An Innocent in Paradise. Kate Carlisle

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СКАЧАТЬ she admonished herself. Those kinds of thoughts were not only foolhardy, they were dangerous. The clock was ticking. Time was of the essence.

      There was no place in her life for fun and frolic, never mind kissing. Her entire life, her research, everything she’d ever worked for, would go down the drain if she didn’t act quickly to staunch the damage already done.

      She checked her kit bag to make sure she had everything she needed, then grabbed a towel from the bathroom and left the hotel room.

      Crossing the bright, tropical-themed lobby, Grace stepped outside and felt the first rays of the warm sun on her skin. She adjusted her sunglasses and walked a dozen yards along the rows of swaying palm trees until she reached the edge of the white sand beach.

      Now this was paradise.

      She allowed herself thirty seconds to breathe in the spectacular view of the tropical island. Startlingly clear water stretched as far as the eye could see. Behind her, farther inland, were rolling green hills studded with more palm trees and lush vegetation. Sailboats bobbed at their moorings in the bay and sea birds flew overhead.

      Her thirty seconds were up. Taking another deep breath, she hunkered down for the next forty minutes. Walking from palm tree to palm tree, she searched the base of each trunk where the roots divided, looking for a sign of the rare Allerian spores she’d come here to observe.

      The sun was already warm at eight o’clock in the morning and she was glad she’d doused herself in sunblock. She should’ve brought a hat with her, too; but she’d been in such a hurry to pack and leave Minnesota that she hadn’t fully considered the effects of the tropical sun on her sensitive skin. At times like this, she was forced to admit she wasn’t quite as smart as everyone thought she was.

      Another case in point, her awkward conversation with Logan Sutherland yesterday. She cringed inwardly, knowing that most of what he’d accused her of was true. Yes, she’d lied on her résumé, although that was for a good cause. But what she really hated admitting was that she’d foolishly underestimated the job of cocktail waitress. That wasn’t smart. She wouldn’t make that mistake again, especially after seeing firsthand how hard everyone in the bar worked.

      “Just let that go,” she murmured. At least Logan had relented and allowed her to stay, thank goodness. She had a full week to redeem herself and she vowed to do just that, if only for the sake of the spores.

      Now if she could only find the darling little critters.

      A sailboat under full sail skimmed across the bay and Grace stopped to watch it. Everywhere she turned on this island, in any direction, she could find something new and wonderful and exotic to look at. She stretched and allowed the sunshine to permeate her skin. Had she ever felt this warm and cozy without the benefit of a down jacket?

      She’d lived in Minnesota her entire life and she was perfectly happy there, of course. But she was just beginning to realize that she’d spent a good portion of her life being cold. No, not just cold, she thought. Chilled to the bone. She was so tired of being cold, so weary of bundling up in heavy coats and mittens and long underwear and wool scarves for more than half the year.

      Alleria was beautiful and, more important, it was warm. If she couldn’t truly let herself go and relax and enjoy her time here, she could at least savor the warm weather. It was so completely different from anything she’d ever experienced before.

      Standing in a cozy patch of shade cast by a huge cluster of coconuts hanging in a nearby palm, Grace took another minute to stretch out her muscles. She rolled her shoulders and raised her arms up in the air, then bent at the waist to touch her toes. She was starting to ache a little from her upper-body workout and it felt good to stretch and bend.

      Once Logan had pointed out the need for balance and upper-body strength, Grace had known what she had to do. She’d begun with thirty push-ups when she first got out of bed this morning. She was in decent condition physically, but she needed much more strength in her upper arms if she expected to lift those hefty cocktail trays every night.

      She was determined to make Logan Sutherland acknowledge that she took her waitressing job seriously. She couldn’t afford to be sent home. She absolutely had to get her funding; and to do that, she had to find and collect enough Allerian spore specimens to conduct her lifesaving experiments for the next few years.

      As she straightened up and moved to another tree, she pondered the sadly obvious fact that Logan Sutherland couldn’t care less about her scientific work. No, he just cared that she performed her job as cocktail waitress as well as anyone else in the company. But if that’s what it took to keep her here, that’s what she would to do.

      At each coconut palm tree, she knelt down and examined the juncture where the thick palm roots crisscrossed and divided. Feathery fern leaves sprouted here and there and that was where her spores were known to propagate. But tree after tree, frond after frond offered exactly nothing.

      She wandered away from the shore and deeper into what looked like a jungle of wild plants and palm trees. Here the thicker vegetation created more shade, but instead of being cooler, it was warmer and muggier. The overabundance of plant life kept the sea breezes from filtering through and cooling the air. Humidity was a good thing if you were a spore.

      Sure enough, minutes later in a shady cluster of coco palms, surrounded by the soft fern leaves that protected them, Grace finally came across the spores she’d traveled thousands of miles to find.

      “Ah,” she whispered, “there you are, my lovelies.”

      She spread the clean towel on the sand and unzipped her spore kit. Kneeling on a corner of the towel, she used her most powerful magnifying glass to study the precious plant life more closely.

      Unlike many plants, these types of spores could thrive without sunlight, but they still needed a warm, moist environment. Glancing around, Grace saw that this part of the island was indeed ideal. The sun was only beginning to shine here so the spores had a part of the morning to thrive in the muggy shade. They seemed happy, reproducing madly even as she watched them through the ultramagnified glass.

      Grace smiled at the thought of happy spores. A sense of calm came over her as she observed the microscopic world. She had been experimenting on this rare strain of Allerian spores for so many years, ever since old Professor Hutchins, her teacher and first mentor, showed her his excellent treatise based on the first spores he brought back from the island. That dissertation had led Grace to begin her own experiments using the potential lifesaving properties of these little guys.

      Grace glanced up at the clear blue sky and marveled at how far she’d come in her studies of the Allerian spores. They were valuable for so many reasons, including the gene replication studies she’d mentioned to Logan. But she was even more excited by the fact that the mitochondria found within the spore cells contained a rare type of phytohormone that carried potential medical applications. Her latest experiments had proven that these hormones could have an adverse effect on human cancer cells, causing certain cells to be suppressed or, in the case of her most recent lab trials, to die altogether.

      The possibility that Grace’s studies could lead to the destruction of cancer cells thrilled her as nothing else had before. She could no more stop this important research than she could stop breathing.

      She thought back to the day she first walked into the university laboratory when she was eight years old. She’d spent hundreds of lonely hours in the lab since then, but knowing that all those years of research might ultimately lead to so many lives being saved made her forget her own pain. It had all been worth СКАЧАТЬ