Free An Affair with Mr. Kennedy by Jillian Stone

“I suspect life will become quite an adventure for you.”
    She fought the urge to grin like a Cheshire cat. “Since you assume I will take a lover, what does the doctor advise in the way of condoms?”
    A tingle of anticipation rushed through her body as she experienced a perfectly delicious, wicked thought. Now that she was living on her own, an amorous intrigue might be just the thing. Something discreet but rather daring. She had made a promise to herself, no gentlemen callers—but what of a lover? Cassie caught her breath. A liaison without the usual social obligations and entanglements. Something primal and passionate. The very idea caused her toes to curl.
    And she had the perfect man in mind.
    ZENO FOUND a spot behind a long, floppy ear and scratched. The lumbering hound’s tail whipped a slow beat against this pant leg.
    “Say hello to Alfred. Scotland Yard’s first and only canine operative.” Archibald Bruce exhaled a warm fog of air onto wireframe spectacles and wiped the lenses with a pocket square. “Watch your shoes, he’s a drooler.”
    Zeno very much liked Archie Bruce, the Yard’s new director of the crime laboratory. Young Mr. Bruce was a certifiable genius when it came to all forms of chemistry, which included a special knowledge of explosive materials. But the most extraordinary thing about Arch, without a doubt, was how dangerous he was. He quite liked to blow things up.
    Archie was on loan to Special Branch from his teaching position at Oxford, and his hire had taken the approval of a hefty budget variance. As a condition of contract, the young scientist had expanded his footage requirement for lab space fromtheir proposed unused corner of Number 4 Whitehall to nearly an entire floor. In addition to real estate, an exhaustive list of expensive equipment and trained technicians had been forwarded on from Melville to Castlemaine, and the headman for Britain’s security had given Mr. Bruce little argument.
    Having suffered under budget restraints for years, Zeno rejoiced when word came down from the Home Office that funding had been approved for the new forensics laboratory. This morning, he and Rafe Lewis enjoyed a tour of yet another adjunct to the Yard’s science facility in Whitehall. An old dry dock, located east of town, had been reconfigured into a remote bomb-testing site. With the Thames Ironworks as their closest neighbor, the occasional dynamite blast would hardly be noticed.
    He and Rafe had spent most of the morning with Arch, viewing his latest invention, a lead lockbox so heavy it took a block and tackle to lift. The simple invention was designed to be a kind of bomb safe for the detonation of dynamite. The “black box,” as Archie called it, was just weeks away from final testing.
    And to detect trace amounts of nitroglycerin, there was Alfred.
    “We’ve trained him to alert to the scent of diatomaceous earth and sodium carbonate as well as nitro.”
    Since dynamite was often packed and shipped in a combination of wood shavings and wood straw, Arch had suggested the agents scour the floors of warehouses under surveillance and collect samples of packing crate materials.
    In the dead of night, he and Rafe had gathered more than thirty samples. Now it was up to Alfred to sniff out any chemical residue.
    “Set them up along the tables and let’s see if Alfred can snuffle out a clue for us,” Arch instructed his technicians, who placed the bags in a neat lineup along both sides of two long tables. He nodded to Zeno. “Removethe leash.”
    The long-eared hound ambled over and ran his nose along the edge and around the back of the first table. Nothing.
    They held their breath as the old boy moved to the second table. Upon reaching the fourth bag from the end, the dog instantly parked himself on the spot. “ Wr-r-ughh-ruff .”
    Rafe whooped. “Plain sailing, aye, Alfred?”
    Zeno grinned. Rafe’s exuberance echoed his gregarious, cheerful nature. The man was also loyal to a