Dr. Bodyguard

She made another mental note. Make a few friends. Go on a date. Her lips curved. A date? With whom? The pool of eligible men at Boston General was pretty shallow. She certainly wasn’t dating George Dixon again—been there, done that, got the restraining order—and most of the other researchers she knew were either ancient, married or—as in the case of the handsome antichrist she shared lab space with—egocentric jerks.

At the thought of her worthy opponent, something niggled at the back of Genie’s brain, but the rumble of Leo’s voice in the hall diverted her and she thought that her paramedic must be pretty inefficient if he waited for each of his patients to wake up. Or else he’d picked up on the same weird vibrations she’d felt run up her arm when he’d been holding her hand in the ambulance.

She plucked at the overwashed sheet and wished she were wearing something other than a hospital johnny. Wished she had a comb and a mirror. Wished she hadn’t run out of laundry and been forced to scrounge in the back of her underwear drawer. Her heart sank at the thought of her colleagues at Boston General seeing the zebra striped satin panties and matching bra her mother had optimistically sent from Paris.

Never mind what the paramedic thought, she could just imagine the talk in the doctors’ lounge. Hey, did you see what Watson was wearing when they brought her in? Whoo-whee. Hot stuff for such a cold fish.

Genie didn’t want to be hot stuff. She didn’t want to be a cold fish. She just wanted to be—

The door opened. She glanced over to thank her paramedic and perhaps, since there was no time such as the present to work on her new resolve, ask him if she could buy him a drink. But instead her heart gave an unsteady thump and all that came out of her mouth was a startled, “Beef!”

The big blond man at the door stopped, looked intently at her, and a slow, sexy grin creased his face. He nodded and said in a disturbingly familiar drawl—one that could even be called nice if she stretched it—“Genius.”

And the battle lines were drawn. Again.

He knew she hated the nickname that had plagued her since she’d skipped fourth and fifth grades, landing smack in junior high at the age of eight. He called her that to bug her, the same reason she called him Beef to his face when the other women did it behind his back.

Nicholas “Beef” Wellington the Third. He might think the nickname was a culinary reference, but the women knew better. They called him Beef as a tribute to his masculine physique, a testimony to his hunkiness and grade-A buns.

Except for Genie. She called him Beef because she knew it irked him and because he was everything she was not—gorgeous, popular, wealthy and well-connected. And sexy. Had she mentioned sexy? He was also sloppy and easygoing, and for the past several months, Leo had forced her to share her precious lab space with him. Her equipment.

Practically her life.

Dr. Genius Watson and Dr. Beef Wellington. They were opposites. Thesis and antithesis. Matter and antimatter. Genie figured that over time they’d either cancel each other out or repel each other into different universes.

She was betting on the latter.

“I was expecting somebody else,” she said. “A paramedic.” Please, she thought, let it have been a paramedic.

Beef Wellington crossed the room in two ambling strides. His lab coat was unbuttoned and the weight of the ID badge, radiation monitor and pen collection in his left breast pocket pulled the coat askew to give her a quick glimpse of the tight, perfect chest and flat stomach beneath the worn T-shirt. There were rusty stains on his sleeves and on the faded jeans that showed through the gap in the white coat.

His dark blond hair had outgrown its midsummer buzz cut and drooped across his forehead and ears as though it couldn’t bear to be away from his face with its wide Viking cheekbones and slashing blade of a nose.

He leaned close and Genie could smell him, a combination of warm soap, acrylamide gel and male musk. He practically oozed pheromones. “Why do you need a paramedic? You sick or something?”

He seemed to have conveniently forgotten that she was lying in a hospital bed with stitches and a concussion. From the way her heart was tap dancing in her chest, she wouldn’t doubt a touch of arrhythmia, too.

She started to frown, then winced instead. “Never mind. Why are you here? Wasn’t it bad enough the administration inflicted Leo on me? They had to send you, too? Why? So you could gloat about having my equipment to yourself for the rest of the day? I think I’m feeling sicker by the minute.”

“Leo said you wanted to see me.” Wellington’s icy-blue eyes flashed as he said the name. Genie wondered fleetingly what the administrator had done to earn his ire this time—besides making him share lab space with a woman he couldn’t stand, of course.

As her hope that she hadn’t actually held Wellington’s hand started to crumble, Genie tried one last time. “Nope. I wanted to see the guy who rode here in the ambulance, to thank him. Leo said he was waiting outside. Did you see him?”

In the sickly hospital light she thought she saw the big man flinch. He nodded with a ghost of his usual grin. “Yeah. Sorry to ruin your day, Genius, but that was me.”

If she hadn’t been afraid it would attract the attention of the big, mustachioed nurse, Genie would’ve groaned. Wellington? Beef Wellington had held her hand all the way to the hospital? And she had liked it? Had vibrations?

She muttered, “I think I need another CAT scan,” and pulled the covers up over her face.

His dry chuckle sounded in the room and her stomach gave a little flutter. Probably from the concussion. “No you don’t. Dr. Murphy says you’ll be fine with a little rest. You’re just embarrassed that you begged me to hold your hand and ride with you.” His voice, mellow and warm, dropped a conspiratorial notch. “I won’t tell if you don’t.”

She spluttered and yanked the covers back down, squinting in the overbright light. “I never begged.”

“Suit yourself, Watson.” Nick moved around the room with purpose, locating her clothes on a nearby stool and holding out the gray wool skirt that she never wanted to see again as long as she lived. “Get dressed, the doc says you can go home.”

“I can?” Genie couldn’t look at the skirt so she focused on his eyes, which were a warmer shade of blue than she remembered. Melting ice rather than a glacier. “He changed his mind?”

“Not exactly.” Wellington looked down and noticed that the skirt was stiff with dried blood. He dropped it back on the pile and wiped his hands on his stained lab coat. “Never mind that. You can wear a blanket out. Want me to help you?”

“No, thank you.” She didn’t want his help. She didn’t want his presence. She particularly didn’t want him to see her zebra undies through the mile-wide slit in the back of the johnny.

But when she sat up, the room spun sickeningly and the honey rice cake she’d scarfed down between experiments that morning threatened a return visit.

“Easy there. I’ve got you, you’re okay.” His hands were steady on her shoulders and she sagged forward against his solid chest until she could feel his heartbeat against her cheek.

Suddenly her head didn’t hurt so much anymore.

“I want to go home.” She didn’t care that she was whining, that there were tears in her voice. She wanted her condo. She wanted a shower. She wanted to be alone when the tears came.

“I know you do. We’re going.” His voice rumbled against her cheek and the room spun again as he gathered her, blankets and all, in his arms and lifted her as though she weighed no more than her kitten. She closed her eyes and pressed her face in the hollow between his jaw and shoulder, where the smell of soap and musk was strongest.

“Are you taking me to a cab?” She didn’t think she had the strength to get herself out of a taxi and into her condo, but if that’s what it took to reach her own bed, she’d find a way—even if it meant crawling up the stairs on her hands and knees with her safari underwear shining like a striped beacon out the back of the hospital johnny.

She thought he smiled, heard a thread of laughter in his voice as he replied, “You’re not getting rid of me that easily, Genius.” The automatic doors whooshed open and she felt the change as they escaped from the hospital into the night air, crisp with fall in New England even through the funk of nearby Chinatown. “I’m taking you home.”

THE WATCHER SAW A BIG MAN in a doctor’s coat carry Dr. Watson past a row of busy ambulances toward the garage. She was wrapped in a blue blanket and from his vantage point deep in the darkness of a recessed stairwell, the watcher imagined her naked. He throbbed with frustration as he imagined what might have been. It should have been a warning for her. A pleasure for him.

His fingers rose to touch the neat bandage above his ear as desire turned to anger. The bitch had hurt him. She was going to pay for that.

Before, he’d merely wanted to stop her.

Now, he was going to end her.

Chapter Two

Nick left the blanket-wrapped woman asleep in his Bronco and unlocked the door to her home with keys he found in her practical canvas handbag. He started to make a quick check of the place, then slowed down as surprise rattled through him.

He wasn’t sure what he’d expected Genie Watson’s home to look like, but it sure as heck wasn’t this.

At work, Dr. Genius was a petite woman, maybe five-four tops, a hundred pounds or so wet, with middling brown hair always pulled back in some twisty thing and a penchant for wearing shapeless clothing in shades of brown, black and beige. Nick had always thought that her eyes, big gray pools framed by thick lashes and high, sculpted cheekbones, were her best feature.

Now, having seen—and felt—firsthand how well she filled out those surprisingly bawdy underthings, he might have to reconsider.

He would have figured her living space to be along the same lines as her wardrobe—conservative, boxy rooms with sensible furniture decorated in shades of gray and brown, maybe with a touch of navy added in a wild moment that had since been regretted. He never would have pictured the spacious two-bedroom condo tucked into the eaves of an elegant Victorian only a few blocks from his place.

The four rooms on the first level flowed into each other like water, a river of golden wood floors, white trim and pastel walls. The huge windows were high and arched, topped by semicircles of abstract stained glass, and he imagined that daylight would splash crazily across the bold Indian rugs, the comfy, jewel-toned furniture and the dizzying array of dust collectors.

If Watson’s constant complaints and annoying little memos hadn’t told Nick everything he needed to know, her condo would’ve done the trick. The place practically screamed “a high maintenance woman lives here,” and Nick’d had enough of them to last a lifetime and then some. In fact, he thought as he looked around again and scowled at the pretty stained-glass lamps, Lucille probably would’ve like this place—if it’d been three times bigger and ten times the price.

Well, he thought, no matter. He was here out of kindness, not interest, so it shouldn’t matter to him that Watson was high-maintenance. He wasn’t in the market for a relationship, and if he was, Genius Watson would rank somewhere around fifth from the bottom on the list of women he knew—with the ninety-year-old grandmother at the Chinese Laundromat right above her.

Scowling at the direction his thoughts had taken, which could only be excused by the bizarre events of the day, he returned to the Bronco to retrieve Dr. Watson. She didn’t wake up when he carried her in and placed her on the plush cushions of an oversize couch, and he wondered fleetingly whether he should rouse her. He was pretty sure you weren’t supposed to let a person with a concussion sleep all night.

It was too bad he hadn’t thought to ask the fresh-faced intern for Watson’s care-and-feeding instructions, but since the doctor wasn’t going to spring her unless she’d had a medically trained observer to stay with her for at least twenty-four hours, Nick had snarled, “I’m a doctor. I’ll watch her.”

Well, he was a doctor. But courses in what to do after a concussion hadn’t been required in the Biochem Department at M.I.T.

He could’ve left her where she was, but he remembered the day he’d broken his wrist in a Little League game. His parents had been at a fund-raiser, the nanny had been on vacation, and a private nurse wasn’t available until the next day. So he’d stayed in the big hospital bed in an empty room far away from the rest of the children. He’d been ten years old. He’d been alone. And he’d hated every minute of it.

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 had 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.