As Ally was reaching for a pen, a petite blond woman with a smashing figure strode through the door. She was wearing a lab coat, not a nurse's uniform, but it still showed off her curves. She was carrying a stainless-steel tray containing a hypodermic needle and three glass vials. "Hi," she said with a smile, "I'm Dr. Connolly. Welcome to the Dorian Institute. We're all very excited about having you here." "Deb, come in," Ellen said seeming slightly startled "Is there something we forgot to--" "No, I just need to take one hundred fifty milliliters of blood. We've got to get started on the cultures we'll be using ASAP." "Hang on a second" Ally said. "I was hoping to talk this over a bit more with Dr. Van de Vliet before I take the final leap." "You're free to dither as much as you like," Dr. Debra Connolly said, her smile vanishing, "but our programs are on a schedule." "I'd still--" "I'll just be taking a small amount of blood. We can then get started on the cultures while you talk." She was already swabbing Ally's arm and feeling for a vein. "Now make a fist." Ally hated giving blood and to distract herself she glanced around the office, trying to construct a life story for Dr. Karl Van de Vliet. Then she noticed a photo of him and a woman standing together on a bridge, next to a sign that said CHARLES RIVER, which meant Boston, and they were holding hands and smiling. The odd thing was, the cars behind them were models at least fifteen years old, yet he looked just the same as he did today. Whoa. There it is again. That odd age thing. There is something very strange about this man. She finally got up her courage to ask. "Dr. Connolly, do you know how old Dr. Van de Vliet is? He looks so young." "There are some things it's not polite to ask." She was capping off the vial and reaching for a second. Her voice had grown genuinely frosty. "Frankly, I don't see why. He knows everything there is to know about me. He has all my files." "You could ask at the front desk for one of our brochures. I'm sure it would clear up any questions you have." She attached the second vial to the needle. "I've seen it. I know when he went to school and all that. But still--" "If you really want to know personal things, you might just ask him yourself. You two seem to get along so well." What is with her? Ally puzzled. Why is she being so hostile and negative? And why that little jab about "getting along"? The truth was, Debra Connolly could have been a runway model, but in a lab coat her blondness and figure just intensified her bitchiness. Okay, maybe the question about his age wasn't overly relevant, more a matter of idle curiosity. But how did he do it? Every woman alive would like to know. Maybe the story Grant had told about Van de Vliet and his experimental skin treatment was actually true. She hadn't put much stock in it at the time, but seeing him out here in the flesh . . ."