six weeks old, until my teens. After that I lived with a lovely lady named Sue Miller until I finished high school and went off to university at seventeen.”
“Seventeen?” He didn’t hide his surprise. “Isn’t that young for university in Canada?”
“Maybe,” CJ allowed, and then gave up staring at her screen and raised her gaze to him. “Yes, all right, it was young. I took summer courses and even a couple of web courses to graduate early so I could move to campus and start university.”
“Why? To get away from this Mrs. Miller?”
“No. I told you she was lovely and she was. Besides, technically, I was still under Mrs. Miller’s care until I was eighteen.”
“But you no longer lived with her,” he said slowly.
“I visited on weekends about once a month, though,” CJ told him.
“Only once a month?” he asked. “Did you not get along with the other kids?”
CJ wrinkled her nose with irritation at the question. The man was nosy and annoying, but after a couple of moments of his expectant silence, she gave in and said, “I got along fine with the other kids. In fact, I’m still friends with three of them all these years later. I just . . .” She hesitated briefly, and then admitted, “I wanted my independence. I already planned to be a police officer, had researched and found out what I had to do education-wise to become one, and just wanted to get it done with and start my career.”
“Ah.” Mac nodded with an understanding smile. “Once I knew what I wanted to do I was eager to get the education part done and move on to the actual doing as quickly as possible too.”
“You started as a physician and switched to hematology,” she remembered, and then raised her eyebrows. “That’s a jump in profession.”
“Not really,” he assured her. “As a physician I tried to work out what was wrong with patients to heal them. As a hematologist I do the same, but just work more specifically with blood to try to heal people.” He pursed his lips briefly in thought, and then said, “When you think about it, both professions involve a certain amount of detective work too.”
CJ didn’t agree, instead asking, “But why would you switch out to hematology of all things? I mean, blood is . . .” She paused and shuddered as she made a face to show that she found it gross herself.
Mac chuckled at her antics and argued, “Blood is fascinating: the viscosity, shear rate, tissue perfusion. It’s all . . .”
He paused, searching for the right word to describe something when she hadn’t understood much of what he’d already mentioned, and CJ interrupted with, “All right, Dexter, I get the idea. You’re into blood.”
“Dexter?” he asked blankly.
CJ tilted her head and eyed him with disbelief. “Surely you know who Dexter is? The forensic guy who specialized in blood splatter?” When he continued to stare at her blankly, she added, “He was a serial killer on TV?” When that got no response, she tsked with exasperation. “I thought everyone in the world either watched or at least had heard of that show. Although it ended back in 2013 or something, and you were probably ten back then and not allowed to watch it,” she added dryly, her gaze sliding over his facial features. The man had skin as pure as a four-year-old girl’s. The pores were nonexistent. She’d originally thought he was probably around twenty-five, but she was now reassessing that.
“I am much older than I look,” Mac said, sounding a touch irritated. “I have two doctorates, for heaven’s sake. That takes a lot of schooling. Speaking of which,” he added before she could respond. “I need to call Bastien.”
CJ had no idea who Bastien was or what Mac’s doctorates had to do with the man, but waited with interest to see what would follow.
“My phone’s back at the house,” he pointed out when she just stared at him.
“It’s probably ruined, then,” she said mildly.
“Yes,” he agreed unhappily, and then glanced around the room, presumably in search of a landline. But there wasn’t one. She wasn’t at all surprised when he asked, “May I borrow your cell phone?”
The words had barely left his mouth before his eyes dropped to the phone she was already holding out.
“Oh. Thanks.” He accepted it with a smile and then stood and started toward the open double doors to the bedroom of the suite. At the threshold, he paused to explain,