Bennett - Milly Taiden Page 0,19

also been adamant that no one was after the serum. That situation had been put to bed.

Testing out her theory, Dakota pulled onto the side of the road and made a big show of checking her back tire. She kicked it, pretending to check the solidity of it. The automobile had turned into a side street. She breathed a sigh of relief and climbed in through the passenger side and over the center console.

She turned up her favorite song, hoping to drown out some of the creepy factor that had made her skin crawl. Her eyes kept going to the rearview mirror, but she didn’t spot the black SUV again.

She raced down the lane, parked the car in a way that would have made a rebellious cowboy proud, and raced into the house. She reactivated the security system and ran down into the lab.

Bennett looked up from his work, pushing his glasses up his nose. His smile was wide and bright, and it went straight to her heart. He really was handsome. Bony angles and all.

“Hey,” he said. He seemed a bit different. More confident somehow. “Did you enjoy your coffee?”

Shit. In all the excitement, she had left the damn thing in her car.

“Yeah, fine. Listen, I need to know if the work Gray has you doing is something I could get followed for.”

Bennett blanched at her words. “It could. He insisted that no one knew about it, though.”

She shook her head. “Then I’m just paranoid. I thought I was being followed on my way back from the coffee shop.”

It had been a dumb thing to do, leaving the house for a fake coffee run. Her damn tigress was making it entirely too difficult for her to focus on what was important.

Her job.

She had to make sure that Bennett and the house, which belonged to a friend of her boss, were safe and clear of whoever had followed her.

“You could have been,” Bennett said, coming around the counter to stand beside her. “Gray was attacked for his research, right? He said that had all been fixed up, but I know what he’s working on. Some people would never give up on getting their hands on it.”

“The magic serum that turns humans into shifters. Right?”

“You know?” He was surprised.

“Well, yeah. Nick had to give me a rundown of what I was getting myself into. I’m just surprised he let me work for him if he had his doubts that this wasn’t over.”

“It was with the government,” Bennett explained. “Gray was assured that no one would interfere with his research. I don’t think that we have anything to worry about. Maybe the Army just put the house under surveillance. They probably just wanted to track you to make sure you didn’t go off somewhere with the serum.”

“Hmm,” Dakota mused. “I don’t know. I want to believe I am making a mountain out of an anthill. I need this job to work out, you know?”

“It’s going to be fine,” he assured her. He went so far as to take her hands in his. “I think we can trust that Gray and Nick wouldn’t leave two newbies to deal with a government conspiracy.”

His smile was devastatingly sweet. Dakota licked her lips.

Hadn’t she just been admonishing herself for making the moves on a client? She shook her head. What the hell was wrong with her? Her priorities were all out of whack. Not that that was anything new for her, but she really wanted this to work out.

“Okay, here’s what I’m thinking. I’m going to go change the security codes, and I’ll give Nick a call. I’ll try to suss out some more information out of him. Without making him nervous that I’ve gone and fucked this up.”

“You can tell him that I’m particularly difficult and that I want more details about my security here. Meanwhile, I’ll give Gray a call, too. I hate to bother a groom on his wedding week, but I’m sure he’ll appreciate the courtesy of checking in. Just to be on the safe side, let’s hide the serum.” Bennett took a card box for Wars of Sorcerers that was laying on the counter. The blood-red box was empty, but he had chosen to use it as a pencil case to stack his post-its and other writing implements in it. He dumped the contents in one of the drawers before gently taking the three vials of the serum. He tucked them in the box and placed it on a shelf. It