by Cindy Dees
Still. He was in the army? Why did the army need to talk with her? She pushed a little less urgently against his foot. “What do you want?” she demanded. Rats. Her voice sounded all squeaky and terrified. No help for it. She was terrified.
“To talk, ma’am. Just to talk.”
“About what?”
“Your work, ma’am. You may have discovered something of interest to us.”
“Us who?”
“I already told you. I work for the government. It’s classified, and I can’t exactly yell about it while standing on your front porch.”
“Why did the government try to kidnap me, then? They could’ve just asked me about my work. I’d have told them.”
“The government did not try to kidnap you, ma’am.”
“Then what would you call having three men run after me and try to jump on me and throw me into a van? As I recall, you physically leaped on me and knocked me to the ground. I’d call that an attack. Why on earth would I let you into my house?”
“Attacked—I saved you! Those men in the van were not with me. They were trying to assault you or kidnap you, and I stopped them!”
“Funny way you have of saving me. I’ve got a bunch of big ol’ bruises to show for it.”
“Yeah, well, I’ve got a few bruises to show for it myself.”
“Do they hurt?” she demanded.
“As a matter of fact, they do,” he answered a little sourly.
“Good.”
A sigh wafted through the crack. “Ma’am, I messed up this afternoon, but I really do need to speak with you. I’m sorry if I scared you earlier. That was not my intent. I truly was trying to save you from those men in the van.”
She replayed the events of the afternoon in her head. Was it possible this man was telling the truth? Someone behind her had called her name. That was just before a squeal of tires captured her attention. And then the big man—Carter Baigneaux—was rushing her in a blur from her left. The other two men came out of the van from directly in front of her.
Hmm. The two attacks had definitely come from different directions. And why would one man follow her on foot when the other two came out of the van? Why not just have all three men charge her from the van? Had Carter not knocked her down, the first two men would have had no trouble snatching her.
“Did you call out my name?” she asked.
“Yes. That was me. I wanted you to slow down so I could talk to you. You left your class out the storeroom door too fast for me to catch you any sooner to ask to speak with you. I had to chase you all the way across that grassy area.”
Okay, so he’d been in her class and not with the other men in the van. His story might be true, after all.
“Tell you what, ma’am. Call the campus police. They ran my ID this afternoon and verified who I am and who I work for. I’ll wait out here on the porch until you’ve done it.”
“You’ll take your foot out of my door?”
“Absolutely. The only reason I didn’t let you close the door was so you’d give me a second to explain myself. Trust me. If I’d wanted to gain entry to your house, this door—open or closed—would not stop me.”
That she did not doubt for a second.
“Okay. I’ll make the call.”
To her surprise, his foot retracted and the door shut abruptly, making her stumble against it. Despite his assurance that he could force his way past it, she locked the dead bolt. It just made her feel better and maybe it would slow him down a little.
She picked up her cell phone and dialed the campus police. “Hi, this is Lily James. I’m the lady the three men attacked this afternoon.”
“Ah, yes. Dr. James. How can I help you? Did you remember something that might help us catch your assailants?”
“Actually, I was wondering if you could tell me who the attacker was that jumped on me. The one you arrested.”
“He was not one of your attackers, ma’am. It turns out he was a passerby. Army man with a combat background. He saw those men coming for you and tried to knock you out of the way.”
“And you know for sure he’s with the army?”
“Yes, ma’am. We spoke with his superiors. He’s a decorated veteran with a sterling record. Apparently, he’s on campus to speak with someone about something classified. His supervisors couldn’t give us the details of that. But they assured us in the strongest possible terms that he’s a man of absolute honor and trustworthiness.”
“And you believed them?”
“Yes, ma’am. Do you know of some reason we shouldn’t?”
“No,” she replied thoughtfully. “Thanks.”
“Call us if you remember any details about the other two men. Kidnapping is a serious crime.”
No kidding. Especially when she was the target of it.
Lily hung up and made her way slowly back to the front door. So, he was who he said he was. She called through the panel. “Okay, I believe you. You’re some army guy and you tried to save me today. Now what?”
She took a hasty step back as he answered from directly on the other side of the door. “How about you and I meet in a public place to talk, ma’am? Where you’ll be surrounded by witnesses and perfectly safe. I won’t be able to go into the details of what we need to discuss, but you can decide for yourself if I’m a bad guy or not.”
“What kind of public place?” she asked, surprised by the suggestion. She’d assumed he would insist on coming into her living room right now. She was relieved that he wasn’t going to invade her private sanctuary.
“Let’s meet any place you’d be comfortable. How about a restaurant? I haven’t eaten since this morning. Are you hungry, ma’am? We could have dinner together.”
“Stop calling me ma’am. It makes me feel like my great-aunt Mildred.”
“All right, ma’— Dr. James. How about it? You name the restaurant. I’ll leave now and meet you there in, say, a half hour. My treat—so pick the most expensive joint in town. Preferably some place that serves a big slab of steak.”
“Meat in large quantities isn’t good for your digestion. Humans are chemically designed to be vegetarians, or at worst, occasional omnivores.”
A sigh drifted through the door. “I’ll eat alfalfa sprouts and dandelions if you’ll just talk to me. Please?”
“All right. Fine. There’s a place on Third Street, the Campus Club. It serves both meat and non-meat dishes, and they serve late. I’ll meet you there in a half hour.”
“Perfect.” He sounded genuinely relieved. “I’m going to head for my car now. Watch me through the front window until I’ve driven away and you know I’m gone. I’ll head over to this club of yours and get us a table. I’ll be waiting for you. Don’t be late.”
His admonition to be punctual bugged her. She never had been any good at taking orders. She popped off, “What’ll you do if I am late? Arrest me?”
He answered evenly, “I’d hate to have to resort to that, but yes, I suppose that would be my next step.”
Seriously? She stood there, stunned, as his footsteps retreated across her porch and down her front steps. Arrest her? Could he do that? Who on earth was this guy?
Belatedly, she moved to her front window to stare at his retreating silhouette. He had broad, muscular shoulders or maybe it was just that his waist was lean and hard that made them look so big. He carried himself with an easy grace that made her feel gawky and uncoordinated just watching him.
He got into a nondescript sedan that screamed rental car. The headlights came on, the vehicle pulled away from the curb and its red taillights retreated down the street. As soon as they disappeared, she raced to her bathroom and threw on the light. Her hair was a disaster and she didn’t have on a stitch of makeup. She ran a brush through the tangled chocolate mass and reached for a tube of mascara before it dawned on her what she was doing. What idiot primped for some guy who’d tackled her and scared her to death?
She threw the mascara into a drawer and stomped out of the bathroom.
When she reached her closet, she pulled out holey jeans and the rattiest T-shirt she owned, a paint-stained thing that had seen much better days. She slammed her feet into sandals, grabbed her car keys, and headed for her garage. Cautiously, she backed out. Carter Baigneaux might not have tried to kidnap her, but someone else definitely had. Even Carter said so.
She guided the car down the street, watching her rearview mirror nervously. By the time she reached the Campus Club, which was indeed one of the most expensive restaurants near the university, she was getting downright paranoid. Twice, she identified cars that were definitely following her only to have them turn off on side streets a few moments later.
She circled the block twice before a parking spot opened up practically at the restaurant’s door. Perfect. She ducked into the spot and made a dash for it. As she stepped into the dark paneled, old-world decor of the Campus Club, she checked her watch and was smug to see that she was five minutes late. She never had been a conformist and she wasn’t about to start now.
A maitre d’ she recognized from previous visits stepped forward. “Dr. James? Your party is waiting for you. This way.”
The table he led her to, a white linen-covered affair set with crystal and china, made her feel violently under-dressed. Carter stood up to his full, imposing height as she approached. Something girly within her wished she’d dressed up for him before the defiant streak in her guffawed at the concept. Darned if he didn’t step forward and pull out her chair for her. Startled, she sank into the seat as he pushed it in. Polite guy. He made her feel downright churlish for having intentionally dressed sloppily.
“Do you always hold chairs for women, or are you trying to butter me up?”
He shrugged. “I’m a Southern boy and I was raised old-school. Gentlemen hold chairs for ladies. My daddy still holds my mother’s chair for her every night when they sit down to dinner, and they’ve been married going on forty years.”
Okay, now she definitely felt bad. “I’m sorry I didn’t have time to clean up more,” she murmured.
“You look lovely just the way you are.”
She felt herself reddening. A Southern boy, indeed. Quite the charmer. And speaking of which, she did detect a soft drawl beneath his matter-of-fact words. She asked, “Where in the South are you from, Captain?”
He grinned, flashing a killer smile that all but knocked her off her chair. “With a name like Baigneaux? I’m from Louisiana. Baton Rouge to be exact.”
Flustered, she made a production of spreading her napkin in her lap.
“So tell me, Dr. James, do you have any idea who those men in the van were this afternoon?” he asked quietly.
She looked up quickly. “You don’t know?” She’d assumed he knew who was after her because he was the one who presumably saved her from them.
“I have no idea whatsoever.” He sounded grim enough to be telling the truth. “You?”
“No clue.”
“Do you have any enemies? Has anyone threatened you recently?” he fired at her.
“I went over all of that with the campus police. No, I’ve received no threats, and other than the occasional whiny student who protests a bad grade, I have no enemies I’m aware of, Captain.”
“How’s your research going, Dr. James?”
The sharp change of topic from him threw her off balance.
“I’ve been having trouble with my computer model. The forecast physical-and radiation-damage patterns of superfast intergalactic flying objects aren’t syncing up with my equations on stationary impacts.”
“In English, please?” he murmured.
Oh. Right. Not a fellow astrophysicist. “I’m stuck on creating software to accurately predict what will happen when meteors hit the earth.”
He leaned forwardly intently. “How stuck?”
She frowned. “Hard to tell. I haven’t been able to get access to a big-enough computer to run a full simulation and calibrate my calculations. Bill Kaplan—he’s the astronomy department chair—thinks I’m a crackpot and won’t fund my work. So, until I can convince someone to cough up grant money for me, I’m pretty much dead in the water.”
“What if I could help with that?”
She stared at the man across from her. “Are you serious?”
“As a heart attack, ma’— Dr. James.”
“My first name’s Lily. If you keep calling me Dr. James, I’m going to start feeling like I’m dating one of my students—” She broke off, appalled. “Not that this is a date—” She broke off again. “Or that you’re remotely like one of my students—” She swore at herself silently. Sometimes she had the social skills of an amoeba.
A grin flickered around the edges of the captain’s rather lovely mouth.
“Tell you what,” he said easily. “I won’t call you Doctor if you won’t call me Captain. My first name’s Carter. If you don’t like that, my field handle’s Boudreau or just Boo.”
Boo? The moniker made him sound like a Pekingese. “Aren’t you a little, uh, old for a name like Boo?”
He rolled his eyes. “Believe me, I had nothing to do with choosing it.”
“Who gave it to you, then?”
“My teammates on Alpha Squa—” He broke off abruptly. “Some buddies of mine.”
“What’s a field handle?” she asked curiously.
He sighed. “A field handle is a nickname soldiers use in the field. It’s usually shorter or easier to pronounce than a full last name.”
She nodded. “Got it.”
The waiter interrupted to take their orders. In spite of her earlier warning about its ill effects on his digestion, he ordered a prime rib with all the trimmings. She ordered a vegetarian ragout over soba. She was going to feel much better in a few hours than he was. Not to mention she was going to live decades longer than he would if he insisted on abusing his body like that.
They’d been engaged in casual dinner conversation for several minutes before it dawned on her that he’d put her entirely at ease with his rambling pleasantries. Smooth operator this man was. Although it probably didn’t hurt his success factor that she was a complete dork around men in general and an easy mark for some charming Southerner to sweep off her feet.
There will be no feet-sweeping offage here, thank you very much. She told herself sternly not to be sucked in by this guy’s Rhett Butler act.
After a thoroughly delicious meal, a waiter cleared their plates and poured coffee for them. Carter leaned forward, abruptly serious, his sapphire gaze intent. “So, tell me, Lily, has anyone shown an interest in your research recently?”
“Besides you?” she retorted. His gaze didn’t waver an iota. She sighed. “Not that I’m aware of. But then, my preliminary equations are posted on the internet. Anyone could look at them and I’d never know.”
“Could just anyone understand them?”
She answered candidly. “Probably not. It would take a mathematician or physicist with a background in chaos theory to fully grasp the algorithms, I expect.”
He smiled ruefully. “You make my head hurt with all those big words.”
Her gaze narrowed. She wasn’t fooled for a second. The man sitting across from her was highly intelligent. He might not be an astrophysicist, but he was sharp. She leaned forward herself. “Quit beating around the bush, Carter. What do you want from me?”
Their gazes locked. She was tempted to look away, but dealing with Bill Kaplan and the other self-righteous blowhards in the astronomy department who’d dismissed her for years as a nut job had made her tough. She might be hanging on to her position at the university by a thread, but by golly, she was still here.
“Suffice it to say that I would like to understand the full implications of your work. I think your research may be crucial to something I’m working on.”
“And what might that be?” she asked, curious in spite of herself.
“I’m sorry. This isn’t a secure location. I can’t talk about it here. Is there any way you can come with me for
a few days to discuss your work in more detail?”
Go with him? For days? Something fluttered deep in her belly. Something feminine and thrilled and, darn it, eager to say yes. “Can’t…students…have to teach…lose my shot at tenure…” she stuttered, her tongue in a knot.
Carter waved a casual hand. “I can take care of that. I’ll speak with your boss in the morning. He’ll get someone to cover for you.”
Bill Kaplan? Cover for her? No way. He would leap all over the excuse to fire her. The jerk had a new girl toy—an astronomy grad student whose only superfast intergalactic objects were her 38 double-Ds zooming around the campus observatory trying to look busy—and Kaplan had made it clear he wanted Lily’s staff position for Astronomer Barbie.
She shook her head and said firmly, “I’m sorry. It’s impossible. I absolutely cannot take any time off until the end of the semester. I can’t risk losing my position here.”
Carter merely grinned. “Impossible’s my specialty.”
Now why did that send a frisson of delight skittering up her spine?
He was speaking again. “…know where I can find your boss tomorrow morning?”
“He has office hours from nine to eleven—” She broke off. “But I’m serious. You can’t talk to him. I really need this job. It’s the only way I’ll be able to get grant money and no one else will hire me until I can prove that I’m not crazy—” Darn it. She’d done it again. She’d gone and stuck her foot in her mouth like a proper dimwit. “I’m not crazy, mind you. I just have some theories that challenge conventional wisdom…”
She trailed off. Carter was smiling broadly at her. “If I thought you were crazy, I wouldn’t be sitting here talking with you. I think you’re onto something and I need your help.”
He thought she was onto something? Really? Whether it was mere relief or desperate need for approval bubbling up inside her, the frothy happiness in her stomach was nice for a change. And it had nothing to do with what his smile did to her blood pressure.
