She sighed. It didn’t really matter. It wasn’t like this was a real romance. She was a dull little science geek, and he was…Mike, the Freaking Hot as Hell Maintenance Man slash Knight in Shining Armor. He probably had some sort of damsel in distress fetish he was working out. This was just a…thing. A blip. A momentary indiscretion. Which was good. Because if it was real, she would forget to stand up for what she believed in and start letting Mike make the decisions about her life. He’d probably want to go back to being a cop in the big city, and she’d have to give up her position at Tucker, and even if she kept working, it wouldn’t be as a full-time scientist. She’d find herself resentful and bitter, and he would start working more and more late hours, and…
Oh, dear Lord. He hadn’t asked her to marry him. Or even for a date. It was just a blip. Although, she admitted to herself, she could use a little more blipping.
Finally dressed, she thought about stuffing her wet things back into her canvas gym bag but didn’t want to soak her stash of Cosmos—treadmill reading material. Who said nerds didn’t appreciate magazine crack? Better use a plastic bag instead. She wadded up the sodden mess and carried it back into the hall, cupping her hand underneath to catch the drips.
Mike and Crawford were standing close together in the hallway.
“Damn it, you are not going to drop this on my doorstep!” Mike’s voice was low, barely audible, but he was clearly mad. He leaned toward the chief, jaw tight, shoulders tense, and his whole body appearing rather huge. She couldn’t see Mike’s eyes, but at her approach, the chief stepped back and raised his chin in her direction. She wasn’t sure, but she thought she heard him mutter, “We’ll get you someway.”
Mike turned toward her, hand on his forehead, thumb on one side, fingers on the other, as though he were squeezing at a headache. He was soaked, T-shirt clinging to muscles, jeans to thighs. Calves. Glutes. “You got a mop in there?”
She nodded. “Culture room, behind the door.”
He strode into the lab, leaving Lauren in the hallway with Crawford.
“Just a minute,” she told Crawford, holding up her wet clothes.” I’ve got to get a bag.” He nodded and went back to propping up the corridor wall.
She went into the lab, too, but didn’t follow Mike into the culture room. She wasn’t sure what the rules were for near hookups in public places with a co-worker. Alex had been all dark rooms and closed doors, all the time. She transferred her wet clothes to her left hand and reached for a plastic trash bag with the other. Mike came out of the culture room and walked right up to her, backing her into the bench. She was so surprised that she dropped her wet clothes. Change spilled from the pocket of her jeans, coins pinging across the floor.
“Hey! You’re getting me all wet again.”
He grinned, and she realized what she’d just said. He leaned closer and put his mouth right to her ear. The tickle of his five o’clock shadow sent a shiver down her spine and…lower. “There’s too much about this that is wrong time and wrong place.” And then he dipped his chin a little more, brushing her skin with his lips.
She nodded. “Uh huh.” But did he know why it was so wrong for her?
He backed up, holding her gaze for a moment before bending to pick up her wet clothes and putting them in the bag she held. He turned and bent down, reaching under the counter for some of the escaped coins while Lauren went for a quarter that had gone the other way. They both straightened at the same time. He gave her an odd look then, but didn’t say anything, handing her the spilled change. She put it in the pocket of her shorts. It looked like he glanced at something in his hand before he stuck his fist in his own pocket.
She made a mental note: Ask Mike what he put in his pocket. But not now. Now she just needed to pretend like nothing had happened. Nothing. At. All.
Chapter Eleven
“Here, kitty, kitty,” Mike said, tossing a wadded up ball of paper across the floor. Possum blinked at him from beneath the couch. “Come on, kitty. Time for your treat. Yum, yum!”
The cat closed her eyes and remained where she was.
The Devil’s Ranger medallion that he’d picked up from the floor of Lauren’s lab winked at him from the end table next to him. How did such a tiny bit of metal make his gut churn? If the spray painted tag on her tissue culture room wall wasn’t a big enough neon sign, this was more evidence that Devil’s Dust was surely coming from Lauren’s lab.
And that it was almost as likely that Dylan was involved. There was no way that thing had gotten on the floor under the counter on its own.
The grandfather clock in the upstairs hallway chimed. Where the hell was Dylan?
To distract himself from the miserable confrontation to come, he considered calling Lauren to ask how to catch a reluctant cat for medicine-time. She was too smart to see that as anything other than what it was—a ploy to get her to come to his house. And once she was there…
Yeah, he wouldn’t mind inviting her to stay for a beer or three, watch a few DVR’d episodes of Justified. And then he could kiss her again. And then…
The kitchen door creaked open.
“Perfect timing,” Mike said. Perfect to keep me from making a phone-pass at the scientist. “Can you help me with this cat?”
Dylan came in and bent down in front of the couch. Possum immediately crawled out and wrapped herself around his ankles, purring. Dylan smirked at Mike and held out a hand.
Mike handed him the treat-wrapped pill and watched his brother expertly shove it into the cat’s mouth, stroking her head while her motor ran as loud as a Harley. Mike stepped closer to try to get in a pet, but she hissed at him and raked her claws along his forearm.
“Shit!” He jerked his hand back. “Why does she hate me now? She liked me yesterday. Sort of. I buy the food. I clean the litter box. I’m the big dog.”
Dylan didn’t answer, just put the cat on the floor and picked up his backpack, heading toward the stairs. Possum retreated to her happy place under the couch.
“Hey, that was a pretty slick one you pulled on your boss today,” Mike said, stopping Dylan in his tracks.
He turned and stared at Mike. “You following me around?”
“It looks like I need to.”
Dylan’s shoulders tensed, and he stared too steadily into Mike’s eyes. “I was doing her a favor.”
“And if you’d gotten pulled over? How were you going to explain that you got her car impounded?”
“I didn’t do anything to get pulled over for,” Dylan shot back. “Damn, Mike. Give me a fucking break!”
Mike picked up the medallion and dangled it from the broken link. “I found this in her lab this afternoon. You want to explain this?”
Dylan didn’t approach Mike to take the shiny silver charm. Instead, he held up both hands and backed away as though it were radioactive waste. “I don’t know how that got there. I lost mine a long time ago.”
“You apparently lost it at work.”
“No, man. I lost it right after we moved here. I had it in my pocket, I was going to toss it into the lake, but when I got there, it was gone. I guess it fell out of a hole in my pocket or something.” Dylan brushed the hair out of his eyes with a hand was shaking with nerves—or anger.
“That’s convenient.” He ran a hand through his own hair. “Dylan, if you’re mixed up with these guys again, I can help. We’ll figure something out. But you gotta stay away from Dino Romain.”
“Why would you do this now? You didn’t pay this much attention to me when I was actually trying to be a Ranger.”
“Dylan—”
“You know what? Fuck this. You can believe me or not. I don’t give a shit.” He turned and went back the way he came in. Through the kitchen and out the back door.
“Dylan!” Mike went after him, but by the time he got to the back porch, Dylan was bumping over the curb on his bike. He disappeared into the twilight.
“Well, that went well,” Mike said to Possum. She darted between his feet and
disappeared up the stairs.
He picked up his phone and texted Dylan, but wasn’t surprised when he didn’t get an answer. He picked up his wallet and shoved it in his pocket, then plucked his truck keys from their hook by the door.
He knew he should probably let the kid cool off before confronting him again, but Mike had a bad feeling. Dylan had nearly gotten himself killed the last time he was mixed up with the Rangers. He might succeed this time, if Mike didn’t find him and convince him to stay off the streets.
…
“Kevin, you have to accept that you’re no longer a kitten,” Lauren told her giant gray cat, shooing him off of the narrow windowsill next to her bed. The beast insisted on trying to sleep there every night—and every night, he fell off the ledge as soon as he dozed off. And he didn’t land on his feet. Lauren figured the cat was on life 900 or so by now.
She pulled up her pink fleece sleep pants and dug around on the nightstand for a book to read. She wasn’t really in the mood for a thriller, not after the real-life scary stuff that had happened over the last couple of days. She thought about the kisses she and Mike had shared that afternoon. Her lips still tingled. Nope, not reading a romance, either. She didn’t need any more ideas than she already had.
Sad but true fact: Lauren was on her way to bed at nine on a Saturday.
The doorbell rang, and Kevin ran for the door. He was practically a Labrador retriever, the way he liked to investigate company. The bell rang again as she pulled on a robe and tied the sash. “Coming!” She looked through the peephole. Holy schneikes.
“Mike,” she said, opening the door.
He glanced down at her, but his eyes were restless, darting to look inside her little house. “Is Dylan here?” he asked.
“What? No! Why on earth would he be here?”
“He’s missing. We had…words, and he took off. I know he looks up to you, so I thought maybe…” He ran a hand through his hair, and it looked as though he’d done that several times already recently. “Shit. I’m sorry. I don’t know what I was thinking by coming here.”
She opened the door wider. “You’d better come in.”
“No, I can see you’re getting ready for bed.” He looked at his watch, then over his shoulder, scanning the street.
“Yeah, well, that’s because I have no life.” She waved him in.
He entered, and her previously adequate living room shrank.
Kevin growled from between Lauren’s feet. “Hang on. Let me toss this guy.” She picked Kevin up and moved around Mike to the door. Kevin departed with a hiss and a glare.
“Do I smell like a dog or something?”
“Huh?” Lauren leaned toward him and sniffed. No, he smelled like Bounce and sexy man—something she wanted to roll around and wrap herself in. “No…no dog smell that I can tell.”
“I can almost understand why your cat wouldn’t like me, you just threw him out and let me in. But mine doesn’t like me, either. I’m developing a complex.”
“Maybe you’re just all ‘King of the Jungle,’ and they see you as competition.” Lauren realized that sounded a little too flirty and quickly said, “Do you want something to drink?”
“You got a Diet Coke?”
That gave her a moment’s pause. She’d have taken Mike to be a beer kind of a guy. Or regular Coke, at any rate. “No, sorry. I’ve got grape Kool-Aid, though.”
“Water’s fine.” He followed her into the tiny kitchen. “Just show me where the glasses are.”
She pointed at the dish drainer, watched him fill the vintage Marvin the Martian glass and then drink it down before refilling. His big hand dwarfed the glass, Marvin peering from between his fingers. “What about Evan? Did you check with him?”
“Yeah, I did. And, no, he didn’t go there.”
“You want to tell me what happened?”
Mike put the glass on the counter, then dug something out of his pocket. “Do you recognize this?” He handed her a medallion of some sort, about an inch and a half in diameter, made of silvery metal. It had a weird dent a little off-center, like it had been bashed with a blunt object.
“No,” she said, then turned it over in her palm. There was a design on the other side, distorted by the convex surface, but it looked like… “Does this match the graffiti in my lab?”
“It’s not yours?”
“No, why would you think that?”
“I don’t, but I found it on the floor next to the change that fell out of your pocket after…”
She looked up and found him looking at her, but she couldn’t read his expression. “You can say it. After I attacked you in the hall.”
“After we kissed. Yes.” He held her gaze, one side of those gorgeous lips quirked up. There was definitely heat there, she thought. Definitely maybe. Why had she sworn off relationships again? Or at least…blipping?
Lauren cleared her throat, suddenly wanting to take a drink of water from Mike’s glass. So to speak. Instead, she looked back down at the medallion. So that’s what he’d slipped into his pocket back at the lab. Like Bilbo. Definitely not Gollum, because that dude never wore clothes. “Um. So, I’ve never seen it before. Why didn’t you ask me about it then?” Instead, he’d mopped up the water in the hallway and disappeared while she’d talked to Chief Crawford.
Mike shook his head. “I had to talk to Dylan first. Give him a chance to come clean.”
Lauren sank onto a kitchen chair. “And did he? Come clean?” She prayed Dylan hadn’t confessed—because she also prayed that he wasn’t guilty. Not just for Dylan’s sake, but for Mike’s, too.
Dylan was such a nice kid. But she was easy to fool. She knew that.
Mike pulled out the other chair and sat, leaning toward Lauren. Knees spread, he draped his arms over his thighs, hands dangling. “Nope.”
“So what happened? You accused him and he blew up?”
“Something like that. I asked about his medallion from when he was a Ranger. He claimed he hadn’t kept it, but I don’t believe him. He reminded me…”
“What?”
He took a breath and let it out. “That I hadn’t bothered to look out for him before, so why start now?”
At the bleak look on this big, strong man’s face, Lauren reached out and took the hand holding the medallion in both of hers. “I don’t believe he did it,” she told him despite the sprouting stem of a tiny seed of doubt. “I just—there was nothing in his demeanor today that said guilty. He came into the lab and dove into helping clean up and talked about internet things—of which I have no understanding—just like always.”
Mike pulled his hand away and stared through the back door window. “I wish I could be as sure as you are. But he’s lied before.” He turned back to face her.
They were quiet for a moment, just looking at each other. She bit her bottom lip, catching herself in the middle of the unconscious move. His eyes dipped to her mouth, then lower. He smiled slightly. She realized her robe had come undone, and the thin T-shirt she wore did little to disguise the fact that she was braless. Something Mike seemed to be quite aware of as he continued to stare and his eyes got a little glossy. Wow. Her breasts had hypnotized someone? Someone totally hot. Mike. She wondered if she could use this power for naughtiness…
Her breath caught and her heartbeat accelerated before she forced herself to remember that she wasn’t going to get involved with him. Although, involved might be a bit ambitious. She would guess that he didn’t do relationships. Which was good. Because neither did she.
His phone rang then, breaking the spell, thank goodness.
“Evan,” he said, after accepting the call. “No, I haven’t found him yet.” He frowned as he listened.
Lauren figured she should give him some privacy as he spoke with his brother and headed to her room to check emails on her own phone. She glanced at the senders but saw nothing of importance—just one from Mrs. Althea Guanadonamaribo, probably claiming that she’d won the Canadian lottery, but was stranded in Z
imbabwe, and all Lauren needed to do was send a check for $1,000 to get a cut of the haul. She scrolled further and saw an email from the Pemberton people—number forty-three of the eighty-nine she’d be receiving to remind her of her appointment. Right…like she could forget that.
She sat down on the edge of the bed and plugged the phone into the charger just as another email pinged her screen. She opened that one. Her mother, sending a picture of that cat with the grumpy face that said, “Still here… Worst apocalypse ever.”
Only Lauren’s mother would think that it was appropriate to send an end of the world joke when her world—or at least, her career—might very well be ending. And only Lauren would think it was the funniest thing she’d seen all day. She reminded herself to call her mom in the morning. No one could make lemonade out of life’s curve balls like Karen Kane.
Lauren arrived back in the kitchen just as Mike said, “Sure, I’ll call you if I hear anything.”
After Mike snapped the phone shut and shoved it into his pocket, he cursed. His concern seemed a little out of proportion to the situation.
“I know you’re worried,” she said. “But Dylan is an adult. Does he have a girlfriend?”
“Maybe, but I don’t think so. Not since Angela, the sister of the leader of the Rangers. But he ended that when he got in trouble.”
Lauren remembered something from earlier in the day, which watered the doubt sprout taking root in her brain. “When he left to deliver the pig, he called someone—a friend—he said he was going to have ride along with him. Do you know who that could be?”
Mike shook his head. “He’s pretty much a loner, as far as I can tell. He does some online gaming stuff, and I’m sure has some virtual friends out there somewhere, but honestly, except to come to school and go to the library, he almost never leaves the house.” He pushed away from the counter. “I should take off. I need to look for him.”
“Where will you go?”
He stopped, turning back to her. “I have no idea.”
“Look. He’s over eighteen. Maybe not far enough over to make good choices, but they’re his choices. There’s no point in driving yourself crazy.”
Deadly Chemistry (Entangled Ignite) Page 9
