Chapter 7 #2
“She knows me inside and out. Knows all my darkest secrets. Still wants to stick with me. Go figure.” He felt a small clip to the side of his leg and stifled a chuckle. It must have been the dark secret crack.
“Surprisingly we have a lot in common,” she said.
He grinned. Excitement vibrated through him. He was enjoying this and so was she. They were a sick pair.
“I can see you have a certain chemistry going,” Mike said, looking from Trent to Charlie. They were both grinning like silly fools. Let him think it was all because they were madly in love. Foley was harmless. He wasn’t a tabloid guy about to write up a love story on the sports page.
The flash of a camera took him by surprise and he turned to see several cameras were aimed his way. Before he could say or do another thing the horn sounded and Head Coach Sal Marini yelled to line up.
“What’s going on? I need to—”
“Don’t worry,” he whispered, nuzzling her ear.
He might enjoy this cover story if it didn’t kill him.
“We’ll do some drills and then you and I will get back to Nunley’s office.
We’ll talk then.” He leaned down, caught her chin with his hand and kissed her mouth.
It tasted like coffee and felt warm and juicy and yielding, but he let her go.
She seemed disconcerted standing there with her black bag on the sidelines, her heels sunk into the ground, totally and completely out of her element.
She sighed and decided today would be a learning experience.
They’d figure out how to fit in their protocol on the fly today and work something more regular into the routine.
All around her were giant men in helmets, older heavy men in coach’s hats, and reporters bundled up in down jackets and holding tablets and cameras.
Then she realized she was standing side by side with Mike Foley, who looked like he wanted to say something to her. He seemed okay.
“So when’s the big day?”
“Big day?”
“Your wedding—maybe you haven’t set a date yet—sorry if it’s none of my business.”
“Oh—no. We haven’t set a date yet.” She hoped this was what Trent had in mind when he said to follow his lead.
Maybe she should give Foley a date. “But we’re thinking about April.
It’s a beautiful time of year for a wedding.
” She smiled and pretended excitement and enthusiasm, and realized she was enjoying the charade.
It felt like she was in a bubble, a different world here in the stadium with no one but strangers.
No one knew her. No one had any expectations.
She had only one job—to take care of John Doe’s protocol.
And to pretend she wasn’t doing just that by pretending she was Trent Lockheed’s latest love interest.
Mike nodded and rubbed his hands together. He eyed her black bag.
“Want to sit down? Put your bag down?”
“Oh—I suppose.” She looked around for Ralph. “Ralph told me he’d find a place for it inside. Maybe I should go—”
“Of course. Sure.” Mike backed up a step as he shuffled his feet to keep warm. “Nice to meet you, Charline. I mean Dr.—”
“Charline is fine. Nice meeting you. I’ll probably be seeing you around. I’ll be here . . . a lot.”
He walked over to where a group of players stood stretching, and she turned back to the tunnel. She wasn’t sure if she should go looking for Ralph or wait here for Trent, but a cold gust made up her mind for her.
She went toward the tunnel in search of the training room.
Still carrying his helmet because he didn’t bother to stop when he got off the field after practice, Trent headed straight to the training room.
The rock lodged in his throat told him he was panicked beyond reason to find her missing.
Where else would she go? The hell out of town and away from him if she were sane.
But she wasn’t. Neither of them were sane.
He turned the corner and pushed through the door, walked past several teammates in giant aluminum tubs of swirling water, and toward Nunley’s private office. The door was closed, but he grabbed the doorknob and swung the door open.
Twirling around, startled, she held a caliper in one hand and a rack of empty vials in the other.
Nunley sat behind his desk reading something on a clipboard, then looked up. “I’ll have to start locking that door.”
Trent shoved the door closed behind him and hoped no one caught a glimpse of his Dr. Lovely and her test tubes.
“Good idea.” He moved toward her as if she had reeled him in with some secret formula that had nothing to do with HGH. Once he realized he’d been intent on giving her a proprietary kiss on the lips, he stopped himself.
“Sorry I didn’t wait for you—I thought I should start getting things set up.”
He glanced at the assortment of equipment, including two needles on the tray table, and heaved a sigh.
“Moment of truth.”
“No going back,” she said.
Nunley leaned forward at his desk and said, “You sure you want to go through with this, Trent? You get caught you can forget about the Hall of Fame. I won’t even bother talking to you about all the lost endorsements since I know you don’t care about the money.
” He shook his head. “But Tammy would care.”
“It’s not Tammy’s life.” He looked at Charlie.
She stopped what she was doing—filling a needle from a small vial labeled EM-HGH-1-JD—and looked at him.
“Don’t worry about testing. They won’t find anything.
This isn’t a synthetic drug. It’s made from human embryonic stem cells.
There is no test for it.” She went back to filling the needle with her own personally invented concoction.
A designer serum made just for him. He felt a swell of momentousness and some pride—however misplaced it was.
This was big for her too. But she didn’t need him. Only his money.
“Besides, what the hell good is all the money if it can’t buy you some quality of life, I always say.”
She glanced up at him. “You do?”
He chuckled and reached out a hand to caress her face. “No. But it’ll be my saying from now on.”
“I believe quality of life is important. That’s why I went into this line of research, instead of looking for cures to more life-threatening diseases and problems.” Her deep, dark, compelling eyes looked serious as death and it made him smile. His heart swelled again—and other body parts too. Damn.
He cleared his throat, slid his hand to caress the back of her neck, lost his fingers in her soft chestnut hair, and wished to hell they were somewhere else, sometime in the future after this was all over.
“Glad we’re on the same page, Doc. Let’s get to it. You need me to take off my shirt and pads?” He raised his brows at her to ease the tension in his shoulders and to wipe some of that deathly seriousness from her face.
She rolled her eyes.
“You’re absolutely sure?” Nunley said again. “Cause you’re dragging me into this too—I’ll get booted from here so fast—”
“You can leave now. You don’t need to be a part of this,” he said as he pushed up the Under Armour sleeve. “I’m serious, Nun. I wouldn’t blame you and I’d never drag you into it after the fact.”
Nunley shook his head. “In for a penny, in for a pound. Besides, I have a feeling this could be the start of a major breakthrough. Not every day a guy gets to be witness to that.”
That made Charlie smile, then she faced him.
“I’ll take some baseline blood samples first, then give you the injection. We’ll do some muscle mass measurements, chiefly of your arms, chest, and legs.” She lowered her gaze. “You’ll need to disrobe for that.”
He suppressed a chuckle. This was a complicated woman. The pounding in his chest was from nerves and anticipation, but if it was anyone but her treating him, he’d be breaking out in a sweat.
After tying rubber around his upper arm and a dab with the cotton swab, she found a vein easily and stuck the needle in without hesitation. Blood filled the tube. He’d had thousands of blood tests over the years, but none felt as momentous as this.
“You sure the usual drug testing won’t show anything, Doc?”
“Positive. I’ve used human embryonic stem cell tissue to make the drug, not the synthetics.
So the good news is that it won’t show on your routine drug testing.
The bad news is you could have a bad reaction—like I told you before you signed on.
This first injection is the most crucial and important to monitor.
” She released the rubber band on his arm, took the needle out and unceremoniously stuck a cotton ball and Band-aid on the needle point—all in one motion.
She turned to her tray of tubes, vials, and equipment and picked up the needle that contained the EM-HGH-1-JD.
His heart rose on a bubble until he almost felt strangled as his shoulders bunched in tension.
Taking a deep breath, he told himself it would work—he’d be playing like he was twenty-five years old again in time for the playoffs—and the Super Bowl.
He’d get another ring and not feel like a cripple as he hefted the trophy in the air.
And he’d be helping medical research doing it.
Charlie gave him one last serious stare into his eyes, as if she were reading everything he’d just thought, then took the needle and injected it into the deltoid muscle of his left arm.
After she pulled the empty needle from his arm five seconds later he said, “Now you can call me Dr. Frankenstein’s monster.”
She didn’t smile. “Now we watch the injection site for a rash, swelling, discoloration, and tenderness and we monitor you for headaches, difficulty breathing, unusual heartbeat or nausea.” She put the needle back on her tray and rubbed the site gently with a cotton ball, examining it closely.
After applying a small bandage, she looked up at him.
“I’m serious, Trent. This is the riskiest moment and I—wouldn’t want anything to go wrong. Wouldn’t want to miss any of the signs.”
“What happens if we see a sign?”
“We rush you to the hospital for treatment. Immediately.” She looked at him with that dead serious expression. Dead calm and confident too.
He nodded. “That would ruin your research protocol, wouldn’t it? Let the cat out of the bag?
Doing a double take, she said, “That would be the last thing I’d be concerned about. Your life would be at stake, Trent. The rest—well—”
She waved a hand and turned away.
“You’re one hell of a doctor, Charlie,” he said. He looked at Nunley then and the man nodded in a silent, I told you she was something.
“Glad you think so. Now take off your clothes.”