Jessica Andersen - Dr. Bodyguard

“GREENS,” GENIE PRONOUNCED the next morning, waving a forkful of strawberry pancake in Nick Wellington’s direction before popping it into her mouth. It sure beat a handful of granola on the way out the door. If Wellington sticks around, she thought, I’ll have to exhume the StairMaster from the attic.

“Excuse me?”

She dropped her fork onto the plate with a loud clatter and blushed before she realized he hadn’t heard her slip of the medulla. And where had that come from? There was no way Nick Wellington was sticking around. No way she wanted him to. In the cold, rational light of morning, that little incident in the shower seemed like an out-of-body experience, like something that had happened to someone else. Now it was—hopefully—time for them to get back to reality.

Back to Dr. Genius Watson and Dr. Beef Wellington. Matter and antimatter. Magnetic north and south. It would serve her well to remember that, because there was no way in hell she was making the Archer mistake twice.

Besides, Wellington wasn’t even interested. Sure he’d felt sorry for her, and maybe a tiny bit responsible because he’d found her. Nothing more. He certainly hadn’t felt the hum of rightness in the ambulance and he hadn’t been prey to the fantasies she’d briefly entertained in the night.

He couldn’t have, or else he wouldn’t have bolted from the shower as if she had just grown a third eyeball in the center of her forehead. She had been naked—naked!—in his arms and her breasts had been rubbing up against his wet T-shirt and her thighs and her— Well, never mind. Genie resisted an unladylike snort. He hadn’t done a thing. He hadn’t kissed her, hadn’t even made a suggestive comment.

Nothing.

Ergo, he wasn’t interested. It didn’t take a genius to figure that one out. And it was just as well, she thought, since she absolutely, positively, wasn’t interested, either.

Screw me once, said Marilynn’s well-bred, Georgian contralto in the back of Genie’s mind, shame on you. Screw me twice… Genie’s lips twitched. She was pretty sure the conclusion of Marilynn’s malaprop didn’t really apply here, but it felt good to remember her friend, as if Marilynn’s ghost was standing at her shoulder, protecting her from being stupid.

“Genie?” Nick waved his hand in front of her face. “You still here?”

She mumbled something unintelligible while she tried to remember what they’d been talking about. Oh, yeah. “Greens,” she repeated and he nodded.

“That’s what I thought you said. Are we talking about lettuce, kale, spinach, that sort of thing?” He sipped at the coffee, which had turned out fragrant, flavorful and perfect, three things she had thought totally beyond her Mr. Coffee.

“No, greens as in surgical scrubs. I dreamed about them last night.”

Wellington looked at her as if that was the worst possible thing he could think to dream about, which it probably was. She bet he dreamed Technicolor fantasies starring tall blondes with chest measurements roughly equivalent to their IQs.

“So?”

She leaned forward. “That’s how he got out of the darkroom. My greens. I keep a set in there for changing the developer chemicals. What do you want to bet they’re not there anymore?”

Genie smiled when he nodded agreement, and was surprised to feel the tension across her shoulders loosen a little. Talking to Wellington over pancakes seemed to be making the events of the day before a little more bearable. A little less awful.

Not smart, her brain supplied, remember Archer. And she did. She remembered Archer in all his golden, popular glory. He might not have broken her heart, but he’d certainly shattered her pride.

“Yeah, that sounds reasonable. I’ll mention it to the detectives when I see them later today.”

Nick stood and piled his dishes in the sink before he grabbed his keys off the breakfast bar. Genie wondered fleetingly why he’d left them there when there was a perfectly good key rack just inside the door. Then she sighed. It was a timely reminder of their differences. She had racks, he had piles.

Magnetic north and south. She’d do well to remember it.

“I’m going to run an errand or two, check in at the lab and speak with the detectives. You going to be okay?”

So that was it, then. Genie tried to ignore the faint sadness that trickled through her. “Sure, I’ll be fine. My car’s parked in Chinatown so I’ll catch a cab to the commuter rail.”

He paused halfway out the door. “You’re not planning on going to work today, are you?”

Though the very thought of it made her queasy, she said, “Of course I am.”

He blew out a slow breath and abandoned subtlety. “You were beat up yesterday, Genie. You’ve got stitches in your eyebrow and I can tell your head’s killing you. Can’t you take the day off?”

Sure she could, but she didn’t want to. Already the idea of taking the elevator up to their shared floor and walking past the developer room was filling Genie with prickles of dread. She knew it would only get worse the longer she stalled. Her brain might be filling the emptiness with irrelevant thoughts of Nick Wellington in her shower and annoyingly apropos mental notes, but her soul knew the truth.

A big, tough guy like Wellington might not understand, but she was scared. Deep-down, bone-thumping scared.

What if the man was still in the darkroom? What if he’d hidden in the little office closet where she kept a change of clothes? She could feel him looking over her shoulder right now, breathing on her neck; the bruises on her stomach ached when she shivered.

What if the police found him near the lab and he told them that he’d been watching her for weeks, just waiting for his chance?

Or even worse, what if they didn’t find him at all? Would she spend the rest of her life trying to remember him, jumping at every shadow that might remind her of what she couldn’t know? Or would she remember him one day, remember what he had said, what he had done.

And wish that she could forget it again.

She shivered and rubbed an absent hand across a sore spot on her neck. “I could stay home, but I don’t want to.” Her self-appointed guardian scowled and she frowned right back. “I need to walk into that lab today, Wellington. I need to prove to myself that I can go back there and function.” She paused. “Otherwise he’s taken away more than just my feeling of safety. He’s taken away the lab.”

And although Wellington would have no way of knowing it, the lab was more than just a workplace to Genie. It was her life. Her salvation.

Her world.

He sighed and nodded. When he scrubbed a hand down the golden stubble on his jaw, Genie noticed for the first time that he looked tired. Worn. And very sexy in a grumpy, I’m-wearing-yesterday’s-clothes kind of way.

“Okay,” he said, “I can understand that. But let me drive you. I’m going to swing by my place.” He named a nearby section of town, surprising her. She hadn’t realized they were almost neighbors. “Once I’ve changed, I’m going to take care of a few things, then I’ll come back here and get you. Okay?”

He nodded and scratched the stubble on his jaw, clearly satisfied with his own plan. Taking lack of disagreement for an agreement, he gave her shoulder a friendly squeeze and left. The condo seemed much bigger and emptier in his absence.

Her shoulder tingled where he had touched it.

And the silence was as loud as a thousand freezer alarms shrieking at once.

Genie shivered. She was alone. Beef Wellington and his space-hogging tendencies were gone. There was no one else here. She was alone. The shadows seemed to pulse with it.

“Get over it, Watson,” she ordered herself. “You’ve been on your own for a long time and it hasn’t hurt you yet.”