Dr. Bodyguard. Jessica Andersen

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СКАЧАТЬ Her belly churned with a dizzying combination of anticipation, painkillers and delayed shock. She felt his fingers tighten, saw the muscles beneath the wet T-shirt ripple, let her eyelids drift shut…

      As he gently but firmly pushed her away, his eyes glued to the nearest butterfly, he growled, “Since you seem okay in here, I’m going to head downstairs and dry off. Yell if you need my help.” He practically leaped out of the shower and was gone.

      Genie sagged against the cool bath tiles and pressed both hands to her burning cheeks once she heard the bathroom door shut in his wake.

      What had just happened here?

      You almost jumped Nick Wellington, that’s what happened, her brain supplied as her heart stopped pounding from excitement and started thumping from sick, horrified embarrassment.

      What had she been thinking?

      She shook her head as the blasting inferno of—lust? desperation? mental instability? delayed reaction?—slowly cooled and left her feeling nauseous. She hadn’t been thinking, which just showed what a terrible day it had been. She always thought first and acted second—it was the secret to an ordered, controlled life. A scientist’s life.

      A safe life.

      Genie knew from experience that when she thought through her actions she didn’t make mistakes. Didn’t do stupid things. Didn’t end up climbing out the third-story window of a house on fraternity row with her teeth chattering as sleet cut through her ripped shirt and slicked the rose trellis beneath her numb fingers.

      Pressing her bruised cheek to the tile, she made a small sound of pain and frustration. Why could she remember every detail of that one humongous miscalculation during her college career and not a thing about this afternoon in the lab? Remembering her single date with Archer—gorgeous, popular, wealthy Archer—did her no good. It hadn’t helped back then and it served no purpose now. But remembering what had happened in the darkroom was important. It could help Detective Sturgeon find the man who had attacked her. Could help hospital security figure out how he had gotten onto the locked thirteenth floor of Boston General’s Genetic Research Building.

      Might prevent it from—dear God—happening to someone else.

      “Tell me!” she ordered her brain, and tried to fight through the layers of defense to that blank place at the back of her mind. “What happened, damn it? Who was it? Why?”

      The fingermarks on her hips and breasts throbbed in time with her heartbeat, in time with the pounding of her head, but the blanks remained stubbornly blank except for a gentle California drawl and the phantom press of a man’s fingers.

      She closed her eyes and knew why Archer was suddenly vivid in her mind after more than a decade had passed. Her brain might not be willing to show her what had happened in the darkroom, but it wanted her to remember that she’d been stupid about men before. Really stupid.

      “I get it, I get it,” she muttered. “Wellington’s out of my league. You think I don’t know that?” She reached for the bar of expensive soap her mother sent her each month from Paris in an attempt to forge the connection they’d never managed when they lived on the same continent. “Besides, I don’t even like him.”

      But she knew, as she slicked the soap over her breasts and down again, that for the first time in a long, long while she was lying to herself.

      NICK PULLED A BEER out of the fridge—who would’ve guessed Dr. Genius drank beer?—and drained half of it while he stood at the sink and waited for his hands to stop shaking with a potent combination of lust and self-loathing.

      What had he been thinking?

      The answer was obvious. He hadn’t been thinking. At least not with his brain. He closed his eyes and swore while the feel of her rocketed through his system and set off every warning buzzer in his body.

      In a hundred years or so he might get past seeing Genie Watson lying in a pool of blood next to the smashed developer. But he was never, ever, going to forget the sight of her naked body, wet with the shower and glowing with reflected butterflies that filtered through the plastic curtain. And the feel of her. He cursed. It had taken every ounce of willpower he’d possessed to set her aside and to leave the shower while he still could. And it had been a close call at that.

      He’d almost kissed a woman who’d been sexually attacked not eight hours earlier—that knowledge was enough to make him feel like a jerk. And the fact that the woman in question was Genius Watson…well, that was just downright scary.

      Hadn’t he learned anything from Lucille?

      He chugged the rest of the beer in self-defense and it went straight to his head, reminding him that he’d been too caught up in DNA sequencing to eat lunch and he’d spent dinnertime in the E.R. waiting room.

      Since he absolutely wasn’t going to follow up on any of the irrational suggestions his hormones were sending him, he decided to cook.

      Food was the next best thing.

      He heard the water being shut off upstairs while he peered into her refrigerator. Pleased that she was well stocked with food as well as beer, he decided on scrambled eggs and toast, making the meal heartier by adding onions, parsley, and a wedge of crumbly cheddar. He felt himself unwind a bit, relaxed by the mindless snick of the knife against the cutting board and the mundane pleasure of preparing a meal.

      Mrs. Greta had taught him well. The Senator’s cook had been a round, motherly woman who’d given her employer’s growing son a swat or a hug depending on the circumstances, and some of Nick’s happiest memories from back then were set in the rambling kitchen with her off-key humming in the background. She’d taught him to cook and hadn’t told his father, for which Nick had been eternally grateful.

      With the memory of the older woman bustling warm and happy around the edges of his mind, Nick breathed deeply through his nose and looked up toward the second floor, wishing idly that he could see through the walls to the steamy shower beyond. If he closed his eyes, he was sure he could picture Genie Watson in glorious, pink-wet nakedness….

      With a man’s fingerprints glowing purple against the rosy skin. The marks of violence at her neck, hips and face. A crumpled white ball under the chemical sink. A pool of blood, dried black at the edges, liquid and dark red in the center.

      The housekeeper’s happy ghost vanished and Nick scowled at a half-peeled onion. He was here because a co-worker had been attacked. Because she had wanted to come home and needed someone to stay with her.

      Someone to protect her.

      He slid the mixture into a skillet while his thoughts poked and prodded at the facts. The detective, Sturgeon, had said there was no reason to think that Genie had been the target, but it didn’t make much sense to picture someone hiding in the darkroom waiting to assault the first person that walked in. Then again, picturing someone hiding in the darkroom didn’t make any sense at all to begin with.

      Why their lab? Why the darkroom? How the hell had he gotten onto a locked floor in the first place? And how had he gotten away?

      At the thought of a blood-covered, would-be rapist escaping through his lab space, and what might have happened had Genie not defended herself, Nick missed an English muffin with a wickedly serrated bread knife and almost took off his own thumb. “Shioot!”

      “Be careful. СКАЧАТЬ