TEMPTED BY HER BOSS Read Free Page B

This was work. This was an emergency situation. His body might be reacting with a rush of hormones but his brain wouldn’t let him go there.
    Her hands scrubbed his back a little more roughly than required. He so wanted to lighten the moment, so wanted to quip, Wanna go lower? But Grace Barclay wouldn’t find it funny.
    He started scrubbing his face to try and take his mind off the fact there was a very gorgeous, very curvaceous, naked brunette inches away from him. All his fantasies about a woman in the shower with him hadn’t started like this.
    What could they just have been exposed to?
    His brain flooded with possibilities. Anthrax, botulism, cholera, smallpox, bubonic plague. The list was pretty long. All high-priority agents that could be used in a bioterrorism attack. Easily spread and transmitted from person to person, with high death rates and the potential for spreading panic.
    Some of his colleagues called him Worst-Case Don. And it was true. He always imagined the worst-case scenario in any situation. It was his mantra. Plan for the worst, hope for the best . It was what any doctor working at the DPA should do.
    He looked back over to the wall. Steam was clouding the clock’s face so he strode across the tiled floor and wiped it clean with a towel.
    ‘Time’s up, Grace,’ he called, reaching for the switch to the showers. But she hadn’t heard. The showers around here didn’t halt automatically. No, they had some weird anomaly that meant for the final few seconds they turned icy cold. Everyone around here knew about it.
    Half the fun of new recruits was letting them find out for themselves.
    He picked up a towel and started rough-drying his legs, smiling as he heard the yelp behind him.
    ‘Yaoow!’
    There was the padding of wet feet behind him and the noise of someone whipping a towel from the top of the pile on the bench.
    ‘You did that deliberately!’
    He looked over his shoulder, vaguely aware that right now Grace Barclay had a prime time view of his bare backside. ‘I did not. I shouted to warn you. You obviously didn’t hear above the noise from the showers.’
    ‘Obviously.’ The word dripped with sarcasm.
    He wrapped a towel around his waist. The immediate crisis was over; it was time to start handling a whole new one. He turned to face her.
    Grace was holding the towel directly in front of her bare body. She hadn’t even had time to wrap it around herself. If someone came in the door behind her they would get an unholy view of Grace Barclay.
    He pointed to the scrubs in the corner. ‘Get dressed. Someone should be along to let us know if the isolation room is ready.’
    He pulled a set of navy scrubs over his head. Already the room seemed too small. Donovan didn’t do well in small spaces. Maybe it was the steam? Clouding his vision and taking up space. If the air-con had been working, this would have been gone in seconds.
    There was a knock at the door. Through the glass he could see the outline of a hazmat suit. A face appeared at the door.
    He breathed a sigh of relief. Frank, from the lab. He already spent most of his day in one of these suits. They’d probably just unplugged him, fastened him to an oxygen cylinder and sent him upstairs.
    He signalled a thumbs-up. ‘Ready, Grace?’ She’d wound her hair in a wet knot at the nape of her neck and was wearing a pale green set of scrubs.
    There. That was better. That was the sight he was used to—a colleague in a set of scrubs. Now he didn’t need to worry about his eyes wandering to places they shouldn’t.
    She gave the slightest of nods. He paused for a second. He might be known as a brilliant doctor with an encyclopaedic knowledge, but his people skills were sometimes lacking. Should he have sat her down and given her a pep talk? She looked a little pale. Her hand was pressed against the wall as if to stop her body swaying.
    But there was no time for pep talks. Donovan needed to be surrounded by colleagues who conducted