by Nora Roberts
“You’re attractive,” she said evenly. “My dog likes you and his judgment’s excellent. Naturally, there’d be some interest. But—”
“We don’t have to get into buts, do we, and muck it all up?” He propped his elbows on the counter. He had long arms, she noted, and a few fresh scratches on the back of his left hand.
“Let me give you a quick rundown. Thirty-three, single. Brushed close to the concept of marriage once, but it didn’t stick. Grew up a city boy with a country boy’s heart, and can’t remember not wanting to be a vet. I’m a good one.”
“I saw that for myself.”
“Doesn’t hurt to reinforce. I like baseball and action flicks, mystery novels. And I’m probably a little overattached to The Simpsons, but I don’t see anything wrong with that. Hurts no one. I can cook as long as it means a microwave, and the biggest crime that I’ll admit on such short acquaintance is copying Ursella Ridgeport’s answers for a U.S. history final in high school. We got a B.”
She wasn’t used to being charmed, or surprised. He was managing to do both. “But . . .”
“Tough nut.”
“I don’t really socialize.”
“Is that a hard and fast rule or more of a blueprint? Because there’s this restaurant up on Bucksport—you are a carnivore, right?”
“And then some,” she murmured.
“Well, they have these amazing steaks. Nice change from the local seafood. It’s just wrong to sit down to one by yourself, so you’d be doing me a big favor if you went with me.”
Oh God, did she have to like him as well as want to rub her naked body all over his? “And I should do you a favor because?”
“I can’t concentrate properly on my work for wondering about you. You don’t want my patients to suffer because you won’t chow down on a steak with me.”
She took his glass, carried it to the sink. “Do you have a dog?”
“Actually I have dibs on a puppy from a patient’s litter. Mom’s a mixed breed I’ll spay in trade for the pup. I lost my dog, Kirk, to cancer about six months ago.”
“I’m sorry.” She turned back, had to check the urge to touch him. “It’s very hard.”
“He used to sing.”
“Excuse me?”
“Sing, along with the radio, especially if it was something soulful. “Dock of the Bay” being one of his favorites. I miss that. He was sixteen, had a good life. It’s never long enough, though.”
“No, it’s not. Kirk? Are you a Star Trek addict as well as Simpson-obsessed?”
“I claim the right to teenage geekdom when I named him.”
“You were never a geek. Guys who look like you may flirt around the edges of the geek universe, but they never get to its core. Too busy gathering up girls with names like Ursella.”
His smile was easy, and appealingly sly. “She was brainy and beautiful, what could I do? I’m a sucker for brains and beauty and it seems for girls with exotic names.”
“My grandfather’s name was Simon. It’s not such a stretch.”
And that, he thought with some pleasure, was the first personal thing he’d wheedled out of her. “Simone.” He took a long breath. “It just sings. Simone, with the beautiful green eyes, have dinner with me. Don’t make me beg.”
Instinct was what she knew—its dangers. But she followed it, moving around the counter, facing him when he swiveled toward her on the stool.
She moved quickly, before rational thought could overcome primal need. Taking his face in her hands, she swooped in, and crushed her mouth to his.
Chapter 3
IT was like being pitched headfirst off a cliff, then discovering you’d sprouted wings.
The shock slammed into him first, then the speed, then the soaring thrill. He wasn’t aware he’d moved until he was standing, until his hands were tangled in her hair and his heart was pumping its life away against hers.
The heat of her poured into him until his blood smoked and smoldered, until his senses were stunned by it. So that he stood, reeling, when she nudged him away and stepped back.
“The dinner invitation was just another prop. You want to sleep with me.”
“What?” He heard the words, but with the majority of blood drained out of his head, he was having a hard time comprehending them. Had there been that much gold in her eyes before? So much gold the green was like a haze under it? “Ah . . . I’m just going to sit here another minute, if it’s all the same to you. Feel a little punchy.”
He looked down at the dog who sat as he had since they’d entered. Like a soldier on guard duty.
“No. Yes.”
It was her turn to look confused. “What does that mean?”
“No, the dinner invitation wasn’t a prop.” His eyes, so rich and brown, fixed on hers. “I’d like to spend some time with you, get to know you. And yes, I want to sleep with you. Did you take a course to learn to kiss like that, or is it just innate? And if it’s the former, where can I sign up?”
“You’re funny,” she decided.
“Feeling pretty funny at the moment. I also feel, with some embarrassment, that my pupils have turned into little hearts. Due to that, I’m now prepared to beg.”
The taste of him, virile and passionate, with that charming hint of cinnamon, was still on his lips, on her tongue. She wanted to snuggle up against him and sniff his neck. “I don’t do well with people.”
“You’re doing fine with me. Top marks down the line.”
She shook her head. “You asked about me, didn’t you? Around town. So, what’s the deal with this Simone? What’s the scoop on her? And you’d have heard she keeps to herself, doesn’t mix much. Nice enough, but a little strange.”
“Close enough. And if you asked about me, you’d have heard that Dr. Kirby, he plays his music or TV too loud most nights. He’s almost always late for his first appointment. Just a few minutes, but time’s time. And he’s no Doc Greene, if you ask me.”
“A couple of years, you’ll be Doc Kirby, and I’ll still be the weird herb lady who lives in the woods outside of town.”
“A woman of mystery.” He lifted his hand, played his fingers over the ends of her hair. “Did I mention I like mysteries?”
“You wouldn’t like mine. But I’ll have dinner with you. Here, tomorrow night. I’ll cook.”
He blinked at her, then the corners of his mouth quirked. “Really?”
“Yes, but now I have to get to work. So go away.”
“Okay.”
He got up immediately. Smart, she decided. Smart enough not to press his luck or give her a chance to change her mind.
“What time tomorrow?”
“Seven.”
“I’ll be here. Any chance of you telling Amico to stand down so I can kiss you again.”
“No. Maybe tomorrow.” She walked to the door, opened it. “Good-bye.”
He walked to the dog first, held out a hand. He saw Amico’s eyes slide toward his mistress before he lifted his paw to shake. “See you, pal.” He crossed to the door, stood for a moment studying her face. “ ’Bye, Simone.”
She locked the door behind him, then moved through the house to the front windows to wait for him to drive away.
A test, she told herself. That’s what it would be, a kind of test. To see how she would handle the evening, being with him. Just an experiment.
And what a lie that was.
Still, it didn’t have to be a mistake, she assured herself. If she was as close as she hoped to a cure, it wasn’t such a risk.
Besides, she’d taken risks before. She’d taken lovers before.
But not a mate, she reminded herself.
She’d wanted him, wanted the taste and feel of him. That most basic and natural of human needs. But what was inside her had wanted him, too. What was in her had wanted to sink fangs into flesh, taste his blood.
Not to feed, that instinct she understood. But to transform. To turn him into what she was, so she was no longer alone.
That she would never allow.
Hurrying now, she went to the basement door, and took the key she wore along with the cross around her neck. She unlocked the door, turned on the lights, then with Amico beside her, locked the door behind her.
Besides its location, the kitchen, the woods, one of the biggest selling points of the house had been its large basement.
She’d bricked up the windows, had installed fluorescent lighting. She used the old shelves, where preserves and cans had once been stored, for supplies.
She’d installed a television, a VCR, a computer, and a work counter to add to the long workbench left there by the previous tenants.
There was a sofa and a cot though she rarely used them. And a large refrigerator used primarily to preserve samples. The freezer was stocked with meat.
A security alarm system warned her when anyone approached the house while she was burrowed in the lab. It rarely happened, but the reassurance was worth the cost.
The floors were concrete, the walls stone, and thick. An old cast iron washtub stood in one corner. A small, efficient laboratory ranged under one of the bricked-in windows.
At the far wall was a cell, eight feet long, six feet wide.
Released, Amico went to his cushy dog bed, circled three times, then settled in for an afternoon nap.
Simone booted up her computer and sat to make some notes. It was important, she told herself, to detail her reaction to Gabe. It was different, and that made it an anomaly. Any change in her condition—physical, emotional, mental—was religiously recorded.
I’m in love! she wanted to write. His name is Gabriel Kirby, and he has beautiful hands and makes jokes. When I kissed him I felt so alive, so human. He has beautiful brown eyes and when they look at me something lights up in my heart.
But she didn’t. Instead she noted down his name, his age, and occupation, added salient details from both their meetings, and termed her feelings for him a strong physical and emotional reaction.
She noted down what she’d eaten that day, and added the time she’d taken her last dose of pills.
She used the washtub and soap of her own making to scrub her hands. All the while she tried to keep her mind a blank, to keep hope in check.
Moving to the counter, she pricked her finger, then smeared two drops of blood on a slide.
She studied it through the microscope and felt a little bump of that restrained hope. There was a change. After nearly a decade of studying her own blood, she couldn’t mistake a change.
She shifted the slide to her computer and began an analysis.
The infection was still present. She didn’t need technology to tell her what she felt, but there was a slight increase of healthy, normal cells.
She brought last week’s sample on screen for a side-to-side study. Yes, yes, there was change, but so little. Not nearly enough after three full months on this formula.
There should be more. She needed more. Maybe increase the dose again. Or adjust the formula itself, increasing the amount of skullcap, or the sarsaparilla. Or both.
She let her head fall back, closed her eyes. Eleven years, and she’d barely begun. Herbs and drugs, experimental serums obtained illegally, and at great cost.
Prayers and charms, medicines and purges. From witchcraft to science, she’d tried everything. And still the change in her blood was so slight it would make no difference when the moon rose full.
It was she who would change, in pain and misery. Locked by her own hand in the cell to hold the monster she’d become. Guarded by the only thing in the world she could trust without reservation.
The dog who loved her.
For three nights she would pace that cell. It would pace—snarling and craving the hunt. A fresh kill. Hot blood.
All the other nights she was a woman, just as caged.
She longed for love, to be touched and held. She craved the connection, craved knowing when she reached out a hand would be there to take hers.
But she had no right, she reminded herself, to long or to crave. No right to love.
She should never have let him into her home. She’d breathed him in, she thought, and had breathed in the vision of what could be if not for that one moment that had ripped her life to pieces.
And now that she had, she was ready to weep and wail because her progress wasn’t enough. She should be rejoicing that there was progress at all.
And she should get to work on making more.
She worked late into the night, stopping only to feed Amico and let him out to run. Locked in her lab, she adjusted her formula. When the pills were ready, she noted the time. Swallowed them.
She shut down her lab, locking the basement door behind her before going out to whistle for Amico.
But first she stood in the dark, under that three-quarter moon.
She could feel its pull, its light, teasing fingers that reached out for her in these last nights before the change.
In the quiet, she could hear the sea throwing itself against the cliffs, and knew if she walked there this close to the change, she would need no light to guide her. Her night vision, always sharp since the attack, grew stronger yet as the moon waxed.
The perfume of the water came to her, salty and cool. She ached, everything about her that was human ached that there was no one beside her, no one to share the quiet and beauty of the night.
She stood alone, whether it was here on the porch, on the cliffs, deep in the woods, she was in a cage. And she had searched for the key for eleven long years.
Why shouldn’t she be allowed to feel love when it came like an arrow in the heart? Why must she be denied the pain and burn and joy of it?
Whatever she was thirty-six days a year, all the other days, all the other nights, she was a woman.
Standing alone, she heard the flight of wings—the hunter—deep in the woods. And the sudden scream—the hunted—as talons pierced flesh.
And on the simple porch of her quiet house, she scented the blood. Fresh and warm.
Could all but taste it.
Chapter 4
“YOU’LL still be a guy,” Gabe assured the cocker-terrier mix as he prepared for surgery. “Balls don’t make the man.”
He imagined if his current patient could talk, the response would be: Yeah? Hand me that scalpel, doc, and let’s try that theory out on you.
“Might seem a little barbaric from your standpoint, but believe me, it’s all for the best.”
He used warm water blankets to offset any chance of hypothermia. The pup was young, barely eight weeks, and there were risks and benefits of neutering this early. Pediatric tissues were friable and needed to be handled very carefully, but the youth of the patient made precise hemostasis easy.
After he’d prepared the field, he made his midline incision.
He worked precisely, his hands deft and practiced. He had Michelle Grant on his surgery CD player, figuring it would soothe the puppy, unconscious or not. He kept an eye on the puppy’s respiration as he operated, then began to close.
“Not so bad, right?” he murmured. “Didn’t take long, and you won’t miss them.”
When he was done, he made notes on his chart and had his surgical assistant prep for the next patient. While a fresh drape and pads were being put into place, and instruments laid out, Gabe stayed with the pup in recovery.
The patient woke quickly, with a little tail wag when he saw Gabe.
“Eileen?” He poked his head out into the waiting room. “Call Frankie’s mom and tell her he came through fine. We’ll keep him here until about noon, then he’s good to go.”
Barring emergencies, Gabe scheduled surgeries from seven to eleven one morning a week. Most of his patients would be ambulatory and able to go home to their family before the end of office hours. Some might need to be monitored.
It wasn’t unusual for him to spend the night after surgery in his office.
At noon, he scarfed up some of the sweet and sour chicken Eileen had ordered for him, eat
ing at his desk while he went over charts and made follow-up calls about patients.
And thought, when he had two minutes to spare, about Simone.
What was there about her? She had a fascinating look. Not really beautiful, certainly not in the classic sense, not with so many angles. At the same time all those points and planes gave her face a sharp and vital look.
He liked the way she looked in jeans and boots and the way her shirt had been frayed at the collar and cuffs. How she smelled like her kitchen, like some strange, secret garden.
Then there was that smile, slow and reluctant to bloom. It made him want to tease it out of her as often as possible.
Whatever it was, when he was around her, he couldn’t take his eyes off her.
She was a little cool, or shy. He hadn’t decided which. Or she had been until she’d planted that blood-thumping kiss on him in her kitchen.
And where had that come from? He pushed back in his chair now, propping the bottom of one foot on the edge, rocking back and forth as he stared up at the ceiling and relived the moment.
One minute it seemed she was on the brink of shooing him out her door, and the next she’s kissing him brainless.
And brainless was exactly the term. His mind had snapped right off, so it had been all heat and sensation, all taste and texture.
She was a loner, a woman—according to his sources—who didn’t make close friends. Did her business, caused no trouble, and kept to herself, with her terrific dog. She owned a business, provided the stock, but she didn’t run the operation. She never, or almost never, mixed with the customers. Details were vague. Where she’d come from no one could say for sure.
She was a mystery tucked into an enigma and surrounded by a puzzle. And that, Gabe admitted, might be some of the attraction on his part. He loved to find things out.
Maybe she was only interested in sex, and would use him, ride him at a gallop until he was quivering with exhaustion.