you do that. Meantime, I’ll get you started with your medical duties.” He lifted the receiver on the phone on his desk and pushed a button. “Is he here yet?” he immediately asked whomever answered. “Good. Send him in.” He looked at Grace. “One of our other infectious-disease specialists will take you to that wing and introduce you around, since I assume you didn’t meet anyone there yesterday with all the paperwork you were doing.”
A shudder of warning immediately passed through Grace. It was all she could do to continue just to sit and keep an impassive yet interested expression on her face.
It surely wouldn’t be …
A knock sounded on the closed office door. Whoever was there opened it without waiting for the colonel’s response.
An instant later, a man walked into the room. He was tall, broad-shouldered beneath a white medical jacket similar to Grace’s but much larger. He was great-looking, with longish thick black hair and a sharp facial structure. His straight, dark eyebrows and wide lips underscored his angry-looking scowl as he glanced at her. The look lightened considerably as he turned to the colonel. “Good morning,” he said.
“You ready to show Dr. Andreas around?” Colonel Otis asked.
“Of course.” He turned back toward her. This time, his expression was neutral, but it still sent shivers cascading down Grace’s spine.
It was Simon Parran. He looked even better than he had all those years ago, if that was possible. And she had indeed caught his intriguing masculine scent last night.
Chapter 2
“Hello, Grace.” Simon continued to stride into the room when he saw her. Of course he had expected to see her here. Colonel Otis had ordered Simon to act as her tour guide that day.
For reasons he didn’t want to think about too deeply, he had agreed without objection.
Grace rose from a chair facing the colonel’s desk and turned. Her movements were slow and supple, her expression neutral. “Hi, Simon,” she said in a soft, cool monotone.
“So you’ve met.” Colonel Nelson Otis sounded irritated, as if he’d planned some startling introduction. Like, Parran, you stupid civilian doctor, I want you to meet this pretty lady physician who was smart enough to join the military. Otis had made it clear he held the civilians around here in disdain. “I thought you’d mostly dealt with the clerical staff yesterday, Dr. Andreas,” Otis continued, “filling out forms, reviewing hospital policies and all that.”
“Pretty much.” Grace crossed the room toward Simon. She didn’t mention that they’d met before. A good thing. Otherwise, they might have to explain the circumstances, and that could be uncomfortable even now. She held out her hand for a businesslike shake. “Good to see you again, Simon.”
Her grip was firm, even as her sable-brown eyes flashed with her lie. She’d been one hell of a good-looker back then. Now, she was even more beautiful, if that was possible: slender in her scrubs and medical jacket, with pert facial features including high cheekbones. Her silver-blond hair had been longer before. Now it was styled in a shaggy cut that brushed her eyebrows and skimmed her shoulders. She smelled like flowers, light and fragrant, yet there was also something heavier about her scent. Something damned appealing. And familiar. He’d imagined smelling it again from the moment he’d heard the name Grace Andreas once more. Her lips were pursed, but he suspected they’d still be highly enjoyable to kiss.
Not that he’d ever get the chance to test that theory.
“Good to see you, too,” he said, sorry to realize that he meant it. Many of the times he’d thought of Grace during the years since they’d met in their first term of pre-med studies, he’d wondered if she had followed through, become a doctor. If so, where she practiced. If not, what else she’d done with her life.
He could have found out. The Internet was filled with resources that could tell him.
He purposely hadn’t looked.
“So,” he said, “you ready to go see the Charles Carder Infectious Diseases Center?”
“Sure.” She turned back to the commander and saluted smartly. “Thank you, sir.”
Yeah, Simon got it even before seeing her. She was in the military despite being dressed like him. The idea turned him off—a little, at least. He had joined the medical staff for reasons of his own. It didn’t mean he had to like the fact that this hospital was affiliated with, and run by, the military.
What he did like was its amazingly useful lab facilities. And that he could visit them frequently, with few questions and no impediments.
He opened the door and let Grace walk briskly through the secretary’s area and beyond, into the wide hallway of the admin wing. It was on the top floor, the third.
“We need to go down a floor to get to the infectious diseases center,” Simon told Grace. “The stairs are there.” He pointed to a closed door with a sign above depicting a stairway.
“I figured,” Grace said drily.
“Would you prefer the elevator?” Simon asked.
“The stairs are fine.”
That was the extent of their conversation until they were on the second floor. The silence was anything but comfortable.
As they started walking along the polished floors of the long, meandering hallway, past other hospital wings, Grace said, “So you’re in internal medicine now. Interesting. I’d have figured you for emergency medicine, years ago, or maybe surgery. Better yet, an area related to anatomy. Or something else altogether, like dermatology. Or veterinary medicine.” She looked up at him challengingly.
Why did that expression on her beautiful face make his insides start to burn? Or maybe it was simply the sudden closeness again of Grace, after their very long separation.
“Same goes,” he retorted, intentionally making his tone grating. “Are we going to start on that same woo-woo obsession of yours all over again?” He glared right back—and was discomfited to see what appeared to be a gleam of triumph in her eyes before she looked away.
As if she finally had gotten him to admit the “truth” she had goaded him for so pointedly back in pre-med.
She couldn’t really know … could she?
Even if she didn’t, her being here, at such a critical time to his personal experiments, could be a huge problem. He needed to work even harder, after his only partly successful test last night.
The second-floor hallway seemed to go on forever. That should have been a bad thing, considering the chilly atmosphere between them. Even so, Grace couldn’t help feeling excited that she was once again in Simon’s presence.
Although it hurt. She couldn’t turn off her emotions now any more than she’d been able to way back when they’d known each other.
She had loved Simon, nearly from the time they had met in their first pre-med classes at Michigan State University. Their passion had been nearly overwhelming, their lovemaking incredible and intense.
And then he was gone. He transferred to another school at the end of the first term.
Left her.
Never mind that she had been the one to break things off first. She had expected candor from the man she wanted to spend her life with. Instead, she had gotten equivocations. Lies.
Ridicule.
She had nearly revealed to him what she was in order to get him to disclose that he, too, was a shifter—assuming it was true.
Thanks to his derision, she’d never dared to mention it.
Good thing.
“Here we are,” Simon finally said at a door with frosted windows. The wall beside it