Ashley Croft - Love is the Drug

‘Mm. Of course.’

‘Ewan?’

He swivelled round again. ‘Yes, Molly?’

His eyes met hers through their safety glasses. Perhaps a ghost of a smile tugged at the corners of his mouth but it disappeared so fast, she must have imagined it and the Baxter lab, of course, was no place for imagination.

‘It’s getting late. Do you mind if I call it a day and get ready for the party?’ Molly said.

He frowned. ‘The party ?’

She pulled off her glasses. ‘Yes, Ewan, the party. It’s New Year’s Eve if you hadn’t noticed.’

He took off his own glasses and blinked. Molly’s determination to hate him from now on, melted like butter in a pan. Despite his name, wherever Ewan’s genes had originated from, it wasn’t Scotland or anywhere within a thousand miles. He had dark brown hair, not red or blond, and his eyes were the colour of strong espresso, rather than the blue or green a geneticist would have expected. Somewhere along the way, Ewan’s ancestors had coupled up with a tribe from the Mediterranean – and a pretty hot one at that.

‘Surely, you hadn’t forgotten?’ she asked.

‘No. No, of course I hadn’t.’

‘Are you going? It starts at eight, you know.’

‘Um. I don’t know yet.’

Molly bit back a gasp of exasperation. The party, and the potential for getting pissed, was her one hope of persuading Ewan to let his hair down.

‘Well, it’s up to you, of course, but everyone will be expecting you,’ she said, turning her back on him and unzipping her onesie. ‘Especially after this morning …’

Ewan pulled a face.

‘Well, when you get awarded the MBE in the New Year’s Honours List, people want to celebrate.’

He grimaced again. Ewan might not have a sexual response but he also didn’t have an ego and had refused to accept that he was responsible for the lab’s pioneering work into parent and baby bonding among primates.

‘I suppose I’d better put in an appearance, if only to thank everyone who helped us win the gong. I can always come back to the lab when I’ve shown my face and it will be quiet as everyone will be at the party.’

‘The Love Bug will still be here tomorrow …’ said Molly, in despair.

Ewan clicked his tongue against his teeth disapprovingly. In fact, he was the only man Molly knew who tutted in a non-ironic fashion. ‘Please don’t call it the Love Bug. It trivialises a very important project and it’s also completely inaccurate. You and I know it’s not a bug, it’s a genetically synthesised bonding hormone but if that … descriptor … slipped out to the press, they’d jump on it like a … like a … dog on a bone.’

Molly resisted the urge to snigger. Ewan might be a genius, and gorgeous, but he was shit at similes.

‘You know what will happen, if some clever dick from the papers gets a whiff of our work before we’re ready to announce it publicly, it will end up splashed on the pages of some rag as a “sex bullet” next to a picture of Brian Cox showing his …’

‘Calm down. Our work is under wraps for now and the Love Bug will still be here tomorrow,’ she said, deliberately using the despised descriptor again and dumping her gloves in the waste bin. ‘But the party and your adoring fans won’t.’

‘I do not have adoring fans.’

‘Oh, I don’t know,’ said Molly mischievously. ‘What about Mrs Choudhry from admin and that guy from the equipment supplier with the hooked nose who smells like chloroform?’

‘I’ve no idea what you’re talking about.’

‘Really? Well, I’m going and if I don’t see you at the party, I’ll see you next year.’

Molly made a meal of taking off her onesie, in the hope Ewan might change his mind and leave the lab with her but he pulled up his hood again and started tapping away at his laptop.

‘Maybe I can just fit in one more run of tests …’

One day you will be found dead in this lab, Ewan Baxter, and eaten by fruit flies. In fact, it may be that someone – probably me – kills you out of sheer sexual frustration.

‘Up to you,’ said Molly through gritted teeth, ‘but I have to get down to the fancy-dress shop and find a costume before it closes.’

At first she thought he hadn’t heard her but then, slowly and very deliberately, he swivelled round again. There was genuine terror in his eyes and she thought his face had definitely turned a shade paler.

‘The fancy-dress shop? Why would I need a costume ?’

Power surged through Molly’s veins. ‘Didn’t you realise?’ she said, picking up her backpack. ‘It’s a fancy-dress party. The theme is movie heroes and heroines. Good luck with what you can find in the next half hour.’

Five miles northwest of Molly’s lab, in the village of Fenham, Sarah Havers inched open the drawer of the dressing table in the cottage bedroom. The white test stick still lay on top of her frilly red thong – the same one that had got her into trouble in the first place.

The face of her partner appeared in the mirror behind her. ‘Is that feckin’ fireworks going off already?’ he said, fastening the top button of his uniform shirt.

Sarah nudged the drawer shut. ‘It’s only six o’clock – surely they aren’t setting them off this early?’ Her heart thudded. She hadn’t heard Niall come out of the en suite.

‘Believe me, it’s never too early to set fire to your dad’s shed or blow your fingers off.’

‘Eww. Spare me the image, Mr McCafferty.’

Niall ran his fingers through his quiff. Sarah thought he’d overdone the gel for work, but Niall’s “thing” about his hair was a small price to pay for living with a real-life hero, not that she’d ever tell him that of course. ‘Hey, I’ll be delighted if all we get tonight is a few lost fingers and some burns,’ he said, teasing his hair into an impressive ski slope. ‘It’s more likely that we’ll have someone die of alcohol poisoning or a juicy stabbing but as long as it’s not me, I can cope.’

Sarah twisted the stool around to face him. ‘I wish you didn’t have to work on New Year’s Eve. You’ve already done the Christmas Day shift.’

Niall frowned as he dabbed at a tiny shaving cut on his chin. ‘Most of the other crew have kids. It doesn’t seem right not to give them time with their families and you know we need all the overtime I can get these days.’

‘I’ll still miss you like mad. It means the world to me that you’ve been behind me giving up my job to start the business, especially a tiara-making business.’

‘You won’t miss me. You’ll have a fantastic time with Molly at the scientists’ ball.’

Sarah laughed. ‘I’m not sure what it’ll be like with eighty geeks bopping away.’

Niall flicked one of the crystals on her tiara and they shimmered in the lamplight. ‘And I’m sure you’ll liven it up, darlin’, though I’m not happy about letting my sexy fairy out of my sight.’

‘Actually, I’m a princess. The party theme is “movie heroes and heroines” and I decided that Anastasia counts as a heroine. Some people say she survived when the rest of the Russian royal family were murdered.’

‘You can be a sexy princess, then, I don’t really mind.’

She traced a nail down the open V of his shirt, enjoying the softness of his chest hair under her fingertip. ‘And I love a sexy paramedic.’

‘Now, now, it wouldn’t do for Cambridgeshire County ambulance service to send a staff member out with a massive hard-on, would it?’

‘Oh, I don’t know. It would add a little frisson for the patients.’

‘Not with the kind of patients I’m likely to encounter on New Year’s Eve. You’ll get me into trouble … Now, I really have to go. Be careful out there and enjoy yourself. What time do you want picking up from Molly’s place tomorrow morning?’