A Shot of Red (6 page)

He tried to unclasp her chin strap, but had difficulty with the catch. Leaning in, he took a closer look. “Enjoy the ride?” he asked, his lips mere inches from hers.

“More than I even imagined I would,” she said softly.

The strap loosened and she tipped her chin with the shifting weight of the helmet. Her lips brushed his ever so lightly and he drew back.

Mia’s heart clamored as he captivated her with his questioning gaze, and she willed herself not to look away. He gently swept his fingertips along her jawline, threaded his fingers through her hair, and pulled her toward him. Her helmet fell to the ground as his lips met hers—strong, supple, and searching.

Mia melted into his kiss, alive with anticipation and overcome with an aching need she hadn’t realized was there. A cool night breeze rustled the shrubs in the nearby hedge, and she shivered. Gio clutched her waist, lifted her onto him as if she were nearly weightless, and wrapped his jacket around her. His lips never left hers, each slow sweep of his tongue seducing her senseless.

He braced his feet on the ground as she straddled him, one hand around his neck with a fistful of his silky dark hair, the other stroking his sandpapery cheek. She’d never pictured herself in a position like this—but that made her even more into it. Her blood ran hot, pulsing through her as if it carried sparks. She shifted on his lap and his breath hitched—maybe the sexiest sound she’d ever heard.

“Gio,” she said breathlessly, liking the sound of his name on her lips. “Let’s go inside.”

…

Gio’s mind had raced nearly as fast as his heart as Mia led him into the grand Beaux-Arts house and up to her apartment, which covered the entire third floor. When he’d decided to go to the concert earlier, he had no idea what kind of surreal fantasy this night would turn into. There was no denying he was on fire for Mia—had been since the second he laid eyes on her. Yet he was also drawn to her in an emotional way even he didn’t understand, since such a thing rarely happened with him. What he did understand was that her mother would freak the hell out if she had any idea what was going on between them. If he was wise, he’d leave now, but no amount of warning himself would convince him to go. Not after that ride, and definitely not after that kiss.

Everything about Mia turned him on, even the scent in her apartment. It reminded him of the orange blossoms in the groves where he’d played in Florida as a child. She closed the door and he found himself standing in the foyer of a large, open space—living and dining areas, and a kitchen in the distance beyond an island, all dimly illuminated by accent lighting. Even that was sexy.

Facing him, she leveled her pale-blue gaze on him and he felt compelled to say something. But what?
Is this really a good idea? Do you have a clue how much I want you?
“Mia, I—”

“Shh.” She stepped forward and pressed two fingers to his lips. “I don’t want to talk.”

Holy hell…
Every man’s fantasy had just come true for him.

She bit her lip—the first sign of nervousness he’d seen. “I just want to see if what’s going on here is real.”

His heart hammered. He wasn’t the only one feeling it. Sure, she’d kissed him, but so had lots of women, and he’d never been crazy enough to risk his job by taking things further with them. But he’d resign right now if it meant he could have Mia tonight. There were plenty of jobs out there, but there wasn’t another girl who did it for him like this one. He was consumed with her mystery, her confidence, her intellect—all of which she had a reputation for. But the chemistry between them was strictly physical right now, and the promise it held had him tense with desire.

Mia took off her boots, then unbuttoned her coat and laid it across a chair. He silently did the same. Taking hold of his hand, she led him beyond the open living area, down the hall and into her large bedroom. A lone accent light cast a gauzy haze on the king-size bed strewn with decorative pillows, giving it a dreamlike quality. Everything else in the room was of little interest to him right now, except her.

He pulled her toward him, unable to wait a second longer to kiss her again. His need for her was urgent, but he wanted to make this last. She kissed him as if she did, too—slow and sensuous, and simmering with secrets she was about to reveal.

Mia drew away from him. He stood mesmerized as she unbuttoned his plaid shirt with her long, delicate fingers and took it off of him. Being undressed by a woman like her was a rush that went straight to his cock. She sensuously smoothed her hands down his black T-shirt. Tensing his pecs beneath her touch, he was thankful for every stolen second he’d spent at the boxing gym, punching the bag and pressing the weights.

She untucked his shirt from his jeans, peeling it upward until he took over and pulled it over his head, tossing it aside. Her sultry, curious gaze wandered up his torso, and she met his eyes, a small, satisfied smile showing that she approved. She traced her fingers down from the V-neck of her sweater, lifted it at the bottom, and deftly unbuttoned and unzipped her jeans, revealing a swatch of bright-blue lace.

Gio clenched his teeth, his already-hard cock becoming more rigid. If he were younger, that move might’ve been it for him.

“Take these off?” she asked.

Blood surged through him in waves. He clutched her narrow waist, her skin satiny to his touch, and eased her jeans down her long, shapely legs until she gracefully stepped out of them. Compelled to see all of her, he pulled her sweater over her head. Her golden hair cascaded beyond her shoulders and over the supple curve of her breasts, which peeked from her lacy bright-blue bra.

He swept her hair behind her ear, leaned in, and kissed his way up her neck, catching a tinge of that orange blossom scent. He gently nipped at her earlobe. “You’re stunning,” he whispered huskily. And he was spellbound.

Mia tipped her head back, her lips slightly parted. He pulled her to him, unable to resist the urge to feel her body against his, and kissed her hungrily. She tugged him toward the bed where she sat facing him and unbuttoned his jeans. “Now yours,” she said. “Take them off for me.”

Gio nudged them past his hips and sat next to her on the bed, certain he couldn’t step out of his as gracefully as she had hers. As soon as they were off, he stood and tossed them aside, his gray boxer briefs stretched tight with his erection.

Mia’s eyes widened and she absently licked her lips. He leaned down, lifted her, and laid her across the bed, nestling himself between her legs. His mouth was on hers within seconds, tasting, testing, taunting. She arched against him and he reached around and unclasped her bra, peeling it off of her as the spark in their kiss caught fire. He pressed her close, the soft curves of her breasts meeting his pecs. Her breath quickened as her hips rose to meet his.

She cupped his face with one hand and combed her fingers through his hair with the other. Beneath hooded eyes, she leveled her gaze on his. “This is—”

“Real,” Gio said, catching his first glimpse of her perfect breasts and moaning with approval. He smoothed his fingers down her side and slipped his hand beneath the delicate lace of her panties. “Before I leave, you’ll have no doubt about that.”

Chapter Five

The director of the Centers for Disease Control had finished his remarks and turned over the press conference to Matthew, who came across as overconfident as he stood at the lectern. He’d been after his fifteen minutes of fame forever, and Mia was glad for him to get it out of his system. Unfortunately, his one moment in time was hardly likely to satisfy him, and there was no telling how many public events he’d show up at with her during the One Shot campaign just for the thrill of standing on the stage in front of everyone. He was clearly his mother’s son. Their dad hadn’t had a self-aggrandizing cell in his body. Mia never wished ill for her mother, but she sometimes wondered why her dad had been the one who was taken from her, and not the other way around.

“Moncure Therapeutics is proud to be the sole purveyor of vaccine for the One Shot program.” Matthew’s tone was a note lower than usual. “As the CDC director explained, we’ve worked to make it easy for health care providers to give the proper dose to each patient. I’d like to say we’ve also made the process as painless as possible, but the needle was a necessity.” He paused for the tepid chuckle that came from the audience.

Mia struggled to keep herself from rolling her eyes. Jimmy Fallon needn’t worry about losing his job to Matthew.

“As a demonstration, the United States surgeon general is here to give the inaugural vaccine in the One Shot Program to my grandmother, Lila Moncure, chairman of the board of Moncure Therapeutics.”

Lila rose from her seat among the who’s-who on the stage and made her way to the tall stool next to the lectern, looking lovely and chic in a stylish, short-sleeved lavender dress. Mia caught sight of Claude out in the audience, and his proud gaze never left Lila. The surgeon general, a sturdy man in full uniform, joined Lila along with a young nurse wearing a white dress and cap. The nurse turned up Lila’s sleeve and swabbed her upper arm with alcohol. She pulled a prefilled syringe with a red stopper out of the pocket of her dress and handed it to the surgeon general. Lila sat primly as he stuck the needle into her arm and depressed the plunger.

Mia tried not to wince. She’d given hundreds of vaccines in Haiti herself, but somehow she’d lost the stomach for it now. Surely all of these people wouldn’t be going through this charade if something was wrong with the vaccine.

…

The stress of her long day left Mia eager to get some sleep, but she wondered if she could. She’d managed to avoid Gio after the press conference even though she felt the electricity of simply being nearer to him than she had been in months. But now that she was safely settled in by herself in Lila’s guesthouse, she could no longer avoid Brent. She had to see what he had sent her from the dead. After all the production of the launch tonight, and seeing all the officials at the press conference, she was having an even harder time wrapping her head around Nora’s story about Brent and the vaccine. But the flash card she held in her hand might convince her otherwise.

Mia had found her old laptop among some of the things she stored in the walk-in attic of the guesthouse. She was glad that Nora had been careful not to watch her video on her computer, but Mia wasn’t nearly as paranoid about viewing hers on her old laptop. It had been months since she’d been online with it, and she didn’t plan to connect now. So she was pretty certain no one was monitoring her activity on it. The idea that anyone was monitoring her at all seemed surreal.

She sat cross-legged on her bed, staring at the computer, a foreboding feeling slithering up her spine. Her hand trembled as she slid the flash card into the reader and waited for the icon to appear on the screen. The moment it did, she clicked it to find that the only file on it was a lone video taken the day before Brent died. Suddenly paranoid, she glanced at the door of the bedroom even though she was alone in the guesthouse. She took a deep breath, turned up the volume, and clicked play.

Brent’s face appeared on the screen, and Mia’s heart pitched seeing the stress around his eyes and the fear in them. It was obvious before he even spoke a word. “Mia,” he said. “I miss you.” He cleared his throat and bowed his head, his light-brown hair looking as if he’d been out in the wind. “But that’s not what this is about.”

Pressure built in her throat, and she worried she’d never make it through this without crying.

He raised his head and looked into the camera. “If you’re watching this, then something has happened to me. God knows, I hope it doesn’t come to that, but I have to keep pushing for answers, and I can tell they’re pushing back.”

They who?

“I don’t have a lot of time here in Lucerne because I’ve got to get back to work. But if I don’t make it, I’m leaving what I find for you. I can’t say too much in case this video makes it into the wrong hands. Hopefully someone I trust has given you a few more details. I hate to put anyone in danger—especially you—and that’s why I’m chasing this myself. But if anything happens to me, please don’t let it lie.

“Something is going on with the vaccine, and it’s scaring the hell out of me. Since you’re watching this, I probably never got the chance to figure it all out, or reveal what it is. So now it’s up to you. As strange as this is to say, I hope I haven’t risked my life for nothing. I’m counting on you. If you can’t bring yourself to get to the bottom of this for me, do it for you.”

Mia stared at the computer, wide-eyed.

“You probably know this already,” Brent said, “but I feel like I need to say it.” He shrugged. “I still love you, Mia. Moncure Therapeutics is your future. Don’t let them steal it from you.”

…

“We’ll do several days of appearances in New York City,” Ellen Sloane said to Mia. They sat in the executive conference room at Moncure Therapeutics the next morning, its floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the company’s rolling Northern Virginia campus. Beneath the gray November sky, a few leaves still clung to mostly barren trees, and others randomly wafted to the ground.

Being in bustling DC was one thing, but New York City was something else entirely. Mia had visions of sensory overload after the sparse landscape and meager infrastructure in Haiti.

“We’ve got a heavy rotation of public service announcements going for One Shot right now, and a perpetual social media campaign. Then we’ll supplement with your appearances on popular shows.”

Mia was barely able to concentrate on anything Ellen said. After seeing Brent’s video, she’d been awake most of the night, wondering what to do with the quandary he’d put her in. If he was telling the truth, he’d been eaten by the lions, and left her alone in the den. She didn’t know whom to trust. And the only way to find out what was really going on was to go to Switzerland and find out. It was her only choice, really. How could she possibly promote the vaccine knowing something could be wrong with it?

Because no one else seems concerned. No. One.

Maybe there’d been a production glitch along the way, or a change in formulation, but everything seemed on track now. This was no time for Mia to be raising her hand and asking questions.

“Over the next two weeks, we’re scheduled on
Good Morning America, Today, Fox and Friends
, and even on
Live With Kelly and Michael.
” Ellen gave Mia a sympathetic look. She was a consummate professional, always impeccably dressed, well-spoken, and thoroughly prepared. “We’ll be in L.A. intermittently to do
The Tonight Show
and a couple of others. Our three-pronged strategy is to reach out to the public through announcements, entertainment, and social media. We’re more likely to get the message out that way than with stuffy press conferences.” She winked. Both Ellen and Mia agreed that those were more for politics than public good, considering her family’s connections, but they were necessary just the same. Especially when the threat of an epidemic was so real.

“So I’m the on-camera spokesperson for all of these appearances?” Mia took a swallow of her lukewarm coffee and set the mug back on the massive cherrywood conference table. The prospect of going from near anonymity in Haiti to appearing on some of America’s top TV shows sent a shudder through her.

Ellen nodded, her silky dark shoulder-length hair catching the light. “Mrs. Moncure insisted.”

Lila.
No one would dare call Mia’s mom by any other title but senator. Mia raised one eyebrow. “Insisted to whom?”

“There was a launch strategy meeting with me, your mother, Gio Lorenzo, Secretary Dartmouth, Matthew, and Mrs. Moncure. There was some…discussion. You know, whether we should go with a consistent spokesperson or switch it up.”

Mia had no interest in how that “discussion” had gone, or how Lila managed to keep votes for Matthew as spokesperson from stacking up. She prickled at the idea of Gio being in a meeting where she was the topic of discussion.

“You’d be the best person for the job,” she said sincerely to Ellen. “You have an enviable way of looking serious without appearing stern, of being instructive without coming across as bossy.”

Ellen smiled.

Mia wondered if anyone had ever taken the time to point out all the positive attributes Ellen brought to the company, not the least of which was her dedication. She’d been there since Mia was in middle school.

“At the risk of incurring a lawsuit,” Mia said, “the camera would love you.” At about forty, Ellen was pretty and fit, perfect to appeal to all the demographics they needed to reach.

“Not nearly as much as it will you. And my name isn’t Moncure.”

Mia took a deep breath and blew it out with a hiss. “Sorry, Ellen. I’m sorry that things got turned upside down when I left for Haiti, and I hate what’s happened with Brent. You deserve to be the spokesperson for One Shot. I’m sure that’s what Brent would’ve wanted.” She shrugged weakly. “Me, too.”

Ellen didn’t flinch at the mention of Brent. “Did you get to talk to Mrs. English? I hope you don’t mind that I gave her your number.” She seemed innocent in asking, making Mia reasonably sure Nora hadn’t mentioned her suspicions when they’d spoken.

“No worries. I visited her yesterday,” Mia said. “I think she was just looking for some closure.”
Since she thinks Brent was murdered.
And in the dark hours overnight, Mia had started to believe it, too. She had to figure out who could help her get to the truth about the vaccine and his death. It could involve a cast of people, or just one. Whether her suspicions were right or wrong, she wasn’t sure whom she could trust with them.

Just to be safe, she’d decided to visit Nora again this evening and give her a prepaid cell phone. If she received more information about Brent’s situation, Mia needed to know. But not via her company phone. She planned to get a prepaid phone for herself, too.

“It’s all so sad,” Ellen said. “Every day I walk past his office and expect him to be there.” She reached over and squeezed Mia’s hand. “I’m sure it’s hard on you, too, coming back to the shock of it all and this round-the-clock PR campaign that has to move forward nevertheless.”

Mia nodded. “I’m afraid to ask who made the travel team.”

“I lobbied to keep it small, but I’m sure we’ll have some drop-ins along the way.”

“No doubt,” Mia said.

“Right now it’s you, me, and a medical liaison from the CDC to give us cred.” Ellen shuffled her papers. “Oh, and Gio. Senator Moncure insisted he come along to massage the message if we need to, since it’s critical to get it right quickly.”

Mia’s heart stuttered. “We’re PR professionals. We don’t need anyone from my mother’s staff to ‘massage the message.’”
Especially not Gio.
“And even if we did, they could spin it from here in DC.”

Ellen gave her a rueful look. “I was in no position to argue about it, I’m afraid.”

“Me, either. And I suppose I won’t be until we get a couple of these appearances under our belts and people start showing up for their vaccinations. If we get good numbers, then we may only need a babysitter for a couple of days.”

“Let’s hope,” Ellen said. “But if we must have a babysitter, I’d say we lucked out with Gio. He’s the best person on Senator Moncure’s staff.”