now, maybe. But I’m hoping to change that again, Grace. I think you enjoyed the other night as much as I did.”
“The sexy part, yes,” she agreed, smiling at him. “But you hated the rest even more than I did. Anyway, it’s been nice eating with you again. See you tomorrow.”
Ignoring her regret, she left to return to her apartment.
To Grace’s surprise, Drew Connell did call her back that night. “How’s Melanie?” she asked right away.
“We’re now the proud parents of a beautiful little girl. Emily. She’s bound to be a shifter like her dad, and her mom says she’s thrilled about it.”
“Congratulations to all of you!”
“Now tell me what you wanted to discuss.”
It seemed a little anticlimactic after his news, but Grace told him about Tilly and her possible scenting of illness in a patient.
“Did you try to confirm it with your own senses, Grace?” Drew’s voice was wry.
“Yes, and she was right. I smelled a scent of illness, too, when I approached the man. It’s interesting how many smells there are in a hospital setting—cleaners, the meds and narcotics used by the PTSD patients, the odor of the shigellosis epidemic…”
“You were warned to control your canine senses as much as possible there, Grace. Those of us who’re doctors mostly work in small practices, or in labs like we do at Alpha Force. The additional smells and sounds can be pretty overwhelming if you let them.”
“I know. But I’m still a doctor as well as an Alpha Force operative. I intend to help people.”
“That’s fine, as long as you don’t do it at the expense of our mission—or yourself.”
A long while after dinner with Grace, Simon returned downstairs to the lab he had virtually commandeered as his own—not that anyone had officially approved of it. Or even really knew about it.
When there earlier that evening, he had hidden the pills he was working on, as always, more or less in plain sight. Now, he unlocked the deep drawer among the many cabinets in this room that comprised its elongated lab stations. Wearing disposable latex gloves and a sanitary lab jacket, he pulled the bottles containing his special pills from among the preparations he did discuss with others—the homeopathic healing formulations he was working on to help his infectious-disease patients regain their strength.
His shifting formula had worked well that evening, but not perfectly. As usual, he had felt light-headed after changing back to human form. Consequently, he still hadn’t reached the degree of success he sought, and with all that had occurred on the night of his last shift he had not had much opportunity to return here and work on it.
Maybe he should thank Grace for declining his invitation for another night of nonstop sex. He snorted to himself. No, thanking her for that wasn’t on his agenda. No matter how eager he was to get his pills to work perfectly, a delay to accommodate making love with Grace would be worth it.
The smell here of antiseptic solutions used to clean the counters frequently, as well as the gleaming gray-patterned linoleum floor, was nearly overwhelming, as always. He figured that even people without an improved sense of smell would find it miserable. But he accepted its necessity.
Now Simon booted up the mini notebook computer he had brought along and typed in his password. The way he entered data about his supplements and other creations, no one but he could interpret them anyway, but he took no chances. He had already determined what tweaks he would perform to his shifting formulation but wanted to double-check it before he gave it a try.
What would Grace think if she knew what he was really doing here?
Why had she stopped teasing him about whether he could be a werewolf? Had she been serious the other day in her extreme hinting that she now knew he was one?
He hoped not. He might be damned attracted to her, but her knowing for certain what he was could only cause a lot of complications.
He suddenly stopped typing as some of what Grace had said before carved a curious thought into his brain, one that nagged at him. She had indicated that Tilly, trained as a service dog to entertain hospital patients, might have smelled something more serious in an accident patient. She had suggested that certain people might have the same abilities. Was this a prod at him, more subtle than in the old days, suggesting that shapeshifters might have that ability?
Simon did, in fact, often