False Match

by Lynne Silver

  *

  “I’m sorry.” Samara plopped her dinner tray down in the space across from Chase, who sat in the middle of a long table surrounded by his buddies in the cafeteria. The din of conversation paused and two soldiers shuffled their chairs over to make room for her.

  “Where’s your sidekick?” he asked.

  “My— Oh, Luca? He’s eating dinner with Loren and Adam. I think your sister is trying get Adam used to kids.” She looked around for a chair and dragged one over from another table and sat. She ignored all the men who’d stopped eating and stared at her with something akin to horror.

  She smiled blithely at Chase while wondering how she was going to eat with this much mistrust and suspicion being thrown her way. It was like middle school all over again, when she’d been the youngest kid by a year and the brainiest. It didn’t help that she’d had zero social skills. Not much had changed in the quarter century since seventh grade.

  “I’m really sorry about this afternoon,” she said, aiming for a cheerfully upbeat, yet apologetic tone. She forked a bite full of salad in her mouth then practically choked on it when Chase kicked her under the table. Hard.

  “Ow. What the…?” She looked up to see Chase’s glare practically in her salad. Oh, she was doing it again. Letting her lack of social skills rule the day. Chase probably didn’t want her apologizing, because his friends would want to know why she was apologizing and then she’d have to explain. Stupid, Samara. Stupid.

  “I was apologizing for spilling something on him in the lab today,” she lied, noting that all the men at the table were paying attention. “You may not want to anger Chase because there’s a chance he’ll turn green and start ripping his shirt off. Or start shooting spider webs from his wrists and swinging between buildings.”

  There was a deadly silent pause then laughter broke out down the table.

  “Dude, I want to scale walls like Spidey,” said a tall, dark-haired man sitting next to Chase.

  Another soldier disagreed. “No, man, imagine going all Hulk. You could get out of any situation.”

  “Why can’t we have cool enhancements like that? I mean, as long as the docs are messing with our genes, at least give us something cool.”

  Samara opened her mouth to explain why that wasn’t scientifically possible, but a heated discussion broke out about which superhero enhancement each of them would want before she could utter something geeky and ruin the conversation. She caught Chase’s gaze on her and smiled.

  “What would you want, Jonesie?” he asked.

  She swallowed a bite of tomato. “Me? Oh I don’t know…”

  The debate threatened to buzz up again leaving her out. “Mystique,” she blurted. “From X-Men.”

  “Oh yeah,” one of the soldiers said.

  “You could make yourself, like, supermodel hot.”

  “The ultimate spy,” another said.

  “Um hmm,” she murmured. But looks weren’t why she’d chosen Mystique. Mystique could become anyone, even someone who could flirt and handle awkward social interactions without sticking her foot in her mouth. Samara would definitely kill for that ability. She listened with one ear to other soldiers discussing X-Men and purposely didn’t look across the table at Chase, who stared at her with a knowing smile.

  Finally when she’d finished her salad and started on her chicken breast, her gaze moved to him as if it were magnetized.

  “Mystique is hot,” he mouthed and grinned a wicked grin.

  She concentrated on her chicken but allowed a small smile to creep onto her lips. The rest of the soldiers rose from their chairs and cleared their trays. She expected Chase to get up too, but he remained seated, pushed back in his chair.

  “Back to bodyguard duty?” she asked around a mouthful of rice.

  “Maybe. And maybe I want to talk.”

  She bent her head over her plate.

  “I forgot you were an X-Men fan,” he said.

  “I love movies. Didn’t we already have this discussion?”

  “Raunchy comedies, superheroes, what’s next? Porn?”

  She practically spit her rice across the table. “Ew, no.”

  “Have you ever watched any?”

  “Porn? I’ve seen bits and pieces.” She shrugged. “It didn’t do anything for me.”

  He sat forward and leaned his forearms on the table. “What does do it for you?” His voice had gone low and husky.

  Her fork clattered onto her tray, her mind racing. Chase was flirting with her. She was almost sure of it. She hadn’t seen flirting in a very long time, if ever, but she’d seen enough movies to recognize the patterns of behavior. She could nip this in the bud right now, or she could try her hand at reciprocating.

  She sat forward, enough so her breasts practically rested on the table. She didn’t need to look down to know the buttons on her blouse were gaping, providing a nice view if one was tall enough. Chase was six two, practically a giant.

  She picked up her spoon and flipped the concave side toward her lips, convex out so if Chase looked close enough he could see his reflection. The spoon flirted with her lips and she darted her tongue out as though tasting something decadent off it. She had his full attention.

  “What gets your blood pumping, Jonesie?” Chase asked in a deep voice.

  You. Deny it all she wanted, she was viciously attracted to Chase. It had been easier to ignore it when he’d been cold and brutal to her, but in the spotlight of his charm she was melting. Unfortunately it was hopeless. It was seventh grade all over again, when she’d had a major crush on Matt Gellan, star of the school basketball team. Matt hadn’t known she was alive. Chase knew she was alive, but the idea of them as a couple was laughable. Beauty and the Geek? Yeah right, but she could have some fun trying her hand at flirting.

  “I’m not sure. Why don’t you list some things and I’ll tell you if those things make me…hot.” She hid a smile behind the spoon. She was flirting. She was rocking this.

  Chase’s Adam’s apple bobbed and he leaned even closer. “Let’s see. What gets good girls hot?”

  “Who says I’m good?” Holy moly, was that her throaty voice?

  He laughed. “Oh Jonesie, you’re as good as they get.”

  The spoon clattered from her fingers, sending rice grains scattering. “I can be bad.”

  “I’ll believe it when I see it.” His tone was more mocking than flirtatious.

  To her everlasting shame, tears filled her eyes. She stood and grabbed her tray. So much for flirting like an expert. Chase saw right through the act and was probably snickering at her. She was such a fool to think someone as handsome as Chase, who could get any woman, would actually flirt with her in a meaningful way.

  “Where you going, Jones?” Chase stood also.

  “To get Luca. I have better things to do than waste time talking about pornography.” Her heels ate up the ground on the way to the used-tray receptacle.

  “C’mon, Jones, I didn’t get to find out what makes you hot.” His long legs made it easy for him to stay in her breathing space. She turned her back and shoved the tray into place.

  “Let me by, Chase.” Without looking him in the eye, she shoved past and exited toward the family homes to pick up her son. She ended up chatting with Loren for a few minutes and hearing about all of Luca’s antics during dinner.

  “He showed us how to hang a spoon from his nose,” Loren said. “I believe that’s Chase’s signature move.”

  Samara sighed. When they finally left here, she’d have to enroll Luca in etiquette classes, but then her humor caught up. Luca was thrilled with the plethora of male role models running around the campus. If they left, it would be just the two of them again.

  “Thanks for having Luca for dinner,” she said to Loren. “Luca, what do you say?”

  He grinned up at Loren from the grass in front of Adam and Loren’s small cottage. “Thank you for dinner,” he said obediently, then turned and sprinted off to their apartment.

 
; When they finally returned to the apartment she’d been given on campus, she’d mostly shrugged off her embarrassment from her attempt at flirting. Except when she opened the door, a thick romance novel, complete with bare-chested male on the cover, was waiting on the entry table with a sheet of notebook paper stuck inside.

  Does this get you hot? was scrawled on the torn-out white paper. She flushed, frowned, then smiled.

  “What’s that, Mommy?” Luca asked.

  She showed Luca the spine. “Just a book, honey.” But it was more than a book to her. It was a beginning.

  Chapter Three

  Chase pushed open the lab door early in the morning to see his doctor already in the lab and on the phone. He’d missed her at breakfast and wanted to hear if she’d stayed up late reading the bedtime story he’d left for her.

  “Fell in the shower?” Samara tilted her head to hold the gray handset between her ear and her shoulder, leaving her hands free to write. “Mmm hmm.” Her silky dark hair hung over her face, blocking his view of her expression.

  Chase stopped trying to subtly get her attention by smiling and standing in her line of sight. It sounded as if she was dealing with trouble. He wondered who she was talking to. As far as he knew, Luca was the sole relative she’d mentioned. Unless she’d had a lover before Paulson kidnapped her. Or…an ex-husband. For reasons he didn’t care to contemplate, his stomach tightened at the thought of Jones being married. Then he released a breath. She’d said Luca had been artificially inseminated. Ergo, no ex-husband.

  He waited another minute before she hung up and bit her lip, fiddling with the blue ballpoint pen.

  “Bad news?” he asked.

  She looked up at him, obviously startled to see him there. Pink touched her cheeks, and he wondered if she was thinking of the gift he’d left. He hoped so.

  “My mother fell in the shower last night.”

  “Your mother’s still living? Was that her on the phone?”

  “I’m only thirty-seven, Chase. Of course my mother’s still alive.”

  “Mine’s not, and I’m younger than you.”

  “Oh.”

  That shut her up. He hadn’t meant to, and it probably hadn’t been the most brilliant move to point out their age difference. Nothing a woman liked more than to be reminded she was older than a man. He wanted to hear about her mother. “Will your mother be all right?”

  “I hope so. She lives in an assisted living facility. She has Alzheimer’s. She wasn’t so bad a year ago when Paulson took me, but it sounds like she’s getting worse.”

  He took a step to offer comfort, maybe wrap her in a hug, but she turned away and wrapped her own arms around herself. “I need to see her,” she muttered to herself. He pretended he hadn’t been about to hug her and made a beeline for the faded scratchy-fabric couch. “I haven’t seen my own mother in more than a year. And she needs me.”

  He leaned his forearms onto his thighs. “Have you talked to Shep? Would he let you go?”

  She threw him a look he interpreted as get real. “I haven’t spoken to him about this yet, but I don’t think he trusts me.”

  “He would let you go if he knew the whole situation.”

  “Maybe, but he’d still make me come back quickly. And I want to spend time with her. You know, before she forgets who I am. If that hasn’t happened already.”

  A lump formed in his throat. Man, that had to hurt. About as much as your mom killing herself because she decided seeing her son grow up wasn’t worth living for. “Maybe you could move her back here. I’m sure there’s a good facility nearby.”

  “Perhaps, but I’ve read that stability is better. The whole world is already confusing enough to her, it doesn’t seem fair or sound to switch up her environment.”

  “Makes sense.”

  “It’s one of the reasons I want to leave here,” she said. “My old job was only a few miles away from my mother. They’d take me back if I wanted. Plus…never mind.”

  “No, tell me. Plus what?”

  “The lab would let me direct my own research. I’d continue with the genetics, but I really want to focus on the Alzheimer’s. Imagine if I could cure it.” She stared at him with a burning intensity that had him leaning in to…what? Kiss her?

  Christ, Chase. Get it together. She was confiding in him, and a good chunk of his brain was processing the width and potential softness of her lips, and whether she’d let him slide his tongue in her mouth. He forced himself to sit up. “If anyone could do it, you could.”

  “Thank you. I know I could. But it’ll never happen. Paulson and Shep want me enhancing humans. And, well, I’m not sure I even believe in it anymore.”

  “Did you ever?”

  She smiled faintly. “In college and med school. I was a bit obsessed with creating a more perfect human. My parents had me when they were older. They’d struggled with fertility problems and were only able to have me late in life.”

  “And you dedicated yourself to solving their problem?”

  She nodded.

  “And now you want to solve their latest health problem.”

  She frowned. “I never thought about it like that before, but yes, I think there’s some truth in the statement.”

  He chuckled. Leave it to his Jonesie to phrase it like that. All scientific and analytical. Wait, when did she become his Jonesie? He stood and held out a hand. “Let’s go find Shep.”

  She clasped his hand and used him for leverage to stand. “Really? You think he’ll go for it?”

  “You’ll never know until you ask. At the very least, I think he’ll allow you to visit your mother. He’s not a monster.”

  *

  It went easier than she ever expected.

  “Take the weekend. Go visit your mother,” Shep said, but then dropped totally unexpected orders. “Chase, you’ll go with her.”

  “What?” In unison.

  Shep said, “You heard me. Chase will go with you. It’s as much for your own protection as ours. Or have you forgotten Paulson wants you back?”

  “I haven’t forgotten,” she said in a low voice. “What about Luca? Will you make him stay behind?”

  “Up to you,” Shep replied, “but maybe it would be easier to deal with your mother’s health without a four-year-old around.

  She released a breath, relieved they wouldn’t hold on to Luca as security to make sure she returned to the Program. It would be easier to travel without Luca, but… “No. We’ve only been here a little while. I think Luca would panic if I left him behind.”

  “Fair enough.” Shep turned to Chase. “Arrange the flights. You can have the plane. I expect you back here by Tuesday.”

  She stared at Shep, unable to process her good fortune.

  “Let’s go pack,” Chase said with a grin. He stood to leave Shep’s office, but she was still in a little shock at how easily Shep had acceded to her wishes and that Chase was coming along for the ride.

  She swiveled in the office chair. “Are you sure you want to go on this trip? Don’t you have better things than to babysit an old doctor and her toddler?”

  “Who you calling old, honey? I was surprised when Shep wanted me to go, that’s all. I’m stoked to be your escort.”

  She smiled.

  “Plus, it will give you time to study my DNA for enhancements.”

  Her face fell. “Oh. Yes, that makes sense.” He wanted her brain, not her body, but then he forced her to reassess with his next statement.

  “I’m going to pack an extra suitcase of things I think get Doctor Jones hot and bothered.” He strode out of the small office, not bothering to look back at her. She was grateful he didn’t see her tomato-red face. She turned back to Commander Shepard, who was already seated behind his desk pretending not to hear, but then he looked up and raised a brow. She fled the office to go pack.

  *

  Samara and Luca settled into their oversized leather seats on the plane, and she smiled at Chase’s back. Their own private bodyguard w
as up front talking to the pilot. Luca had sat in front for the entire pre-flight check. There were perks to traveling in a private jet. She still couldn’t believe Shep had granted them use of it, but Chase had told her it was safer for all parties if the jet dropped them in Colorado and returned for them in a few days.

  Whatever the reasoning, she wasn’t arguing, though it did feel a bit cloistering, as if they didn’t trust her in a public airport. She was going to use every second of the trip to scope out a possible job at her old lab and a home in Colorado.

  “Little man’s napping?” Chase came from the front of the plane and jerked his chin at Luca.

  She swiveled her head and smiled at her now-sleeping son. “All the excitement must have knocked him out. He said he’s going to be a pilot when he grows up.”

  Chase laughed. “He told me yesterday he was going to be a soldier just like Adam and Xander.”

  Her skin tightened a little at the thought of her little boy growing up to be a soldier and put in dangerous situations. She relaxed, remembering Luca was young and would likely change his mind a zillion times before settling on a career. “Well they made a big impression on him when they broke us out of Paulson’s.”

  “I could teach him a little martial arts if he’s interested. Four’s a good age to start. I started around then.” But he suddenly lost his smile. “But you probably want Adam or one of the enhanced soldiers to train him.”

  She touched his knee. “Luca isn’t enhanced and it’s not as if he could be part of the Program as an adult. You’d make a fabulous sensei for him, and I think he’d love it. Ask him when he wakes up.”

  The easy smile was back on his face. “Cool. I will. Want to watch a movie?” he asked.

  Would she? All her own media devices had been left behind when Paulson had kidnapped her. She had nothing to do on the flight save for the romance novel Chase had gifted her with. And she didn’t dare let him see she was already halfway through it. “I’d love to watch a movie. What do you have?”