“Baloney,” she said. “The technique is going to revolutionize prenatal testing.”
“True, but it could do so much more if the other aspects were developed.”
An icy ball lodged in her belly. “Which is precisely why I don’t want to lose control of the patents. The ethics are—”
“The ethics aren’t the issue,” he interrupted. He closed the laptop with a decisive click and turned the full force of his attention on her. The piercing intensity of his blue eyes chilled the ice inside her even further when he said, “Sure, some people will set off down the bioethics warpath the moment you say
stem cells,
but we’re not talking about experimenting on embryos here. That’s the whole point. We’re talking about a blood sample.”
The ice moved from her gut into her bloodstream as an uneasy suspicion formed in her brain. “No, we’re not talking about it at all, because I’m going to find someone to license NPT on my terms, or else.”
“Or else what?” he said, very calmly, almost dangerously calm, as though he were accusing her of planning something she hadn’t even thought of.
The phone rang, making her jump. Her heart rate spiked at the thought that it might be an investor phoning her back. But no, it was an inside line. She eschewed the speakerphone in favor of privacy and lifted the handset. “This is Dr. Corning.”
“It’s Max. There’s something I think you should see in the lab.” A thread of excitement ran through his normally gruff voice, telling Meg it was something good.
“I’ll be right there.” She replaced the handset and glanced over to find that Erik hadn’t returned to his computer. He was still looking at her. Watching her.
Judging her, though she didn’t know what she’d been accused of.
A sizzle of frustration beat at the worry, but she said only, “You keep doing what you’re doing. I’m needed in the lab.”
He set the laptop aside and rose, leaning heavily on the cane and wincing. “What I’m doing is keeping an eye on you.”
A momentary beat of empathy fled quickly in the face of irritation. “If you’re protecting me from the person who may or may not be trying to kill us, then you don’t need to follow me into my own lab. If I’m not safe there, where am I safe?” The starkness of the words brought an involuntary shudder and she quickly continued. “And if you’re protecting your supposed future investment, then you should take a
serious look at yourself in the mirror. That level of paranoia can’t be healthy.”
She expected his anger, even welcomed it on some level. His anger distanced him, made him seem less approachable than he’d been when they worked together in her office, quietly sharing space like longtime co-workers.
Or partners. Lovers.
And where had
that
thought come from?
Rattled, she headed for the lab, aware of Erik following at a distance, far enough away that she couldn’t accuse him of breathing down her neck, even though that was exactly what it felt like.
When she bent over Max’s fluorescent microscope she could almost feel the weight of Falco’s gaze, but when she straightened to snap at him, he was half a room away, leaning against a wall.
Yet his eyes held a knowing gleam. Why? Because he sensed her ridiculously misplaced attraction and found it amusing? Or because he imagined a far more sinister motive for her glare?
“Did you see it?” Max demanded, gesturing to the fluoroscope, which held the results of his latest series of tests.
That was when Meg realized she’d been so preoccupied by thoughts of Erik that she hadn’t even registered what she’d seen. “I’m sorry.” She made a vague gesture. “I’m distracted.”
It was day four of her seven-day timeline. There hadn’t been any new attacks.
But she hadn’t made any progress on the licens
ing, either, save for a vague promise of a “maybe” from Genticor after she forced herself to go through her mother’s second husband, and a “we’ll look into it” from Pentium Pharmaceuticals.
Max grimaced, but his voice wasn’t as gruff as usual when he said, “You should take off early. Do something nice for yourself. Go home and have a bubble bath or something.”
She nearly snorted at the idea—she couldn’t remember ever thinking of a bubble bath as a first line of defense against stress.
Earlier in her life, when she’d been upset—and that was most of the time—she’d tested the boundaries between danger and safety. Windsong had soothed the jagged edges as she’d tumbled backward out of an airplane and let the altimeter needles spin until the last possible moment, when she’d yanked the parachute cord and flown free. Adrenaline had pushed aside her mother’s absence or her father’s lack of compromise when she’d leaped from a dozen bridges and train trestles, and waited for the bungee cord to take up the slack of freefall.
Those had been her outlets, the only things that could quiet her soul when it seemed that nothing else was going right in her life.
And now?
Now, she realized with sudden clarity, she needed the exact same thing. A moment of privacy. Of clarity.
Of intentional danger.
She nodded at Max and grinned, though part of
her felt a little mean when she said, “You’re right. I’m going climbing.”
She’d found the one place Erik Falco couldn’t follow, and she was damn well going to take advantage of it.
AN HOUR LATER Erik leaned up against a padded wall and scowled, hoping the frown would discourage idle conversation. But he soon realized he didn’t need to bother—the others weren’t at the converted warehouse to talk.
They were there to climb.
On either side of him, the walls rose up and curled over to create impossible-seeming angles and overhangs, all formed out of foam and molded fiberglass in colors unimagined by nature. The vertical—and sometimes horizontal—planes were rusty-brown, criss-crossed with wild streaks of turquoise, green and yellow. Deep grooves scored the surfaces, ranging from penpoint-wide to forearm-deep, and improbable blobs of yellow, pink and blue handholds were scattered with apparent random disregard—thickly distributed in some places, thinly scattered in others.
It might have looked like a normal room distorted by a funhouse mirror, if it hadn’t been for the climbers.
They were everywhere, wearing a dizzying array of colors and meshwork harnesses, clinging to the walls like fluorescent human spiders caught in webs of thick nylon ropes and metal clips. They worked
in teams, one above the other on the wall, or one on the wall, the other standing on the ground manning a long safety rope.
The floors were heavily padded and the air smelled of sweat and healthy fear, with an overtone of talc. It didn’t look like any gym Erik had ever frequented, but the grunts of exertion and rumbles of encouragement he heard over the heavy thump of rock music reminded him of being fit. Being active.
Being strong.
“Hey,” Meg’s voice said at his elbow. Her tone was neutral, but when he turned, he saw questions in her eyes. Then he glanced down at the rest of her and his brain vapor-locked.
The photos his investigators had gathered had included some from charity functions, showing her dressed-to-impress in floor-length gowns or one memorable little black dress. Those photographs had left him with the impression of an elegant woman in her midthirties, self-possessed and confident, tall and solidly built in clothing that never quite showcased the promise he sensed in the body beneath. Since meeting her in person, he’d seen her in work clothes and her lab coat, and even though they’d found themselves at odds over the NPT acquisition, he hadn’t been able to shake the sense that she had a better body than she let on.
Now, seeing her ready to do battle with a foam wall, all he could think was damn, he’d been right.
And then some.
She wore tight gym shorts that ended just above
her knees, surprising him with the long length of smooth calf below. He’d known she was tall, but hadn’t realized that most of it was leg. Perfect, whole, unmarred leg.
At the thought, he felt a stir of lust coupled with a scrape of resentment.
Her bare feet were encased in thin climbing shoes that flexed as she shifted her weight from one foot to the other. She wore a faded nylon utility belt around her hips, and a hot pink sports bra with a cropped T-shirt overtop. The shirt looked as though she’d gone after it with scissors and cut away the neck, arms and bottom half. It showed as much as it covered, to the point that he wondered why she’d bothered.
Modesty, or something else?
She jerked her head to an opening beyond the colorful walls. “I’ll be in the next room. You can stay here if you want. I promise not to sneak out and sabotage my own research.” The last was said with a bite of sarcasm.
Partly because he felt like an idiot leaning on the wall by himself, partly because a masochistic section of his brain wanted to watch, Erik grabbed his cane and stepped forward with the same damned awkward lurch he always needed to get moving. “I’m right behind you. I can hold up a wall in there just as easily as I can here.”
Her lips tightened, but she turned away. “Come on, then.”
Her quick, long-legged strides quickly outpaced
his gimp, which was slowed by the muscle strains of the past few days. Maybe she was trying to lose him. Maybe she was trying to make the point she’d already made too well. Either way, the message was clear.
You don’t belong here. I don’t want you here.
They both knew damn well that was why she’d come. She didn’t want to climb. She wanted to teach him a lesson.
Knowing it, he gritted his teeth and followed her through a sloping archway into the next room, which not only had climbing surfaces on the walls, but also contained a huge geometric figure in the center of the wide space. The rust-colored megalith looked like a UFO, or maybe an abstract artist’s impression of a UFO. Made of the same material as the walls, the thing bulged on one side and rose to a high spire on the other. As in the other room, the surface was broken by craggy fissures and brightly colored handholds. Similarly, the edifice was dotted here and there by climbers.
Only these climbers were unsupported by ropes.
Erik shot a look at her belt, only then realizing it supported only a bag of chalk and—incongruously—a toothbrush. “You free-sclimb?”
She shot him an indecipherable look. “It’s called bouldering. And, yeah. You got a problem with that?” The jut of her chin dared him to say yes, to argue that free-climbing—bouldering, whatever she called it—was a senseless, stupid risk.
But because he didn’t have the right, and because
his objections came from another, more complicated source, he shook his head. “No objection. I’ll watch from down here. Just don’t fall and go splat.”
She sniffed. “What? And make your life easier? I don’t think so.” She turned away, but then paused and glanced back. “Look, would you do me a favor?”
His instincts quivered to life. “What sort of favor?”
She shifted her weight on the balls of her feet, making him elementally aware of the slide of the long, lean muscles in her legs and the unexpectedly defined muscles of her arms. He felt a rush of heat, and shifted on his own feet, feeling the brace of the cane beside him.
“Would you mind waiting in the other room?” she asked. “I know I said you could watch in here, but I could really use the space right now.”
He snorted. “What space? We’re inside a converted warehouse with a hundred other people. It’s not like you’re out on Mt. Washington, just you against the elements.” Though suddenly he could picture her clinging to a precarious knife-edge ridge of rock in a sharp opposition to the image she projected.
She presented herself as professional. Detached. Untouchable.
All of it was a lie, disguising the woman underneath.
She was none of those things as she glared at him. “It’s not my first choice, but it’s a good option for blowing off some steam when I don’t have time to
get out of the city. And, yeah, there are a bunch of people around, but none of them bother me nearly as much as you do. Since you can’t spot me—” she looked pointedly at the cane “—I’d rather you left me alone for a bit.”
Ouch. Erik buried the wince, knowing she was getting him back for single-handedly putting a stranglehold on her licensing plans.
He could almost see it in her eyes.
You hit me where it hurts and I hit back. How does it feel?
Not good, but he wasn’t going to tell her that. Instead he nodded shortly. “I have your word that you won’t leave without me?”
“I promise.” But she looked away as she said it, sending his instincts spiking into the danger zone. “I’ll climb for an hour, maybe less.”
She strode away, comfortable in her thin, flexible shoes with their grippy bottoms. She crossed to the fiberglass UFO, where she met up with a buff, tanned guy probably a few years younger than she. He wore an employee’s polo shirt that was cut off at the throat and arms much like her T-shirt and ragged jeans shorts that bared his bronzed, muscled legs.
Erik disliked him on sight, and disliked him even more when he leaned close and said something to Meg, something that sent her burbling laugh rising up and over the background noise of music and exertion. Then she glanced over at Erik and her laugh cut off, as if someone had thrown a switch.
She pantomimed a shooing motion.
He muttered a curse and turned away. She wanted
space? He’d give her space, damn it, but he wasn’t trusting her for one moment, promise or not. He limped through the faux rock archway toward the rope climbers, but then turned back and propped his shoulder against the doorway. He could watch from there without being seen, giving her space while also providing protection.
Protection for her from the danger that seemed to be stalking them. Protection for him from being betrayed by an attractive woman. Again.
He muttered a curse as he watched her chalk her hands from the pouch at her waist and attack the free-climbing wall while the stranger spotted her from ground level. It wasn’t until a spear of pain lanced through his temples that he realized he was gritting his teeth hard enough to make his molars creak.