Jessica Andersen: Under the Microscope

Translation: he’d pawn her off on William, who was nearly impervious to big brown eyes.

Max was tempted to tell her to get lost, but he wasn’t an idiot. He knew her company was getting set to launch their highly touted female sex-enhancement drug-not because he’d been keeping tabs on her, but because the buzz had been impossible to ignore. It stood to reason that she wanted to see him about Thriller.

The drug was slated to bring in big money. Big publicity. Exactly the sort of thing his and William’s company needed if they wanted to break out of the nickel-and-dime stuff and into mainstream competition.

“Tomorrow could be too late,” she argued. “I need to talk to you now.”

He was faintly surprised by the persistence, which jarred against his memory of a quiet, polite woman in a hospital bed, one who didn’t want to be fussed over as the doctors struggled to control a blood clotting issue. It was that very desire not to make a fuss that had made him want to fuss over her. Want to be with her. Want to wrap her in silk and take her away from danger and ugliness.

It was what his techie friend Ike called DIDS. Damsel In Distress Syndrome.

But, Max thought grimly, knowing you have a problem is the first step in fighting it.

He didn’t budge from the door. “You need to talk to me? So talk.”

She took a breath and glanced away. “First, I need to apologize. You were nothing but kind to me three years ago, and I treated you badly. I was sick, hormonal and upset and going through a really terrible time in my life, but that’s no excuse.” She paused and looked at him squarely before she said, “I’m sorry. I should have said goodbye.”

Three years ago, that might have mattered to him.

Now, he scowled. “Agreed. So what?”

He expected her to back down. Instead, she stood her ground while something dark and haunted moved through her expression. “I’m in trouble. You’ve heard of Thriller?”

He nodded, accepting the change of topic if not the apology. “Female sexuality drug. Lots of publicity. Launches sometime this week.”

“Actually, it was supposed to launch today. The FDA put a hold on it.” Still standing in the hallway, she unslung the leather bag from around her neck, opened it and pulled out a folder that was filled with a half inch of papers and had a data disk taped to the front inside a plastic sleeve. She offered it to him. “Four women are dead from cardiac arrest. According to the reports, the only thing they had in common was that all four took Thriller before they died.”

He ignored the folder. “Call William in the morning and make an appointment. Our history back in Boston doesn’t give you the right to hunt me up at home, and it doesn’t qualify you for preferential treatment. Hell, if anything, I should tell him to ask for hazard pay.”

He told himself he’d meant the comment as a joke, but it landed flat.

Three years earlier, he’d been more or less content with his lab work at Boston General Hospital. With a Ph.D in biochemistry, a postdoc in a fertility lab and a half-dozen major first-author papers to his name, he could’ve run his own group, but preferred having someone else manage the basics, leaving him free to pursue interesting side projects.

It was one such side project that had put him in contact with a then-pregnant Raine. When danger had stalked the lab and its patients, Max had appointed himself the pretty divorcée’s guardian, and had thought his growing feelings were reciprocated.

In the end, an empty hospital room had proven otherwise.

“I already spoke to your partner about the case,” she said quickly. “He told me to talk to you.”

Max bet she was leaving out a few steps. Like how she’d conned William into giving up his address. No doubt she’d implied-or outright said-that they’d been lovers, when they’d been nothing of the sort.

Though they might have been lovers. If they’d met at another time, under different circumstances…

It didn’t matter, Max told himself. They’d met the way they’d met, and parted the way they’d parted.

And he’d gone on to make some really bad decisions in the aftermath. Maybe it wasn’t fair to blame her for them, but that didn’t change the upshot.

Damsels in distress were nothing but trouble.

He held up a hand before she could speak again. “Look, Raine. An apology doesn’t change anything.” He stepped back, into the apartment. “If you want Vasek and Caine to handle your case, you’ll have to deal with William, not me.”

With that, he shut the door on her. He didn’t slam it, because a slam would indicate anger, suggesting he still cared.

No, he shut it gently, with a firm, final-sounding thunk.

Then he locked and double locked it. But as he turned away from the door and stared into the barren apartment, which had been stripped of most of its furnishings and absolutely everything of monetary value, he had to wonder.

Was he locking her out, or locking himself in?

RAINE STOOD IN THE HALLWAY for a long moment, trembling. Not with fear or anger, though that was part of it. And not with the accumulated stress of the past two days, though that was part of it, too. But the rest of it was Max.

She’d thought she’d been prepared to see him.

She’d been wrong.

He was taller than she remembered, and broader, but his voice was the same, a deep, dark rumble that used an educated man’s vocabulary in a blue-collar Boston accent. His face remained a collection of heavy planes and angles that shouldn’t have been handsome but somehow was, even beneath a faint shadow of stubble. All that was the same.

But his eyes were different. How he’d looked at her was different.

When they’d known each other for those few short weeks at Boston General, under the strangest of circumstances, he’d treated her so kindly, so gently. He hadn’t said much, but he’d been there through the entire terrifying ordeal, and he’d never looked at her as though she were the enemy, as though she had betrayed him.

Never looked at her the way he had just now.

“It’s nothing more than I deserve,” she said aloud. “I took off on him.”

It occurred to her that his reaction-along with his partner’s raised brows and quick cooperation when she’d given her name-was confirmation that Max remembered her, evidence that the feelings hadn’t been all on her side. But it was also proof that she’d hurt him when she’d left, and she hadn’t wanted that.

She’d wanted to punish herself for getting sick and miscarrying the baby, not him. But it seemed as though she’d managed to do both, and she wasn’t sure how to fix it. Wasn’t sure it was fixable at all.

On the long, traffic-delayed drive from the Vasek and Caine offices in Manhattan, she’d worked out what she would say when Max opened the door. But the shock of seeing him had driven the planned speech out of her head.

He’d turned her down before she’d been able to get back on track. So now what?

“General Gao’s?”

Raine gasped and spun at the unfamiliar voice.

A young man in courier’s clothes and a bike helmet stumbled back a step and held up a fragrant brown bag as a shield. “General Gao’s!” he repeated. “Pork fried rice.” He pointed to Max’s door. “You’re in 5A, right?”

“Of course.” Thinking fast, Raine dug her wallet out of her purse. “How much do I owe you?”

She paid him, added a generous tip and waited until he was gone, until she was alone in the hallway.

Then she faced Max’s door and took a deep breath. “Well, here goes nothing.”

She wasn’t giving up on her company.

According to Jeff, the FDA investigators had practically locked down Rainey Days while they pored over the computer and hard-copy files of the clinical trials. They were checking to see whether Thriller was safe for human use. They were also looking for evidence of criminal misconduct. Falsified evidence. Mysteriously “lost” toxicity reports.