.