Sexy/Dangerous (4 page)

When Max and the dogs came downstairs, they found Kaitlin at the front door arguing with six or seven men dressed in work clothes and holding tackle boxes in their hands. Apparently, Ms. Chihuahua was playing guard dog again and trying to make them leave, but the men arguing and shaking work orders in her face weren’t buying it.

Max stuck two fingers in her mouth and let fly a piercing whistle that quieted everyone in mid-shout. In the silence, she and the dogs walked forward. “Gentlemen, I’m sorry for the confusion. I’m the housekeeper. I didn’t tell Kaitlin that you were coming. My bad.”

The men were staring at her as if she had just stepped out of a UFO. Max didn’t know if it was her height, her color, her skinny blue halter top, jeans, or matching blue boots, but since she was accustomed to folks staring at her, especially men, she let them look while she said, “Is there a plumber here?”

A Black guy raised his hand.

Max smiled. “Okay, I’ll see you first. The rest of you give Kaitlin your names, make yourselves comfortable, and I’ll be back to put you to work.”

Kaitlin was staring, too, but as if Max had lost her mind.

Max gave her a wink then walked off with the brother plumber and his two-man crew.

For the rest of the morning, the plumbers worked on the pipes and bathrooms. Painters stripped wallpaper and brought in dry wall. Brick masons were turned loose on the crumbling archway adjacent to the house, and electricians roamed the place in search of frayed wiring. Even though all the contractors had passed NIA’s security checks, she kept an eye on them nonetheless. By noon the house was a hive of noisy activity and Max was the queen bee.

To Max’s surprise, Kaitlin was a good second in command. Armed with a clipboard and a no-nonsense attitude, she made sure the workmen stayed on task and turned a withering eye on anybody trying to hit on her. Her dislike of Max was still intact. She spoke to Max as little as possible. But she took care of business, and that’s all Max cared about.

In the basement, Adam threw up his hands. How in the world was he supposed to concentrate with all the racket going on upstairs? Hammering, drills, men yelling back and forth.
This is not going to work.
He’d agreed to have a few things done to the house, not erect the Sears Tower.

Planning on giving somebody a piece of his mind, he left the lab and went to find the woman in charge.

The upstairs looked like a construction site. He’d never seen such chaos. Noise, men carrying paint cans, women carrying lumber, saws going, plaster dust everywhere. He looked around for Blake. He didn’t see her or her dogs but he did see Kaitlin.

He yelled angrily over the wail of circular saws, “Where is she?”

“Kitchen!” Kaitlin shouted back. “I tried to stop her!”

Grim, Adam set out in that direction. He was so intent upon his mission he walked directly into the path of a wheelbarrow. “Hey! Watch out!” the man pushing the thing warned loudly. Adam jumped out of the way just in time. Cutting the man a look, he moved on.

The state of the kitchen left him speechless. The place was so torn apart it looked like a pipe bomb had gone off. The sink was gone, the stove disconnected and pushed aside. A man with a sledgehammer was knocking holes in the wall. She was on the far side of the room wearing a yellow hard hat and watching the workers removing the countertops. When had he authorized that? More amazing were the dogs. They had on canine versions of hard hats that looked like miniature bike helmets complete with chin straps.

“You need a hard hat in here, man,” one of the men carrying out the countertop said to him.

Adam had no intention of putting on a hard hat. Instead he turned to Max and gritted out, “May I speak with you please, Ms. Blake?” Then he added for emphasis, “Now.”

She met his eyes and shrugged. “Sure.” But before leaving she said to the dogs, “Ruby and Ossie, stay back out of the way.”

When the dogs backed up, Adam shook his head, latched onto her arm and very gently but pointedly bum-rushed her out onto the patio. Turning her loose, he asked, “Who said you could turn this place into mayhem?”

“You,” she said firmly. “You said to do whatever I thought necessary, remember?”

Adam did remember. He also remembered her losing her towel, and that only added to his mood. “I didn’t know it would be all this.”

“The house is crumbling around your ears, Doc. Weren’t you with me this morning when I starred in
Waterworld,
or was that a clone?”

He sighed angrily and looked away. “I can’t work with all this going on.”

“Then do something else for a while. Watch the news. Take a walk.”

Max saw Kaitlin on the other side of the glass watching them. She had her clipboard clutched tightly against her chest and her face was grim. Max asked, “Will you please tell me what is the deal on her? Are you two engaged or what?”

“Not engaged. Although her father would like that.”

“Who’s her father?”

“Dr. Sylvester ‘Sly’ Kent. Helped me get my first lab. Now he wants to be my first father-in-law. She’s the bait.”

Max thought she understood the girl’s attitude now. “She’s cute if you like them young.”

“I don’t.”

The eyes staring into hers were frank; male.

Oh my,
Max said to herself. Leaving that alone, she brought the conversation back to more immediate issues. “The electricians need to cut the power so they can do some rewiring. What day is good for you?”

Adam could smell the faint notes of her perfume, and it was as distracting as she. “None.”

Max was puzzled. “Don’t you have a backup generator for the lab?”

“I do.”

“Then why are you being such a pain in the butt? Pick a day or I’ll pick one for you. Today is Tuesday.”

He met her eyes, and when she didn’t flinch, he again wondered how such a beauty could be so tough. “Tomorrow,” he mumbled. “Get it over with.”

“Thank you.” Max wanted to throw up her hands. She’d never had an assignment drive her insane on the first day.

“When will the dog pen be built?” he asked bluntly.

Max sighed. “What is it with you and my dogs?”

“When?” he asked quietly.

“As soon as possible.”

“Good.” He stared over at her for a long moment, then said, “I have to get back to work. Try and keep it down.”

When he was gone, Max shook her head and went back inside.

Downstairs, Adam surrendered. No way could he concentrate with the bedlam going on upstairs. He’d asked her to keep it down, but apparently she had a different definition for the phrase because the noise sounded louder. Disgruntled, he slid from the stool and took off his lab coat. He’d never had anyone call him a pain in the butt before, and he wondered if her military training was responsible for her fearlessness or if she’d been born that way. From her point of view, he supposed he was acting like a pain in the ass, but she didn’t seem to understand he had no room in his life for upheaval.
And she’d only been around a day.
He couldn’t imagine what things would be like in a month. The dogs were bad enough, but now he had to contend with wheelbarrows, drills, and dust. To make matters worse, every time he looked at her, his memory kept flashing
back to her in that towel; the droplets of water on the edge of her neck, the imprint of her nipples pressed against the damp towel, the sleek firm muscles of her legs and thighs. He ran his hands over his eyes. He had to stop. If he didn’t get those images of her out of his mind, his commitment to celibacy was going to crumble around his ears just like his old house.

To do something with his restless energy, he changed clothes and went to work out on the weights he had set up in one of the basement’s other small rooms. He pumped iron for a good thirty minutes, but it didn’t help; all he kept seeing was Max.

Max took Adam Gary’s grumbling about the noise
into consideration, but because no one in the work crew spoke
drill
or
saw,
it was hard to tell the machinery to hold it down.

By five o’clock that evening the workers were packing up for the day. They’d all be back first thing in the morning. Although the house was still torn apart, the various projects were proceeding well. According to the electricians, the wiring was so old and substandard the place was a potential fire trap, but they’d made good headway pinpointing the areas needing to be worked on first. Max was pleased because Benny, with his fiber-optics equipment, would be coming tomorrow to lay in the cameras. The plumbers had also given her a report. They’d turned the water back on and their diagnosis of the pipes had something to do with air chambers and ratios. Since Max didn’t have a clue as to what they were talking about, she simply nodded and told them to take care of it, and they had. The faucets were fixed in her shower, and when she turned on the water, the pipes protested for a moment but then went
silent. A new shower head had been installed as well. When she stepped in to wash off the plaster dust and the rest of the day’s grime, the experience was blessedly drama free.

After the shower she dressed and, refreshed, went went on a search for Kaitlin. Max wanted to know if there was a decent restaurant nearby that didn’t involve clown’s crowns or paper bags. She was hungry and in need of a good meal. However, she hadn’t fully explored the house and so had no idea where Kaitlin’s office might be. “Ruby, find Kaitlin, please.”

Ruby stood still for a moment, then moved her head a few degrees to the right and left as if listening. When she seemed satisfied, she began walking up the hall. Max could have just as easily yelled out Kaitlin’s name, but every opportunity she had to work the dogs kept them keen.

Ruby made a turn and led Max and Ossie into a hallway Max had never seen before, and then up an old rickety staircase. Max asked, “You sure this is where she is, girl?”

Ruby kept going. At the top of the stairs was a landing. Set back a few feet stood a large wooden door bordered with carvings of mathematical equations and chemical symbols. Ruby walked to the door and sat down. Max, confused, stood on the top step. “Okay, if you say so.”

Just as she raised her hand to knock, she heard Adam Gary ask, “What are you doing?”

Max turned and stared into his suspicious eyes.

“Looking for Kaitlin.”

“She’s not in there.”

“According to Ruby, she is.”

“Well, the dog’s wrong. That’s my room. Kaitlin knows it’s off limits.”

His room?
Max had wondered where he slept but assumed he had a place connected to the lab. “She’s usually right.”

“This time it’s not.”

“She’s not an it,” Max gritted out.
What was it going to take to get him to lighten up?

He came up the stairs, brushed by Max and opened the door. Lo and behold, there stood Kaitlin, looking for all the world like a kid caught rummaging through her parents’ room.

Seeing Gary’s thunderous face, Kaitlin spoke up quickly, “I—came to see if you had any laundry.”

He folded his arms. “Laundry,” he echoed skeptically.

Max didn’t believe her for a moment.

“Yes, you asked me to take your sheets to the Laundromat. Remember?”

Max could see him scanning the room as if looking for her real purpose.

“I remember,” he said, “but I also remember telling you not to be in here without permission.”

She smiled that cute twenty-five-year-old smile that probably made lesser men believe her every word. “I know I’m not supposed to be up here, but sometimes, Adam, you get so busy that you forget stuff like washing your sheets.”

“Oh really?” He looked her up and down, then said harshly, “Get out, Kaitlin.”

Her shocked eyes morphed to hurt. “You don’t have to be so mean, Adam Gary.”

“Out.”

With her lip quivering, she shot Max a nasty look, then made a hasty exit.

Max waited until she was gone to say, “Guess Ruby was right, after all.”

He didn’t say anything.

Max wasn’t surprised, so she asked instead, “Do you keep anything connected to your work up here?”

“One of my desktops is over there.”

Max could see the screen saver on the computer’s monitor. Multiple strands of Einstein’s famous equation e = mc
²
floated lazily over the screen. “Check and see if she logged on or tampered with your disks. If she was up here after sheets, I’m five-foot-two.”

Max thought he smiled in response to her quip, but like last time, it vanished so quickly she wasn’t sure.

While he sat down and booted up, she checked out the room. This was obviously the attic. The space was circular, with walls paneled in cherrywood. Large windows overlooked the lake. Built-in shelves, filled top to bottom with books, dominated one wall, and a huge black metal bed covered with a beautiful indigo quilt dominated another. Where his downstairs outer office resembled a cave, this space with its plush gold and ivory Turkish rug, framed artwork, and neatly stacked audio components resembled a cocoon. Also unlike the office downstairs, the bedroom was barracks clean, not a book or paper out of place. The room exuded haven, and she thought it would be the perfect place to cuddle in and let the world go by, but she doubted he knew anything about that. On the other hand, she liked seeing him in real clothes. He was wearing an old MIT T-shirt, jeans, and Reeboks. Without the lab coat, the lean muscles in his arms showed themselves for the first time. He had a
trim waist and the jeans fit real nice.
Not bad for a brother made out of ice water.

To put herself back on track, she asked him, “Any idea what she really might have been doing?”

He shrugged. “No telling. Nothing seems moved or out of place, though.”

“I’ll have a lock put on tomorrow.”

“Good.” For a moment there was silence as he did a quick scan of his programs, then said, “Nothing indicating she logged on so far.” Adam clicked on his mailbox and saw a message from his mother. Smiling, he opened it. A digitalized picture began to load and seconds later her face appeared. Her brown eyes, so like his, were filled with intelligence, and as always a spark of mischief. He glanced to the bottom of the pic and froze. Beneath the picture were the words:
Will the lioness fight as fiercely as the cub? Have a good evening. Your friends in Madrid.

Max saw him stiffen. “What’s wrong?”

“They’re threatening my mother.” Adam quickly pulled out his phone. If they went anywhere near her, he’d kill them with his bare hands!

Max read the message and whispered, “Good lord.” Seeing the phone next to his ear, she said, “Are you calling her?”

“Yeah.” He stood and began to pace.

“I’ll call Myk and let him know.”

Adam turned his attention back to his own call. His mother’s voice mail kicked in. Disappointed, he kept his voice as normal as he could. “Hey, Mom. Just checking in. Call me when you get a chance. ’Bye.” As he ended the transmission, his worry increased in proportion to his anger. If the people responsible for sending
the e-mail wanted to tangle with him fine, but leave his mother out of it. Grim, Adam punched up his stepfather’s cell number. Ray’s phone rang a few times, then Adam was sent to his voice mail, too. Tight-lipped, he forced his voice into the same calm tone he’d used before and left Ray a similar message.

At that moment Adam felt like a terrible son because he had no idea where his parents were. He remembered his mother calling to say she’d be going on a trip to West Africa, but he’d been so obsessed with the prototype that he hadn’t paid much attention to the dates or to her itinerary. Had she gone already? Had she returned? How long did she say the trip would be? He ran his hand over his hair. He didn’t know. The same held true for his stepfather. The last time he’d talked to Ray had been two weeks ago. Or had it been longer? Once again he couldn’t recall the conversation clearly, and now there was no way to be sure they weren’t in danger unless they called. If anything happened to them he’d never forgive himself.

Max was on the phone with Myk. She had him hold on for a moment while she spoke to Adam. “Did you get your stepdad’s voice mail, too?”

He nodded. “Neither of them answered. She said something about going to West Africa but…” He shrugged.

Max relayed that info to Myk. She and Myk talked for a few more minutes then she closed her phone. “Myk’s tracking down your parents right now. He’ll call back soon as he can. If it’s any consolation, Myk and I are both betting they sent this to scare you.”

“And they’re doing a damn good job.”

Max sympathized with him. “I’m not going to tell you
not to worry, because if it were my mama, I’d already be on a plane for home. We’ll just have to wait and see what Mykal finds out.”

Adam nodded but all manner of disturbing scenarios filled his mind. For the first time in a long time his work on the prototype took a backseat.

“Who else knows about this invention of yours?” Max asked.

“Most of the scientific community. I took the wraps off at the Madrid conference and referenced some of the work that went into it.”

“Exactly how much referencing did you do?”

“Enough for them all to know that I’m just a heartbeat away from perfecting it.”

“I see.” Max rolled that around in her mind for a moment, then asked, “So can the people who sent the e-mail do anything with the prototype if it’s not finished?”

“Depends. Lot of people out there with bigger brains than mine.”

“Could anyone you know be helping them?”

It was a question he’d been asking himself since leaving Madrid. “Not that I know of.” Adam wished he knew where his mother was.

“You have firewalls on your computers?”

“Yeah.”

Max was glad to hear that, although the Madrid people had somehow accessed his mother’s screen name in order to lure him into opening the message. “Myk’s going to contact a friend and have her try and find out where that e-mail really came from. What about Ms. Kaitlin, could she be a mole?”

“Only for her daddy, but he doesn’t have access to a
lab, as far as I know, and you’d need one to finish the prototype.”

“He’s a scientist?”

“Yeah. Got himself kicked out of the community, though. A couple of his assistants popped up pregnant and took him to court.”

Max’s empty stomach growled loud enough to be heard in Tokyo. “Sorry,” she said apologetically. “If I don’t get something to eat, I’m going to keel over. I was looking for Kaitlin originally to ask if there were any real restaurants around that delivered.”

“Danny’s. Over on Third.”

“What kind of food?”

“Basic stuff. Best sweet potatoes, greens, and ribs this side of Detroit, though.”

Max was impressed. “There’s a soul food place up here?”

“Yep.”

“This Danny’s a Black man?”

“Nope, Polish, but when you taste his food, you’ll swear his mama was a Black woman from the South.”

Max smiled. “Okay.” She could see that he was still worried about his mom, and she couldn’t blame him. “If your mama is anywhere on the planet, Myk Chandler will find her.”

“Thanks.”

“Whoa!” she exclaimed.

He stared. “What?”

“I didn’t think you knew that word.”

His dark eyes flashed irritation.

Max quickly defended herself. “I was kidding, goodness. You really need to lighten up, Doc. All that darkness is gonna turn you into Darth Vader one day.”

He smiled.

She was so astonished she laughed, then said to the dogs who were lying by the door, “And he can smile, too, guys!”

Ruby barked twice in happy response and Max saw Adam freeze. The stony set of his face made her study him in the silence now filling the room. She said to him quietly, “You really need to tell me what’s going on with you and the dogs.”

He looked away and didn’t respond for a few long moments. Finally he said, “Two rottweilers attacked me on the way home from school.”

Max’s heart twisted. “How old were you?”

He met her eyes. “Twelve. I was hospitalized for ten days. Had to have seventy-five stitches put in my jaw and lips. Another fifty in my back and shoulders. The beard is mainly to cover the scars.”

Max could only imagine the pain he must have endured. “I’m so sorry. That’s why you don’t do dogs.”

“Exactly.”

She understood now. She walked over, knelt next to the dogs and said just as quietly, “Ruby and Ossie, go wait for me down by the steps. I’ll be there in a few minutes.”

Ruby stood and left. Ossie stood, too, but he stayed. When Max looked down, she saw that the dog’s eyes were focused on Gary. It wasn’t like him to not comply with a command, so she said, “Go ’head, Os,”

The big male gave the scientist one last long look, then trotted out.

Max said to Adam, “Being around them must be hard. There was nothing about the attack in the file I was given.”

“Not something I talk about. Grown men aren’t supposed to be afraid of dogs.”

She understood that, too. “I feel really bad. I’m so sorry. I can be like a bull in a china shop sometimes.”

“I’ve noticed that.”

“Bet you have.”

They both grinned this time, and the effects of his soft one seemed to slide right through her.
Oh my,
she said to herself.

Adam had been affected by her as well and found himself wondering what it might have been like had they met each other under normal circumstances. “What would you like from Danny’s?”

“The yams and ribs sounded good. Do you have a menu?”

“Yeah. Hold on.” He walked back over to the desk and opened a drawer. Pulling out the menu, he handed it over.

Max read the selections then said, “Yep. Yams. Ribs. Collards. And throw in a piece of coconut cake because I’ve been such a good girl.”

He chuckled, “Oh really?”

“Yes,” Max said with mock attitude. “You don’t think so?”

Adam stilled. He knew how he wanted to respond to the provocative question, but he’d known this woman less than a week and he was supposed to be practicing celibacy.