Dr. Bodyguard. Jessica Andersen

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СКАЧАТЬ wobbled on the first stair. Cursing under his breath, Nick grabbed her elbow just as she was about to lose her balance and half carried her up the stairs.

      GENIE DISCOVERED THAT Wellington’s version of privacy was far different from her own when he helped her into the shower, pulled the see-though butterfly curtain closed and waited for her to pass out the hospital johnny and the zebra underwear.

      Her hands were shaking when she finally pointed the nozzle at the tiled wall while the water heated. She could see him standing by the sink, his broad shoulders and narrow hips made wavy by the plastic curtain, and she wondered what it was that she felt when he came near her. What were those warm vibrations that ran through her at his touch and made her snarl? Concussion, or something else?

      Something impossible that jittered in her stomach and confused her. She, who was never, ever confused.

      It had to be the circumstances, she told herself. She was still shaky, that was all. She’d been attacked—there, she’d said it—in her own lab. She could be excused for being shaky.

      A tear cruised down her cheek and she didn’t bother to brush it away.

      When the water was hot, she turned it toward her chest, careful to keep the stitches dry. She’d wash her hair later, but for now she let the heavy stream of water beat down on her breasts and belly, washing away her attacker’s unremembered touch and easing the soreness of the angry bruises at her hips and breasts.

      As she touched one of the black marks, she asked her brain, What happened? Who attacked me? Why? What had he hoped to gain?

      Genie frowned in concentration and her temples throbbed as her mind bounced up against an implacable barrier.

      It was no use. Frustrated and achy, she muttered a curse and looked through the rising steam. She couldn’t concentrate with Wellington in the room. He was too distracting. Took up too much space. “You can leave now,” she said, her voice echoing in the tiled bathroom. “I’ll call you if I have any trouble in here.”

      She saw his masculine outline, blurred by the moist air and the ridiculous shower curtain, shift from one foot to the other. “Are you sure? You’re not feeling dizzy or anything?”

      What would he do if she were dizzy? Get in the shower and hold her up? Scrub her back? Wash her hair?

      Protected from fear by the web of amnesia, her brain chose that moment to prod her with a mental note. Get a date. Suddenly, Genie could smell acrylamide and musk over the delicate perfume of Parisian soap, and she had a quick, improbable fantasy of Dr. Nicholas Wellington naked in the shower with her, his large, blunt fingertips massaging her scalp and taking the ache away. She imagined his big hands working in maddening circles, moving down her neck, across her shoulders, and down… She started to feel dizzy, but not in the way he’d meant.

      He would press himself against her backside—

      And push hard, grind against her in the bloodred light while the developer clanked and groaned so loud that nobody could hear her muffled screams.

      “What is it? Genie, what’s wrong? Do you feel faint?” She must have made some noise, because suddenly he was in the shower holding her tight while the water blasted them both, quickly plastering the clothing against his hard, sculpted body.

      He pulled the butterflies closed, making the shower into a warm, safe nest lit with bits of reflected color. There were blue butterflies, Genie saw as she stared at them rather than at the man who held her, and green and yellow ones that shone through with bright, warm light.

      Not red and black. And the roar of the water pounding down on them was the shower, not the X-ray developer. But she was still cold. So cold.

      “Genie!” His voice was sharper now, demanding an answer, bringing her back through the red-black mist. “Are you in pain? Do you want to go back to the hospital?”

      “No,” she managed to get out through chattering teeth, grateful for his arms around her, grateful when he turned the water even hotter to ease the chills that gripped her. “No, I remembered a little of what happened. Just a quick flash, that’s all.”

      “That’s enough.” His words were clipped, but his eyes were steady when she looked up into them. His hands were gentle on her body as he seemed to wrap himself around her until she felt a little warmer. A little safer. He rocked her back and forth until her trembling eased a bit, and said quietly, “I’m sorry.”

      Lulled by the feel of the man against her, it took a moment for Genie to register the words. Then she said, “For what? You didn’t grab me in the darkroom. Even you wouldn’t go that far to get time on the sequencer.” She’d meant the last as a weak joke, but fell silent when the words came out sharp, bitchy, the way they always did when she tried to talk to Beef Wellington, thirteenth floor hunk.

      No wonder he hated working near her. She couldn’t even say good morning without sniping at him. Get a life, her brain reminded her.

      Yeah, easy for it to say. It was just too bad for her that of all the classes she’d aced over the years, she’d missed Get a Life 101. It had probably conflicted with calculus.

      They stood there for a moment and Genie tried to frame an apology in her mind—one that sounded if not friendly at least less nasty. She shifted away from him, hoping that distance would bring more clarity to thoughts that seemed steeped in his heady scent. Instead the motion dragged the tips of her breasts across the wet material of his T-shirt and she froze as she became intimately, acutely aware that she was naked and he was not.

      The small space within the butterfly curtain grew warmer and her breasts suddenly felt harder and softer at the same time, heavy with an unfamiliar, pulsing ache.

      Over the pounding rush of the shower, she heard Wellington take a sharp breath. She looked up into his face and froze, mesmerized by the play of color and light across his features. The tendons of his strong neck stood out sharply beneath the slick skin of his throat, the muscles of his jaw rippled as he swallowed hard, and she wondered what he was thinking.

      Was he wishing that he were anywhere but in the shower with Genius Watson? Was he thinking that his good deed for the day had turned into more of a project than he had planned? Was he thinking of the ride in the ambulance? Of the blood on her gray wool skirt and what might’ve happened if she hadn’t fought back, hadn’t been lucky?

      Her eyes traveled up from his throat, slid across the wide planes of his cheekbones and up the aggressive jut of his nose to his eyes, which glittered through the steam like chunks of pale blue topaz. She wondered if maybe, just maybe, he was thinking the same thing she was thinking. Feeling the same things she was feeling.

      Suddenly the events of the day didn’t seem quite so unbelievable in the face of another incredible fact.

      She was naked in the shower with Beef Wellington. She, Genius Watson, who in college had been voted by one mean-spirited fraternity as The Most Likely to Die a Virgin, was standing in the shower. Naked. With Nicholas Wellington III, the most popular, eligible, drop-dead gorgeous man at Boston General Hospital.

      The wet material of his T-shirt grazed the hard tips of her breasts when he rasped in another breath and his soaked jeans were rough against her thighs and belly. She felt a liquid throb, warm and low, and her lips tingled with a phantom imprint as though he had kissed her already.

      He sucked in a third breath as though filling his lungs was the most important СКАЧАТЬ