“We’re alone.”
“There are cameras,” he said without turning, without gesturing. Then he bent low and brushed his lips against mine. I had a choice. I could move away, or I could do my job and kiss him back. And that was an odd thought. When had my job become about kissing virtual strangers?
I moved in to him, pressing my hand to his side, and returned his kiss. It began as a gentle, almost friendly, kiss. But it quickly turned into something else as he tugged me closer with a hand on my hip. My body seemed to respond to him without any thought on my part, my bones melting to mold to his body, my jaw loosening to welcome him. And, hell, it felt good! Why did it have to feel so good?
I was almost relieved when the elevator door opened and he pulled away, sliding his hand into mine as we stepped out into a startlingly white corridor.
“This is the basement where the labs are.” Lucien gestured to the right. “Those are the clean rooms. We’ll go over there in a minute. But first I want to show you the chemistry labs.”
He led the way into a large room that looked almost like the lab at the high school I’d attended, but, of course, it had more state-of-the-art equipment. There were dozens of people bent to their work, mostly staring into microscopes or watching the action of other machines I couldn’t begin to describe, let alone explain what they did. Lucien pulled me along by my hand, speaking in hushed tones so as not to disturb anyone. He told me how they’d bought the patents to certain medications when they began the business so that they would have revenues before they were able to come up with unique medications of their own. Some of those were still produced in these labs. Others were produced in mass quantities at other facilities. Most of the work done in these labs was on new medications, medications that had yet to receive FDA approval.
“Over the next two years, we hope to release three new drugs. One to treat heart disease. Another to treat Parkinson’s. And a promising new drug that has shown marked improvement in people suffering from Alzheimer’s disease.”
“Impressive.”
“It’s our goal to change the landscape of American medicine.”
“That’s a lofty goal.”
“It is.”
Then he led me across the small lobby to the other side of the floor. The clean rooms required us to put on paper suits and to slide covers over our shoes. Once again, he held my hand as he led the way inside. He led the way to a set of windows and stood behind me, his body pressed up against my back, his hands on my hips, as he explained what we were watching. People in suits not unlike our own were assembling what looked like miniature computers.
“Those are a new style of insulin pump we’ve designed. We already have a patent for that, and it has been undergoing human trials for almost a year. We’re expecting the FDA to allow us to go to market in six months.”
He turned me and pointed to another window. “That is the pacemaker we’ve designed. It’s already on the market, changing people’s lives every day.”
Then he shifted me again, pointing to another window. “That device can be implanted in a patient’s brain and help control the tremors associated with Parkinson’s.”
“That’s…”
I didn’t have words for all they were doing here. It was impressive, but that didn’t seem like a big enough word for all the good they were trying to do for people. I’d known what kind of business this was before I set eyes on Lucien and Jacob the night before, but it really hadn’t sunk in until I saw all of this myself.
Lucien’s arm came around my waist, and he drew me closer to him.
“Are you impressed yet?”
I nodded. There was no point in lying.
We left the clean rooms a few minutes later and re-boarded the elevator. Lucien lifted my hand and kissed my palm lightly.
“Do you understand now?” he asked, his eyes searching mine.
“We’ll do everything we can.”
He smiled. “I know,” he said as he bent and kissed me once more.
He left me in his office as he went off to some meeting down the hall. I called Theresa and sent her to my apartment to pack me a bag for the weekend. And then I settled behind Lucien’s desk and logged onto his computer. I’d worked with computers some in the Army, enough to know how to find things that most people didn’t even know they could look for. I wanted to know who’d sent that email to Lucien, wanted to know who would be greedy enough to block any life-saving device from hitting the marketplace. I knew Robert was working on it, but I might as well do something useful while I was here.
I was digging through Lucien’s files when the door opened and his personal assistant walked in.
“Oh, you shouldn’t be doing that,” she said, walking around the desk and turning off the monitor, like that would do anything to stop me.
“It’s okay. Lucien knows what I’m doing.”