Part 39 (2/2)

”Give me the address. I could use a little support myself. I got tlhreatened today, I think, by somebody who would like to crush me like a bug. And easily could. I'll spare you the ironies, but you and I may have more in common than you think. My interest in the Gerex Corporation has just gotten extremely personal.”

After she hung up, she felt energized and she decided to give Jennifer a call after all. In truth, she wanted to tell her about Stone and to get her take on whether seeing him was a good idea. Aren't these second-time-around things always doomed?

”Hi, Jen. I'm home and I'm making all kinds of fateful decisions.”

”So what happened? Are you going to be a guinea pig for that clinic?”

”Is that what you think it amounts to?” She couldn't tell how serious Jennifer intended to be. ”I'm still debating it Mom loved the place.”

”Well, good. Good for her. But you're still not sure about you?”

”I'm leaning . . .” She paused. ”Jen, somebody I used to see in college is on his way down here right now. He's a medical reporter, but the truth is, I don't know why I asked him.”

”I guess if I were your shrink, I'd ask, 'How do you feel about that?'”

”If I knew the answer to that, I wouldn't need you to be a one-woman support group.” She bit her lip. ”He's doing a book about stem cell procedures. So in a way it's a lucky break that he appeared exactly when he did.”

”Yeah, Ally, if you ask me, it sounds like it was a lucky break in more than one way. An old flame reappearing can be a positive sign. It's high time something happened in your life.”

You 're tighter than you know, she thought. I'm ready for this, whether I admit it to myself or not. But is there going to be any chemistry when we actually see each other? There used to be a lot.

The embarra.s.sing thing was, her first thought was to wonder if he was still terrific in bed. She remembered thinking he was very adroit back then, but back then she didn't have much experience to compare him with. Mainly, thinking about him now made her painfully aware she was overdue for some closeness.

_Tuesday, April 7

10:22 PM.

_What's she going to think of me? Stone wondered as he knocked gently on the door. She'd buzzed him up from the lobby without a word.

More to the point, he thought, what am I going to say if she wants an opinion about whether she should undergo the procedure or not? So far, the only evidence I have that the clinical trials are working is circ.u.mstantial, the patients who've been through the sequence and discharged. So how can I, in good faith, advise her one way or the other?

But, he then concluded, I'm getting way ahead of myself. She may take one look at me and decide she was right to dump me the first time.

Nice building, though. Housing for grown-ups, not like the one-bedroom starter setup I've been reduced to.

He knocked--he always hated the idea of ringing a bell on an apartment door--and a second later, it opened.

Alexa Hampton and Stone Aimes just stood awkwardly for a moment and stared, taking each other in. Finally...

”You look... great.” They both said it simultaneously, and that served to make the moment even more awkward.

”Well,” he said finally, into the silence, ”you do.” And he meant it.

There was, however, a lot of strain on her face, in her eyes. The mark the years had left seemed more psychic than physical.

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