lay stiffly in the bed, too aware of the wire cables tethering her to the jukebox to relax. Several minutes passed, until she finally grew bored enough to close her eyes and practice the relaxation techniques that Carleen had taught her after her breakup with Ian.
Breathing in deeply through her diaphragm, she held her breath for a moment, then slowly released it, letting the tension flow out of every pore of her body. She repeated this technique several more times, gradually becoming more comfortable.
When Elvis began to sing “Love Me Tender,” the music soothed her like a lullaby. By the end of the song, she forgot about the relaxation breathing and began to drift off to sleep.
Floating in a twilight haze, she was dimly aware of the door creaking open, then closing again. Footsteps padded on the carpet, but she kept her eyes closed, drowsily telling herself it was just Hannah coming to check on her.
Mia dozed, barely aware of someone moving quietly around in the room. Then her senses came alive at the sound of the bedsprings bouncing beside her and the spicy scent of male aftershave.
She opened her eyes and the glow of the jukebox revealed a man lying next to her in bed, staring right back at her.
Ruggedly handsome, with a slight crook in his nose and a small scar over his right eyebrow, he far surpassed any dream lover she’d ever imagined. But when he spoke, Mia knew she wasn’t dreaming.
“So what’s a nice girl like you doing in a place like this?”
She bolted upright in the bed and screamed.
He sat up, too, the gold lamé comforter falling to reveal a snug gray T-shirt that outlined the impressive width of his shoulders and the rippling muscles of his chest and torso. He wore his hair short, like a Marine, but she couldn’t tell the color of his eyes because his gaze had dropped to her breasts, where her pert nipples were visible through the thin cotton fabric of her pink nightshirt.
She grabbed the comforter, pulling it up to her neck, then jabbed the button on the headboard several times. “What do you think you’re doing in here?”
A wickedly sexy smile kicked up one side of his mouth. “I think I just asked you that same question.”
Before she could reply, the door to the suite swung open and Harlan hurried into the room. “Is there a problem?”
She pointed to the intruder. “I just found this man in my bed!”
“So?” Harlan replied, looking perplexed.
She blinked. “So? That’s all you have to say? So?”
The man leaned back against the headboard. “I don’t think she was expecting me, Harlan.”
That was the understatement of the century. She turned to Harlan, the wire cables limiting her movement. “I don’t know what kind of girl you think I am, but if this research center is just a front for making a porn movie or is some kind of kinky sex club, then I’m not interested—”
“Now just hold on there,” Harlan admonished, raising both hands. “This is legitimate scientific research, Carleen. You’re going to skew all the readings if you keep jumping around like that.”
“Then do something about him,” she insisted, forcing herself to lie still. “Call the police or one of your security guards and get him out of here.”
Harlan’s brow furrowed as he moved around to her side of the bed. “I don’t think you understand, Carleen. Nate Cafferty is your new environment.”
She blinked. “What?”
“This is an experiment about how different environments affect sleep patterns,” he reminded her, “as well as how quickly we adapt to them.”
“I don’t want to adapt to him,” she replied, needing to make that very clear. “I don’t even know him.”
“That’s the point, my dear,” Harlan said, as if it all made perfect sense. “The specific environment I designed for you is sleeping with a stranger. That’s why we waited until you fell asleep so we could establish your baseline readings before we let Nate join you in bed.”
“You can’t be serious.” She glanced at Nate, who seemed to enjoy watching her come unraveled. “I can’t sleep with him. I…I’m engaged.”
“Yes, I know, but I still don’t understand why you’re so upset.” Harlan’s brow crinkled. “All the possibilities were spelled out in the contract.”
She swallowed a groan. Apparently, Carleen had missed that little detail when she’d skimmed over the legal mumbo jumbo. “I’m upset because no woman in her right mind would put herself in a situation like this.”
“You have nothing to fear from Nate,” Harlan assured her. “He won’t hurt you.”
She looked between the two men. “So you really expect me to go through with this?”
“That’s completely up to you,” Harlan replied. “I never force my research subjects to do anything they don’t want to do. But I have to admit I’ll be very disappointed if you decide to return the money and quit the sleep study.”
She hesitated. Returning the money wasn’t an option. But how could she spend the next three weeks in bed with a stranger? She turned to Nate, hoping he’d at least act the gentleman and withdraw.
But the man lying beside her didn’t say a word. He just gazed back at her with eyes that she could now see were the same shade of verdant green as the leaves of the stately pin oak trees painted on the Graceland mural.
A keen intelligence shone from those eyes. And something else. Something that made her want to squirm beneath the covers. Mia wondered if she really could trust Nate. She wasn’t the best judge of a man’s character. Ian Brock was proof of that. But what choice did she have at this point?
“I suppose we could try it,” she said, surrendering to the inevitable, “at least for tonight.”
“Wonderful,” Harlan exclaimed, stepping up to the jukebox. “Now let me check to make sure all of these connections are still secure.”
“Why doesn’t Nate have to wear them?” she asked, knowing she probably resembled Medusa with all the cables sticking out of her head. The fact that she had washed off her makeup didn’t improve her mood, either.
At least Nate didn’t seem to mind her appearance. He settled back onto his pillow as Harlan tucked the covers around her.
“Nate’s vital signs aren’t relevant to my research,” Harlan told her. “For this particular study, I’m only interested in how your sleep patterns are affected at different phases of the relationship.”
“But we don’t have a relationship,” Mia reminded him. “We haven’t even met before tonight.”
Harlan grinned. “That’s why this study fascinates me so much. Because when you sleep with someone every night, even platonically, you have to develop some kind of relationship—good or bad.”
She glanced at Nate, wondering if this was some kind of test of her willpower. Having recently sworn off bad boys, she now found herself in bed with one. Only he far surpassed the Justins, Andrews and Ians of her past. Her awareness of him pulsed through every cell in her body, making her hot and cold at the same time.
Not a good sign.
Mia forced herself to look away and took a deep breath. If she could resist him, she could resist anyone. The key was to avoid him as much as possible while sharing the same bed. That meant not looking at him, not talking to him, and definitely not touching him.
Harlan lowered the volume on the jukebox. “Now let’s try this again, shall we?” He walked to the door, his hand resting on the night switch. “Goodnight, Carleen. Goodnight, Nate.”
Then he left them alone in the dark, the only sound in the room Elvis crooning a song that seemed