False Match

by Lynne Silver

  False Match

  Lynne Silver

  Book three in the Coded for Love series.

  Genetically enhanced soldier Chase Stanton has two jobs in life. One, he must kick ass on all missions for the Program, and two, breed with his DNA breed mate, whoever and wherever she may be.

  Two problems. Chase learns he isn’t genetically enhanced after all and Doctor Samara Jones, the woman he craves beyond all reason, is likely an enemy of his team and not his true match. Too bad they can’t keep their hands off each other.

  A Romantica® contemporary erotic romance from Ellora’s Cave

  False Match

  Lynne Silver

  Dedication

  To N & J for teaching me how a mother loves.

  Acknowledgments

  Thank you to the Washington Romance Writers, the best RWA chapter.

  Chapter One

  “We want to offer you a full-time job.”

  Samara stared across the battered wood desk at Commander Shepard of the Program, a formerly top-secret government military agency. “And if I don’t accept?” She’d arrived on campus yesterday, and barely had time to get her bearings. All she knew about the place was what had been written in the newspapers, basically nothing. She knew they’d been breeding genetically enhanced soldiers since the sixties. Other than that, she was in the dark.

  She also knew it was these genetically enhanced soldiers who had rescued her from captivity. After a nightmarish year, it was hard to believe she was free. Free from being coerced to work for one Doctor Paulson out of fear her son would be harmed.

  “Then we will arrest you for conspiring with Paulson, a known enemy.” Maybe not so free after all. Across the desk, Shep’s lips tightened into a thin line. It was obvious he knew he was acting like a bastard. He knew more than anybody she hadn’t had a choice about working for Paulson. They’d kidnapped her son and forced her cooperation. When it came down to it, Shep wasn’t acting any better than their enemy, Paulson. At least Shep had the decency not to involve an innocent child, but it wasn’t much consolation.

  She turned away and took a deep breath, controlling it so it didn’t turn into a heaving gasp or sob. Yep, back in prison. When all she wanted was a little ranch house with a nice yard for Luca, and a clean lab for her to conduct her research in. “Well, then I guess I accept.”

  Shep smiled. “Excellent. Someone from human resources will be in touch to talk salary and benefits package.”

  How could he say that with a straight face? As if she had a choice. The time for her choices had come and gone. She wished they’d made the offer years ago, when she was straight out of med school and excited about taking her genetics study in an unexplored direction. But no, she’d hadn’t considered any offers from government agencies and only wanted to go into the private sector with supposedly more funding and more freedom.

  The irony was that she’d had the freedom stolen away, and would likely never have it again.

  “We want you working closely with Doctor Wise,” Shep said. “She wants to explore the possibility of creating enhanced children from unmatched parents and research the possibility of enhancing already developed fetuses.”

  She nodded. It’s what Paulson had been working on also. It was what everyone was working on. Designer babies was the holy grail of genetic enhancement, and deep inside, she knew they were years away from significant breakthroughs in the science. Not to mention the ethics involved. Her stomach rolled over as she contemplated more years stuck in this place working on a project she was coming to oppose ethically, and yet she was the world’s leading expert. Oh the irony.

  Unfortunately, her ethics hadn’t come into play when she’d worked for Paulson and her progress hadn’t been fast enough for him, so he’d felt the need to kidnap Adam and Loren, a matched couple from the Program compound, in order to force them to breed enhanced children to be handed over to terrorists as future soldiers.

  “Several of our breeding-aged soldiers are balking at finding their genetic match. They want more freedom.”

  “To fall in love,” she said.

  “What was that?” Shep looked startled.

  “They want love matches. Falling in love based on science scares them.” Though she’d been working in the field of genetic matching for years, it was brand new to the rest of the world. The idea that a person’s DNA code could be matched to another’s to create a more perfect human was earth shattering to the world at large who’d only learned of it over the summer.

  “I don’t understand why, but I suppose you could be right.”

  “I am.”

  “I know you’re bright. We’ve had your records sent from your schools and early jobs. Very impressive.”

  She’d been hearing that word all her life in relation to her academic pursuits, but since he seemed to want some sort of acknowledgement, she murmured, “Thank you.” She studied the leather black toe of her shoe as it rubbed against the beige carpet on Shep’s office floor.

  “Doctor Wise will give you a list of your top priorities. Oh, and there’s an already matched couple who are having trouble conceiving. They’ve suffered from a few miscarriages. Make them priority one.”

  “Of course.” She stood and turned to go.

  “Oh, and Doctor Jones…”

  She turned back to Shepard.

  “Chase Stanton will be handling your introduction into the Program campus. Consider him a tour guide of sorts. I don’t believe you met him.”

  “No, I haven’t,” she said.

  Shep’s office door cracked open and a man who looked more like a surfer with his sun-streaked messy hair and bronze skin popped his head in. “You wanted to see me, Shep?”

  “Stanton, come on in.” The surfer entered and the office was suddenly too small for all three of them. It wasn’t so much that Chase was huge. He was the typical Program enhanced soldier, a little over six feet with a lean, muscular body. It was his internal energy that bounced off him as if his life force couldn’t be contained by skin.

  She subtly stepped back.

  “Stanton, this is Doctor Samara Jones,” Shep said. She didn’t imagine it, Chase lost his smile and his positive energy almost shut down into something cold.

  “Chase, you’ll be her shadow for the next few weeks to help Doctor Jones learn her way around,” Commander Shepard said. She wondered why the other doctor on campus, Doctor Wise, wasn’t going to be her mentor. It didn’t make sense to use a soldier as her welcome committee. It was a misuse of resources, unless they felt they needed someone with military training. She wasn’t sure yet whether it was to protect her from Paulson or to protect them from her.

  “That’s all for now, Doctor Jones,” Shepard said. “If you give it a chance, I think you’ll like it here. We run a good program and do important things.”

  “If you say so, sir.” She eyed her new shadow and exited into the hallway, wondering if he’d follow closely. He did. Once the door closed firmly behind him, she stalked down the hall to head outside in search of some sunshine.

  *

  Two Weeks Later

  A prison was a prison even if it had pretty gardens and no locks on the doors. And Samara could no longer ignore the clues, just as she’d suspected when Commander Shepard offered her the job two weeks ago, she was back in a prison. Sure, this particular prison had a lovely campus, Olympic-size pool and an amazing state-of-the-art genetics lab, but if she wasn’t allowed off campus without an escort, then it was for all intents and purposes a prison.

  Once again she was being coerced to work on scientific projects not of her choosing. At least her current bosses were a little more flexible and less Doctor Evil than her last boss, Doctor Paulson.

  “Goddamn bastard,” Samara said under her breath
.

  “You talking to me?” Chase Stanton asked.

  She looked up from her notebook to glare at the man in the room. He may have introduced himself as her personal guide to her new home, but now she knew better, he was her guard.

  “I may be a lot of things, but bastard isn’t one of them,” he said.

  “I wasn’t talking about you,” she muttered. “I save the good adjectives for you.” In the two weeks they’d been together, they hadn’t had any conversation more than tersely worded exchanges. She’d done her best to ignore him, but there was something about his presence that had her reading her notes twice without understanding them and dropping equipment willy-nilly. If she broke any more glass, she was going to have to requisition her own vacuum cleaner.

  He grinned at her but there was nothing friendly about it. “Care to share?”

  Boy did she, but calling Chase a pigheaded, cocksucking son of a bitch wasn’t going to make any friends on the Program campus. And since it looked as if the Program was to be her new home for the foreseeable future, she probably shouldn’t annoy their most popular resident. That was the biggest rub. She was unaccountably attracted to him, yet he’d done nothing to encourage her. If anything, he’d been as silent as a sculpture.

  They both looked up as the door to the lab opened, and Marlena, the Program head chef, popped in with a plateful of warm, out-of-the-oven cookies for Chase.

  “Thanks, Lena. You’re the best,” Chase said around a mouthful of cookie. He waited until the door closed behind Marlena before reluctantly holding the plate out to her, offering one.

  She shook her head in refusal. Marlena had baked them especially for her señor Chase. Had she willingly offered her one? Of course not. So of course she didn’t indulge herself in a cookie, even if she could smell the melting chocolate from across the room.

  She didn’t understand it. Chase had a steady stream of visitors at all hours popping in to say hi, share a joke or bring home-baked goodies. Apparently, he had charm, but he hid it well from her, hence her desire to call him names. It wasn’t just his co-soldiers stopping by, as exhibited by Marlena’s appearance. Yesterday the campus gardener had swung by.

  She got suspicious looks and medical scientific requests, not delicious-smelling cookies fresh from the oven. What was it with Stanton and the ladies of the campus? Even the married ones were stopping in to check on him. Maybe if you squinted he was kind of good-looking. Okay, the jerk was freaking gorgeous. There was no squinting about it. A blind person would think he was movie-star gorgeous with his sunny smile and surfer-boy blond hair all perched on a tan, muscular body.

  She was not a shallow person. It took more than good looks to attract her. So why then was she staring at Chase when she was supposed to be staring in her microscope or asking him to pass things to her in the hopes their fingers might brush? Get it together, Jones.

  “Jones, did you hear me? Who were you talking about?” Chase asked. He had put his tablet down and was staring at her as if she had the answers to climate change and the date of the coming apocalypse. She didn’t know anything about apocalypses and she could probably solve climate change if she spent a little research time on it. But her field of study was genetics and fertility. Hence why she was stuck here in yet another prison.

  “Were you talking about Paulson?” Chase asked. “Is he the bastard?”

  She nodded and turned slightly in her chair, bending over her pad, hoping he’d take the hint and not talk to her and stay silent like a good bodyguard was supposed to do.

  “What are you working on?” he asked.

  Oh now he wanted to talk. Great. “Stuff.”

  He snorted. “Undergrad degree from Harvard and a medical degree from Hopkins, and the best you can do is ‘stuff’? Come on, Jones. I expect better.”

  She looked up to give him her scary-mom stare. “Where did you go, Faber College?”

  For the first time since Chase had been assigned to be her shadow, she earned a genuine grin and she got why he had females coming to say hi every minute of the day. His smile did things to her lower belly. Mushy, girly things.

  “Hah. That’s funny, Jones. I wouldn’t have guessed you’d seen Animal House. I took you more for a PBS documentary or Masterpiece Theater kind of girl.”

  “I watch plenty of documentaries. I happen to love good comedies also.” It was true. Her lack of a social scene in high school meant she’d had plenty of time for renting from Blockbuster. In an attempt to figure out the lingo and social patterns of her teenage peers, she rented all the movies they quoted from in the hallway around the lockers. At some point the research had morphed into genuine appreciation for raunchy comedy.

  “I have all the National Lampoon movies on disc. Maybe I’ll bring them in. If we’re gonna be stuck together, we may as well make it fun,” he said.

  “If you wish,” she said. And bent back over her notebook, hoping he wouldn’t sense her interest.

  “I do a mean Robot Mime. Wanna see?”

  “No.” Heck yeah, she wanted to see him do the hilarious scene from EuroTrip. But she couldn’t. Shep was expecting her to have a report on Paulson, and Doctor Wise wanted her to read through her latest paper on their proposed methodology of the Program’s genetic enhancements. “You’re in a weird mood today,” she said.

  “Weirder than usual?”

  She shrugged. “I only met you two weeks ago. I don’t have a baseline to ascertain your definition of weird, but you’ve been silent to the point of rudeness and now suddenly you’re Mr. Chatty.”

  He scoffed at her and then abruptly his expression got serious and searching. She tried to continue working, but it was tricky with him looking as if he wanted to say something, but instead was glowering silently.

  “What is it, Chase?”

  “No, go back to work. I don’t want to bother you.”

  “You’re bothering me now,” she said.

  “Okay, fine. I’ve been wondering. Can a person have two?”

  She froze, staring at the notes on her lined pad. What was Chase talking about? “Two what?” He’d made a leap even her quick-working brain had trouble following.

  “Two genetic matches.”

  “Statistically speaking, yes. A person can have several people who would make good breeding partners. But it often comes down to geography. Most people don’t meet their perfect genetic breeding partner because they’re never in the same place at the same time. For all we know, your perfect breeding partner is in Istanbul.”

  “Not Constantinople?”

  She opened her mouth to remind him of the country’s name change then laughed at Chase quoting the popular song. “They Might be Giants, right.”

  Chase grinned. “Gotcha.” Then he lost the grin and went back to brooding.

  She bent over her work for another moment before she was unable to resist continuing the conversation. “Why do you ask?”

  “No reason.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Of course you’re asking for a reason, Chase. You never talk to me without a reason. So what’s it this time? Are you looking for a threesome? And that’s why you’re hoping I can give you scientific proof that two wives would be better than one? You want to hide behind science to defend your alternative lifestyle.”

  He released a genuine guffaw. “Saucy, Jones. Saucy. I like it. I didn’t know you had it in you. And no, I don’t want one wife, let alone two.”

  “Then why ask?”

  He captured her gaze and stared intently. She swallowed at what she saw in his expression.

  “Can I trust you, Samara?”

  It was the first time he’d used her first name. Slowly, she bobbed her head. “Yes. Especially if you tell me something medically related. Ethically, I can’t divulge anything.”

  “Good.” He turned his back to her and stepped a few feet away then turned back. The small room was a makeshift lab set up only for her. It was smaller than any lab she’d worked in before and Chase’s large body seemed to
consume all the available space.

  “You met my sister Loren right?” he asked.

  She remembered the tall, beautiful blonde who’d been one of her rescuers last month from Paulson’s fertility clinic. “Yes, I met Loren.”

  “She’s my half-sister. My dad was married twice. I don’t think my parents were a perfect match. And now I’m wondering if they were a match at all.”

  “What makes you think that?” She turned in her seat to fully face him and put on her concerned-bedside-manner expression. The look was something they actually taught in med school.

  “Because, you know we had that traitor, Jonathan Keel?”

  It wasn’t quite a question, but she nodded anyway. Keel had been a leader here at the Program but turned out to be a traitor. He’d been responsible for setting up Adam and Loren and sending them to Paulson.

  “Anyway, I think Keel did something to the paperwork when my dad was being matched. Keel had been dating Loren’s mom and she left him for my father. But then the test results said they weren’t a perfect match. And my father, the ever obedient soldier, agreed to marry my mom, who on paper was his perfect match.”

  “But you don’t think they were a match?”

  “No. Isn’t it odd that my father displayed all the signs of a matched person, but not toward his wife?”

  “It is odd, but it doesn’t necessarily mean your parents weren’t genetically compatible.”

  “That’s what I’d like you to find out.”

  “Find out what?”

  “I’m starting to suspect I’m not perfectly enhanced, and I want to know for sure. I think Keel messed with my parents’ lab results.”

  She bit her lip. This was probably a bad idea. It was a man’s career, his whole identity for Pete’s sake. “Are you sure you want to know? What will it change?”

  “Everything.”

  That’s what she was afraid of. But she looked at him and something pressed on her heart. If she were in the same boat, she’d want to know. “Okay. I can take a look.”

  “Awesome.” He held out an arm. “Do you need to draw blood?”