“How long will each one take?”
“I don’t know. I don’t work that way.”
Still, she persisted. “What kind of tests?”
Focusing on her amazing voice instead of his irritation, he debated how much to tell her. As a socialite whose main concern was no doubt the latest fashion or which party to attend, he didn’t expect her to know much about science. Much? Ha. Change that to anything.
So how many details should he reveal? His research, though complicated, could be simplified, put into layman’s terms that would be easy enough for an average high school student to understand.
But would she even care? Judging from the bored impatience with which she greeted his every statement, he doubted she would. Which meant she only asked in order to annoy him. Fair enough. He refused to give her that much satisfaction.
Instead, he’d give her information.
“We’ll start with your voice. I want to run some sound tests, to check out your pattern of speech. Then I’ll do more blood work and take tissue samples, especially of your hair, skin and even your nails, if you can spare one.”
“My nails?” She sounded surprised rather than offended, interested instead of bored. “I don’t know about that. If I cut one, I have to trim all the others so they’re all the same length. Why do you need them?”
“I’m going to run several tests on your DNA and I want to run the same test on different bodily sources. I’d like to try to isolate the areas where you are different.”
“Different?” She sounded both haughty and … hurt? “There is only one way I’m different. I’m descended from centuries of royalty. My Pack lineage can be traced back to those who made up the first Pack. Beyond that—I’m the same as everyone else.”
Though his research had already turned this information up, hearing the words said out loud made him realize what an incredible opportunity this was. There were very few shifters anymore who could trace their heritage back to the first Pack.
Of course he couldn’t help but wonder if this rare pure blood contributed to her amazing abilities.
And then there was the single anomaly. Both her parents had blond hair and blue eyes, as did her two sisters and one brother. From what he’d read, Alisa was a brunette, with green eyes. Though not common, this was not impossible. Still he had to wonder how her genetic makeup differed from the rest of her family.
“None of your siblings can do what you can do.” He spoke his thoughts out loud.
“No. But still—”
“Then your lineage is irrelevant.”
Her audible gasp made him smile.
“Insulting me isn’t going to help,” she said.
“I wasn’t insulting you. I said irrelevant, not unremarkable. Don’t confuse the two terms.”
After a second, she laughed. “Thank you for clearing that up. By the way, you should do that more often.”
Confused, he cocked his head. “Do what more often? Clear things up for you?”
“No.” She laughed again, the husky sound sending a second shiver through him. “Smile. It becomes you.”
“Oh.” Unsure how to take her words, he returned his attention to fiddling with the microphone, even though his wolf had gone completely and utterly still at the compliment.
Compliment. Hmmph. Pushing away the rush of warmth, he willed himself to concentrate. Nothing but the science and his work mattered. Nothing. Least of all his insane and inappropriate attraction to a spoiled princess.
“Excuse me, Dr. Streib?” Her voice brought him right back to where he didn’t want to be—the present. “You keep zoning out on me while I’m talking. Are you all right?”
“Zoning?” He raised a brow. Sometimes he thought she sounded more like she was from Boulder than he did. “That’s a very American term.”
“True. But then, I went to school with a bunch of American kids.”
“School? You went to an international high school?”
This time her laugh sounded a bit forced. “Not high school. College.”
“You went to college?” He didn’t know why he was so surprised. “Where?”
“California,” she shot back. “And you don’t have to sound so surprised. Many royal families send their children abroad to universities.”
“True, but I thought most of them went to Cambridge or Princeton or Yale.”
“Harvard, MIT, Stanford and John Hopkins were all good schools, but University of California at Berkeley was fifth ranked.”
“In what?”
“Initially, I went for molecular biology.”
“What?” He dropped the microphone. Facing her, he realized his mouth hung open and closed it. “You’re kidding me, right?”
“No.” The smile in her voice spoke volumes. “I’m not kidding. And yes, I graduated. I received both my bachelor’s and my master’s degrees. I have to decide whether to go back in the fall to finish working on my doctorate.”
“In molecular biology?”
She sighed. Loudly. “Yes. Now you see why I wanted explanations about the tests.”
Dumbfounded, he tried to process this information. Obviously, the brief bit of research he’d been given was inadequate. Seriously lacking. He made a mental note to fire that particular research assistant when he got back in the States.
“No offense, Dr. Streib,” she continued, “but time is wasting. We need to move things along here. I do have other duties besides working with you.”
“Call me Braden,” he said without thinking, still feeling a bit foolish.
“Then you can call me Alisa,” she graciously granted. “Now, let’s get started.”
“All right.” He forced himself to focus as she took a seat in his chair. Readying the needle to prick her finger, he considered. Doing such things was difficult while blind, but not completely impossible, as long as he wore gloves and took care not to contaminate the sample. Still, this was too important to take the risk.
“One moment,” he told Alisa, then pressed the button on his console that would summon his assistant.
A moment later, Katya arrived. “Yes, Doctor?”
Explaining what he wanted, he waited while she took the blood samples. When she’d finished, he directed her to place the slides under the multi-faceted microscope for his machine to view and analyze. Though Katya didn’t know, along with Alisa’s were the samples he’d taken of his own blood earlier, for comparison purposes.
Katya did as he directed and pushed the button for the machine to begin to analyze. This process would take several minutes.
“Will there be anything else?” Katya asked.
“That will be it for now,” he told her.
Murmuring something about calling her if he needed her again, Katya left the room, leaving him alone again with Alisa.
As he turned to face her, he braced himself for more questions. He wasn’t wrong.
“Tell me about your work. I’m very curious how you are a neurosurgeon when you cannot see,” she mused. “Or, was that something you only did before the explosion?”
No tiptoeing around for her.