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tell you the truth, no.”

      “No?” she said with a small laugh, surprised by his answer.

      “It was the science I loved. I went into medicine planning to do research, not work with patients.”

      “How did you end up with patients, then?”

      “I didn’t at first. I finished medical school and spent a year in research—like your year defending evildoers rather than putting them away,” he said with another of those half smiles she was a little afraid she could get hooked on.

      “And you didn’t like it as much as you thought you would?” she asked, to urge him on.

      “I liked it all right. It was just that during that year I discovered that impregnating mice and rats, and making charts and lists of statistics to write papers from got tedious day after day. I wanted to continue some of the research—like this study in alternative medicine—but I wanted to do it in the real world, with people.”

      “Where you could see genuine results and not just compile data and end up with paperwork as your final product,” Ella guessed.

      “Exactly.”

      “And has it been better for you? Have you enjoyed working with people more than working with rats and mice?”

      This time she got a full smile and it doubled the effect. “Don’t sound as if you can hardly believe it,” he said.

      “Did I?” Ella asked, because she honestly hadn’t thought it had come out that way.

      He only answered her previous question. “Yes, it’s been better for me to work with people. I think I’ve done some good for a lot of them, and if I had spent the last few years in research I’d probably still be doing the same project I started when I graduated from med school.”

      “I know that from what I’ve heard and read about you, you’ve definitely done some good for a lot of people,” Ella confirmed. “That’s why I came to see you.”

      That seemed to remind him of something—maybe that this wasn’t a social occasion or that their being together was a professional association—because his smile dissolved, he sat up straighter, and took another look at his watch.

      “I’d better get going or I’ll be late for this meeting,” he said.

      Despite the fact that a certain amount of formality had reappeared in him, Ella thought his tone was tinged with what almost sounded like regret to put an end to this.

      Still, they both stood and gathered the papers and remnants of their dinners, depositing it all in the trash before leaving the hole-in-the-wall restaurant.

      “I appreciate you taking the time to do this for me tonight,” Ella said as they headed back up the street. “And dinner was good, too.”

      That addition made him smile another more-reserved smile, which she caught out of the corner of her eye. “I don’t think a hot dog and a bottle of water count as dinner. Don’t tell Kim Schwartz that’s what I fed you or she’ll think I’m sabotaging the study. She’s all about balanced everything—a balanced life, a balanced diet, a balanced body.”

      “She’ll probably see it in my tongue on Monday night whether I tell her or not,” Ella joked, eliciting a slight chuckle from the imposing doctor and feeling far too pleased with herself that she’d accomplished it.

      As they neared his town house and the building directly across from it where his office was, he pointed his chin in the direction of the office building and said, “I can never find a spot to park in front of my place so I use the office lot. Is that where your car is?”

      “It is,” Ella confirmed.

      They crossed the street together and went into the lot where few other cars kept company with the silver Porsche he said was his and the more economical, compact sedan she pointed out as hers.

      “I’ll walk you to your car,” he said, following her to it and waiting for her to unlock the driver’s side door.

      “Thanks again for the orientation dinner,” Ella said, looking up at him from over her open door.

      “I’ll see you Tuesday night.”

      “I’ll be there,” she assured him.

      For a moment he just went on standing there, those intense eyes of his staying on her the way they might have had this been the conclusion of a date he didn’t particularly want to end.

      But then he took a step backward and said, “Drive safely.”

      “You, too.”

      He raised his chin to acknowledge that and pivoted on his heels to head for the Porsche.

      And as Ella got behind the wheel of her own car and closed the door, she suddenly began to wonder what it might have been like if this had been the end of a date. Would he have tried to kiss her?

      Kiss her?

      Jacob Weber?

      That was just too weird to even think about, she told herself as she started the engine.

      Too, too weird…

      But weird or not, she still couldn’t get the idea out of her mind the whole way home.

      She also couldn’t get out of her mind the lingering and purely baseless thought that it just might have been nice if he had kissed her.

       Chapter Four

       “N ow you’re going to let them turn you into a pincushion?”

      Ella laughed at her sister, Sara’s, comment in regards to her announcement that she was about to begin acupuncture treatment for infertility. “Yes, I guess I am,” she confirmed.

      It was Tuesday and Ella had taken the afternoon off to shop with Sara and Sara’s about-to-be-three-year-old daughter, Janey, for Janey’s birthday party on Friday night. After buying balloons and streamers and other decorations in the princess theme Janey had chosen, they were at Janey’s favorite playground. While Janey climbed on a giant plastic replica of a hamburger, Ella and Sara sat on a bench close by, having mocha lattes.

      “It won’t only be acupuncture, though.” Ella continued to explain her next plan of attack in her attempt to conquer her childlessness. “I met with Dr. Schwartz last night and I’m also taking herbs—a powder form specially blended for me that I mix in water to drink. Plus she’ll be teaching us meditation and relaxation techniques and some acupressure, and there’s even some therapeutic massage that sounds kind of nice.”

      “But needles, El, needles,” Sara persisted.

      “Don’t sound so horrified. It isn’t as if she’s going to poke my eyes out with them or anything. Kim—she’s the doctor—showed them to us and they’re very, very thin needles, about the width of a hair. They don’t go in all that far, either.”

      “But they do go in. Into your skin.”

      “I’m sure it’ll be okay. Acupuncture has been around for centuries—longer than Western medicine. A gazillion people have survived it and I think I will, too.”

      “I just don’t see how that’s going to help you get pregnant.” Sara added skepticism to her distaste of the idea of the needles.

      “It may not. It’s an experimental study. That means we’re trying something new to see what happens. But one way or another it’s harmless. The goal is sort of to reset my body so everything is working the way it should be, to put me at optimal speed so that maybe, when JacobWeber does in vitro on me again afterward, it will actually take.”

      “But is it worth it?”

      Ella looked over at Janey just as her niece stood tall atop one end of a make-believe stack of toast and leaped off as if it were the accomplishment of a lifetime, laughing

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