First Love: A Superbundle Boxed Set of Seven New Adult Romances (63 page)

Liz rubbed her temples with her fingers. God, it had been a long night. Jenny was right; she needed some extra sleep. If she continued at the pace she was going, she'd be burned out before getting her graduate degree.

It took another couple of minutes before the cytometer wound down to a complete stop and she was able to start the analysis.

She'd tested for everything. Her heart beating quickly, she clicked through to the results readout on the screen. Her finger moved down the side of the column of numbers. Acidity was normal. Oxygen content was a bit low, probably due to the blood being stored overnight or however long it had been resting in the trash bin. Metal ion content was fine: iron was normal, potassium was normal, all of the trace elements were at normal levels. Blood sugar was normal, cholesterols a bit high. Liz frowned. Maybe Robb had high cholesterol and was monitoring his levels. That made sense.

Her finger clicked to go to the next page, and when she read the first line she stopped and read it again. That couldn't be right. She blinked and looked at the screen.

The white blood cell count was off the charts, and the reading showed a chromosomal transformation.
Abnormal
white blood cells. At a reading ten times the typical concentration of blood. Liz's mouth dropped open. It was the same high concentration of all of the cultures they were studying in the lab. She'd seen these counts before, and she knew what they meant.

Her hand fell away from the cytometer as the air around her seemed to turn blisteringly hot. She struggled to take a breath as her mind grappled with the secret laid bare before her. That was the truth behind his research.

Robert Chatham had blood cancer.

She heard Jenny open the lab door and quickly shut off the screen. She opened the cytometer and took out Robb's vial of blood, shoving it back into her pocket. She bent down and opened a cabinet to rummage through the glassware, breathing slowly to try and calm herself down. Jenny would be able to tell at one glance that something was off with Liz.
Breathe
, she told herself.

"That was fast," she said, her hands pushing aside glassware, her eyes locked down on the rows of test tubes. She hoped her voice wasn't trembling and she took one more breath before standing up. "Was the tea shop open—"

Her words sputtered to a stop as she stood up and saw Robb standing in front of her, just opposite the lab table.

"Good morning," Robb said. "What was that about tea?"

"I—I—" Liz had no idea what to say. Her eyes darted to the cytometer screen, but no, she had turned it off. Thank god.

"I wanted to talk with you," Robb said, his voice as calm as if what had happened last night had never happened.

"About the experiment?" Liz asked. "The second trials are running. Jenny already started them."

"Not about the experiment." Robb came around the lab table, moving slowly but surely. Liz put her hands in her lab pockets. One hand grasped the vial of his blood. His gaze flicked down to that pocket, and she held her breath for an instant.

"What is it?" Liz asked. She tried to sound professional, but she was terrified. More so now that Robb was close to her and her body was again reacting to his presence. He reached out and touched her arm softly. The immediate tingle raced from his touch all the way to her core, and she clenched her jaw.

"Last night," Robb said. "I'd like to talk. I need to explain."

His voice was calm, soothing, and the way he looked into Liz's eyes seemed to put a kind of a spell on her. She could not tear herself away from his touch, even as he stepped closer and began to caress her arm from the shoulder to the elbow, his fingers running lightly over her skin.

Oh, the ache! She wanted him to lean forward and kiss her, and at the same time she wanted to run. His eyes looked at her, as though seeing into her mind, and she twitched anxiously. The vial. His blood. His sickness. How could she work for him after learning his secret?

"There's no need to explain," Liz said, coughing to get the lump out of her throat. "It was a simple misunderstanding."

"I want to apologize for my behavior," Robb said. His hand, oh god, his hand was still moving, now with more pressure, all along her arm. She clutched the vial in her fingers tighter, thankful that she'd scraped off the label.

"You already did," Liz said. "I forgive you. It was all a mistake."

Robb's mouth twitched.

"Please come over tonight. Let me talk with you about all this." His dark eyes had a depth to them that Liz could get lost in. She was falling now, falling headlong into his gaze, falling—

"Oh! Sorry!" Liz looked over Robb's shoulder to see Jenny staring at them both, a cup of tea in each hand. "I got you, um, Liz, I got you a tea. Hi, Mr. Chatham."

"Hello," Robb said, his hand loosening from Liz's elbow and falling to his side. The connection between them was broken, and Liz inhaled sharply, the world finally clearing around her. "I hear you've been doing good work in here."

"Trying to," Jenny said. Her arched eyebrows were a question that Liz did not know how to answer. "We've got the second set of results coming in soon, if you'd like to look at them."

"No need," Robb said, his eyes still tracking Liz. "We were discussing an outside project." His phone began to ring. He pulled it out of his pocket, looked at the screen, and turned it off quickly.

"Oh, sure! Right!" Jenny's voice was overly bright. "I'll just, um, I'll just be setting up for the third run this afternoon then." She walked backwards toward the lab setup, grinning at Jenny. Making quote marks in the air with her fingers, she mouthed the words:
"OUTSIDE PROJECT!
"

Liz closed her eyes, exasperated.

"I can't," she said. "I have to finish these trials. The last setup and run will take eight hours to complete, and we won't be starting until after lunch."

"Jenny, dear," Robb called out across the lab. Jenny poked her head out from behind the shelves. "Would you be able to run the trials this evening so that Liz can come help me with my project?"

"Sure!" Jenny said. "No problem at all." She gave a thumbs up and disappeared again behind the machines.

Liz shook her head.

"I don't—"

"Please," Robb said, and again Liz saw the fear and desperation behind his cool, collected mask. "I need to explain."

Liz's fingertips ran over the glass of the vial in her pocket, and she swallowed.

"Okay," she said, her heart thumping in her chest. "I'll be at your place by seven."

"Thank you," Robb said. His eyes flickered down to her lips, and for a moment Liz thought that he would kiss her. Then he stepped back.

"I'll see you then," he said, turning and walking quickly out. The door swung shut behind him, and Jenny poked her head up to look over at Liz, an expectant grin on her face.

"Don't ask," Liz said.

"You can't come home crying after a date and then have the guy show up the next day begging you to see him again, and then
not tell me anything
!" Jenny crossed her arms. "If you don't tell me, I won't run the cultures for you tonight."

Liz considered this, thinking that it might be better to not show up. Then she thought about the blood test results, and she knew that she couldn't break her promise to Robb. She would reassure him that she wouldn't tell anyone, and that would smooth their relationship. Their
professional
relationship.

Certainly he had been wary of letting her know his secret. He had blood cancer. Liz could only imagine how stressed he was, trying to figure things out by himself in secret.

"Come on!
Pleeeeeease
," Jenny begged.

"I'll tell you after tonight," Liz said. "I'll be home by midnight. If I'm not, call the cops." She smiled, but inside her stomach was fluttering with real anxiety. Robb seemed gentle now, but she remembered how he had been last night. Still, her curiosity burned brightly inside of her, and she longed for someone to talk to who understood her pain. His pain.

As sorry as she was to know the truth, his secret now bound them together.

Chapter Fifteen

Robb straightened his tie again in the mirror. He didn't know why he was so nervous. Surely it couldn't be the girl.

"First things first," Robb said to his reflection. "Get her to like you. Get her to trust you. Get her in bed. This is easy."

His stomach twisted in knots and he stretched his arms above his head to relieve some of his anxiety. Anxiety which had built up inside him for no good reason. The notches on his bedpost, if he kept them, would have whittled down the entire bedframe to sawdust.

Liz, though—Liz was different. She was intelligent, but more than that, she was guarded. So guarded, in fact, that he did not know if he would be able to break down whatever defenses she'd put up to keep him out. He shouldn't have attacked her in the first place, he knew. Stupid of him.

He leaned forward and brushed his hair back with one hand, then decided to part it on the other side. No, the first way was better.

A knock on the door made him jump before he recognized the voice coming through the door.

"I'm here to see about a mad scientist!" The voice was muffled, but the friendliness came through.

"Come in, Doctor," he called. "The door's unlocked." He adjusted his tie one last time before walking out to greet his visitor. Few people knew the code to enter his building, and Dr. Vasin was one of them.

The doctor came in the front door, stooped over his cane, and Robb was surprised, not for the first time, to see how much the doctor had aged.

"You're looking at my hair," Vasin said, running his hand through the gray mane. "It's true, I'm old as hell."

"I didn't say that."

"You're looking good, though," the doctor said, squinting through his spectacles at Robb. "Maybe too good. When was the last time you let yourself age?"

"It's been a while," Robb admitted.

"You're supposed to be thirty-five," Vasin said, tossing his cane onto the couch along with his black leather medical bag. "Stop being so vain. Let yourself go."

"Easy for you to say," Robb said. "You don't have a choice."

"I'm in good shape for seventy," Vasin said, coughing into his hand. "You'd be surprised how I have to beat the ladies off with a stick."

"They just want your medical advice," Robb teased. "A doctor in-house."

"Ha! Don't I know it. I had one lady spend the night, and in the morning she came back to bed from the bathroom and told me all of the details of her bowel movement."

"Lovely."

"I wasn't as titillated by the description of her stool as she'd have liked me to be," Vasin continued. "Perhaps I'm just cut out for the bachelor life."

"Good that you've figured that out now," Robb said, laughing.

"After two divorces, I'm finished," Vasin said. He rummaged through the black leather bag. "Alright, let's get this out of the way. Off with your shirt."

"I just finished knotting my tie!" Robb said. "Beside, I only wanted to talk with you about a friend."

"We can talk friends over the phone," Vasin said. "But you're overdue for a physical anyway, and I have some more tests I'd like to run on your blood."

Robb sighed but loosened his tie. Vasin was as unemotional as a brick wall, and just as stubborn.

"We can't talk about this friend over the phone," Robb said, unbuttoning his shirt and stripping down to his bare chest.

"Oh? Why not?" Vasin asked. He pulled out a set of vials from his bag and ripped open the paper package, revealing a needle.

"Is that needle bigger than the one you used to use?" Robb said, as the doctor leaned forward and wiped the inside of his elbow with a sterile alcohol pad. "It looks bigger."

"You're just more of a coward than you used to be," Vasin said dryly.

"I hate needles," Robb muttered, but held out his arm.

"Most people hate the sight of blood," Vasin said. "You're going to feel a pinch now."

Robb grimaced. The needles were always bigger with Vasin. He used glass syringes instead of the modern plastic ones on Robb, after Robb's blood had reacted poorly with the plastic. The metal needle tips, too, were large enough that they almost fit the entire vein. Vasin insisted that Robb's cells would try to heal around the needle tip unless it had a large enough diameter, but Robb thought that he was simply a sadist.

"How many vials?" he asked.

"Five," Vasin said, capping the first glass vial expertly with one hand and switching another empty one out. "You may need to feed afterward. Not on me!" He chuckled at the same joke he'd made every time he came to visit Robb.

"Your blood is poison, anyway," Robb said.

"Ah, yes. Too old," Vasin said. "It expired a few years back."

"I can smell it through your skin," Robb said, a half-grin on his face.

"And?"

"Definitely gone sour. It smells like rancid butter."

"Not all of us have blood as sweet as yours," Vasin said.

"All it takes is a bite," Robb said.

"You've told me that before.”

“And?”

“Before, I said no. Now that death is coming for me, I must say that your offer tempts me more than it used to."

Robb could feel his blood cells rushing to the needle where it had pierced his skin. After just a few seconds, the itching was unbearable. His body wanted desperately to heal.

"Just a little longer," Vasin said, as Robb fidgeted in his chair.

"You wouldn't want to live forever," Robb said.

"No," Vasin said. "No, I suppose not." His gray, bushy eyebrows pinched together on his spotted forehead.

It wasn't the needle, not even the itching, that made Robb fidget. It was the hunger that Vasin predicted coming on. That was a side effect he'd forgotten—that after he gave blood, he would need to feed on something. He had a few packs of blood in his lab, but nothing fresh, and he would be weak until he was able to replenish himself.

"My friend," Robb said, trying to take his mind off of the ache growing inside of his body.

"Ah, yes, yes. Your friend. Right. I forgot the reason you asked me to come."