High-maintenance, memo-writing Genius Watson might not be his favorite person on a good day, but this counted as anything but a good day. His mind blinked to the sight of her in the developer room and his gut twisted. After an experience like that, even if she couldn’t remember most of it, she deserved to spend the night in her own bed if that’s what she wanted. From his eavesdropping in the hallway, he’d gotten the idea that she was firmly set on going home, so here he was, in a pretty condo with an even prettier woman asleep on the couch.
How had he overlooked Genie Watson’s beauty before? Even with a rainbow of bruises marring her jaw and a line of stitches crawling across her right eyebrow, she was lovely. Her narrow, bruised hands rested beneath her left cheek and her even breathing tugged at a ringlet of her hair that had fallen from its customary twist. The surprisingly rich brownish-bronze glittered as it rippled over the patchwork quilt he’d found on the back of the sofa and thrown over her.
Nick supposed that he might have missed appreciating the delicate bones of her jaw when it was clenched in irritation because he’d forgotten the wipe tests again. He might not have noticed the pouting fullness of her lips when they were flapping at him for spilling stain on the UV projector or running the sterilizer too hot. But as Nick looked at Genius Watson now, he wondered how he ever could have dismissed her as ordinary. How he could have failed to look beyond the prickly gray wool and scratchy lace collars to see the woman beneath. Because, Lord, she was beautiful when she was unconscious.
It was too bad she’d wake up eventually.
“Wellington?” Her soft voice jolted him back to reality. He’d been so busy staring at her, he’d missed that her eyes were open, cloudy with fatigue and pain. “Why are you still here?”
He shrugged and tried to choke down the hot ball of…something that rose when she sat up on the couch and the quilt drifted down to her waist. The hospital gown slipped far off her shoulder, down to the creamy up slope of a breast the likes of which he never would have imagined hid beneath those awful clothes. She shifted again and the material dipped lower, baring the faintest hint of darker, nubbled flesh—
Get a grip, Wellington! The voice didn’t sound like the Senator now, it sounded like a slightly hysterical version of Nick’s own. That breast is attached to Genius Watson. Remember her? The most overbearing, overbright, annoying female you’ve ever had the misfortune of sharing lab space with?
The voice was right. He had to get a grip. He shook his head to clear it. The incident that afternoon must have shaken him more than he’d thought. That was the only rational explanation for his sudden interest in Dr. Genius’s breasts.
“I—” He cleared his throat. “I had to promise the doc I’d stay, so you’re stuck with me for the night unless there’s someone else you’d rather I call.”
She closed her eyes in pain, or perhaps annoyance. “No, but that doesn’t mean you have to stay. Thanks for the ride home, but you can leave now. I’ll be fine by myself.”
Nick settled himself on the wide marshmallow of a love seat opposite her couch and linked his fingers behind his head. “I don’t blame you for wanting some space, but I’d be going back on my word if I left you alone.” He crossed his legs at the ankles. “Either I stay or you go back to Boston General. Got it?”
She frowned. “I said I’ll be fine, Beef. I don’t need your help.”
“Nick,” he corrected, ignoring the rest. “You call me Beef tonight and I’ll take you back to the E.R. and tell the doctor that you seized and I think you need every sort of invasive, embarrassing test imaginable.”
“Fine. Nick. Whatever.” She gave in with ill grace, struggled to her feet and swayed. “I’m going to go take a shower.”
He held a hand out to steady her. Should’ve known she’d be a difficult patient. She’d never made anything easy for him before, why start now? He’d probably have been better off leaving her in the hospital. But no, as he watched her shiver in the warm, cozy living room, he knew he couldn’t have done that.
Growing up, he had learned early and well that it was up to him to protect the people around him. And if ever in his life Nick had seen someone in need of protection, she was standing right in front of him, trying to look tough and self-reliant even though the kitten skulking behind the television could probably have knocked her over with one tiny paw.
Ever the politician’s son, Nick chose his words carefully. He couldn’t very well help her if she kicked him out on his ass. “I don’t think that’s a good idea. What if you black out and hit your head again? Then it’s back to the hospital and Nurse Mustache for sure.”
She shuddered and he saw a flash of vulnerability beneath the prickles—a confused, hurt woman looking out through Genius Watson’s bruised eyes—and the image only strengthened his desire to help. “I need a shower, Welling—uh, Nick. My brain may not be telling me what happened today, but my body remembers.” She rubbed her arms and he noticed a series of marks on her shoulder, near her throat. Four bruises the size of a man’s fingers.
He felt the anger boil low in his gut and hated the fact that an intruder had come into the lab and he hadn’t done a thing to stop it. He should have sheltered the people he worked with. He should have been smarter. Faster. Better.
Genie shivered again, and Nick gave in to the urge to soothe. He touched her bruised cheek with the back of his hand, was surprised by the quick jolt that ran the length of his arm at the contact, and was even more surprised when the visible outline of a taut, peaked nipple showed through the thin hospital robe, mute testimony that she’d felt it, too.
Whoa there, he thought, trying to quell the quick thump of his libido. Protect, remember? Protect, not ogle. You don’t even like her. And besides, she’s had a hell of a day. Leave her alone. Figuring that his conscience had a point there, Nick took a deep breath and willed away the surprisingly compelling image of Dr. Genius wearing nothing but a lab coat. “Well…”
She frowned and the hurt moved to the back of those pretty gray eyes. “Don’t give me grief on this, Wellington. In case you’ve forgotten, someone broke into Thirteen today and…ruined the developer.” Her eyes darted to the shadows near the kitchen and she tapped her temple. “Whoever did it is up here— I saw him. I heard him. And I don’t remember any of it. I need to remember it. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to take a shower and I’d like a little privacy.”
She tried to brush past him, but her grand exit was ruined when she wobbled on the first stair. Cursing under his breath, Nick grabbed her elbow just as she was about to lose her balance and half carried her up the stairs.
GENIE DISCOVERED THAT Wellington’s version of privacy was far different from her own when he helped her into the shower, pulled the see-though butterfly curtain closed and waited for her to pass out the hospital johnny and the zebra underwear.
Her hands were shaking when she finally pointed the nozzle at the tiled wall while the water heated. She could see him standing by the sink, his broad shoulders and narrow hips made wavy by the plastic curtain, and she wondered what it was that she felt when he came near her. What were those warm vibrations that ran through her at his touch and made her snarl? Concussion, or something else?
Something impossible that jittered in her stomach and confused her. She, who was never, ever confused.
It had to be the circumstances, she told herself. She was still shaky, that was all. She’d been attacked—there, she’d said it—in her own lab. She could be excused for being shaky.
A tear cruised down her cheek and she didn’t bother to brush it away.
When the water was hot, she turned it toward her chest, careful to keep the stitches dry. She’d wash her hair later, but for now she let the heavy stream of water beat down on her breasts and belly, washing away her attacker’s unremembered touch and easing the soreness of the angry bruises at her hips and breasts.
As she touched one of the black marks, she asked her brain, What happened? Who attacked me? Why? What h
ad he hoped to gain?
Genie frowned in concentration and her temples throbbed as her mind bounced up against an implacable barrier.
It was no use. Frustrated and achy, she muttered a curse and looked through the rising steam. She couldn’t concentrate with Wellington in the room. He was too distracting. Took up too much space. “You can leave now,” she said, her voice echoing in the tiled bathroom. “I’ll call you if I have any trouble in here.”
She saw his masculine outline, blurred by the moist air and the ridiculous shower curtain, shift from one foot to the other. “Are you sure? You’re not feeling dizzy or anything?”
What would he do if she were dizzy? Get in the shower and hold her up? Scrub her back? Wash her hair?
Protected from fear by the web of amnesia, her brain chose that moment to prod her with a mental note. Get a date. Suddenly, Genie could smell acrylamide and musk over the delicate perfume of Parisian soap, and she had a quick, improbable fantasy of Dr. Nicholas Wellington naked in the shower with her, his large, blunt fingertips massaging her scalp and taking the ache away. She imagined his big hands working in maddening circles, moving down her neck, across her shoulders, and down… She started to feel dizzy, but not in the way he’d meant.
He would press himself against her backside—
And push hard, grind against her in the bloodred light while the developer clanked and groaned so loud that nobody could hear her muffled screams.
“What is it? Genie, what’s wrong? Do you feel faint?” She must have made some noise, because suddenly he was in the shower holding her tight while the water blasted them both, quickly plastering the clothing against his hard, sculpted body.
He pulled the butterflies closed, making the shower into a warm, safe nest lit with bits of reflected color. There were blue butterflies, Genie saw as she stared at them rather than at the man who held her, and green and yellow ones that shone through with bright, warm light.
Not red and black. And the roar of the water pounding down on them was the shower, not the X-ray developer. But she was still cold. So cold.
“Genie!” His voice was sharper now, demanding an answer, bringing her back through the red-black mist. “Are you in pain? Do you want to go back to the hospital?”
“No,” she managed to get out through chattering teeth, grateful for his arms around her, grateful when he turned the water even hotter to ease the chills that gripped her. “No, I remembered a little of what happened. Just a quick flash, that’s all.”
“That’s enough.” His words were clipped, but his eyes were steady when she looked up into them. His hands were gentle on her body as he seemed to wrap himself around her until she felt a little warmer. A little safer. He rocked her back and forth until her trembling eased a bit, and said quietly, “I’m sorry.”
Lulled by the feel of the man against her, it took a moment for Genie to register the words. Then she said, “For what? You didn’t grab me in the darkroom. Even you wouldn’t go that far to get time on the sequencer.” She’d meant the last as a weak joke, but fell silent when the words came out sharp, bitchy, the way they always did when she tried to talk to Beef Wellington, thirteenth floor hunk.
No wonder he hated working near her. She couldn’t even say good morning without sniping at him. Get a life, her brain reminded her.
Yeah, easy for it to say. It was just too bad for her that of all the classes she’d aced over the years, she’d missed Get a Life 101. It had probably conflicted with calculus.
They stood there for a moment and Genie tried to frame an apology in her mind—one that sounded if not friendly at least less nasty. She shifted away from him, hoping that distance would bring more clarity to thoughts that seemed steeped in his heady scent. Instead the motion dragged the tips of her breasts across the wet material of his T-shirt and she froze as she became intimately, acutely aware that she was naked and he was not.
The small space within the butterfly curtain grew warmer and her breasts suddenly felt harder and softer at the same time, heavy with an unfamiliar, pulsing ache.
Over the pounding rush of the shower, she heard Wellington take a sharp breath. She looked up into his face and froze, mesmerized by the play of color and light across his features. The tendons of his strong neck stood out sharply beneath the slick skin of his throat, the muscles of his jaw rippled as he swallowed hard, and she wondered what he was thinking.
Was he wishing that he were anywhere but in the shower with Genius Watson? Was he thinking that his good deed for the day had turned into more of a project than he had planned? Was he thinking of the ride in the ambulance? Of the blood on her gray wool skirt and what might’ve happened if she hadn’t fought back, hadn’t been lucky?
Her eyes traveled up from his throat, slid across the wide planes of his cheekbones and up the aggressive jut of his nose to his eyes, which glittered through the steam like chunks of pale blue topaz. She wondered if maybe, just maybe, he was thinking the same thing she was thinking. Feeling the same things she was feeling.
Suddenly the events of the day didn’t seem quite so unbelievable in the face of another incredible fact.
She was naked in the shower with Beef Wellington. She, Genius Watson, who in college had been voted by one mean-spirited fraternity as The Most Likely to Die a Virgin, was standing in the shower. Naked. With Nicholas Wellington III, the most popular, eligible, drop-dead gorgeous man at Boston General Hospital.
The wet material of his T-shirt grazed the hard tips of her breasts when he rasped in another breath and his soaked jeans were rough against her thighs and belly. She felt a liquid throb, warm and low, and her lips tingled with a phantom imprint as though he had kissed her already.
He sucked in a third breath as though filling his lungs was the most important thing in the world, then slid his hands up to cup her shoulders and Genie thought, He feels it, too. He’s going to kiss me. Her belly churned with a dizzying combination of anticipation, painkillers and delayed shock. She felt his fingers tighten, saw the muscles beneath the wet T-shirt ripple, let her eyelids drift shut…
As he gently but firmly pushed her away, his eyes glued to the nearest butterfly, he growled, “Since you seem okay in here, I’m going to head downstairs and dry off. Yell if you need my help.” He practically leaped out of the shower and was gone.
Genie sagged against the cool bath tiles and pressed both hands to her burning cheeks once she heard the bathroom door shut in his wake.
What had just happened here?
You almost jumped Nick Wellington, that’s what happened, her brain supplied as her heart stopped pounding from excitement and started thumping from sick, horrified embarrassment.
What had she been thinking?
She shook her head as the blasting inferno of—lust? desperation? mental instability? delayed reaction?—slowly cooled and left her feeling nauseous. She hadn’t been thinking, which just showed what a terrible day it had been. She always thought first and acted second—it was the secret to an ordered, controlled life. A scientist’s life.
A safe life.
Genie knew from experience that when she thought through her actions she didn’t make mistakes. Didn’t do stupid things. Didn’t end up climbing out the third-story window of a house on fraternity row with her teeth chattering as sleet cut through her ripped shirt and slicked the rose trellis beneath her numb fingers.
Pressing her bruised cheek to the tile, she made a small sound of pain and frustration. Why could she remember every detail of that one humongous miscalculation during her college career and not a thing about this afternoon in the lab? Remembering her single date with Archer—gorgeous, popular, wealthy Archer—did her no good. It hadn’t helped back then and it served no purpose now. But remembering what had happened in the darkroom was important. It could help Detective Sturgeon find the man who had attacked her. Could help hospital security figure out how he had gotten onto the locked thirteenth floor of Boston General’s Genetic Research Building.
&n
bsp; Might prevent it from—dear God—happening to someone else.
“Tell me!” she ordered her brain, and tried to fight through the layers of defense to that blank place at the back of her mind. “What happened, damn it? Who was it? Why?”
The fingermarks on her hips and breasts throbbed in time with her heartbeat, in time with the pounding of her head, but the blanks remained stubbornly blank except for a gentle California drawl and the phantom press of a man’s fingers.
She closed her eyes and knew why Archer was suddenly vivid in her mind after more than a decade had passed. Her brain might not be willing to show her what had happened in the darkroom, but it wanted her to remember that she’d been stupid about men before. Really stupid.
“I get it, I get it,” she muttered. “Wellington’s out of my league. You think I don’t know that?” She reached for the bar of expensive soap her mother sent her each month from Paris in an attempt to forge the connection they’d never managed when they lived on the same continent. “Besides, I don’t even like him.”
But she knew, as she slicked the soap over her breasts and down again, that for the first time in a long, long while she was lying to herself.
NICK PULLED A BEER out of the fridge—who would’ve guessed Dr. Genius drank beer?—and drained half of it while he stood at the sink and waited for his hands to stop shaking with a potent combination of lust and self-loathing.
What had he been thinking?
The answer was obvious. He hadn’t been thinking. At least not with his brain. He closed his eyes and swore while the feel of her rocketed through his system and set off every warning buzzer in his body.
In a hundred years or so he might get past seeing Genie Watson lying in a pool of blood next to the smashed developer. But he was never, ever, going to forget the sight of her naked body, wet with the shower and glowing with reflected butterflies that filtered through the plastic curtain. And the feel of her. He cursed. It had taken every ounce of willpower he’d possessed to set her aside and to leave the shower while he still could. And it had been a close call at that.
Dr. Bodyguard Page 3