Chapter 13

After answering a couple of student questions and deleting a handful of "irresistible" offers from e-companies, Lori moved on to more interesting things. She scanned the sketch she'd made and sent the picture to her old mentor at Michigan State. If Dr. Wirtz couldn't identify the pattern, probably nobody in the United States would be able to do so. Then she closed out her mail and looked up a couple of herpetological web sites. There were some close-ups of various monitor species, but none of them seemed to have the pattern she was looking for. She glowered at the screen while gnawing on the cap of a pen. What the hell was it?

Lost in her thoughts, Lori never heard her door open wider, or the sound of sneakered feet creeping up behind her. When a pair of warm hands covered her eyes from behind, she shrieked and nearly fell out of her chair.

She turned, sputtering, to face her assailant and was greeted by the sound of rich feminine laughter.

"God, you're so easy to terrorize." The willowy blonde who now sat perched on the countertop next to Q, laughed. "You're so intense when you work that I doubt you'd notice an earthquake."

Lori grinned and smothered a chuckle as she smoothed her hair back. "Bitch. Couldn't you knock, or maybe just say hello?"

The blonde shook her head, sending cascades of thick wavy hair swirling about her shoulders and waist. "Nah. That wouldn't be any fun at all."

Lori smirked. "Probably not," she admitted. "What do you want, Wes? I'm supposed to be working."

Dr. Wesley Iversen crossed her arms over her impressive bosom and glared at Lori. "No, you're not. It's Saturday and you need to get out. So shut the computer down and let's go. I'll even buy dinner."

"I can't, Wes," Lori argued amicably. It was an ongoing battle, but this time Wes wasn't going to win. Going out on the town with Wesley was always fun, if a little hard on the ego. Her outgoing personality and stunning Nordic appearance attracted men in droves and sometimes they even had friends who politely paid attention to Lori. Somehow, though, that didn't sound appealing at all tonight. In fact, Lori was almost sure there was something else she was supposed to be doing. "Not tonight. I've got tons of work to do. Go away."

"You work too much," Wesley argued. "Time to chill out, relax a little. You'll get your tenure. Face it, with the overabundance of stodgy white males in this department, they can't afford to lose one of their few young females." She paused dramatically, then went on. "Trust me, I've been listening to the conversations. The old boys, with the possible exception of our esteemed department chair, desperately want to keep you. Your tenure is not in any danger. Now let's go get you changed into something a little more interesting, then we'll drive to Ann Arbor and have a good time. We can crash at my sister's place so we don't have to drive home after the bars close."

Great. She'd be going out with not only Wes, but with Wes's equally gorgeous, redheaded sister Wendy, as well. Wait a minute! Something was still nagging at Lori's brain. Something she was supposed to do tonight. Oh, crap! Her eyes widened, probably to the size of saucers. Wesley must have noticed because she paused mid-diatribe.

"I can't go out tonight!" Lori gulped. "I've got a date!"

Wes's bright blue eyes goggled and she wobbled on her perch. "Really? With whom?" Whom. Perfect grammar, as usual. As far as Lori could tell, Wes was the ultimate proof that life wasn't fair. Anyone who looked as much like a Norse goddess as Wesley did should have, by all rights, been a brainless twit, or at the very least, a stuck-up bitch. Instead, Dr. Iversen was a certifiable genius, with three bachelors' degrees, two masters' and a doctorate in animal genetics from Johns Hopkins. When Lori had first arrived at SMU and met Wes, she'd expected to despise the brilliant beauty, but somewhere along the way she'd discovered that for all her looks and brains, Wes was unpretentious, fun and had a truly wicked sense of humor, much like Lori's own. Over the last few years the two women had become close friends.

"Eric Gordon," Lori answered. "From the Computer Science Department."

"Lori!" Wes scolded. "What am I going to do with you? A computer geek? You can do better than that."

Lori felt the instinctive need to jump to Eric's defense. "He's not a geek. He's nice!"

Wes snorted. "Nice is for puppies. Nice is not what you look for on a date for Saturday night. Is he hot?"

Lori flushed and looked away.

Wes raised one eyebrow in a speculative gaze. "Really?" she drawled, her interest apparently aroused. "What does he look like? Skinny, glasses, pocket protector?"

"Slim, not skinny," Lori contradicted. "He's actually pretty muscular, like he works out or something." Wes narrowed her baby blues a little but didn't speak, so Lori went on. "He's tall, maybe six two or three, it's hard for me to tell." Being only five foot one made it difficult to judge the height of normal people. Everybody was tall compared to Lori. "My head doesn't quite reach his shoulder. Sandy hair, a little long in back and the prettiest green eyes I've ever seen." She grinned. "And, yes, he does wear glasses, but no pocket protector."

Her friend appeared to weigh the possibilities, then nodded in reluctant approval. "Any good in bed?"

Lori's pale skin turned an even brighter shade of scarlet. "How should I know? It's our first date." She tried to stop there, but she just couldn't. She had to talk to somebody about her meeting with Eric the night before. "But if he does that anywhere near as well as he kisses, it's amazing that some woman hasn't got him chained to a bed somewhere."