Phase - Excerpt Only

Phase (Excerpt Only) - Chapter One

So, why had Red Creepy-Ass Devos been cozying up to her in the first place?

And, what'n the ever-loving hell had she asked him?

The answer erupted in Megan's mind.

Her eyelids flew open. Heat crawled across her face, down her neck, spreading like a disease until she was full-body blushing. It hadn't been a question she'd asked, more a private thought voiced aloud: Wonder if you're ginger everywhere?

Oh God.

Mortified, she bent over her desk, faking intense interest in a note she'd scrawled on her blotter. Talk about giving off all the wrong signals. Because, sure, that was the kind of question a single girl might pose to her girlfriends and snicker about over appletinis at some bar, but it was so not the kind of question you put to a work colleague. While sitting at your desk. Where any of your other colleagues could overhear. And, given that the first time Megan had laid eyes on Red Devos, she'd been hard put to find anything the least bit attractive about him—and that first impression sure hadn't changed any—it was such an alien thought that her brain struggled to comprehend where the hell it had come from.

Bile scorched her throat. Blinking stinging eyes and trying not to gag, she choked the bitterness down. No way did she want to get anywhere near Red Devos, let alone close enough to check out the shade of hair on his—

The nape of Megan's neck prickled.

She glanced up in time to catch Red's smug grin before he turned away... and the suspicion niggling the back of her mind bloomed into an idea so wrong, so evil, she shook her head in a mute attempt to refute it.

Surely he couldn't have devised a way to—?

Nah. Impossible.

Her head throbbed again, a stabbing pain intense enough that she slit her eyelids against the abruptly too-bright interior of the lab.

Ducking her head, Megan searched her desk drawer for pain meds and choked a couple down. Best tackle a task that wouldn't tax her brain until the headache settled down. Her gaze fixed on the file containing background info on a batch of new volunteers. Perfect.

Manually inputting each volunteer's data into the correct fields freed her unconscious to worry at the broken pieces of her memory. The last missing piece of the puzzle slipped into place and the entire encounter with Red unspooled in her mind.

Ho-ly shitballs.

It was all Megan could do not to spew her long ago breakfast over her keyboard. Climbing unsteadily to her feet, she headed for the exit, fiercely concentrating on placing one foot in front of the other, sporting an "I'm fine, nothing to see here" smile that took every ounce of determination she could muster.

The smile almost cracked when she passed Robyn, and her frowning, obviously concerned roommate asked, "You okay, hon?"

"Bathroom break," Megan murmured, fisting her hand against her belly, hoping her friend would put it down to period pains.

Robyn inhaled in a sympathy-laden hiss. "Oooh. Poor thing."

"Yeah." Megan managed a credible wry chuckle. "Sucks to be a girl." She coded out, and the instant the security doors shooshed closed behind her, fled for the sanctuary of the women's washroom.

~*~

Megan blotted her face with a paper towel and braved a second glance in the mirror. Red nose, blotchy cheeks, bloodshot eyes—anyone with half a brain would know she'd been crying. And, despite ten minutes hiding out in a cubicle, trying to get her shit together, the scared-rabbit expression in her eyes hadn't faded any.