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that had been pieced together. His left cheek and jaw were a distorted washboard of hardened tissue, pulling his mouth into a taut, straight line. Imagining a couple of bolts sticking out of his neck completed the picture forming in her mind.
    “BJ.” The brittle ice in his voice snapped her back to the present. She had been staring at him. No matter that some of her impressions had been flattering, she had been rudely gawking. Obviously, Brodie didn't appreciate the scrutiny.
    “Sorry.” She smiled contritely. “I didn't hear your question.”
    “It can wait.” He closed his notebook and put it away. “You don't like to answer questions, do you?”
    He leaned his hip against the counter and hunched his shoulders down a bit. BJ thought he did that to appear smaller, less threatening. Although he still towered over her, BJ found his effort oddly touching. She suspected Brodie Maxwell rarely made such a concession to anyone.
    That concession gave her the courage to delve into the past.
    “You want to know why I freaked out when you called me a lab rat this morning?”
    BJ kicked off her shoes and padded past him into the living room, needing some time to choose her words. She sat on the sofa and pulled her legs up beneath her, pretzel style.
    Brodie moved the beginnings of a space shuttle model out of the chair across from her and sat. He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees, again making his bulk appear smaller. “I'm listening.”
    BJ breathed deeply and expelled the air slowly. “I'll give you a brief history of my childhood.”
    She found the steadiness of Brodie's gaze reassuring, and she concentrated on his steely eyes as she launched into her story. “My mother died when I was born, leaving Jake—my dad— to take care of me. He was a good man, and I loved him dearly. He was a digger for Jasmine's father, Austin Sinclair.”
    “A digger?”
    “Austin's hobby is archaeology. After an accident on one of his early expeditions, Austin promoted Jake to foreman. Gave him steady work. So he travelled a lot, all over the world. Jake used to take me sometimes. Those were the best adventures. I have memories from a very early age.” Her heart warmed as she recalled those brief, special times with her father.
    “But he was never in one place for very long, so he let Austin enroll me in a boarding school when I was four. Almost from the start, I was in trouble all the time. Missing curfews and meals because my nose was stuck in a book. Asking the wrong questions in class. Challenging teachers. At first they diagnosed me as ADHD and put me on medication.”
    A sour taste coated her mouth as she recalled the school nurse prying open her mouth and jamming the pills she didn't want to take down her throat.
    “It didn't seem to have much effect other than to make me depressed and combative. The administrators sent me to several doctors who tried different medicines and treatments. I was dismissed from two schools before I was six. Jake pulled me out of a third school when they labeled me mentally retarded—”
    Brodie's crude expletive interrupted her. “That's about what Jake said.”
    “I think I would have liked your father.”
    BJ saw understanding shining in Brodie's eyes. The kindness and compassion there softened his harsh looks. BJ rubbed her hands together, feeling an eerie chill of remembrance. For an instant, she was a terrified five-year-old, praying that some kindhearted hero would rescue her from her captors.
    “Can you go on?”
    Brodie's gentle prodding and secure presence made the painful memories recede a little. “Jake never believed there was anything wrong with me, but he didn't know what to do with me, either. We lived in California at the time, so he checked me into a research school in Berkeley. The professors and grad students ran all kinds of tests on me. They poked and prodded and quizzed me eight hours a day for several months.”
    “You were so young. You must have been