Sweat beaded on his brow that had nothing to do with the Louisiana summer afternoon.
“So where are you folks from?” Diane asked, smiling pleasantly.
Paige looked up at him expectantly.
“Texas,” he offered.
“Big state.” Pat laughed. “Where about in Texas?”
“Amarillo.” Paige sent him a smug grin, as if to say, two can play this game.
Diane nodded. “We’re from Baton Rouge. We heard this part of the state had some nice camping, so we headed up here on a lark. We’ve made a lot of spontaneous trips since we became empty-nesters.”
“Don’t suppose you kids have any children yet, being newlyweds and all?” Pat asked.
Paige shook her head, smiling politely, but Jake felt the slight tensing of her muscles. The idea of having babies with Paige shot a surreal sensation, an odd longing through Jake that made his head buzz. Family was a concept he held at arm’s length, a subject too intimate and raw to consider. Like staring into the sun, he had to look away quickly or risk the damaging effects.
“Listen, kids, later tonight we’ll have a big campfire and roast hot dogs and marshmallows.” Diane motioned to them with a sweep of her arm. “Why don’t you come over and join us? We have plenty!”
Jake groaned internally. Maybe camping had been a mistake. Clearly, slipping into the campground quietly and keeping a low profile was not an option. Not if all the neighbors were as outgoing and curious as the Appelmans.
A refusal was on the tip of his tongue when Paige piped in, “We don’t have other plans for dinner, and that sounds like fun. Count us in. And thank you.”
Pat glanced to the pop-up camper. “Sure you don’t want a hand?”
Before Jake could answer, Pat was taking over. In minutes, their neighbor had the rented camper set up and was showing Jake all the features inside. The fold-down table, the slide-out beds, the tiny refrigerator and electricity hookup.
Finally their loquacious neighbors headed back to “the monster,” leaving Jake and Paige to settle into the small camper.
Jake’s gut tightened when he considered the coming days, sharing these cramped quarters with Paige. Twenty-four/seven contact. All-day and all-night exposure to her vulnerable green eyes and the sweet scent that clung to her.
Gritting his teeth, he focused on the job at hand. He only had to remind himself that national security was at risk to bring his libido under control. Almost.
He pulled out the stack of files from Scofield’s office, eager to get to work after the day full of delays and distractions.
But Paige’s restless movement around the tiny camper, her quiet sighs and nervous tongue clicks as she set up the laptop and logged on, kept him hyperaware of his roommate. He sat across from her at the tiny fold-up table. Doubling as the baseboard for one of the beds when folded down and laid between the two bench seats, the table barely had space for him to spread a file and for her to park the laptop. Beneath the table, her knees bumped his when she shifted, and Jake almost swallowed his tongue as an unexpected jolt of electricity crackled through him.
Curling his fingers into his palms, he struggled to focus on the dry reading in the files, but the deep breath he took to clear his mind was scented with Paige’s shampoo, or her perfume, or whatever the source of the intoxicating floral aroma that swirled around her.
He cast a furtive glance in her direction. She studied the computer screen with rapt attention. If the brush of their knees had rattled her as much as it had him, she showed no sign of it. With one hand maneuvering the roller-ball mouse, Paige alternately chewed her manicured fingernail and tapped the polished nail on her teeth.
What did it say about him that he found her nervous habit endearing, mesmerizing?
Says you’re way too easily distracted, pal. Get a grip!
“Hey, Jake, take a look at this.” Paige waved a finger toward the computer screen, and her gaze shifted to meet his. “I’m looking through Brent’s planning calendar, and the entry for tomorrow is kinda weird.”
Jake turned the laptop to face him and read the entry.
June 13—Gates—3
18* 30’ 0” N 77* 55’ 0” W
“What do you suppose that means?” Paige waved a hand in query. “Gates 3. Is that like an airport gate number? Could the rest be an ID number or an account number or—?”
“No.” Jake shook his head as he met her eyes. He knew the pattern of numbers well. “I’d say they’re coordinates, GPS. Except it looks like he used an asterisk instead of the circle for degrees.”
“Coordinates for what? For where?”
He lifted a shoulder, scratched his chin. “Ballpark guess would be somewhere in the Caribbean. Which, considering that’s where you were honeymooning, makes sense, but doesn’t help us out much. This could be the coordinates of an address where he had a meeting.”
“Or of a restaurant he wanted to take me to, or of a landmark tourist attraction he wanted me to see.” Her tone was somewhat defensive, and like the many other times she’d tried to defend or justify Scofield’s motives or actions, Jake had to suppress a twist of frustration and…what?
He tightened his jaw and tried to decipher the secondary emotion that left a sour burn in his throat and had his muscles tensing. Jealousy?
He had no reason to be envious of Brent Scofield. He could easily compete with his old friend in most any aspect—appearance, physical ability, worldly experience, money. So why did Paige’s loyalty to Scofield rankle him so much?
Jake quickly squelched the thought before it could fully form. Loyalty was a luxury that he’d learned could easily be snatched away. He had no use for something so fickle.
“Without a way to check these coordinates, there’s no point speculating about the location.”
Paige leaned back on the bench seat and crossed her arms under her breasts. He tried not to stare at the enticing way the gesture plumped her cleavage. And failed.
A man had his limits.
“Can’t we plug the coordinates into the internet and find out where they’re for?”
He jerked his gaze to her face when she spoke. “Yeah, but we have no cell-phone reception out here in the boonies, much less a Wi-Fi connection. But next time we’re in town, we’ll stop by the library or a coffee shop where we can get on the internet.” He spun the laptop back around for Paige. “Meantime, keep looking. Maybe something else in there will give us a clue.”
“So what are you finding?” She waved a finger at the papers he’d spread on the tabletop.
Besides how easily you distract me?
Jake cleared his throat and riffled through the papers. “Most of this seems pretty routine. Memos and forms related to research projects. Marketing reports…” He lifted a meaningful glance to her. “Your handiwork, I take it?”
She twitched a quick grin. “If I was writing marketing reports on a product, then it was out of development and on the market. Doesn’t seem likely anything widely available would be what the terrorists are after.”
“Yeah. That’s what I’m thinking.” Jake closed a couple of folders and shuffled them to the bottom of his stack. Tapping the file now on top with his pen, Jake caught Paige’s gaze. “This PMB-611 file, the one he calls Superbug, looks like the most recent study.”
She tipped her head and lifted a shoulder. “It may be the one he started most recently, but we have multiple research projects ongoing at any time. Can you tell from what’s there what the project was researching? What kind of drug was in development?”
Jake flipped back through the papers to find a report he’d read earlier. “Um, it says…‘part of a progressive study to manufacture a vaccine for drug-resistant flu.’” He looked up from the page. “Drug-resistant-flu vaccine? Isn’t that an oxymoron?”
She smiled. “In a way, I guess. But the flu strains that are currently resistant to drug therapy are the very ones we need most to find a vaccine or treatment for. New flu viruses show up every year. Older
viruses mutate and adapt to the current treatments so that the drugs are less effective.” She sighed. “It’s a never-ending battle.”
“Fortunately…for Bancroft Industries and other drug developers’ pockets.”
She frowned, lines of discontent pleating her forehead. “Bancroft’s products save thousands—hundreds of thousands—of lives every year! Do you know how many people die from just the regular seasonal flu every year?” She paused briefly and arched a delicate eyebrow. “Thousands. Globally, the number could be as many as half a million.”
Jake cocked his head, stunned. “Really? That many? I knew the number was high, but…”
“Yeah. And with the recent emergence of avian and swine flu, researchers are scrambling to find new vaccines for the new variants of the virus. A pandemic, like the one in 1918 that infected about five hundred million people and killed fifty million worldwide, could develop any day and spread in a matter of weeks.” Passion and gravity for her subject blazed in her eyes.
“Yeah, I watch the news. I heard all this when the bird and swine flus showed up.”
“So…Bancroft Industries is just doing its part to try to stop diseases like that from decimating the population.” She paused. “Among other worthy projects.”
Jake drank in the flush in her cheeks, the green fire in her eyes and the husky, authoritative undertones in her voice as she made her point.
Damn, but she was sexy when she got riled…
“But they also stand to make millions of dollars if their product is approved to fight one of these diseases.” He lifted a corner of his mouth when her eyes widened in dismay. “I mean, come on, you’re in marketing. It’s always about the bottom line.”
She shoved to her feet, her expression reflecting hurt and disgust. “Yes, the company makes money. Business is business. But my grandfather and my father did not pour their lives’ work into Bancroft Industries just to get rich off the illness of others! They wanted to help stop illness and needless deaths. They wanted to contribute to society in a positive way. It’s not all about the money!”
Jake leaned back as far as he could on the narrow bench seat and stacked his hands behind his head. “A little touchy about your family’s wealth, Paige?”
“You brought it up! And you made it sound like I should be ashamed that my father’s company is successful. That all his hard work and his contributions to medical research were based in greed. That Bancroft—”
“Whoa!” Jake whipped a hand out to cut her off. “I didn’t mean any offense. Really.”
Paige glared at him, her expression dubious and her arms akimbo. After a moment, he took one of her hands between his, rubbing the back with calming strokes of his thumb. “I’m sorry if anything I said insulted you or your family.” Her expression softened, and he added, “Or Bancroft Industries.”
She drew a deep breath and exhaled slowly. “Okay.”
Before he released her hand, he brought it to his lips and pressed a chaste kiss to the back of it. His eyes held hers, and he watched her pupils widen, her eyes darken to the color of a deep lake. He felt himself sinking in that deep green water, drowning in the desire he saw reflected in her eyes. Reluctantly, he dropped her hand and tore his gaze away.
He leaned forward, hovering over the files from Brent’s office, but his attention was shot. All he could think about was how much he wanted to pull Paige close and taste her sweet lips as he had mere hours ago.
And what would she think if he did kiss her? She wasn’t as vulnerable today. She wasn’t shaking with the shock of the carnage and gunfire at Scofield’s office or reeling from her disrupted wedding as she had been last night. She’d had some time to collect herself, to know if kissing him was what she really wanted or just a gut response to an oversupply of adrenaline and life-threatening circumstances. Yet even with the luxury of a day’s perspective, Paige’s eyes warmed when he touched her. Her lips trembled when he held her gaze, and the air between them crackled the way the summer sky produced heat lightning.
Jake ducked his head, clenching his teeth until his jaw ached. Getting involved with his client’s fiancée—even his client’s ex-fiancée—was asking for trouble. They had big enough problems dealing with terrorists chasing them, some undefined threat to national security hanging over their heads and no solid leads to tell them what the hell they were mixed up in. His duty to protect Paige started with protecting her from himself. He knew without asking that she was not the one-night-stand type.
Paige was society weddings and Vera Wang dresses. She needed commitment, security, love.
He was a loner, black ops in third-world countries and dusty military fatigues. And he had nothing to offer her but his pledge to get her out of this debacle alive. Knowing this shouldn’t bother him. He was used to keeping people at arm’s length. So why did the prospect of walking away from Paige at the end of this assignment leave him feeling so…empty?
Chapter 7
Later that afternoon, Paige unzipped the canvas that covered the camper window and peeked outside.
Instantly, Jake jerked to attention. “What’s wrong? Did you hear something?”
“It’s a campground, Jake. I hear plenty of noise. Nothing to worry about.” She flashed him a wry grin. “Unless that kid who has been blaring his rap music plans to keep his speakers on very late tonight.”
Jake pulled a face. “I think if that happens, I could be convinced to remove his speakers from him. Permanently.”
He stretched his arms over his head, and his T-shirt pulled taut across his broad, muscled chest.
Paige’s mouth went dry, and she shoved to her feet from the narrow bench seat. “Actually, I was checking to see if our neighbors had their fire going yet. I’m beginning to crave a roasted hot dog.”
After several hours huddled around the small camper table, searching Brent’s files, Paige needed a break. Trying to ignore Jake, or rather, her magnetic attraction to Jake, was a bit like trying to ignore a rattlesnake coiled on the floor. And like a rattlesnake, Paige feared the powerful temptation Jake posed could come back to bite her if she didn’t keep her guard up.
She knew her interest in Jake was purely physical—he had an elite soldier’s body, a movie star’s face and dark bedroom eyes she could get lost in. She knew her reaction to him was emotional—he’d saved her life, comforted her when she was falling apart and shown her nothing but kindness. And she knew even considering a relationship with Jake was impractical and illogical—she couldn’t see anything they had in common, and the timing couldn’t be worse, days after her doomed wedding, while running from dangerous thugs.
The way Paige saw it, emotionalism and physical attraction were poor reasons to fall for a man, and the absence of the two ingredients she looked for, practicality and logic, cinched the deal. Falling for Jake would be a huge mistake.
But knowing he was all wrong for her wasn’t enough, apparently, to keep her nerves from tingling every time their knees brushed under the small table or her pulse from scampering when he held her hand and looked into her eyes. She’d nearly melted into a puddle of goo when he held her hand to apologize for his comments about Bancroft Industries profiting from the products they designed to fight disease.
Or maybe the reason her heart was racing had more to do with the implication that she, as a Bancroft, was spoiled. That her wealth somehow put her in an untouchable class that he resented.
Heaven knows, Brent always felt he had to strive toward a higher mark to be “good enough” for her. And she’d hated it. She wanted to be loved and accepted for who she was, not what she had. And she wanted the man she loved to know her affection was not tied to monetary worth or status in society.
Jake closed the paper files and rubbed his eyes. “Dinner does sound good, and I wasn’t looking forward to the canned and packaged stuff we bought today.”
Paige peeled back the corner of the zippered window cover. Diane Appelman spotted her and waved from behind a crackling campfire. “I thin
k they’re ready for us.” She smoothed a hand over the wrinkles in her cotton khaki shorts, a wasted effort. The manners her mother had bred into her from birth plucked her conscience. “I feel bad going empty-handed. Grab that can of corn. Can that be heated over a campfire?” she asked as she stepped back to give Jake room to scoot out from the table.
How were they supposed to share such tight quarters without going nuts?
“Sure. I bet the Appelmans have any number of ways to cook over an open fire.” He picked out two cans of corn and two of baked beans to contribute to dinner and, after putting the cans in a plastic sack, ushered her outside.
A swarm of annoying bugs flew in her face the minute they stepped outside, and she swatted at them, swallowing the groan of disgust that rose in her throat. As much as she hated bugs, she hated the idea of the terrorists finding them more. If Jake thought camping was their best bet for staying hidden, she would play along without complaint.
She shuddered. Even if that meant sharing her legs with a cloud of hungry mosquitoes. She gritted her teeth and slapped at the pesky menaces nipping her calves.
“Come over here by the fire, honey!” Diane called to her. “The bugs hate the smoke. And I have bug repellent you can use.”
Paige accepted the can of spray the woman handed her as they approached the neighboring campsite. “Diane, you’re my new best friend.”
The older woman chuckled. “When you’ve been doing this as long as we have, you learn to be prepared. Don’t worry. The bugs are worst now, at dusk. In a minute, Pat will get the citronella torches going, and you’d be surprised how few bugs you’ll see then.”
Paige turned to Jake. “Make a note for our next trip for supplies. Citronella and bug repellent.”
He massaged the base of her neck with his free hand. “Roger that, sweetheart.”
Dry warmth from the campfire baked her face, while another sort of heat blasted through her from his touch. The endearment he’d addressed her with had been for show, part of the role of newlyweds they played for their neighbors, but a flutter of sweet longing tap-danced in her chest. Brent had always been so formal, had never used a pet name for her, so Jake’s use of such an intimacy caught her off guard.
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