Dr. Bodyguard Read online

  She hated how he said “the brain” as if it belonged to someone else. It was her brain damn it, and it had no right to swell without her permission. Since she hadn’t given it permission to get any bigger than it already was, she should be able to go home.

  But the fourteen-year-old intern remained firm. He crossed his arms over his weedy chest and frowned. “The only way I’m going to release you is if there’s somebody with medical training to observe you. Do you have any colleagues you could call? Any friends that could help you?”

  Genie opened her mouth to reply, but nothing came out. How pitiful it sounded to say, “No. There’s no one.” But it was true.

  Sure, she had acquaintances. She chatted with the elderly Chinese lady who cleaned the lab each night and she knew the names of all the grandchildren in the pictures that lined Ben’s desk at the security kiosk. And she had colleagues that she nodded to in the halls and smiled at in the lunchroom.

  But there was nobody to call and say, “I’ve got a concussion. Will you come stay with me so I can sleep?”

  Nobody.

  Inexplicably, a low, intimate voice floated through Genie’s mind. She didn’t clearly remember anything after hearing the rubba-thump of the darkroom door behind her when she’d gone to develop the day’s films, but she did have a sketchy recollection of a comforting presence in the ambulance. She remembered a large, warm hand holding hers and a gentle voice saying she was going to be okay.

  She assumed it had been a paramedic, and made a mental note to thank him for his excellent bedside manner—though with the way her bruised brain was working, it could be a few weeks before that particular note surfaced.

  The nurse and the young intern left in a swirl of white and green, and when the door swung the other way, it revealed the face of Genie’s least favorite administrator.

  She tried to summon a convincing scowl, one that would soothe the worried look on his face. “Jeez, Leo, don’t I rate anyone better? Couldn’t they have sent Hetta from personnel or Louie from accounts payable? Even one of Dixon’s goons. Anyone would be a better deathbed visit than you.” Though she didn’t like him much as an administrator, Leo was one of her favorite acquaintances and he smiled at her feeble snarl.

  “Nope, everyone else already had plans. Since neither you nor I have a life, we were unanimously chosen for the roles of visitor and visited.” He tried to grin, but it faltered and his hand trembled as he wiped a handkerchief across his sweating head. “Jesus, Genie. I… I…” He couldn’t finish, just shrugged, and she wondered if he had been the one to find her in the darkroom.

  She’d seen the bloodstained lab coat before the police had taken it away, but when she tried to imagine the attack, her mind slid away and showed her other things instead. Fields. Butterflies. Flowers. The hazy shape of a man holding his hand out to her.

  Since Genie’s greatest source of pride was her well-ordered, methodical mind, she did not like this open rebellion and planned to make her brain behave at the earliest possible moment. But to do that, she had to go home. She’d never get any peace at Boston General. There would be candy stripers trying to cheer her up until she wanted to throttle them, doctors shining lights in her eyes every five minutes to make sure she wasn’t in a coma, and that big woman nurse with the mustache and the sponge baths…

  She had to get out of here.

  “Will you take me home, Leo?” It was worth a try, but even before the words were out, he shook his head.

  “No. No. I don’t think that’s a good idea, Genie. You’re pretty banged up.” He paused and she could read the words, Although it could’ve been a whole lot worse, in his gaze. “No. I think you should stay right here and let the doctors look after you while the police find whoever did this.”

  Genie didn’t want to think about who had attacked her. Even the word police made nausea swirl higher and sweat bead. She didn’t want to think about being attacked. Not here, not now. She needed to go home.

  Needed to be alone so she could fall apart in private.

  She frowned to keep the tears away, but the movement pulled at the stitches on her forehead and made her headache worse. “Then go away. I don’t want any visitors unless they’re going to take me home.” She stopped Leo on his way out. “Hey. Can you find the guy that rode with me in the ambulance? I want to thank him.”

  Leo looked surprised. “You do? But I thought you didn’t…” He trailed off, then shrugged. “Okay, I’ll go get him.”

  “He’s here?” Didn’t paramedics hang out at fire-houses? Or in ambulances? She thought so, though her E.R. experience was limited to a quick three-week rotation and taped reruns of the popular television show.

  “Yeah, right outside. He’s been waiting around to make sure you were going to be okay. He was real worried about you.”

  “Then send him in and go away, Leo.” The administrator headed for the door and Genie called after him, “And, Leo? Thanks for coming. Thanks for looking upset.” Even though he was probably more concerned about lawsuits and PR nightmares, it was nice to think that someone cared.

  When he was gone, the nausea subsided and was replaced with a warm, fuzzy feeling Genie thought might be due to the little pill Nurse Walrus had given her a few minutes earlier. Her mind drifted.

  She needed, she thought irrelevantly, to get a life. If nothing else, this…incident had brought home the fact that she’d let important things slide while she’d pursued her medical degree, then her Ph.D., becoming the youngest Primary Investigator that Boston General had ever seen.

  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 collec
tors.

  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.