by Lucy Monroe
As much as Lana would prefer not to like the woman who had caught the interest of the only man she’d wanted in years, she found herself enjoying Elle’s company more each time they interacted. Of course, the crush Lana had had on Dr. Beau Ruston was small, stale potatoes next to the sizzling fries that had been short-circuiting her brain ever since Mykola had sauntered into her lab.
Well, she couldn’t be sure he’d sauntered. After all, her first awareness had been once he was already within touching distance, but she was fairly certain the bad boy intent on protecting his sister sauntered most places—rather than doing anything so mundane as mere walking.
Lana winked at Elle and then turned to Frank. “If that’s all you need from me, I’d like to get back to my work.”
What she really wanted to do was keep the sexy Mykola Chernichenko in her lab. Or better yet, take him home where she had privacy and a bed for a whole new type of research for her. Since neither was going to happen, she needed to stop daydreaming and get back to saving the world’s starving children.
“That’s it?” Mykola asked, his rich voice laced with shock and a little disdain. “I tell you that your project has put my sister at serious risk and you want to get back to your work?”
“Myk, that’s enough. My job is what has put me at risk. Not Lana, or her projects.”
“I don’t agree.” He didn’t raise his voice, but it was filled with a passion of purpose Lana understood only too well.
She wished she could help him, but she didn’t see what she could do to improve the situation.
Elle was looking far from amused now. “You don’t have to.”
“Tell these really dangerous people that the enzymes don’t work on metal.” Lana picked up her electronic tablet and stylus to jot down an idea.
“It doesn’t work like that.” Mykola put his hand over her tablet, filling her personal space. “They have no reason to believe us.”
“Or accept that verdict, even if they do believe it,” Lana acknowledged with an inner shudder, memories she’d buried surfacing in flashes that made her want to throw up.
“So, give them a reason.”
Lana’s head snapped around, and she stared at the newest visitor to her lab. It was Dr. Beau Ruston, her former heartthrob, Elle’s current fiancé, and second in command here at ETRD.
He grinned, a look that as recently as that morning would have sent butterflies on a high-wire act in her stomach.
Right this second with tall, protective, and dangerous in her lab, it just caused her to smile in return. “Hello, Beau.”
“Hey, Lana.”
He punched Mykola on the shoulder. “You’re the super-spook. It should be a piece of cake to convince the bad guys that Lana’s experiments are a washout. Hell, more than half the projects we work on here at ETRD never see the light of day or large-scale prototype testing.”
Beau moved right into Elle’s personal space and it was like the air shifted around them, sealing them in a bubble the rest of the world couldn’t touch.
Lana couldn’t imagine having something like that with someone else. The level of absolute trust and commitment these two showed toward each other was something she’d never known in her life. Not from her family and certainly not with the few boyfriends that had taken up temporary residence in her orbit.
“As brilliant as your insight is, my love, this situation is not that simple.” Elle’s expression sobered. “We can’t be sure they’re looking at the mythical concept of base metal alchemy. The Vega Cartel’s primary commodities are illegal substances. They may very well want the enzymes exactly for their intended purpose—to increase their cash crops.”
“If it is, we don’t have enzymes created for the type of plants they harvest, either.”
“You mean the enzymes aren’t universal?” Elle asked, sounding intrigued.
Lana shook her head. “Not even close. The enzyme developed for Phaseolus vulgaris wouldn’t work on another type of bean crop, much less a different plant family altogether like cannabis or Papaver somniferum.”
One of the things she loved about her enzyme project was that it was plant specific. If the concept was going to be misused, it would require a different scientific team than her own to develop enzymes for growing more marijuana or opium poppies.
“But it could be developed,” Mykola said.
“With as much likelihood of success as the enzymes we are currently working with, yes.”
He gave her that glare again. The one that blamed her for the world’s problems and all their ramifications.
“What would you have me do?” she asked him with exasperation. “Stop my experiments? That’s not going to help. As you say, the word is already out.” She smiled at Elle, when she felt like doing anything but. “I wish you’d been here to stop the leaks before my notes got copied, stolen, or whatever.”
“Damn it.” Sounding deeply surly again, Mykola spun away from her.
She felt the rejection but pushed it down where it couldn’t hurt. The same place she kept her fear at bay.
“I’m not like you and Elle. My skills don’t range to protecting others. I ask again, what do you want me to do?” Then a truly horrifying thought came to her. “You want me to turn myself over to the cartel?”
“No!” Elle and Beau said in forceful unison.
Mykola’s glare did not soften. If anything, it got more pointed. “Of course not.”
“Don’t be ridiculous, Lana,” was Frank’s contribution.
She almost laughed. They all sounded so sincere—appalled that she would even make such a suggestion. Only, if the choice came down to it, she’d bet Mykola would trade her for the safety of his sister in a heartbeat. That Elle would not willingly go along with such a plan was immaterial.
Not everyone got a vote in situations like this. Not even the people most affected. Lana hadn’t. Before. She’d been sold out for motives a lot less noble and compelling than the safety of a family member. Her research, her freedom, her life had been put on the auction block for five hundred lousy dollars and a handful of pills that wouldn’t have lasted the length of time it had taken her captors to get her interred in her new home.
She was never going through that again if she could help it. Images of a hot, windowless lab with a steel door in northern Turkey threatened to take over her mind. She shoved them back with more concentration and determination than she gave anything besides her work.
Her libido doused like a candle flame under a hurricane wave, she turned away from them all, going back to the safe and familiar. “I believe that I’ve told you all that I can. If I can help with anything else, ask.”
With that, she went back to her work.
She could have asked what they planned to do to protect her. Even if Mykola’s sole concern was his sister, Elle and Frank saw Lana as a valuable resource for ETRD and presumably wouldn’t want to lose her. She had no doubts that if not now, once Mr. Smith was made aware of the situation, plans would be made to keep her safe as well.
It didn’t really matter, though. No one’s personal security could be guaranteed. She would do her best to stay safe and if she was taken, she’d do what she had to in order to get away.
Just like she had the last time.
Chapter 3
“What the hell just happened?” Myk asked as he, Elle, Beau, and Frank walked down the nondescript gray hallway toward Elle’s office.
For a company on the leading edge of environmental technology, the building’s décor was less than inspiring. Who knew? Maybe gray walls and white labs were supposed to promote creative thinking to compensate?
Frank checked his watch and pulled the cell phone from the holster on his belt, clearly needing to make a call. “That’s just Lana. Don’t take it personally.”
“It’s hard to take her desire to have sex with me any other way.”
Beau choked on a laugh. “She said that?”
“Myk! Stop it.” Elle sounded serious. “Lana’s soc
ial skills are a little unpolished. She spends too much time on her own. The only other person she talks to regularly is her lab assistant.”
Frank chuckled. “I swear those two talk in some kind of code. Half the time I can’t follow their conversation.”
“So?” Myk shrugged.
“So…just don’t make fun of her. You, either,” Elle said to Beau and then stopped at her door and passed her hand over the biometric lock. “She’s a brilliant scientist and a caring person.”
“Yeah, she cares so much, she dismissed us after I told her you were the primary target for bastards that would make slitting your throat seem like a favor.”
Elle spun to face him, her glare familiar and yet more intense than it used to be. “First target. Not primary. Ultimately, to make whatever scheme they’ve got going work, these people are going to need Lana, not just her formulas. That makes her the primary target and don’t think she’s so lost in scientific theory she hasn’t already figured that out.”
Right. “Then why didn’t she ask what we are going to do to protect her?”
“I’m sure she doesn’t think you are interested in protecting her at all.” Elle pushed the door to her office open and stepped inside.
Beau followed her. “Sounds like I missed some fun showing up late for your talk with our little alchemist.”
“That’s bullshit,” Myk said to his sister, more annoyed than he should be by the accusation. “I’m lead agent on this case. Her safety is my responsibility.”
“You didn’t tell her that, though, did you?” Elle shook her head and sat down behind her desk, giving him a look that reminded him of their mother in full disapproval mode. “No, you made sure you told her that if anything happens to me that it’s her fault.”
Myk wasn’t taking that back. He was furious that his sister was at risk from a drug cartel that made the slavery ring he took down look like school-yard bullies in comparison.
Elle sighed, her expression going somber. “Besides, I doubt she believes that she’s safe, regardless of what measures are taken.”
“Why?” Beau asked from his perch on the edge of Elle’s desk.
“Do you know something we don’t?” Frank asked thoughtfully, his phone open but inactive in his hand as he took one of the chairs facing Elle’s desk.
Myk opted to stand.
“I’m sure Mr. Smith is aware of it,” Elle said with some derision. “But he’s already shown he shares information on a need-to-know basis and he decides who needs to know what.”
“What does Mr. Smith know?” Myk asked, on the downhill slide to psychotically frustrated, a condition only the women in his family seemed to be able to elicit in him.
“Lana was a child prodigy.”
“It figures,” Myk muttered. The woman was even smarter than his sister, but he didn’t see what that had to do with her perception of personal safety.
“Honey, that’s not exactly a state secret,” Beau said.
Elle hushed him with a look. Huh. So it worked on non-Chernichenko males as well. Must be the connection between them.
“She had a double PhD in applied physics and chemistry by the time she was twenty-one.” Elle’s admiration was clear in her tone. “Her doctoral thesis for her PhD in chemistry had applications for chemical warfare, though she was interested in improving water supplies without hugely expensive water-treatment facilities.”
“And?” Frank prompted when Beau and Myk refused to do so.
Chernichenko women were notorious for dragging out a story. The men in the family had a policy of not encouraging them. Myk was glad to see Beau taking the same tack.
“And she was kidnapped by a radical faction of the Kurdish rebels a week after she defended her thesis to the doctoral committee. The rebels wanted her to create chemical weapons for them.”
Several beats of stunned silence followed Elle’s revelation.
That was one need-to-know fact Myk would never have guessed resided in the sexy scientist’s history.
“Someone found out and got her released?” Beau asked.
Elle’s gray eyes flashed. “She blew a hole in the wall of the cell equipped as a lab that they kept her in. The door was steel, set in a steel frame, but the walls were more vulnerable.”
“Day-am,” Beau’s drawled.
Myk’s reaction was less printable.
“Two soldiers died in the explosion and several others would have suffered permanent nerve damage from the gas she released to incapacitate them for her escape.”
Myk shook his head in amazement. “She’d make a hell of a soldier.”
“You think?” Elle didn’t look convinced of that fact. “There’s a reason she spends more time in her lab than she does at home and barely has a social life outside of ETRD.”
Frank was frowning in thought. “She didn’t start working for ETRD until she was twenty-four.”
“She disappeared after the explosion. She didn’t show back up on anyone’s radar until six weeks before she started working here.”
“Mr. Smith found her.”
“Probably, but if he knows how she spent that year plus, he’s never said.”
“Year plus? How long did the Kurds have her incarcerated?”
“A little over eight months.”
Myk’s insides twisted in a way he’d thought he’d grown immune to. “They forced her to work for them.”
“She’s a pacifist who has dedicated her life to mitigating world hunger. What do you think?”
“Hell.”
“That’s exactly what I’m sure she lived in for those eight months.”
“Mr. Smith never told me any of this.” Frank closed his phone without making the call and put it back in its holster.
“Surprised?” Elle asked.
Frank’s jaw locked. “No.” He might not be surprised, but he was obviously pissed.
“And you think she believes I have no interest in protecting her from the Vega Cartel?”
Elle’s look of sisterly censure was easier to read than See Spot Run. “You did a good job of selling it.”
“I’m worried about you. Is that a crime?”
“No, but neither is trying to feed starving children.”
Shit.
Myk spun on his heel and headed back to Lana’s lab.
He found Lana back at her microscope. Muttering to herself, she took notes on an electronic tablet with one hand while staring with rapt attention at whatever she saw beneath the lens.
Just like before, she didn’t appear to notice the arrival of someone new in the lab. Damn.
This was not good. Clearly she felt safe here, but she shouldn’t—at least not to the extent that she became completely impervious to what was going on around her. It amazed him that she could, after the experience she’d had. No matter how good Elle’s protection measures for ETRD were, nothing was foolproof.
He’d just dropped a bomb on Lana’s sense of security. Or it should have been. However, despite her own knowledge to the contrary, Lana Ericson acted as if she was completely naïve to her potential risk. He trusted Elle when she said she thought Lana was too intelligent not to realize she was a target as well.
Which meant what?
Myk didn’t have an answer for that. The woman should be a nervous wreck, but instead she was lost to the world around her while she worked on her project.
And as dangerous as that was, she charmed him.
Damn it.
“Do you always talk gibberish to yourself when you are alone in your lab?”
She stiffened. “It’s not gibberish. It’s formulas. For my project.”
She’d heard him the first time he spoke, unlike when Frank and his sister had been trying to get the modern-day alchemist’s attention earlier.
Interesting. “Ah.”
“Did you need something?”
“For you to look at me to start with.” He tugged on her ponytail of stick-straight strawberry-blond hair. It was soft as silk and he co
uldn’t resist the urge to subtly caress it as he let go.
This woman was lethal to his self-control.
He forced himself to take a step backward as she turned to face him.
Soft gray eyes dusted with flecks of green stared at him in wary confusion. “Did you need something else?”
“Yes.”
“What?” Her gaze skimmed over him like it had earlier, the heat as honest as it had been the first time, though the wariness remained.
Her reactions were so candid. So damn different from him. Because while his sex had thickened to the point of straining against the leather of his pants, his breathing and expression were carefully controlled.
No way would she know how she affected him unless she looked directly at the only evidence. And even then, the snug leather did a good job of holding him in.
She didn’t look. This time.
Elle’s reaction earlier must have had an impact on the scientist’s uninhibited behavior.
Too bad.
He thought he might just be able to come in his pants from the blatant and hot, yet innocent interest of the usually preoccupied scientist.
So maybe his control wasn’t as good as it should be if he was having thoughts like that.
Back to work, Myk. “I’m not going to let them take you.”
She shrugged, her lack of belief obvious.
He couldn’t help it. He stepped forward, invading her personal space once again. She needed to trust him. He was the agent in charge. Her safety was his responsibility. “You’re not going to end up in another prison cell lab. You have my word.”
Her eyes widened, like his knowledge of her past surprised her. Then she wrapped her arms around voluptuous curves not completely hidden by her lab coat. “You can’t make that kind of promise.”
“Yes, I can.” The need to touch the alluring scientist too strong to resist, he cupped her face. “I may not be a brilliant head-geek, but I’m damn good at what I do.”
Her breathing hitched, causing the generous swell of her breasts to brush his elbows. He was going to go to Agency Hell for the thoughts he was having about this woman he was supposed to protect. But damn if he didn’t want to rip the nondescript lab coat from her body and then peel away the clingy lime-green T-shirt with a picture of Winnie-the-Pooh, his hand caught in the honey jar, on the front.