A Canadian Werewolf in New York

Chapter Twenty-Seven

I sat and stared at the door the same way I had just been staring at the phone receiver. Only, I wasn’t stunned Gail was at the door. I was completely surprised.

And I shouldn’t have been surprised at all.

Gail knocked again. “Michael. I can feel you on the other side of the door. I know you’re there.”

I sat a moment longer.

Okay, my mind had really been in la la land for a few minutes.

It must have been that I was so stunned with the situation with Mack and the publisher that I’d completely tuned most of my senses out.

Seriously.

Nobody whose scent I knew, particularly someone like Gail, whose scent had a intimate familiarity to me even after all this time, had ever been able to “sneak up” on me.

My sense of smell was so heightened, so in tune with the world around me that, without a second’s thought I should have been able to smell Gail the moment the elevator doors opened.

Could it be that I was sick – coming down with something?

Sure, I had caught a few viruses in the past, some of which did dilute my heightened senses. But those usually came with some sort of chest or sinus congestion. And I felt none of that.

So no, it couldn’t be as simple as a cold.

Perhaps I was just so overcome with emotion, so utterly exhausted, both physically and mentally and so caught up in a series of deep thoughts that I simply wasn’t attending to the signals being sent to my brain.

I paused, took a purposeful breath in through my nose.

Gail’s sweet scent – that alluring mixture of Sandalwood mingled with her sweat.

I breathed out, shaking my head.

How I had longed to smell her again.

I can’t remember how many times after she’d broken it off with me that I’d be sitting here and hear the elevator doors open and desperately pray that it would be her scent I would smell.

But alas, it never was her, and that desperate longing would send me into a tail spin; send me packing a lunch and an overnight bag on an extended pilgrimage down memory lane.

I breathed in her warm and spicy scent again, then got up from my chair and walked over to the door.

Leaning against the door, the tips of my fingers and my forehead against it, I breathed her in again.

Impossible to believe how close we had been at one time.

Frustrating memories to think how easily I lost her.

Incredible to know she was just on the other side of that door. But even worse, that, despite how she’d come back into my life, I did not want to hurt her with what I had to let her know.

“Michael?”

Mingled with her warm and woody fragrance was the smell of underlying stress and concern. I wanted to push that scent away and just breathe her in longer, but wanting to remove that smell of stress is what made me open the door.

Her heartbeat raced as I turned the handle and began to open the door. It almost skipped a beat as we came into sight of one another.

Then again, that might have been my own heart skipping a beat.

She launched herself through the doorway and into my arms.

It seemed I was able to feel her body as it practically melted into mine, all those familiar comfort points melding so perfectly together, like we were made for each other. I was intensely aware of every single point of contact between our bodies as I pulled her in tight. I had to control how tightly I was hugging her, ensure I didn’t crack her ribs.