Page 25 of Conner's Luna

"OK, thank you," I say, a little breathlessly. I'm eager to start.

I don't have to buzz myself in. As soon as I reach the main doors, they burst open and a younger-looking man greets me with a large smile. "You must be Bailey? I'm Dr. Gregor."

"Hi," I smile, shaking his hand. His grip isn't the best, a little on the weak side, and he's only a few inches taller than I am. Still, despite his smaller stature, he bounces with energy and seems to be teeming with life.

"You can call me Mark. It's so nice to have you starting today. We need all of the help we can get. It's crazy-busy right now. We have two major projects underway in the mole lab and another that is in the planning stages."

Mark continues to ramble on as he shows me the building. I hang my coat up in the workroom where the refrigerator hums. He takes me to see all of the mundane areas first, then, finally, the mole lab.

I suck in a breath. The outside of the building is fairly nondescript, just a metal and concrete box with very few windows, but the molecular genetics laboratory is state-of-the-art. In a glance, I fall in love. White, clean, sterile walls and floors are broken only by dark blue lab tables carefully arranged in a large "U" shape. Each table holds an array of equipment and materials, all organized and carefully labeled. My fingers start to twitch as I look over the large screens dotting the room, showing all of the results from the various testing happening. It's beautiful.

Mark shows me a fairly empty table with only a computer with one of the flatscreens, a microscope, and a clean, unused lab vial set. "This will be your station. Basically, you'll be sorting and cataloging results of genome profiling on various samples and looking for anomalies. One of the team has already poured through them, you're a second, or sometimes third, set of eyes."

"Fun," I squeak (and I mean it). It takes all of the willpower I have to not completely geek-out and start thanking Mark for allowing me the opportunity to touch the DNA results.

Mark laughs. "You'll fit in here great, Bailey. Dr. Honekier isn't here right now. You'll meet him on Wednesday. He doesn't often come in on Saturdays."

"OK. Should I start now?" I ask him, fingers twitching away like Christian Grey with a whip and a naked lady. Or was that his palms? Oh, whatever. I only read the first book, anyway.

Mark laughs again. "Sure. You can start with this program file. Everything in here has already been cataloged, as I said. Just play around with the program until you feel comfortable, then you can flag anything interesting you come across. You can use... I guess you're stuck with pink flags. Note anything of importance and flag anything that is incorrect with the red. Don't be worried about re-flagging something someone else already has. The more flags the better."

Smiling broadly, I dive into the program. A couple of minutes later, I feel the thrill of discovery rush through me when I notice the statistical anomaly in one of the protein codes. It's already flagged, but I get to add my own little pink flag, too. Bailey was here.

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Conner

Bailey is carrying a large coffee and wrapped in a thick sweatshirt that is about four sizes too large for her with MIT printed on the front. Her hair tumbles freely around her shoulders in a mass of golden-brown corkscrews. Her mascara has smudged a little under her eyes.

I feel my wolf snarl furiously in my head as soon as we catch our first glimpse of our new friend.

She looks well-fucked.

The first thing I do when I approach her is inhale deeply. The red rage fades as soon as her sweet scent hits me. Honeysuckle, clean and pure. I look closer at her, the glasses sitting just slightly askew over her tired eyes. Tension melts from my shoulder and my wolf settles his ass down. The mascara smudges are dark circles, and her hair is clean, just not thrown up in her typical bun.

She's just sleepy.

I smile slowly, "Morning, babe. Rough night?"

Slumberous hazel eyes blink at me behind her glasses. The keen intelligence I'm used to seeing is muted this morning. "Good morning, Conner," she replies out of habit. Awareness comes slowly, but it hits her as she glances around the empty classroom. "Why are you here?" she looks back at me, baffled.

I ignore her question because I need an answer to my own, first. "Long night?" I repeat.

Her eyes sharpen and narrow on my face. "I was working late," she offers. "Why are you here?"

"Came to see you," I shoot back.

A reluctant smile curls her lips. "OK. I thought maybe you just missed taking statistics," she teases me without skipping a beat. I guess she's awake now.

Bailey shuffles past me with her coffee mug held to her lips and heads for a seat in the front corner. I stop her by snagging her bag and gently tugging her up toward the back of the stadium-style seating.

"Hey!" she hisses, holding her coffee tightly to prevent spills. Her rapt focus on the to-go cup makes it easy to move her along. I smirk and pull her up until we are at the back of the classroom, in the center. I sit and tug her down next to me. The seats are arranged as two-people per workstation; a stupid design, if you ask me, but convenient for making a statement.

Bailey sits but tosses me a glare as she does. "Why are you really here?"

"I miss stats," I reply, still smirking.

Bailey rolls her eyes so hard I think I may have broken her. I snicker at her pouting face while she unpacks her notebook and textbook and arranges three different-colored highlighter pens and two blue pens on her desk.

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