I peered through the lens of the microscope and jotted down my findings on my notepad. Some of the other doctors liked to dictate their notes, but I’d never liked the sound of my own voice. Besides, it was a lot quicker to use the shorthand I created in college to take my own notes this way. My handwriting sucked, but I typed out my own notes, so no one complained about them.

“I finished transcribing your notes.”

I jerked my head up. Addison had been here for five days now, and I still sometimes forgot she was here.

Except that wasn’t entirely accurate. While my mind might’ve been focused on my work, some part of me was always aware of her presence. When she wasn’t anxious she was quiet, which meant she could – and often did – show up at my side, startling me in the process.

I frowned, what she’d said finally registering. “What was that?”

She gave me a sheepish smile that I was starting to understand meant that she’d taken a bit of liberty with the freedom I gave her, but now she wasn’t so sure whatever it was she’d done wouldn’t get her into trouble.

“I finished transcribing your notes from this week,” she repeated, her eyes darting around, landing on everything except me.

I turned around until I was facing her and crossed my arms, more curious than annoyed. Part of her contract included a non-disclosure agreement regarding anything she might see or hear during her internship, so I didn’t need to worry about that.

“How did you do that?” I asked, studying her closely. “I created my own shorthand in college. No one else uses it because I’ve never told anyone else how to read it.”

She reached up and tugged at a curl. “I might’ve cracked your code.”

Now, I was intrigued. I stood up, grimacing at how stiff my legs were. I really should get up and stretch more often. “How did you manage that? I don’t have a cipher written out anywhere.”

She shuffled her feet, clasped her hands behind her back, and flicked a quick glance up at me.

Fuck.

She looked so submissive just then. Her posture, the way she dipped her head. All of it screamed at me to step into her personal space, to push back those sunset-curls, and tell her to tip her head back…

“I remember everything I see,” she explained. “It can make my head really crowded. When I was a kid, I created my own sort of mental shorthand. Like compressing files on a computer. I can access them, when they aren’t all pushing to the front.”

“Interesting, but I don’t understand how that translates into you figuring out in a week how to read something that I spent six months developing.”

“In an interview with Science Today, you mentioned your shorthand,” she continued. “And there was a picture of something you’d written during the interview. When I was straightening your desk on Monday, I saw a few pages of your handwritten notes. On Tuesday, you had one of the transcribed files pulled up on your computer, and I saw it when I came up to ask you something. Once I had that in my head, connecting the dots wasn’t difficult.”

I crossed the space between us until barely a foot remained. “I knew you were brilliant from the first moment you started speaking, but this is beyond anything I could have predicted.”

Her cheeks flushed, and I knew I’d embarrassed her. She deserved the compliment though. I’d done well academically, augmenting natural intelligence with hard work, but I didn’t have a mind like hers.

“It was all your work,” she said. “I mean, all I did was crack the code. You actually created it.”

I reached out and hooked a finger under her chin, raising her face until she looked directly at me. “Don’t sell yourself short.”

The moment held, froze…and then shattered.

I dropped my hand and took a step back. What was it about this young woman that made me not only enjoy spending time in her presence but wanting to touch her? Innocent touches, like a brush of my fingers across her cheek, or putting my hand on her arm. I’d never been the sort of person who sought out physical contact, but with her, it was a fight to keep my hands to myself.

I didn’t want to have sex with her. That would be far too cliché. The doctor sleeping with his intern. Even if it hadn’t been cliché, I couldn’t do it. She was even younger than I originally thought. Most people working on their doctorate were in their mid-twenties, but this child prodigy was only twenty-two. A college senior when she was just sixteen, she completed her graduate degree in only eighteen months before plowing through her doctoral program in near record time.

Twenty-two. Damn.

Too young for me.

Even though I knew there were plenty of couples with that age gap or more.

Not that I was looking to be part of a couple.

Shit.

I turned away, shuffling things on my table even though I had no real need. My thoughts had simply taken a train of thought too far. It happened sometimes. I’d be thinking about the way an epidemic spread, and instead of mentally picturing a week of an exponential spread, I’d have the whole mathematical equation worked out until the entire country was infected.

I’d learned to rein in those trails that served only to distract me. I could do the same now with my thoughts about Addison. Because that’s all they were, a distraction from the real work here.

“Are you getting settled in?” I asked, the question practically bursting out of me.

“I am.” Her voice was nice and even, like she hadn’t noticed anything odd about my behavior. “My roommate is great. I’ll admit, I was nervous about living with someone I’d never met, but we get along really well.”

“How are your parents adjusting to your move?”

Why did I keep asking her personal questions? They weren’t overtly personal, I knew, but they weren’t helping my mind pack away the distractions. I should’ve stuck with discussions about viruses and anti-virals and cluster outbreaks.

Still, I waited for her answer, more curious than I wanted to admit.

“Well, I haven’t spoken to my dad in a year, and before that, there’d only been calls on Christmas and birthdays, if he remembered.”

I glanced over at her, but she was checking a few cultures I had growing.

“My mom didn’t want me to leave, of course, but I think part of it was that she didn’t want to lose her free babysitter.” She said the words without rancor, but I heard a trace of sadness beneath them.

I turned around, then told myself that I didn’t need to comfort her. I shouldn’t comfort her. I was her supervisor, not her friend. Certainly not anything else.

“Sorry,” she said, giving me a grim smile. “I love my family, but I don’t always like them very much.”

The admission made me chuckle.

She gave me a questioning look. “That’s funny?”

“It is. Trust me, if you met my brothers, you’d be laughing too.”

“Why’s that?”

Now, she was the one asking personal questions. I needed to put a stop to this.

“I have three of them,” I said, avoiding her question. “One older, and two younger.”

“Do they still live in Boston?”

I raised an eyebrow.

She tapped her temple with her index finger. “Eidetic memory, remember? There’s more than one article about you where it’s mentioned that you grew up in Boston.”

“My older brother, Jax, does. Slade lives in Texas, and Blake lives in Wyoming.”

“Is it hard, being away from them?” she asked. “My sisters and brothers could be a pain in my ass, but I love them, you know?”

“My brothers and I…we get along better the farther we are apart.”

She came over to stand near me, her head cocked to one side like she was trying to figure me out. “When was the last time you saw them?”

“Last week,” I said, my jaw tightening at the memory. “Our grandfather died.”

She reached out this time and put her hand on my arm. “I’m so sorry. I remember reading that he’d raised you after your parents passed.”

“He did.” I didn’t shake off her hand even though the logical part of my brain told me to shut this down. Now.

She squeezed my arm. “It’s never easy to lose someone.”

I nodded but didn’t say anything else. I didn’t like this, talking about my family, about my feelings. I couldn’t think straight when things were like this. I needed to take control again, get things back to the way they had been. I’d barely spoken to Grandfather in three years. The fact that he was no longer here for me to call or visit shouldn’t have bothered me. He’d been no part of my life here in Atlanta, so now that I was back, things should’ve been able to go back to normal.

Except, now, as I looked at the concern on Addison’s face, I began to wonder if my life would ever be normal again.