Red Alert, page 9
“Well, that makes one of us,” he said. He jerked his head to the elevators. “Come on. Let’s hole up for the night. Maybe this will all make more sense once we’ve had a few hours of shut-eye.”
She wasn’t sure whether “this” referred to the kiss, the attacks or their continued stalemate over the NPT sale, but she agreed with him on one count, at least. She was done in. Suddenly exhaustion pounded at her from all sides, as though fatigue had been waiting at the edges of her consciousness, ready to swoop down the moment she dropped her guard. “Fine. You going to run me home, or should I catch a cab?”
He looked at her strangely. “For God’s sake, I’m not leaving you alone just because I’m mad. Not after Raine and the text message. He said my other girlfriend was next. He may have got the relationship wrong, but the sentiment’s clear. Whether or not the earlier attacks were directed at me, you’re officially a target.”
Meg shivered and twined her fingers together as the last of the heat faded from her core. But she didn’t argue. There was nothing to argue against. She might not like Erik or his methods—or, more honestly, she liked some parts of him too much and others not nearly enough—but he was right. It wasn’t business as usual anymore. “What do you suggest?”
Faint surprise flashed in his eyes, followed by something darker, as though her capitulation only confirmed his deepest suspicions. “The way I see it, we have two choices—your place or a hotel. Either way, I think we should get the hell out of here as soon as possible.”
Because all of the attacks so far had come in or near the hospital.
Meg suppressed another shudder and focused on one omitted detail. “Why not your place?”
“Not an option,” he said flatly. When she would have pressed—out of sheer stubbornness more than anything—he held up a hand. “Hotel or your place? Either way, I’m staying with you.”
The thought of him bunking on her couch, or worse, in an adjoining hotel room, lent a new frisson of energy to the worry. “I’m not sure I want you as my protection.”
He scowled and advanced on her until they were nearly nose-to-nose, until he filled her vision, looking large and angry and masculine, capable of protection, of violence, every inch the cop he’d once been. “Sorry, babe. You don’t have a choice. I’m the one with the gun.”
Though she knew he wasn’t threatening her, she fell back a step and bumped into the conference table. “I thought you said you didn’t carry anymore, that the recoil messed with your balance.”
“I said I didn’t like to carry,” he corrected her. “I never said I couldn’t. I can and will if the circumstances require, and these do. So I’ll ask again, your place or a hotel?”
“My place,” she said finally, because the narrow house had three different floors. She could get away from him if she needed to, away from his presence and the memory of that chilly transformation, when he’d gone from aroused to stone-cold in an instant.
He tipped his head in assent and gestured toward the elevators. “You go. I’ll cover you.”
And he did just that as they left the building, eyes probing every niche, every shadow. Oddly, instead of making her feel safer, his vigilance made her feel more endangered.
More exposed.
EDWARD WATCHED from his vantage point at a small pastry shop down the street from Boston General. Open late, the six-table restaurant had allowed him to watch in comfort, with the added benefits of strong coffee and delicacies he’d paid for singly, much to the waitress’s amusement.
Let her laugh. The moment Falco and the doctor emerged, Edward tossed his napkin, drained his espresso and dropped a decent tip on the table before he strode out into the night and hailed a cab.
“Where to?” the driver asked once the door was shut, closing Edward in with the scents of cheap plastic and too many other people.
“Wait one moment.”
That earned him a startled look, but the cabbie shrugged. “Meter’s running.”
Edward watched as Falco’s Mercedes emerged from the Boston General underground lot. “Follow that car.”
“You some sort of a stalker or something?” But the cabbie said it with a laugh.
Edward snorted. “Hardly. We’ve been at an office party. The boss asked me to make sure they get home okay, but not to make a big deal about it, if you know what I mean.”
The driver glanced in the rearview mirror, making Edward worry that the lie was too elaborate. Then the cabbie’s eyes slid away and he steered them out into the sparse midnight traffic on Kneeland Street. “Bummer. I was hoping for something more exciting.”
“Sorry to disappoint.”
They tailed the Mercedes to a row of neat, narrow houses just outside überexpensive Beacon Hill. “Don’t pull up too close when they get out,” Edward warned. “The boss didn’t want his top VP to know I was checking up.”
“Gotcha.” The driver rolled to a stop in the lee of a big green van, so they were partially blocked from view as Falco and the bitch emerged and walked up a brick path toward her house. They walked near each other but not together, separated by a telling empty space, and by their stiff, stilted postures. The cabbie noticed it, too. “Looks like they had a fight in the car. That, or the drink’s wearing off.”
“Either way, I’m just making sure they get home safe.” He watched as the doctor unlocked the front door and Falco shielded her with his body, just like a good little cop. They went in together. The door shut. The lights snapped on inside. Edward leaned back and smiled. “That’ll do. You can drop me at the closest T stop.”
The driver’s reflection in the rearview mirror looked faintly insulted that his fare would rather take public transport the rest of the way home. In reality, Edward planned to switch cabs at the station, then again at least once more before giving his home address. Just in case.
But as the cab rolled back onto the street, those practicalities were lost in a wave of satisfaction.
It wouldn’t be long now.
ERIK CHECKED every room in Meg’s house, from the lower-level storage and guest room, through the main level with its open kitchen and sitting area, up to the top floor, where he discovered a sybaritic master suite that gave him way too many ideas. The bed was neatly made with a green knitted spread that contrasted with the rich burgundy paint on the walls and the brass accents of the headboard and bedside lamps.
He shouldn’t be able to picture Meg lying there, beckoning him closer.
Because he could, because his system still revved from the kiss they’d shared back at the hospital, and from the surge of mindless, near-violent anger that had consumed him when she’d asked him about the NPT deal in the heat of the moment, he realized he’d done it again. He’d fallen in lust with a woman who didn’t want him, but rather wanted something from him.
“Idiot.”
“Did you find something?” Her voice came from the doorway, startling him. Inflaming him.
He spun on her, gun in one hand, cane in the other. “I thought I told you to stay by the door.”
“That was nearly ten minutes ago. If there was someone here, you’d’ve found him by now.”
He hated the logic, hated the way she stood framed in the doorway with the soft hallway light spilling over her shoulders, touching her cheek and chin with a reflected rosy hue. Tension snapped in the air between them, a sudden acknowledgment of where they were, an awareness of the big bed a few paces away and the pounding, unfulfilled ache of their earlier kiss.
If he were the man he’d once been, he would have damned the consequences and taken her. He would have crossed the room on strong, whole legs, swept her up into his arms and carried her to the bed. Hell, maybe they wouldn’t have even made it to the bed the first time. Maybe he would’ve taken her up against the wall, pounded himself into her until he could think straight again. Until they both could.
But he wasn’t that man anymore. He could no more cross the room unassisted as he could lose himself in a woman he didn’t trust. So he slid the safety on his weapon—a small drop piece that was all he could handle these days without fighting the recoil—and stuck it into his waistband at the small of his back, where it made an awkward, half-familiar bulge.
Then he leaned on his cane and crossed the room, expecting her to be smart enough to move before he got too close. She didn’t, of course, because her agenda was different from his. She’d followed him upstairs with a plan. A purpose.
She wanted to seduce him out of his goal.
He stopped just shy of where she stood, looking up at him with wide eyes and wide lips that beckoned him with a faint hint of tension. Of moist heat.
Again, he was tempted to take her up on the offer. Tempted to believe he could lose himself in the physical without making the emotional mistake he once had.
He leaned closer, until he could smell the faintest hint of her scent, more organic than the touch of perfume in the master bedroom, somehow changed by a day on her skin.
She didn’t lean into him, didn’t lean away, not even when he shifted to align their faces, their bodies. They weren’t touching, but neither were they separated. The heat in the air bound them together.
Her lips shaped a word. Two syllables. His name. “Erik?”
It was barely a puff of breath. An acknowledgment. An invitation. An almost impossible temptation.
He cursed and pulled away. “I thought so. Excuse me.” He pushed past her, leaning harder on his cane than necessary, until the force sang up his shoulder and echoed in his hip as he stalked out into the hall and spun back, nearly vibrating with an emotion he couldn’t name. “For the record, I’m interested, but I’m not an idiot. You want me? Then tell Cage to go forward with the sale tomorrow. Once that’s out of the way, we can get as horizontal as you want.”
Her expression blanked with shock for an instant, then flushed with fury. He half expected her to slap him, half wished she would. Instead she straightened away from the door frame, so the light from the brass bedroom lamps gleamed around her like a halo. “I won’t prostitute my work, and I won’t prostitute myself. I think it’s a shame that you would, Erik. A damned shame.”
With that, she disappeared into the bedroom. Her voice carried out into the hall. “Help yourself to whatever’s in the fridge. Blankets and pillows are in the hallway closet, the sofa’s on the middle floor, guest bed on the lower level. Take your pick. And, Erik?”
“Yeah?” he said, though he almost said, I’m sorry for being a jerk, sorry I’m damaged, sorry for everything. But he couldn’t say any of those things because they weren’t really true. He wasn’t sorry. He was smart.
“I don’t want to see your face until morning.”
THOUGH SHE WAS TREMBLING as much from rage as emotional backlash, Meg held it together until she heard his uneven steps move down the hall. She crossed the room and stayed quiet while the hallway closet door opened, then shut, and the stairs creaked beneath his weight.
Then she yanked a pillow off the bed and hurled it against the door. She would’ve thrown something more satisfyingly solid, something that would’ve made a glorious crash, but the noise would only bring him running, and that was the last thing she needed.
Ignoring the part of her that said it was exactly what she needed, she stalked into the master bath, shedding her clothes as she went. Her stomach rumbled with hunger, but she’d be damned if she faced him again that night.
Two rejections per day was her limit.
Instead she leaned over the Jacuzzi tub and twisted the knobs. She was tired, achy and sore, and she was going to indulge herself, damn it. She’d learned over the past few years that if she didn’t take the time, nobody was going to take it for her.
Tears prickling at the thought, at the accumulated stress of the past week, she added bath beads to the filling tub, which was a deep triangle with power nozzles, big enough for two.
When it was full, she grabbed the cordless handset from the bedroom, returned to the bathroom and climbed into the tub. Warmth surrounded her immediately, caressing her with scented bath oils and the low-grade pulse of the jets.
It was almost, but not quite, like being held.
Her eyelids burned as she hit number six on the speed dial and tried not to notice that four of the top five numbers were local take-out restaurants with free delivery.
The line connected halfway through the third ring. “Hello?”
Meg sighed and eased lower in the tub, keeping her phone barely above the surface. “I’ve decided to become a lesbian. I’m terrible with men.” She paused. “Then again, I’m not so good with women, either, so the lesbian thing might not work. What if I bought a little cabin in the Vermont woods and talked to bears, instead?”
There was a startled pause, then a tentative, “Meg? Is that you? Is something wrong at the lab?”
Embarrassment was a hot rush when she realized that her closest female friend didn’t know her phone voice, couldn’t conceive of her calling outside of work. “Yes, it’s me. I’m sorry, Jemma. I shouldn’t have bothered you at home.”
“No, that’s…” Rustling carried down the line, and the click of a lamp, then her assistant’s voice returned, stronger and more awake now. “No. I’m glad you called. What was that about lesbians?”
“Oh, heck. It’s late, isn’t it?” Meg glanced around, but even she wasn’t compulsive enough to have a clock in the bathroom. “I’m sorry. I’ll hang up now. Please forget I called.”
“No. Don’t go,” Jemma said quickly. “What’s wrong? Has there been another attack? Has Raine taken a downturn? No,” she answered her own question, “you called to talk about lesbian bears. You’ve got man trouble?” She gasped. “You went out with Otto?”
Meg remembered her fledgling crush on her climbing instructor with a faint sense of nostalgia. “Nothing that simple. It’s Falco.”
There was dead silence for a moment before Jemma said, “What was that you were saying about a cabin in the Vermont woods?”
Ouch. Meg sank lower in the bath and told herself the sudden chill was a sign that the bath water was cooling. “You don’t like him.”
“It’s not that,” Jemma said quickly, “I like him fine, except for the parts where he tried to strong-arm the administration into selling your life’s work, pretended he and Raine were married, put you in the crosshairs of someone who wants you dead, and still manages to act like it’s everyone else’s fault.”
“I thought you said you liked him fine,” Meg said, hating that her voice sounded so small, and hating that every one of Jemma’s words resonated with inescapable logic.
“I do. Just not for you.” After a pause, Jemma sighed. “I’m sorry, I’m not trying to be mean, but you’ve been out of the dating scene for a few years, right? Well, let’s just say I wouldn’t suggest breaking the drought with someone like Falco. He’s got too much attitude. Too much baggage. Cut your teeth on someone easier. Please.”
There was a sharp thread of emotion in Jemma’s voice that told Meg she spoke from experience, but the logic rang true. Erik wasn’t easy. He was work.
And he’d already turned her down. Twice.
Meg sighed. “How old are you again? You sound like somebody’s mother.” Not hers, though. And her father had managed to turn the birds and the bees into a two-month lecture series.
“Sorry.” Jemma laughed, but the sound carried a thin quality that made Meg wonder. She hadn’t asked her assistant many personal questions. She knew Jemma was divorced and childless, and sometimes dated a radiation safety officer named Chet, but beyond that, nothing. Yet her first instinct had been to call Jemma. What did that mean? That she was so socially cut off that she had to turn an employee into an unwilling friend? Or that she was finally breaking out of the academic mold?
Meg decided she preferred the latter option, but feared it might be too little, too late when it came to her relationship with Erik.
Or lack thereof.
“It’s just that I don’t get him. His reactions don’t make sense. One minute I could swear he’s going to kiss me—” Or he is kissing me, she thought but didn’t say, because she wasn’t sure she was ready to share the details “—and the next minute he’s angry about it. Or maybe angry at me. I’m not sure anymore.”
“That’s my point,” Jemma said. “He’s not a bad guy, but—never mind the fact that he’s trying to take over your life’s work, which can’t be a good start for a relationship—he seems like he’s got a bunch of layers, and not all of them are good ones. I’d be afraid that if you dug your way through a few of them, you might not like what you find underneath.”
“And that’s a good enough reason not to bother trying?” Meg asked, hearing the petulance in her own voice and wondering why she was arguing when she knew Jemma was right.
“Maybe, maybe not. But are you willing to invest the time and energy in a project that might not pay off?”
“What if we called him a side project?” Meg said, referring to the smaller, riskier experiments they occasionally attempted. Side projects weren’t the main focus of the lab’s efforts and they failed ninety percent of the time. But when they succeeded, the payoff was usually huge.
Hell, the technique that eventually became NPT had evolved from her grad school side project, and NPT was an unqualified success.
“I’ve worked for you how long?” Jemma asked. “Three years? I think I know you well enough to say there’s no way you could make a man like Falco into a side project. Otto, maybe. But Falco? No way. He’d become your primary investment way too quickly.”
“Yet you’d rather see me with Otto than Erik,” Meg said, beginning to think she would’ve been better off calling speed dials one through four and ordering take-out.
“I don’t think either of them is right for you, but I’d rather see you practice on Otto, yes. Much less potential for bloodshed.”
Meg shivered faintly at how true those words had already proven. “You’re right. I don’t like it, but I know you’re right.” On the heels of the shiver came an ear-popping yawn that she didn’t even bother to cover.
