Hot Ice (A Hostile Operations Team Novel - Book 7) by Lynn Raye Harris

soap his skin and rub his hand down between his legs, over his large, hard…
    Oh my.
    Another knock at her door interrupted her fantasies. She threw her pen down with a curse. Garrett tossed a look at her as he went to the door.
    “Who the hell are you?” Tim Fitzgerald demanded.
    “I could ask the same of you.”
    Garrett sounded much too cool for Tim’s own good. Grace shot to her feet and headed around her desk. Tim stood in the doorway, looking more than a bit surprised at the sight of Garrett. And a little bit belligerent too.
    “Tim,” Grace said, coming up beside her bodyguard. “What can I do for you?”
    “You didn’t come in yesterday. I was worried about you.”
    “I’m fine, as you can see. I thought it was better if I let the attention die down a little bit first.” A ridiculous statement considering she didn’t think it had died down at all. Well, there wasn’t currently a news helicopter in the air over the building, so maybe that was an improvement.
    “Who’s this guy?” Tim’s gaze raked over Garrett.
    “You can ask me directly, you know,” Garrett said in that low growl that made little shivers skitter up her spine.
    Uh oh.
    “This is Garrett,” Grace blurted. “He works for my father.”
    Which was certainly true.
    Tim’s expression changed in a heartbeat from suspicious and irritated to friendly. He held out his hand. “Dr. Tim Fitzgerald. Sorry for being a bit suspicious, but you know, with everything that’s been happening around here, I worry about our girl.”
    Garrett took his hand. He must have squeezed awfully hard because Tim grimaced for a moment.
    “Dr. Campbell’s safety is my number one priority. No one is getting through me.”
    She loved the way he emphasized her title, as if schooling Tim on the proper way to address her. She’d have to thank him for that later… after she apologized for using her Helena Voice on him again.
    Telling him she’d tattle to her daddy—as if she couldn’t take care of her own issues—was not a high point of her day. But he just got under her skin sometimes and made her say the most asinine things.
    “Excellent,” Tim said, as if he were perfectly happy Garrett was there. She suspected he wasn’t thrilled at that moment, but since Garrett presumably had the senator’s ear, Tim wasn’t going to be rude again.
    “I haven’t had a chance to hit the lab yet,” Grace said. “Just as soon as I finish going over my notes, I’ll go take a look at the slides.”
    Tim frowned as he brought his hand up and rubbed the back of his neck. She didn’t like the look on his face.
    “Actually, Grace…” He blew out a breath. “Oh hell, the director wants you to work from home for a few days.”
    His dark eyes were actually sympathetic, but her stomach fell through the floor anyway.  
    “What do you mean work at home? I can’t take slides home, Tim—”
    “I know that, but, er, the press… and the protestors. Since you came in this morning, it’s gotten worse. The Washington Post just called, and CNN is sending over a camera crew…”
    Her belly churned with acid and fury. Her father announced he was running for president, and all of a sudden her life was out of control.
    Except the man who’d held a gun on her the other night couldn’t have had anything to do with that announcement. The way he’d gotten past security and been waiting for her spoke of elaborate planning, not a spur-of-the-moment decision.
    Still, it had all fallen apart that evening, and the only thing that had changed was her father’s plans. Before that, she’d still been working on sensitive viral genetics research, and she’d still discovered how to combine two strands of deadly flu virus into something approximating a supervirus. Something that the human immune response couldn’t combat.  
    Yet.
    But her research meant they could find vaccines before the combination happened in nature. It wasn’t harmful to anyone because there was no way that