Mesmerizing Stranger Read online

  “Cate, if you need me to carry you, I can and will.”

  Damn him. It was that tone that made her want to melt. And she wasn’t the melting type. “I really want to just sleep. And this is a great chance for you to be alone with the men. Push their limits. Dig until you find out stuff.”

  “Yup, it would be. But there’s a time to worry about murder and larceny. And a time when a guy needs to take care of his girl. It’s a no-brainer which counts more.”

  He didn’t actually carry her. She climbed to the main deck, walked strong as an ox off the boarding ramp. The air was brisk, eagles perched on high spruce boughs, watching the fish in the harbor. A dozen other yachts and fishing boats were docked close by. The yachts looked as if they cost millions and millions. The fishing boats looked as if they’d survived two world wars and then some. A slope of land showed a scattering of buildings stretched on what was clearly the only road. And a silver-diamond waterfall bounded down a rock crevice. All of it took her attention…at least until she caved.

  Harm caught her before she fell, swooped her up in his arms as if she were a damned baby. And she held on, head snugged against his neck, as if she’d have fallen if she hadn’t.

  “I’m not your girl,” she said.

  “No?”

  “We haven’t even slept together.”

  “Yeah, we did.”

  “We haven’t made love. That kind of sleeping.”

  “That isn’t sleeping. Trust me, if you didn’t know that before, you will after I get through with you.”

  “Harm. Get serious.” She couldn’t seem to keep her eyes open, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t fully serious. “We’re not a pair. Can’t possibly be. You’re a conservative guy. You need a wife who’s into a house in the suburbs, commitment, an intrepid Volvo for the kids, responsibility. I could live out of a carpet bag and have space left over. I don’t have a clue how to be a wife. I don’t even like money. I wouldn’t work for you. Trust me.”

  “I probably wouldn’t work for you, either. I’ve had two divorces. Don’t be forgetting that.”

  She frowned, confused. “I haven’t forgotten that. But like I told you, it’s irrelevant. I don’t doubt you married women who couldn’t handle you. You’re a complete pain.”

  “So that’s settled,” he said, with such a tone of satisfaction that she was confused.

  “What’s settled?”

  “That you’re my girl. And that we seem to be at the, um, clinic now.”

  Clinic? When Cate turned her head, she saw a cedar door open, and a small boy emerge with his dog. The kid was a scrapper, skinny, ragged cap, but healthy-looking. The dog looked like a sled dog, beautiful and elegant and soft-eyed, with a giant white bandage on his left paw.

  “You’re taking me to a vet?” she asked disbelievingly.

  Harm didn’t look any happier. “Beats me. Captain said it was the third building, go upstairs to the second floor. That’s where we are.”

  The place seemed to be an apartment, not a clinic, where a big bear of a man lumbered through a living room to greet them. Toys littered the floor. A toddler was pulling a noisy push toy. The big bearded guy scooped up the squirt and bellowed for his wife, who showed up in the doorway, wiping her hands on a dish towel.

  “So you’re the one who had the fall on the boat?” she said. “Come on in. Let’s have a look.”

  The laundry room had a stretcher, which apparently doubled as an exam table. Harm came in with her-not that she asked him-but he clearly didn’t think much of the setup. She did. Cate could see intelligence and common sense in the woman’s eyes, her whole no-nonsense demeanor. “We usually have a doctor around here, retired from Anchorage, but in the summer, he’s hit or miss, off on a fishing trip anytime he can find someone to go with him.”

  “I hear there’s a lot of that going around,” Cate said.

  The woman chuckled. “Anyway, I’m what’s left over. Used to be a surgical nurse on the mainland, picked up credentials as a P.A. No fancy degrees, nothing extra, but I know enough to get you flown out of here if we think there’s a reason.”

  “I just took a fall,” Cate said. “I’m fine. Just going to be bruised up and sore for a little while.”

  “It was a serious fall,” Harm interjected. “From one deck down to the next.”

  “But I was asleep. And covered with blankets, really cushioned.”

  “Aha. You two are doing a lot of talking. How about if I do a lot of looking?” Ten minutes later, she said, “You took a good fall and you’re going to be bruised and sore for a little while.”

  “See? What’d I tell you?” Cate said immediately to Harm once they were outside. “So I’m going to those hot springs. Sounds like a good place to soak. And the lady the same as said I’m totally okay.”

  “What the lady didn’t realize was that you’ve got a head harder than rock and can’t be trusted to show good judgment.” But Harm was back to ribbing her. His whole mood eased after she’d been given a decent bill of health. He hooked an arm around her shoulder as they strolled up the street toward the waterfall and springs.

  “So now we can concentrate on murder and madness,” she said with satisfaction. “Now I can concentrate on murder and madness.”

  Cate didn’t argue. Right then, although she’d never admit it aloud, she felt too darned weak to walk all the way back to the boat. She figured the short trek to the springs was all she could handle.

  That didn’t mean she wasn’t going to help him, though.

  He didn’t have a choice in the matter.

  Chapter 8

  Harm climbed on the rock behind Cate and stopped dead still. The harbor and town were nice enough, but no one would guess the view beyond the slope and into the trees.

  The trek wasn’t long from the P.A.’s place. The splash of a silver waterfall was always in sight, tumbling over rocks and glistening off pines, but the sudden path leading to the shaded glen was like a step into a mystic paradise. Pools carpeted the rocky landscape, a half dozen or more. Warm, fragrant steam rose from each one. Ferns and pines caught the occasional ribbon of sunlight from above. Spears of light reflected on dripping ferns and moss, the magic interrupted only-only-by the raucous sound of men’s laughter.

  A few other people were wandering around, but Ivan, Hans, Yale, Purdue and Arthur had staked out one sizable pool next to the waterfall. They whistled and hooted hellos the instant the newcomers were spotted. Cate, in spite of the bandage on her head, started laughing. “Well, if this isn’t a skinny-dipping paradise.”

  Harm scowled. It was. The captain had advised the guys to bring bathing suits and towels, but that didn’t mean they had-and the drifts of steam floating above the water was hardly concealing. Worse yet, Cate pushed off her shoes and started tugging off her jacket.

  “Wait a minute,” he said with alarm.

  She shot him a grin. “Afraid I’m naked under this, handsome?”

  That’s exactly what he was afraid of. She hadn’t done much yet to convince him that she wasn’t fearless to the point of foolhardy-not to mention that he didn’t want anyone seeing her naked but him.

  A path of slippery, wet rocks led to the pool. Harm was never less than a step behind Cate, stripping as fast as she was, hustling to keep up with her. As she shimmied out of her pants, he saw with relief that she wore exercise shorts and a T-shirt. It was a long way from the neck-to-toe covering he wished she were wearing, but at least the essentials were shielded. And the guys, of course, were looking.

  Before he could stop her-not that he could have-she’d edged over the rocks and into the pool. “Harm…” She reached back for his hand, which just happened to be right where she could reach it. He steadied her as she sank in, right up to her neck. She released a long, blissful sigh.

  “Wow. This feels like total heaven and then some…especially on some of these bruises. I’m never leaving. Maybe someone can bring us food and drink up here.”

  The guys started a steady rou
nd of joking, but the serenity of the place eventually quieted everyone. The ceiling of green pines, the warm springs, the impossibly fresh air seemed to melt everyone’s stress. Even Harm unwillingly started to relax. Cate’s nearness could have worn down a stone. Her knee kept brushing his, her shoulder, as if she were deliberately staying in touch with him, communicating underwater something private and real…

  At least until she suddenly piped up with a question for the group. “Hey, you guys, while we’re all together, I want to hear some more about this cancer drug you all created.”

  He figured he’d misheard her. Someone had pushed her from the top deck last night. She couldn’t possibly be thinking about baiting a bear.

  “Seems crazy to talk about work on a gorgeous day like this,” Purdue said lazily.

  “Especially when we’ve got a half-naked goddess among us,” Yale concurred.

  Harm leveled his youngest employee with a razor-sharp stare, but Cate only chuckled. She leaned back, closed her eyes. “You’re right about the goddess, guys. But I lost my family so young. Maybe it wasn’t from cancer, but I relate to how awful it is to lose loved ones. How helpless you feel when you can’t do anything about it. Even how angry. And yet your team picked a couple of the toughest cancers…”

  “That was Dougal’s doing. Harm’s uncle,” Arthur shared. “He lost his wife to cancer. That was his motivation.”

  “And for the rest of us,” Purdue said, “it wouldn’t have been any fun to pick the easy cancers to work with.”

  “There are easy cancers?”

  “Not easy.” Yale was starting to rev up now. It was always hard for him to resist talking about his favorite subject. “Most people don’t have a reason to understand cancer-that it isn’t one illness or one thing. It’s a whole class of diseases. The only thing they have in common is that a bunch of cells suddenly grow out of control. The key answer is always why. We know environment and heredity are primary factors, but there’s more to it.”

  Purdue picked up the thread. “Basically, there are four main kinds. Carcinomas are malignant tumors that grow from a base of epithelial cells. They’re the most common. They’re like-breast, prostate, lung, colon. Then there are sarcomas. Those are malignant tumors that grow from connective tissue.”

  “Then there’s lymphoma and leukemia,” Yale interjected. “Essentially, those emanate from blood-forming cells. And then there are germ-cell tumors. Those come from totipotent cells…”

  “Okay, okay. Overloading,” Cate said. “You’re getting too complicated for me. Just go back to one of the cancers you’re working on. Like pancreatic. What makes that one different?”

  Even Arthur got into it now. “For one thing, it’s one of the toughest to cure. It’s also one of the worst killers. It’s just plain ugly.”

  Cate nodded. “Now, you’re talking language I can understand. But what makes that cancer so hard to cure?”

  “Three things,” Purdue said. “All about the cells. They’re tiny and they grow like weeds and they hide. Actually, it’s the hiding factor that’s always been the worst problem.”

  “But you guys found an answer for that?”

  “Exactly.” Yale leaned his head back. “It’s complicated. But to put it in basic terms, what we discovered was a chemical that turned on those sucker-small cells. They grow neon bright when exposed, even through dense tissue.”

  Harm held his breath. None of them talked this way to outsiders, primarily because of security and privacy. And they shouldn’t. But Cate was somehow able to charm money from a beggar…and he hungered for the chance to hear how each of the men responded.

  “So how’d you all find this formula where nobody else could?” Cate asked.

  “Initially, it was Dougal’s breakthrough-Harm’s uncle. He didn’t have the formula pinned down, but he established the breakthrough idea. Then when he got ill, Purdue took over some of the lab work. Then me. Took a while before we were getting consistent results. Then we started the real trials.”

  “Which was…when?”

  “Over the last two years. The compound passed every damn test we could put it through. We have it. We hadit.” Purdue’s voice carried the whine of frustration. “The next step was final FDA approval, but there was no reason that would have been denied. We had all the legal grounds set up. It was ours. The company’s. We all had a stake in it. There was just a waiting period until the final stuff came through. There was no doubt in any of our minds that we had the real thing.”

  Arthur said, “I’m roasting here. Think I’m getting out, wandering back toward the ship.”

  The comment came out of the blue, stopped the discussion cold-and started an exodus. Simultaneously, the guys started to move, standing up, groaning when their flesh suddenly contacted cool-cold fresh air. Instead of joining the others, Cate leaned her head back and closed her eyes.

  Harm wasn’t about to budge without her. Immediately, though, he noticed that her perky questions and zesty smiles all faded once the men disappeared from sight. The clear water revealed her lithe, slim body. She wasn’t soft. Her calves were tight, molded from walking and exercise, her hips more bone than padding. A few sunbeams sneaked through the green canopy overhead, lighting on freckles and a skinny nose, on bare lips.

  She looked nothing like any woman he’d ever loved.

  But he looked at her, and wondered if he’d ever loved before.

  “You wade right into trouble, don’t you?” he murmured.

  “Yup. It was one of the things my foster mom taught me. Never avoid trouble if you can help it. It’s the old shark-in-the-water thing. If you don’t turn around and face it, you have no way of knowing if trouble’s on your tail.”

  “Are you going to be able to make it back to the boat?”

  “Maybe. In a bit.” She opened one eye. One sharp blue eye. “I’m not sick, Harm.”

  “I know.”

  “It just hurts. The bruise on the hip more than the head. But really, the rest of me is okay.”

  “The rest of you is more than okay,” he corrected her.

  There now. He got a smile. Softer than butter. Lustrous. But then it disappeared. “There’s a huge piece missing, Harm. Didn’t you hear it?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Your guys. Your problem. There’s this huge hole that doesn’t make sense. Everybody’s got a loyalty to this formula you all developed. Everybody values the team, what they were doing. Everybody could see success coming, personal and financial. There doesn’t seem to be a single visible gain for anyone to steal the formula, when everyone was already going to get rich, already going to get tons of lauds and credit. So what could possibly motivate the man to steal it?”

  Harm was beginning to have his suspicions. But he still told Cate the frustrating truth. “I don’t know.”

  “There has to be something we’re missing.”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s driving me nuts. Trying to figure it out.” She opened both her eyes then. “Maybe…Fiske died of natural causes. Maybe my fall was somehow accidental. Maybe things only look dire and dangerous and they really aren’t.” She frowned. “Harm, I totally realize this isn’t really my business or my problem. But I’m at least a fresh pair of eyes. And I didn’t know anyone before, so I can be objective. So I’m not trying to bug you, I really hoped I could bring something to your table, seriously help. Except…”

  “Except that your mind’s spinning sideways?”

  “Oh, man. You said it.”

  “So how about if we see…if we can make your mind spin in a whole different way? A good way,” he promised. He valued everything she’d said, but it was too much. The more she hurtled into his problems, the deeper he hurtled into her character. He liked that foolhardy character of hers, but for a while, he wanted her to quit worrying. He wanted her to quit hurting.

  He wanted to figure out how deep he was in with her.

  He found out.

  Damn fast, he found out.
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br />   Careful of her sore hip, even more careful of the lump on her head, he scooped her closer, using his arms as a cushion for her neck. And then he kissed her. Not softly. Not carefully. But with everything he had.

  He took her mouth. Her tongue. Her breath.

  A few other people had been enjoying the springs, but no one was in sight now. The only sounds were the splashing waterfalls, the whisper of leaves, the shallow intake of her breath, the beat of her heart…and his.

  Somewhere, in the rush of water, the heat, the thick scent of pine, she turned liquid for him. Her limbs flowed over his, around his. Her lips turned slippery-soft, under his, with his.

  An hour before, he thought she didn’t have enough clothes on. Now he realized she had way, way too many. Thankfully, they were soaked snug to her skin. It wasn’t as good as naked, but he could still feel her. Her bones, her small, lithe muscles, the cushion of breast and tummy.

  She murmured…something in the language of music. A call, a whisper, a tune of longing.

  Desire barreled through his pulse like a racehorse at the gate. He stroked the length of her tenderly, with precious care for where she could be sore or bruised…Yet still, he found nipple, found treasure beneath the waistband of her pants, hair that curled around his fingers, inviting him into her private nest.

  She murmured again. This time the sound she made was more of a feline hiss. She stroked him too, but not with tenderness or care. Her fingers made prints, denting his back and shoulders, down his sides. Her hands, her mouth, enticed him to forget where they were, who they were, and when she suddenly twisted her full weight on top of him, he went down.

  He surfaced almost immediately, sputtering, almost laughing…until he saw the reckless intent in her eyes. It was her turn to slide a hand down his torso, to dip into damp pants, to find the hot, hard core of him and squeeze. It wasn’t a nice squeeze. It wasn’t a sweet, shy squeeze. It was an I’m-gonna-have-you kind of squeeze.

  “Cate. Think. You’re too sore,” he hissed.