Fatal Heat: A Navy SEAL Novella (4 page)

Paige had an incredibly frustrating day, trying to piece together corrupted research files from the Argentina Research Station and waiting for her friend Silvia, who worked there, to contact her.

The Argentina research project was interesting, and a little creepy. As a plant geneticist, Paige was fascinated by what nature could do all on its own. But now her company, GenPlant Laboratories—an offshoot of a major food multinational—had spliced a human growth hormone gene into corn, creating a new variety, HGHM-1, intending to produce a type of corn that grew so quickly you could have three crops a year, each crop double the tonnage.

Their research fields were in a vast company landholding four hundred miles south of Buenos Aires and one of her best friends, Silvia Ramirez, was the local project leader.

They’d been playing phone tag for days. Silvia had sent a file of preliminary results, but the file had somehow become corrupted, almost impossible to reconstitute.

Without the files and without Silvia to help her, Paige was stymied. HGHM-1 was the company’s top priority at the moment, and she didn’t have any other urgent projects which needed her attention.

So Paige spent all day with basically nothing to do but think of her new neighbor. Not obsessing really. Just… thinking about him.

He was in pain. He suppressed winces when he put too much weight on that thin, mutilated leg, but she could tell it sizuld telhurt him.

He hadn’t said a word about it, though, pretending absolutely nothing was wrong. In fact, offered to look after her dog.

It was been a real surprise to her when she opened her mouth to say “no” and “yes” had plopped out.

Much as her Max exasperated her, she loved her dog. The only time she left him with strangers was when she had to leave town on a business trip, and then only at the certified kennel she’d carefully checked over.

So telling a man she didn’t know that she’d leave her dog with him for the day was way out of character.

The thing was, for a second there, human Max had looked so lost and lonely. The best remedy for that was time spent with her Max. Her Max would run you ragged chasing after him and keep you laughing all the while. No time to feel lonely. Max was joy incarnate.

The other Max wouldn’t be lonely for long, though, once he put himself back together. There was a whole world of women out there who’d love to play with him.

The man simply exuded sex. It came out of his pores. She wondered whether her Max could smell the pheromones coming off him, though maybe males didn’t notice hormones from the same gender.

It was an interesting thought.

When Max caught her just before she stumbled into the surf, it had been like receiving an electrical charge. For a second there, she thought she could actually hear electricity crackling, though probably what she heard were her neurons frying. Held tightly against that super-hard, overly lean body really messed with her system. If she’d been one of her test plants, she’d have wilted from overload.

Certainly her brain had left her body. It was already crazy that she’d let him keep Max for the day.

Of course, the man was a naval officer, used to enormous responsibility. He was a SEAL. Or a former SEAL. Those men knew how to do everything, and she was sure he could ride herd over an undisciplined but friendly dog.

Asking him to dinner? Well, that had been a little loony. Not her style at all. She was pretty cool around men. She couldn’t remember ever asking a guy out on a date.

Not that the dwilt that inner was a
date
, of course. It wasn’t, not at all. It was just a friendly neighborly gesture. A thank-you dinner. But once she’d had time to think—to overthink it, Silvia would have said—she realized she’d gone way out of her comfort zone.

She would have called him to cancel, except… well, except there was a part of her that looked forward to tonight. That wondered whether the zing she’d felt when she touched him was an outlier.

If she were to plot her emotional reaction to men on
x
and
y
axes, the line would wander gently over the lower third of the page. That one experience had been, literally, off the charts. Zipping up to the top and disappearing into the stratosphere.

Her cell phone rang. She snatched it up, hoping it was finally Silvia, and heard static.

Then, faintly, “Paige?” Silvia, sounding as if calling from the back side of the moon. “—Sent you—”

Paige clutched the receiver. “Silvia! Finally! The data file you sent—”

But she was talking to empty air. They’d been disconnected. Again. Paige flipped her cell closed with a frown. Silvia wasn’t answering emails, was never online according to Skype, she wasn’t Twittering, and her Facebook page hadn’t been updated—something she did at least three times a week.

Silvia, the most gregarious person Paige knew, seemed to have dropped off the face of the earth. She would never leave Paige wondering where she was. If Silvia were capable of getting in touch, Paige knew, she would.

And the file she sent had been hacked and corrupted. Paige was sure of it. But who to complain to? Silvia’s attachment had been personal, not part of the regular updates of the Argentina Research Station’s reports to the head office. Officially, the attachment didn’t exist.

Well, this had been an unproductive day. Worrying about Silvia and mooning over her next-door neighbor.

She hung up her lab coat, unbraided her hair—her own personal signal for being off-duty—and walked out the big two-story glass doors of the research complex.

Worry drummed in her heart. For her friend, and because she had a file-restoration app a lovesick nerd had once designed for her in grad school, in the hope of luring Paige into his bed. The ruse hadn’t worked but the aplaid but tp did.

It looked like the file had been degraded by a pro, but NerdApp had restored bits and pieces. One sentence had leaped out at her, chilling her to the core.

Strong evidence of a human carcino—

The sentence was incomplete, but the only word in the English language that began with those letters was “carcinogen.”

Something in what Silvia was studying was giving humans cancer. And Silvia was nowhere to be found.

There was absolutely nothing Paige could do, not at the moment. The head of her department, Dr. Warren Beaverton, was in Estonia for a conference. And though Dr. Beaverton was excellent at what he did, outside generating lab data he was a useless human being with barely enough backbone to stand up straight.

And right above him was Vice President for Research Dean Hyland, who, on a scale of humanity, one to ten, ranked minus-five. And who, being corporate, knew less than her cleaning lady about genetics. She had no idea how he’d gotten his degree. Bought it, probably, from some online company based in Montenegro.

Instinctively, Paige knew she couldn’t involve either one.

Something was really wrong. At times, when Paige lifted her extension, there was a slight humming sound before the click of connection.

She didn’t have to read thrillers to know what that meant. Her phone and undoubtedly her office computer were being watched. It would take nothing to tempest her keyboard so they could follow stroke by stroke what she wrote.

Silvia was smart and so was she. If they could just communicate briefly, they could figure out a way to talk without being overheard. They could set up a message board, they could invent new Skype names, they could communicate via throwaway cells.

But first, Paige had to be able to talk to Silvia.

And Silvia was nowhere to be found.

At least she had the two Maxes tonight to take her mind off her worries.

Chapter Three

M
ax stood on the doorstep, trying to keep his jaw from dropping, drinking in the sight of Paige in the open doorway. This was the third version of Paige Waring he’d seen, and if the first two bowled him over, this one took his breath away.
Kapow!
Dead man standing.

The laughing beachcomber and staid businesswoman were gone. In their place was this sexy knockout.

That shiny, light brown hair—enough for about six women—shimmered around her shoulders, reflecting the light with every move she made.

She’d put makeup on that highlighted her large blue-green eyes and made that lush mouth a work of art. She had on a simple, elegant, sexy, frothy turquoise summer dress, white and turquoise bangles, and open-toed sandals showing bright pink toenails. Even her fucking
toes
were sexy.

A stronger version of the perfume he’d smelled this morning mixed with warm skin would have brought him to his knees—if he were able to bend both knees.

She was a wet dream come to life, she lived right next door, and she was about to feed him.

Max leaned down to unleash the dog and to give him time to hide his reaction, because staring slack-jawed at a woman was definitely uncool.

The instant the snap of the leash was undone, the dog bounded forward. He was crazy-eager to get to his mistress, though Max had learned today that crazy-eager was the dog’s default setting. He’d been crazy-eager to chase squirrels in the small, dog-friendly park at the far end of the beach, he’d been crazy-eager to play Frisbee on the sand, he’d been crazy-eager to play fetch with a stick in the surf.

He was crazy-eager about everything, and keeping him out of trouble had kept Max on the move and in a good mood all day.

Max jumped his mistress, trying to reach her face and lick it. Paige stepped back, almost falling under the dog’s weight.

Max snapped out of his Paige-trance.

“Max!” He put command in his voice. “Sit!”

Immediately, Max plopped his butt on the floor. The discipline lasted a second as he shivered with excitement, then hind muscles bunched for another leap on Paige.

“Stay!” Max commanded, and surreptitiously slipped him a doggie treat. He’d never thought to try that with his men. Give them a command, then slip them a Mars bar when they obeyed.

Now it was Paige’s pretty jaw that dropped. She gazed wide-eyed down at her dog then up at him. “Oh my gosh! He obeyed you! That’s amazing, how did you manage that?” She narrowed her eyes at him. “And don’t you dare say it’s because you’re a man.”

He clenched his jaw closed because, well, it was true. He was used to commanding men. Corralling her dog into something resembling discipline came easily to him.

“I won’t say that. Promise.” Max wasn’t a fool. He wanted to keep on her good side. “Here.” He pulled his hand from behind his back to show her a bouquet of flowers. “Believe it or not, your dog picked them out. He sniffed at all the florist’s bouquets and decided on this one. Just sat down in front of it and wouldn’t budge until I bought it. I have no idea what the flowers are.”

She was smiling as she took the bouquet, sniffing appreciatively. “Thanks, though it wasn’t necessary. Let’s see, we have black-eyed Susans, African daisies, Gladioli, Zinnias and Asters.”

His eyebrows rose. “That’s impressive. I know daisies from roses, but that’s about it. I know edible mushrooms and those that will poison you.” And how to make deadly oleander tea.

“Don’t be too impressed,” Paige called out as she walked into a small, pretty, light-filled kitchen and came back out with a vase. “Knowing plants is my job. I’m a plant geneticist.” She looked at his face and laughed. “I get that blank look a lot. No one knows what to say to that. Must be like your line of work. Come on in and sit down; can I serve you a glass of wine?”

The dog was whining and wriggling at his feet. Max looked at Paige. “Thanks. I’d love a glass of wine. What are we going to do about Max? I think we’ve reached the limits of my one-day training course.”

Paige turned back to the kitchen, her words trailing. “Well, I do happen to have some
treats
for a
good dog
.” As if the words were a trigger releasing a spring, Max leaped up and scrambled into the kitchen, nails clicking madly on the tile floor.

Well, it was good while it lasted. No one could expect a dog barely out of puppyhood to stay still forever. Particularly after only one day of training.

Max was jumping up and down, making light yips of joy. Paige bent down open-handed, and he ate the treats delicately from her palm, then licked it. Paige laughed and ruffled the fur on the top of his head as he looked up at her adoringly.

Max understood perfectly. The instant he’d seen Paige on the doorstep, so pretty and smiling, something in him—something painful and dark and twisted—cracked open, just a little.

Amazing.

The groundwork had been laid by a sunny day with an energetic, affectionate dog, and now the work was complete in the presence of its mistress.

Paige exuded calm. Sexy, radiant serenity. Did such a thing exist? Hell if he knew. But if it did, she had it in spades.

The way she moved, those luscious yet slender curves, some kind of perfume that moved straight into a man’s nose and zapped the thinking part of his brain—those were there. But there was also some kind of serene force field around her. She moved in her pretty orderly space like some kind of angel sent to earth to remind him that life was good, was worth living. That life wasn’t battle and death and loss. Blood and pain. That life had things that were worth fighting for.