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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.
    He thought he could probably live with that.
    Grinning, he went out to take his afternoon appointments. And underlined his mental note to buy wine and flowers before heading out of town.
    Â 
    S HE wasn’t thinking about him. Her mind was too occupied to make room for dinner plans with a man. Her latest blood analysis showed no improvement. The virus was still viable, still thriving in fact. It simply mutated to adjust to the invasion of the serum.
    She’d succeeded in stimulating the B cell, and she knew from previous tests the cell divisions had begun. But they hadn’t continued, not long enough for the plasma cells to secrete sufficient antibodies to bind to the bacteria.
    The infection was still there, raging.
    She’d seen this before. Too many times before. But this time she’d been so hopeful. This time she’d been so sure she’d been on the edge of a breakthrough.
    She’d done another DNA test and was even now carefully studying the results. It made her head ache. Lab workdepressed her, though it was almost second nature to her now. She considered, as she had before, selling her business, relocating yet again. And taking a job as a lab tech. She’d have access to more sophisticated equipment that way, more resources, more current information.
    The reconditioned electron microscope had cost her thousands. A top-level lab would have new equipment. Better equipment.
    But there would be questions she couldn’t answer, physical exams she couldn’t take. Day-to-day contact with others she wasn’t sure she could stand. She’d been through all that before, too, and it was much, much worse than being alone.
    To be with people, watching them go about the blessed normality of their lives and not be a part of who and what they were was the most damning aspect of her condition.
    She could handle the pain, she could handle the violence that ripped through her three nights every month. But she couldn’t stand the lonely unless she was alone.
    She’d promised herself years before, when she’d understood and accepted what had happened to her that she’d find a way to a cure. That she’d be normal again before her thirtieth birthday.
    Thirty, she thought with a tired sigh, seemed a lifetime away at eighteen.
    Now she was nearly there, and the infection still brewed inside her.
    And she was still alone.
    No point in whining, she reminded herself. She’d only just begun to try the new formula. There was still time before the full moon. Still time for the serum to work.
    â€œPut it aside, Simone,” she told herself. “Put it aside for a few hours and think normal. Without some normal, you’ll go crazy.”
    Think about dinner, she decided as she went