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Doctor Seduction
Beverly Bird


Mills & Boon Silhouette
After they survived a traumatic ordeal together, Dr. Sam Walters felt a bond so strong for pediatric nurse Caitlyn Matthews that he could barely look at her without wanting to take her home.Every time their eyes locked, Sam knew there was no turning back for either of them–that their feelings could only grow deeper. But how could he get involved with a woman who would expect a future? After all, he had a reputation to uphold as Mission Creek's resident scoundrel. But did any of this matter when a new threat might take away the only woman he would ever love?







CLUB TIMES

For Members’ Eyes Only

I’ve got a secret….

I have to say that this week, I have a little crush on Dr. Sam Walters. He flashed his pearly whites at me in the grocery store as I was fondling fruit. Talk about drop-dead gorgeous! I also caught his nurse, Caitlyn Matthews, standing near the potatoes (carbs don’t help anyone, Caitlyn), and she was eyeing the good doctor, too. I like a man who eats from the four food groups.

Thank goodness, Branson Hines is out of our hair. Let’s take a collective sigh of relief that Mission Creek is free of another troublemaker, although I’ll bet our small town can stir up a little excitement now and then. What do you think, members?

I must leave you for the time being because of something that needs my undivided attention. You guessed it. I have a bun in the oven, the stork’s gonna pay me a visit in eight months, I’m expecting a bundle of joy. Shocked? I bet you thought I was an old biddy… Well, there’s still plenty of mileage left in this body. Who’s the father, you ask? I’ll never tell….

Make sure to keep your eyes and ears open to the goings-on in the wild and wonderful world of Mission Creek. And our very own Lone Star Country Club, the place that makes your heart and soul come alive!




About the Author







Having grown up on an island, BEVERLY BIRD loves to write of any locale that does not involve beaches, sand or seagulls. Writing for the LONE STAR COUNTRY CLUB series had the added advantage of getting to “meet” so many other authors who were involved, sharing ideas and inspiration.




Doctor Seduction

Beverly Bird







www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)




Welcome to the







Where Texas society reigns supreme—and appearances are everything.

Could danger still lurk behind the doors of Mission Creek Memorial Hospital?

Dr. Sam Walters: He had once managed to disguise his powerful attraction for his nurse through his brusque, intimidating manner. But when they were held against their will for three days, this hot-blooded pediatrician’s suppressed desires just couldn’t be denied. Can their tenuous relationship survive the devastating aftershock of their life-altering captivity?

Caitlyn Matthews: She didn’t know if she’d ever get past being traumatized by a demented criminal. Nor did the dedicated nurse know how she’d ever be able to reveal to her roguishly charming colleague that their brief yet electric interlude had a most unexpected result!

Branson Hines: Although the Mission Creek Madman is finally behind bars, he is still bent on revenge. Does he have one final ace up his sleeve?

Holly Sinclair: This chipper new hospital cafeteria worker is an all-too-willing confidante to a beleagured Nurse Caitlyn. But what really lurks behind her sunny smile?















Contents


Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen




One


Everything looked just the same, she thought.

Caitlyn Matthews stopped her car at Mission Creek Memorial Hospital and looked around. The automobiles and SUVs stacked side by side in the employees’ parking area were the same ones that had been here last Tuesday. The American flag still snapped to attention with each hot gust of south-Texas wind. The original hospital building looked strong and impressive, but the windows of the new maternity wing looked a little shinier than the others. Maybe that was her imagination. If the wing already harbored nasty memories, then, Cait thought whimsically, it had the air of a haughty celebrity who was not about to reveal the skeletons in her closets.

She had worked at the hospital for the past four years now. The sight of it should have filled her with a sense of normalcy, of hope. Instead, she realized that it was entirely possible she was about to throw up.

She unclenched one hand from the steering wheel to press her fingers against her lips. What’s wrong with me? I can’t be like this. It’s just not acceptable. Cait took her hand away from her mouth with a jerky motion and laughed aloud at the thought. A lot of things she would never have allowed before had been creeping into her life lately.

Her life was a shambles, a disaster. It was in sharp little shards at her feet, and she had no idea what to do about it. But she did know that having her life torn apart and tossed about for a few short days was not going to undo her permanently. She would just have to pick up the pieces and put them all back together again. What frightened her was that she was starting to think she might not be able to put them back in the same order they’d been in before.

“Give it time,” Cait told herself. She had a plan. But first she had to force herself to simply step into the hospital again.

She got out of her dark-blue Ford compact and locked the door behind her, then jiggled the handle to make sure it was secure. She pivoted to the hospital and began to walk before she realized she’d better be absolutely positive her vehicle was locked. She went back and tested the handle again.

“Fine,” she said. “It’s fine.” Of course it was. The car was locked up tight and in fine shape. In its two years she’d taken it in for service at three thousand, six thousand, twelve and eighteen thousand miles, almost right on the dot each time. It was steady, reliable.

She was the one falling off her rocker lately.

Cait turned away from the car like a marine drill sergeant. She made it through the front doors of the hospital just fine. But as it turned out, that was the easy part. The man she’d suddenly decided to give her virginity to after twenty-five otherwise chaste and uneventful years was right there in the lobby, staring at her.



It was unconventional, but Dr. Sam Walters prided himself on marching to a different drummer. He stepped off the elevator with a mission, towing the boy behind him by one hand.

Gilbert Travalini was nine years old, scared out of his mind and, in all likelihood, he was dying, though Sam had yet to give up the fight to turn that particular tide. New marrow would be transplanted into his bones at seven o’clock tomorrow morning. The match wasn’t as close as Sam would have liked and there was a chance the boy’s body would reject it, but until that happened, Gilbert was still a motor head and Sam happened to own one very fine, candy-apple-red Maserati. Said Maserati was currently parked outside.

“Let’s go,” he said, tugging the boy into the lobby. “If all that stuff about speed was just some macho bluff on your part, better cough up the truth now before you wet your pants.”

“You’re going to let me ride in it?” Gilbert’s blue eyes bugged.

“I’m going to do better than that. I’m going to let you drive it.”

The kid stumbled in thrilled shock. Sam caught his elbow and held him up. “Easy does it now.”

“That’s against the law,” Gil said.

“Are you going to rat me out?”

“No! No, sir.”

“Then come on. I’ve got thirty minutes before rounds and—”

And then she was there.

Sam’s voice was chopped off in midsentence and he came to a stop. He had a single, inane thought: this isn’t supposed to happen yet. They’d only gotten out of that underground room where they’d been held hostage a few days ago. He’d figured it would take Caitlyn Matthews weeks to recover and get back to work. At least, it would take the average woman that long.

But little Miss Tight Buns obviously considered it her patriotic, Hippocratic, fuss-budget duty to get back to work as soon as possible after the singularly worst event in her ultra-organized life, Sam thought. She’d probably do it if only to make his life miserable, he thought.

His eyes narrowed as she came toward him. A petite, waifish blonde, her every stride was measured and precise. That little chin of hers was held high, and her sapphire eyes moved neither left nor right. Every germ within a fifteen-yard radius either saluted or ran for cover at the sight of her, Sam decided sourly.

His heart, meanwhile, was pounding like a trip-hammer.

“What are you doing here?” he demanded when she came to a stop in front of him.

“I work here,” Cait replied without looking at him. Then she leaned down to look into Gilbert’s eyes. “Running off on me, are you?”

“No, ma’am. Yes, ma’am. I’ll be back, though,” the boy said, clearly rattled.

Cait straightened again and transferred her attention to Sam. “Where are you taking him, anyway?”

“Nowhere.” Sam felt like a kid himself, one just caught in a naughty act by a particularly unpleasant teacher.

What was he supposed to do about this situation, anyway? He decided this was all her fault. No matter that he should have known it would eventually come to this when he’d first taken it into his head to touch her in that underground room. For that one insane, stress-induced moment he’d thought he would just taste her and that would be that. But he hadn’t stopped there because something amazing and overwhelming about her had swum through him and over him and drove him to a place where nothing else mattered except the scent of her, the feel of her, her heat.

Now they were back at the hospital, back to being co-workers, and he couldn’t seem to get his stride.

“Why are you guys in the lobby?” she asked in that quiet, even voice, bringing him back.

Sam looked around, then recovered enough to wink at Gil. “Could be just a wrong turn. Right, sport?”

“Knowing you, why do I doubt that?” Cait took Gil’s other hand. “Come on, kiddo, back to bed with you.”

“No! Please!” The boy pulled hard against her grip, forcing her to let go.

Cait looked at Sam again, frowning. “What are you up to?”

Sam felt temper slide into his blood. Maybe it mingled with his panic. “Tell you what. When I start reporting to my nurses, you’ll be the first one I come to.”

He saw her recoil. “I’m sorry,” he said to her, then turned to Gil. “Go sit down over there for a minute.” He pointed at the little lounge tucked in one corner of the lobby. The boy hurried off.

“That’s the first sensible thing you’ve said yet,” Cait commented.

“You just can’t hold your tongue, can you?” That was a new side to the normally quiet Caitlyn, he thought, and it made something with hard, hot fists punch inside his brain. “You shouldn’t be here. What’s wrong with you, anyway? Why are you back at work so soon?”

“Why are you?”

“I’m a doctor. I have patients.”

“So do I.”

“Someone else can fill in for you. They’ve been doing it for days.”

That chin of hers came up again. “Well, they don’t have to do it any longer. The world didn’t suddenly come to an end when we…when I…when Hines…”

He watched her come up against the issue of what had happened to them—between them—in that room and back off again. Okay, that was good. She was a complication his life didn’t need. And there was no doubt he’d snag up her life pretty nastily, too. They were the two most disparate people you could ever imagine, and they still had to work together. They had to leave behind that underground room—and everything they had done there—and move forward.

His knees went a little weak as he considered the alternative—that she might think they shared some kind of…relationship now. He could always give her his ex-wife’s phone number, he thought. Nancy could set her straight on that score.

He decided to avoid pursuing their current topic and switched gears. “I’m taking Gil for a ride,” he said suddenly.

“In what?”

“My car.”

“Why?”

“He’s got this thing for speedmobiles. And he’s dying.”

He saw her wince, but then she rallied. “He can’t possibly have been discharged. Do his parents know about this?”

“Are you questioning me again, Nurse?”

She backed off a step. “Of course not.” Then something glinted in her eyes. That was new, too, he thought, startled. She’d always been docile to a fault.

“Yes,” she amended.

“Well, don’t. It’s none of your concern.”

“He’s my patient. Have you considered the risk of infection if you take him out of here?”

He withered her with his gaze and glanced at his watch. “That’s why he’s chock-full of antibiotics. I’ll see you for rounds in twenty minutes.”

“Where can you take Gilbert Travalini in twenty minutes?” she persisted.

To the barren roads snaking through the federal land behind the Saddlebag bar, he thought, and to a brief, small slice of heaven before, God forbid, the boy actually saw the pearly gates for real. “Don’t worry about it,” he answered. “Get to work.”

She backed off another step.

“Caitlyn—Nurse Matthews.” He corrected himself fast. Her gaze lifted to his, a little too fast, a little too searchingly. Sam felt his stomach spasm. “It was a one-time thing. You know that, right?”

This time her expression didn’t change. “Of course. I never intended for it to be anything else.”

You were a virgin, damn it! The words blared through his head, though Sam held himself back from shouting them aloud. Virgins didn’t run around suddenly unzipping their uniforms on a whim. Rigid, prissy little virgins didn’t. This virgin shouldn’t have. So why had she?

And why him?

“Please be careful,” she said suddenly. She inclined her head toward the boy. “With whatever you’re intending to do with Gilbert.”

And that, he thought, was all the importance she gave to making love with the doctor she’d worked with and driven crazy for the past four years. Sam raked a hand through his dark hair. “Come on, Gilbert,” he called. “Time to roll.”

The boy launched out of his seat with more energy than he should have possessed. They headed for the lobby doors together. Sam didn’t look back.

He didn’t see her eyes fill with tears.



Cait completely forgot that she’d dreaded stepping foot back into this hospital. She blinked hard and fast against crying, and practically dove headfirst into the corridor that led to the new maternity wing. Everything inside her screamed to get away from Sam Walters before he saw her fall apart.

“Oh, God, what have I done to my life?” Suddenly Cait’s starched spine crumbled and she leaned against the wall, hugging herself. She was shaking. Badly.

It was a one-time thing. You know that, right?

The truth was, she’d spent the past three days in a state of agonized expectancy because she hadn’t actually been sure.

She hadn’t seen him or heard from him since they’d been rescued from Branson Hines and the underground room where he’d held them hostage until Tabitha Monroe—the hospital administrator, who for some reason felt compelled to be Cait’s friend when Cait very much preferred her solitude—had taken it into her head to have all twelve orange pounds of Cait’s cat pose as a baby in a blanket in an effort to meet Hines’s ransom demands. Cait scrubbed her hands over her face as she stepped into the maternity wing. Tabitha sometimes tended toward extremes, but it had worked. Sort of.

She veered left. The new wing was like no hospital she’d ever imagined working in. The walls were done in bright, primary colors that jarred her a little in her current mood. She passed the newborns in the nursery without looking at them. Her stride hitched up as she passed the storage room where Branson Hines had cornered twelve employees a week ago, changing her life forever.

She reached the nurses’ station, then hesitated and looked around furtively.

No one was here. She’d banked on it. She knew hospital routine and right now, everyone would be gearing up for rounds, cleaning up after breakfast. She stepped behind the desk and found the large brown envelope she was looking for near the computer station. It was the one that would carry memos and other paperwork from this department to other areas of the hospital. She unwound the little string that held it closed, drove a hand into her pocket and came up with a slim, white envelope.

She’d printed Dr. Jared Cross’s name in neat block letters across the front and underlined it three times. She’d sealed it with a little blob of white wax.

“Help me, please,” she whispered, “before I lose my mind.” She dropped her envelope into the bigger one, closed it again and fled the maternity wing.

She could have just gone to his office to ask for an appointment, sparing herself all this subterfuge. For that matter, she could have sent the note via the nurses’ station in her own pediatrics unit. But she didn’t want anyone to know what she was up to. She didn’t want any of her co-workers to go stuffing their own mail inside the pediatrics envelope, recognizing her handwriting on a personal envelope to Dr. Cross.

They couldn’t know. No one could know what was happening to her. And she certainly couldn’t confide in a stranger, couldn’t go outside the hospital to another psychiatrist. The mere thought nearly crippled her with panic. Maybe she wasn’t his usual prepubescent patient, but Cait knew Jared Cross. He was the director of child psychiatry at Mission Creek Memorial, and something about him had always appealed to her. He was a little gruff, eminently practical, not given to maudlin emotion.

She would have to trust him with this. There was no one else.

Cait rode the elevator up to the pediatrics floor in the main building. She was in Chelsea Cambridge’s room when Sam walked in. This time she was ready for him.

“Good morning, Doctor.”

He scowled at her as he took the patient’s chart from her hands. “So that’s how we’re going to play this, hmm?” he asked in an undertone.

Cait hesitated. It was as though they’d never spoken downstairs. Maybe he was going crazy, too. Or maybe she had imagined that whole encounter.

The very real possibility of that had her stomach rolling.

“It was a one-time thing,” she said, just to be sure.

“That it was.”

She turned away from him quickly to ease down the sheets on the little girl’s bed because she wasn’t at all sure what her expression would reveal at his response. Then she watched him gently palpate the child’s abdomen, and her mind spun away.

Those hands…

Cait had a sudden, shattering image of them on her own skin, closing over her breasts, his breath hot where his face had been buried at her throat. She’d thought she’d been dying. Not because of anything Hines had done or might still do, but because for the first time in her life, she’d known what it was to be touched, really touched. And she had craved it, had needed it with something so strong it had vibrated inside her.

Why had she done it?

Because he’d been funny and kind and gallant in that room, neither outrageous nor as arrogant as she’d come to believe during the years she’d worked with him. Because she’d been terrified that God would give her no more days after that one, and because there was something huge in life she was going to miss if she didn’t make love with that man right then, right there. Because he was devastatingly good-looking with those sometimes stormy, sometimes laughing eyes and the little cleft in his chin. For once in her life she’d wanted to do something wild and daring and exhilarating. She’d done it because she’d needed him.

“Nurse Matthews?”

Cait snapped back. “I’m sorry. What?”

“Would you like to pay attention here?”

“I was.” Her breath still felt short. But he’d already looked away from her, toward the interns who had gathered behind them.

“Okay, guys, this is what you’re not supposed to do when you’re with a patient—phase out on something personal,” he said to them.

Cait felt her face heat with embarrassment. “I didn’t…”

He shot her a sardonic look, the kind that only he could muster. He went on with his examination of the child.

“Coming?” he asked her as the others began leaving the room.

Cait refused to meet his eyes. “I’ll be right behind you.”

“Make it snappy.”

Out of nowhere, Cait felt anger bubble up in her. She gave him a sharp, little salute before she realized she was going to do it. She was fiercely glad when he looked startled.

They landed in Gilbert’s room next. The boy was back in bed, his color high. “Well,” she said quietly, “he appears none the worse for wear.”

“Questioning me again, Nurse?”

“Who, me? I wouldn’t dream of it, my being your subordinate and all.”

Satisfaction was something hot and sharp under the skin that wasn’t entirely unpleasant, she discovered when he seemed unable to respond. She liked it.

He gave her his shoulder, picked up Gilbert’s chart and addressed the interns again. That was when she saw Jared Cross hovering in the doorway. Cait stepped quickly aside when the psychiatrist motioned to her.

“You wanted to see me?” he asked.

She hadn’t expected him to get her note so quickly, or to act on it so promptly. “Yes.”

“I’ve got about twenty minutes until my first appointment. Do you have time now?”

Cait glanced back at Sam. He seemed oblivious to her now. She cleared her throat loudly, but he didn’t glance her way.

To hell with him, then. “Okay,” Cait said.

She matched Dr. Cross stride for stride down the corridor to his office at the end of the floor. To his credit, she thought he was mincing his steps a bit, allowing her to keep up. He was a good foot taller than her own five foot two. He was also a gentleman, of sorts. When they reached his door, he pushed it open and seemed to suggest she step through first when suddenly he made a move of his own. They hit shoulders in the threshold. Or at least, Cait thought, her shoulder nailed his upper arm.

“Sorry,” she said quickly. Then, in his office, she hesitated. “I, uh, wanted to see you in a professional capacity.” She felt her face flame.

Dr. Cross went to his desk and sat, lacing his fingers together and catching them behind his head. Rumor had it that he had found himself a pretty heiress and was happily besotted these days. Cait thought it showed. He seemed more relaxed than she had ever seen him.

Maybe that was what happened to a person when sex turned out right, she thought.

“I gathered that,” he answered. “Have a seat.”

“I don’t have a lot of time.” But she took the chair across from him. She desperately needed his help, but now that she was here, she faltered. This sort of thing was never supposed to have happened to her. “I don’t know where to start,” she murmured.

Cross brought his hands down. “Want me to do it for you?”

She blinked at him. “How can you? You don’t even know why I want to see you.”

“Try this on for size. You’re having a hell of a time getting back to the woman you were before the rest of Hines’s hostages escaped through the vent in that storage room, before he returned in time to keep you and Sam Walters from doing the same thing.”

“I…yes.”

“Now, suddenly, you’ll be going about your business and—wham!—blazing fury seems to come at you from out of nowhere.”

Cait sat up straight. “You’re good.”

He grinned and she liked him better for it. “I memorize well and I read all the books.”

“What books?”

“On post-traumatic stress disorder.”

She sat up straighter. “I don’t have a disorder.”

“Tell me what’s been happening to you lately.”

With the simple question, she felt something begin to shake inside her. Cait sank back in her chair again. “It’s not just Hines. He was crazy, a horrible person, but he’s gone.”

Cross nodded. “He’s in jail. Which, theoretically, should make you feel safe again. But you don’t.”

Cait shuddered. “People like him don’t happen to people like me, at least not twice in the same lifetime. And he’s incarcerated.”

“He was supposed to have been incarcerated once before.”

It was true, Cait thought weakly. Hines had disrupted the ribbon-cutting ceremony for the new maternity wing, then tried to kidnap the son of Crystal Bennett, the hospital fund-raiser. Already wanted for other crimes, he’d been remanded to the maximum-security prison in Lubbock. Somewhere between Mission Creek and Lubbock he’d escaped to follow the hatred in his heart right back to the hospital. He’d uprooted her life, not to mention those of several other people. But she and Sam had been the only ones held hostage in a room beneath his house. And then—

No, she couldn’t think of that again.

“Caitlyn?” Cross prodded.

She jumped. “I’m sorry. What?”

“You were saying?”

She felt herself flush. “I was about to say that I seem to be doing a lot of that lately—fading in and out. That’s what I meant. Hines is over, behind me. But I’m different.”

“Flashbacks?” he asked. “Do you experience flashbacks to your time in that underground room?”

She felt Sam’s hands on her breasts again. The heat that slid up over her skin, from her chest to her throat to her face, was excruciating. “Yes,” she said quietly.

Cross was watching her closely, but he said nothing.

“I think the worst part is that I’m…I’ve become paranoid,” she whispered, the final scalding admission. The word made her sound so…crazy.

“Checking your locks three, four, five times?”

“That’s it.” She swallowed dryly. “And I keep feeling like someone is…I don’t know. Watching me. Following me.”

Cross sat forward and put his elbows on his desk. “Describe your childhood to me in five easy sentences.”

Cait’s eyes went big. “What kind of a shrink are you? I thought that sort of thing was supposed to take weeks. ‘Tell me about your parents…. Did you wet the bed?”’

He laughed. “I’m a shrink who has a few more minutes with you today and who wants you to schedule another appointment. But in the meantime I’d like to point something out to you, and I might be able to do it if you answer my question in a nutshell.”

Cait took in air and shrugged. She felt fragile. “Okay. When I was two, my mother left me with her aunt so she could find a decent job in a larger city. She didn’t come back.”

“What about your father?”

Cait lifted one shoulder again carefully. “Who knows?”

“Where he was?”

“Who he was.”

“Ah. Okay, what happened then?”

“My great-aunt died when I was four and from then until I was eighteen I pretty much bounced from foster home to foster home.” She touched her hands to her cheeks. “I am so terribly embarrassed about the way I’ve been acting lately. Why does any of this matter?”

“I just wanted to nail down the fact that you had a shaky childhood.”

“But it didn’t affect me.”

“Sure it did. Your childhood is directly responsible for the type of adult you’ve become. For every action, there’s a reaction, and that goes for the human psyche, too. The reaction doesn’t necessarily have to be negative. Maybe you never had a problem with your past before—until Branson Hines grabbed you.”

Cait brought her chin up. “I put myself through college, then nursing school. I’m here. I did fine.”

He nodded.

“Those foster parents were kind enough. No one was ever cruel to me!” She shouted it and was instantly mortified. “Oh, heavens.”

“What?”

“That. That’s what I mean! I’m volatile. I’m…I’m out of control.”

Cross grinned. “I like that word. Control. Great nutshell word.”

“Why?” she pleaded.

“Because that was what you’ve had your whole life—or at least from the time you left that last foster home and went to college. And now—” he snapped his fingers “—it’s gone. Hines took from you something you’ve fought hard to never have to relinquish again.”

“Control,” Cait whispered.

Cross nodded. “Rumor has it that you run a pretty tight ship here at work. What about at home?”

She paid her rent months in advance just in case anything untoward should happen and she was suddenly unable to find the money. The apartment was hers, the first place she could really call home, and she would not lose it. “I…yes. I guess.”

“You had no control over things when Hines took you,” Cross went on. He laid his palms flat on the desk. “He proved that all your efforts in that area have been for naught. That could shake a person like you to the core. Anyway, here’s the deal. You did the right thing in coming back to work today. But I’d recommend that you confront the site of your trauma, too, and all the people associated with it.”

“The room where it started?” She didn’t want to go there.

“And Sam Walters. Though you work with him, so I imagine you’ve already dealt with him, right?”

Sam. Cait bit her lip.

“Was that a problem?” Cross asked. “Seeing him again?”

“Of course not. I’ll do whatever I have to do to get back to normal.”

“Good.” He watched her closely. “Caitlyn, is there something else you want to tell me about your abduction?”

She jolted. “Like what?”

“I don’t know. That’s why I’m asking. You tell me. Something else that might have rocked your world during that time?”

She’d made love with Sam. “Absolutely not.”

“People react in some startling ways when they think their time is running out.”

“Not me.”

“They do uncharacteristic things.”

“I never got uncharacteristic until I got home again. That’s when all this started.”

Cross stood. “You’ll tell me sooner or later. I do want you to make another appointment. It would probably work best if you came in on your day off. We’ll have more time together that way.”

Cait pushed to her feet, as well. “Okay.” She was back to being polite and agreeable. For now, she thought a little wildly. Who knew how long it would last?

“I’m sorry this happened to you, to everyone Hines touched.”

Cait nodded. “Thank you. But he’s gone now.”

“With my help, you’ll get the old Caitlyn back. But I seriously doubt if she’ll ever be quite the same person she was before all this happened.”

Cait squeezed her eyes shut. She was so desperately afraid of that. “I’ve got to go.”

She fled Cross’s office without making a second appointment, but they both knew she would be back.

Hines can’t take me away from me! she wanted to holler. And as for Sam…well, just as he had said, it was a one-time thing. Time would pass and what they had shared would fade from her memory. And that was best. It was why she had prayed since they’d been released from that room, that he wouldn’t call her, wouldn’t try to get in touch with her. She’d seen woman after woman hang with bated breath on a man’s every whim and action and spoken word—every one of those things out of their control. She would not let that happen to her.

Cait turned into the nurses’ station again and came nose to nose with Sam’s angry face.

“Where the hell have you been?” he snarled.




Two


The world was clearly going to hell in a handbasket, Sam thought, watching Cait open and close her mouth in shock at his outburst.

One minute everything had been perfectly normal. He’d known himself inside and out. The world around him was just predictable enough to offer comfort without driving him crazy. Then Branson Hines had crashed into his life, showing him that he wasn’t so much the hero, after all. And now that they were free of the man, this woman seemed to stubbornly resist going back to the way she was supposed to be, the way she’d always been before.

“Excuse me,” she said, trying to step around the desk and pass him.

“The hell I will.” He blocked her way. “You owe me an explanation.”

“For what, pray tell?”

“Pray tell?” Suddenly Sam grinned. That was the Caitlyn Matthews he’d always known. Then again, the old Nurse Matthews had never argued with him or contradicted him. And now, unless he missed his guess, she was actually questioning him about his annoyance.

His blood pressure spiked again. “You walked out on me in the middle of rounds!”

“No, I did not.”

“You were there, then you just wandered off.”

“I attempted to tell you I was leaving. You wouldn’t acknowledge me.”

“Maybe you didn’t try hard enough!”

“Would you kindly stop shouting? You’re embarrassing me.”

“I ought to write you up for this! To hell with your pride.”

Then she shocked him. She placed both hands on his chest and shoved. “You’re in my way.”

“I’m—” He broke off, dumbfounded, his thoughts fragmenting. “You’re out of your mind!”

She swiveled on one hip to glance back at him. “Could be. If I were you, I’d watch my step. There could be an ax murderer lurking inside me. You wouldn’t want to tick her off.” Then she walked away.

“You know, after everything that happened to us last week, I don’t think that’s very funny,” he called after her.

Sam heard his own words and almost choked. He was the practical joker of the pediatrics floor, the one to whom not much was sacred, unless it affected a patient, the one who took a very sick boy speeding around federal land in a Maserati the day before surgery.

Caitlyn seemed to catch the incongruity of his statement, too. She stopped again. “I know what Hines took from me, Sam,” she said, looking back. “What did he take from you?”

He refused to be sidetracked. “A nurse, for starters. What if I had needed you ten minutes ago?”

“As you pointed out earlier, there are plenty of others on the floor who can do my job. I’m non-essential.”

“Damn it, I never said that.” He’d always had a good rapport with the nursing staff. After all, most of them were women.

“You implied it, then.”

“I was making the point that I had to come back to work. You didn’t!”

“You’re shouting again, Sam.”

He was going to choke her.

Then it hit him. She’d never once called him by his first name until the time he’d buried himself inside her in that room. Even when Hines had been shuffling them along at gunpoint, she’d called him Dr. Walters. Now she’d said Sam twice in the last minute.

Things were getting way out of hand.

“Go back to work,” he said shortly.

“I was trying to until you detained me.” She set off down the corridor again, her tight little hips twitching. Had they ever twitched before? He couldn’t be sure. He’d never quite gotten past her cool stuffiness until she’d whispered, “Show me how” in his ear.

So he had. He had shown her. And now he couldn’t get her out of his mind.

“Doctor?” One of the other nurses approached him, frowning. “Are you all right?”

“Why wouldn’t I be?” Stupid question, Sam thought. But Hines had derailed him a lot less than little Miss Fancy Hips, who’d just turned into a room down the corridor.

Sam brought his focus back to the nurse before him. Her name was Angelina Moffit. She was a brunette of staggeringly appealing proportions—the type he usually went for. He opened his mouth to tease her, then just waved a hand in abject disgust with himself. For the first time in his memory, words failed him. “Oh, to hell with it.”

He left her and started down the hall. This, he thought, was going to end right here and now. He caught up with Jared Cross just as the psychiatrist was ushering a woman and her daughter into his office. “I need a minute with you,” he said peremptorily.

Cross lofted a brow. “Most people make an appointment.”

“I don’t have time for that. This can’t wait. It’s important.”

The psychiatrist watched him for a beat, then nodded. He stuck his head in his office and said a word to the woman, then he returned. “Five minutes.”

“Fine.” Sam turned to a door across the hall and threw it open. He stepped into his office after Cross and closed the door, being careful to turn the lock. “Have a seat.” He said it like an order.

“That’s usually my line.” But Cross sat. “What’s going on?”

Sam went behind his desk and sat, as well. There was no way to handle this, he thought, other than to dive right in. “I’m losing my mind.”

Jared Cross laughed. “My practice is thriving. I ought to start charging more.”

Sam scowled at him, not understanding. He raked his fingers through his hair, agitated.

Cross relaxed, leaning back to rest one ankle on his knee. “Okay. Tell me about your childhood.”

Sam felt his eyes go to slits. “You’re kidding, right?”

“No, not entirely. Cooperate with me.”

“Well, I didn’t wet the bed, that’s for sure.”

“You?” Cross shook his head. “No, I can’t imagine that you did.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You’ve led a gilded life.”

Sam thought about it and eased back in his own chair. “Yeah, right.” He shrugged. “What’s to tell? My parents have been married for almost forty-five years. I had dinner there last Sunday. The only thing they said to each other was ‘Pass the salt,’ in the exact same tones they used when I was six.”

“Ah.” Cross steepled his fingers under his chin. “School?”

“Straight A’s, for the most part.”

Cross grinned. “I’ve been your colleague for some time now and I know you’re not that smart.”

Sam relaxed enough to laugh a little. “I did a hell of a lot better with the female teachers, I can tell you that. Is this supposed to give me some insight as to what’s wrong with me?”

“Yes. Because I’m smarter.”

Sam laughed outright. Then Jared got serious.

“Try this on for size. My guess—knowing you as long as I have—is that you learned early on that what you failed to accomplish with your brain, you could always wing on your charm.”

Sam didn’t like the sound of that, but he nodded cautiously. “That’s me. Charming.”

“Personally, I think you rely too much on the knowledge that your looks and your talents of persuasion can get you out of pretty much any sticky situation.”

“People pay you for this?”

“You’ll have my bill in the morning. In the meantime, let’s get back to what I was saying. When you were abducted last week, you ran headfirst into a brick wall. For the first time in your life, you hit up against something you couldn’t finesse your way out of.”

“Correction. I did get us out of it.”

Cross waited.

“Okay, with some help.” And, Sam thought, things had been looking pretty dismal until Tabitha Monroe and Jake White had arrived. Yeah, that bothered him.

“Now you find yourself doubting your every move in areas that had always been your strong suits,” Cross continued.

“Not every move.” Though he’d had a horrible moment in surgery yesterday, Sam thought. What was the sense in denying it? He had asked this guy for help. “Just most of them.”

“It’s called post-traumatic stress disorder,” Cross said.

Sam stiffened. “I don’t do stress and I don’t do disorders.”

“You do now.”

“That’s bull—”

Cross held up a hand to cut him off. “It basically happens when the predictable order of one’s life is suddenly derailed by any sort of catastrophic event. Things you once put trust in are no longer viable. You find yourself reacting differently, in ways you never considered before.”

Sam breathed again. There it was. The answer. That was why he couldn’t get little Nurse Sweetness off his mind. “So give me something for it.”

Cross shook his head. “No can do.”

“Come on, there’s a drug for everything these days. Turn me into me again.”

“You’re a doctor, a surgeon. Kids’ lives depend on you. I’m not prescribing you so much as an aspirin. Besides, it wouldn’t work, anyway.”

There was that, Sam thought, feeling chastened. But he was desperate. “What, then?”

“I want to see you again. Make an appointment this time. We’ll talk our way through it.”

“I’m not going to start seeing a shrink over this.”

“You already have.”

Sam rubbed his jaw. “I’ll think about it.”

Cross stood. “In the meantime, you might want to think about confronting the source of your trauma.”

“Come on, Jared, ‘trauma’ is a little harsh.”

“The scene of the crime, then.”

Sam’s mind flashed immediately to Caitlyn—and what they had done in that basement room. “You can’t be serious.”

Cross gave him an odd look and nodded. “Try visiting the place where it began, where you started realizing you were a day late and a dollar short on saving yourself and Nurse Matthews.”

“The storage room.” Sam breathed again. That he could do. “Why not? It beats the hell out of tangling with little Nurse Prim-and-proper.”

“You seem more focused on your hostage situation than on the actual abduction,” Cross observed. “What exactly happened to the two of you in that underground room, anyway?”

I lost my mind for a woman I never thought I liked, Sam thought, and now she’s metamorphosed on me. “Nothing.”

Cross shrugged. “You’ll tell me. Sooner or later.”

Sam had a staggering thought. “This post-traumatic stress disorder could have happened to Cait, too, right?”

“Cait?”

“Caitlyn. Nurse Matthews.”

Cross fought a grin. “Presumably. If the normal order of her world was rocked.”

“This sort of thing could really change people,” Sam mused.

“It changed you.”

“It’s tripped me up a little, that’s all.”

“You know, after we’re finished with the stress disorder, we can work on your ego problem if you like.”

Sam made a gesture in Cross’s direction to tell him what he thought of that. Then he got to his feet, too. “You’ve already fixed me. Thanks for taking the time.”

“Make an appointment, anyway.”

Sam watched Cross leave the office and he took a deep, steadying breath. It wasn’t him. Well, not entirely. It was Caitlyn, too. She’d gone wacky on him. He was essentially fine.

He had pre-op routines to do on Gilbert. Sam headed for the door. He stepped into the corridor almost squarely into Dr. Kimberlie Leon’s impressive chest.

“Hey there,” he said, grinning. “Looking for someone?”

“As a matter of fact, I am. You.” She tossed back her mane of long, dark-blond hair. She was the newest addition to Mission Creek Memorial’s staff—an oncology physician.

“My lucky day.” He leaned a shoulder against his door. “What can I do for you?” He was back, Sam thought. Oh, yeah, he was definitely back on his stride.

Then he looked over the doctor’s shoulder. He saw Cait Matthews coming toward them down the corridor, shoulder to shoulder with one of the interns, a dark-eyed Lothario from somewhere out West. California, Sam thought it was. As he watched, she tucked that tidy, short blond hair behind one of her ears and glanced up at the guy out of the corner of her eye. Then she laughed.

She’d been a virgin until a few days ago! Was she trying to turn that one inaugural event into a whole four-year term or something?

“Got to go,” he said suddenly to Kimberlie.

“But—”

“Catch up with me later.”

He left the doctor gaping after him and stepped back into his office. He slammed the door hard.



It was well after four before Cait returned to the maternity wing. She was so tired her legs felt weak.

She had managed to keep her contact with Sam to a minimum through the rest of the day, but each isolated encounter with him had drained more out of her. Emotions had been ricocheting through her for the past eight hours—ups, downs, highs, lows and everything in between. She’d found herself sneaking peeks at him, remembering. Again. Then she’d found herself hating him for his newfound brusqueness, though she’d noticed that he was foul with everyone, not just with her.

Maybe he, too, was having trouble regaining his equilibrium after what had happened to them, she thought as she made her way down the flamboyant corridor. The absurdity of such an idea would have made her laugh if she’d had the energy. The unflappable, outrageous Sam Walters? Hardly.

Cait’s feet stalled as she reached the storage room across from the nursery. She touched the doorknob tentatively, praying it would be locked and she could just turn away from here and go home. Why did Jared Cross want her to do this, anyway? Her every inclination was to turn her back on what had happened, to walk away from it, close it out, forget it. Then again, if she’d been able to do that, she wouldn’t have gone to see him in the first place.

The door wasn’t locked. Cait leaned into it and it opened. She stepped over the threshold and let the door swish shut behind her.

She took a few militant steps into the room, then stood in the center of it with her arms crossed over her breasts. Her heart started beating a little too quickly. She unfolded her arms to press the heel of her right hand to her chest. “This is ridiculous.”

Her gaze slid over the shelves stacked with cardboard boxes. Someone had picked them up, she thought, because they’d gone flying when Sam had briefly struggled with Hines the day the man had taken them. Hines had come back into the room to find the others escaping through the vent, and Sam had held him back long enough to keep him from grabbing the last woman in the duct. By then, of course, it had been too late for Sam and her.

Cait shivered and glanced at the hard plastic-and-metal chairs tangled together like some kind of absurd jungle gym in one corner. Then her eyes were drawn to the door, and the memories came rushing back….

“Let’s go, let’s go!” Hines shouted, waving his gun.

Cait took a step that way, then balked. The thought of leaving the room with him had cold sweat beading along her spine, between her breasts, under her arms. Then Dr. Walters was behind her and she couldn’t back up anymore, couldn’t get away.

“Do it. Just go ahead,” he whispered. “I’m right behind you. We need to placate him until I have time to think our way out of this. I won’t let anything happen to you.”

She’d believed him, Cait realized, had trusted him blindly. Probably because, for the first time in her life, she hadn’t been able to think her own way out of what was happening to her. Hines had forced them down the hall to a maintenance room and into a laundry chute there.

Now she went to the vent and placed her palm against the cool metal. Then she eased down to sit on the floor, pulling her knees up to her chest. She wasn’t sure what was supposed to happen here. Was she supposed to feel miraculously better for confronting this place? Well, she didn’t. She covered her face with her hands and closed her eyes.

Then she heard the door open.

For a single moment her heart seized. She was afraid to look to see who it was. She was suddenly, insanely sure that Hines was back to try again. He’d escaped. It was going to start all over again—except this time she was alone.

She kept her face covered, afraid to breathe. Then she recognized the tread of rubber-soled shoes on the linoleum. Hospital shoes. She pulled her hands away and opened her eyes. What she saw was very nearly worse than her imaginings.

Sam.

He didn’t notice her in the shadows. He made a guttural sound of anger in his throat and walked over to the air-conditioning vent, punching his fist into it hard. The metal rang. Cait let out a yelp. He jerked around and spotted her. “What are you doing here?” he demanded.

She’d die before she admitted she’d seen Jared Cross and he’d recommended it. “I could ask you the same question.”

“I asked you first.”

They both seemed to realize how juvenile that sounded. Sam looked away, and for a moment she thought he looked almost embarrassed. Then he went to the pile of boxes and began moving the ones on top. “I was looking for something.”

Cait astounded herself by snorting. “And then the vent did something to offend you?”

He stopped moving and looked at her as though she had changed color. “Damn it, would you stop doing that?”

“What?”

“Being sarcastic. It doesn’t suit you.”

“I don’t know about that. I never really tried it on before.”

“Well, you have now, and I don’t like it. So knock it off.”

“Correct me if I’m wrong, but I only report to you between the hours of eight and four. And that’s on a bad day. If I want to be sarcastic on my own time, that’s my choice.”

His eyes—they were the color of chocolate in the dim light, she thought—almost bugged. “You just did it again!”

Suddenly the fight went out of her. Cait slumped back against the wall and looked away. “Please. Just leave me alone.”

He was silent for a long time. “You’re not doing okay with any of this, are you?” he asked finally.

His voice was kind. She brought her chin up quickly and looked at him once more. “I’m doing great. You?”

“Terrific. Good. No problem.”

“Which explains perfectly why we’re both here.”

“I was looking for something,” he said again.

“Then get it and go. Don’t let me keep you.”

He sat on the floor across from her, instead. “You know what part I liked the most?”

She knew, somehow, that he was talking about the ideas for escape they’d bounced back and forth during their first few hours in their underground prison. What did it mean, that she was suddenly able to read his mind? “Which?”

“When you were going to hide in the ceiling pipes and drop down on him after I called him into the basement.”

Cait sniffed. That one had been her idea. “You wouldn’t have fit up there.”

“You’re too small to have done any damage to him. He would have thought a flea had landed on his back.”

She felt anger kick in her again. “So you said at the time. But I believe you called me a sparrow.”

“Flea, sparrow, same thing.”

“Tell that to the itchy sparrow.”

He stared at her again, then he laughed and shook his head. “You really have gone off your rocker.”

Cait stiffened. “I’m not the one going around beating up ducts.”

He ignored that. “I would liked to have seen it, though—you falling through the air like Wonder Woman.”

Suddenly she felt hot again. Her skin felt excruciatingly warm, all her senses heightened. “I believe she was a bit more substantial than I am.”

“‘I believe,”’ he mimicked. “That’s good. You’re sounding like you again.”

“I was an English major before I decided to go into nursing,” she said tightly.

“Why’d you change?”

“Nursing pays moderately better than teaching. Then again, teaching doesn’t demand interaction with arrogant God’s-gift-to-women doctors.”

He looked genuinely affronted. “I’m not arrogant.”

“You’re arrogant.”

“How am I arrogant?”

Cait pushed to her feet. She crossed to the door, but she wasn’t leaving. She stopped there and rested one shoulder against the frame, a wide, cocky grin on her face. “‘Looking for someone?”’ she mimicked him.

He watched her, mystified.

She left the door and turned around to face it. She put a simpering look on her face and tossed back an imaginary mane of hair. “‘As a matter of fact, I am. You,”’ she said in a falsetto.

When she turned around this time, she saw the light dawn in his eyes.

“Kimberlie Leon?” he asked. “You were too far away to hear what I said to her.”

“Obviously, not far enough.” Cait leaned back against the wall.

“Regardless. That wasn’t arrogance.”

“Okay. Cockiness, then.”

“I was flirting.”

“Well, if the way you slammed your office door was any indication, your technique needs work.” She came back at him quickly, because she hated the hot shaft of something unseen and inexplicable that hit her in the gut, something bizarrely like jealousy. “She was all over Kenny Estrada the moment you were gone,” she added.

“The intern?” Sam scowled. “She was?”

“She was.”

“I guess that took you down a peg.” He shot at her.

It had, actually. “Why would it?”

“You were flirting with him.”

She crossed her arms. “I don’t flirt.”

“Maybe not two weeks ago, but you were sure as hell doing it today.”

“No, I wasn’t.”

He got to his feet and proceeded to pick his steps across the room. He looked coyly out of the corner of his eye and gave a high-pitched little giggle as he tucked invisible hair behind his ear. “That’s flirting.”

Cait opened her mouth in outrage. Then a laugh came up from her belly. She clapped a hand over her mouth in an unsuccessful effort to stifle it, and then a sobering thought hit her. This was just the way he had been in that underground room. Whenever she’d started to come undone, he’d made her laugh until her panic had subsided.

Cait dropped her hand and turned around again to reach for the door handle. “I’m leaving.”

“By the way, you’re not less substantial than Wonder Woman,” he said suddenly, stopping her. “Not in all areas.”

She whirled back to him. Her heart kicked her chest and vaulted into her throat. “What?”

“I guess I would know.” His gaze fell to her breasts.

Heat poured through her, almost making her knees buckle. Why was he talking about that? “Don’t talk about that. It was a one-time thing.”

“Yeah, it was. But I was just making an observation.”

“Well, don’t.”

“You’re blushing,” he said.

“I don’t blush, either.”

“Right, and you don’t cut men off at the knees.”

“What? I never did that!”

He needed to talk about this, Sam realized. Coming back to this room sure as hell wasn’t doing it for either of them. She was still just as unpredictable as she’d been all day. So he needed to put what had happened between them right out there in the air and toss it around a little, he decided. Then he could forget about it.

“Show me how,” he whispered.

“Show you what?” Sam noticed that her voice went thin. It was almost a squeak.

“That’s what you said to me when I kissed you.” He watched more color fly into her face. “Face it, lady, you were the instigator in all that.”

“That’s preposterous!” Now her eyes were shooting fire. “You kissed me! It was the farthest thing from my mind! We were sitting there sharing that bag of peanuts you found in your pocket, then you started feeding them to me and then you just…you just…kissed me!”

That was exactly how it had happened, Sam thought, so he wouldn’t win any points trying to argue it. He tried another tack. “And you needed me to tell you how to kiss? Was that why you said, ‘show me how’?”

“No!”

“Then the rational deduction is that you were not talking about kissing when you said those words.”

“I don’t even remember saying them!”

“Oh, honey, you said them. Trust me on that one.”

“Well, then, I was…I was…”

Sam waited.

“Go to hell!” she shouted.

He threw back his dark head and laughed. “I was waiting for you to say something like ‘You, sir, are no gentleman.”’

She sniffed. “Except we always knew that.”

Sam found himself closing the distance between them. “Four years, and I never knew you had such a tongue on you, Nurse Matthews.”

She backed up against the door. “You’ve seen the last of my tongue.”

“Have I?”

“What’s gotten into you? It was a one-time thing!”

“So was the burning bush, but people are still talking about it.”

“I don’t want to talk!”

“That’s a change, then. You did it nonstop the whole time we were in that room. The only thing you didn’t tell me was at what age you were potty-trained.”

She pressed her hands to her cheeks. “There was nothing else to do but talk.”

“Oh, we thought of something.”

She moved her hands to clap one against her tummy. “Stop this.”

Okay, he thought, relaxing for the first time all day. He knew a rattled woman when he saw one. She wasn’t as indifferent to that whole business between them as she pretended to be. His ego was assuaged.

Now, he thought, he could put it behind him.

He took another step toward the door and she jumped back again, hitting it so hard the collision hurt him. His first instinct was to ask if she was all right. He touched a finger to the underside of her chin, instead. “Relax.”

She smacked his hand away. “Don’t touch me!”

He backed up gladly. Her skin was too soft. “Are you going to stand there all night, or are you going to move so I can leave and go home?”

Cait jerked aside so he could get to the door. “Be my guest.”

He opened it and stepped through.

“You said I was rigid, too,” she said suddenly. “You didn’t just call me a sparrow. You said I was rigid.”

He looked back at her. The conversation was supposed to be finished. He’d done what he’d meant to do. He’d gotten her out of his blood. But now something in his gut hitched all over again.

“You were rigid,” he said, “right up until you started taunting Hines like some kind of madwoman.” And that had blown his mind away.

She gave a quick little nod. “Okay, then. I just wanted to get that straight for the record.”

“Consider it straight. You have unplumbed depths, Nurse. Duly noted.” Damn it! She looked bewildered and pleased by the compliment, and he felt something go hinky in him again. He felt himself wanting to kiss her one more time.

“Let’s go,” he said quickly. “Are you done communing with the laundry chute?”

She stepped through the door after him and shut it smartly behind her. “In my own fashion. I might mention that at least I didn’t destroy my knuckles in the process.”

Sam looked down at his right hand. She was right. He was bleeding. He felt marginally like an idiot until they took four or five strides down the hall. Then he was distracted by the nervous shift of her shoulders. She hesitated and looked back the way they’d come.

“What?” he asked.

She shook her head. “Nothing.”

He walked with her to the employees’ parking area. He wasn’t surprised when she stopped beside a car that was small, practical and ugly. It was exactly what he would have expected her to drive—a week ago. That comforted him a little until he got to his Maserati and looked back.

Then he watched her through her windshield. She started playing with that damned zipper again, the one on the front of her scrubs top. She tugged it down a little. He got a peek of skin—he knew it was as smooth and pale as alabaster—then she fanned herself from the heat with her hand. She reached to the passenger seat and a second later she pushed dark, wraparound sunglasses onto her face. When she turned out of the lot, the wind tickled her hair through the open windows.

It was over, damn it. Over. A one-time thing. But suddenly Sam had to inhale hard just to breathe.



The woman tailed them as far as the lobby, her anger pushing hot and steady at the inside of her skull.

It had been a bit of luck, finding them together. Otherwise, she would never have known that they were still cozy. Up until now, she’d just been keeping an eye on him. He was her answer, her way out, the clever doctor who collected women like trophies, then tossed them aside.

He was the one who would give her everything she’d ever wanted. Except now…now he’d come out of that storage room with the breathless little blonde. It was a wrinkle and it infuriated the woman. It caught her off guard and was going to force her to adjust her plans.

She waited until they turned out of the corridor, then she hurried after them. She’d had a bad moment when the bitch looked back over her shoulder as though knowing she was being watched, and that made her more cautious. She finally landed in the lobby at the same time they pushed through the outside doors.

She hurried to the glass and watched him standing there, staring after the sweet, wimpy nurse.

She’d have to fix this, she thought. This time she wasn’t going to lose.




Three


Normally Cait used the drive home from work to plan the evening ahead. She considered which chores she could do to free up time on her days off for more pleasurable pursuits, like scouting out a flea market. She thought about what new book she might start reading and letters she really ought to write.

But tonight, as she pulled out of the hospital parking lot, she decided that what she really wanted most in life was a glass of wine.

What had that been back there with Sam? Her heart had stopped gallivanting, but still thudded in a strange way. The pit of her stomach still felt ticklish. He’d been teasing her, she thought, and he had mentioned it. Not once, not twice, but repeatedly.

Yes, she decided, she definitely wanted a glass of wine. It would be very soothing. She pulled over to the curb for a moment because she wasn’t quite sure how to go about such a thing. Stop at a bar? She’d noticed the Saddlebag at the edge of town a time or two, and there was always the Lone Star Country Club. But truth be told, her insides went a little squirmy at the idea of sashaying into such an establishment by herself. Okay, she thought, she’d find a liquor store.

She pulled away from the curb and spotted one a few minutes later. It occurred to her that she’d passed it every morning and night on her way to and from the hospital without ever really noticing it. Of course, she felt very strongly about keeping her eyes on the road while she was driving. A fender bender would really disrupt her life. But these days such a calamity seemed like…well, less of a calamity.

“Being taken hostage with God’s gift to women is infinitely worse,” she muttered, and pulled her little car up to the curb one more time.

She got out and locked the door. She was halfway across the sidewalk when it happened again, that itchy feeling at the back of her neck, the humming urgency inside her to make sure the car was absolutely secure. Cait stalled and rubbed a hand over her nape.

“No,” she said. She wasn’t going to do this anymore. She was going to get better.

“I didn’t even ask you yet,” said a man approaching up the pavement.

Cait turned her head, then literally gaped at him. He was one of the best-looking men she’d ever seen, right up there with Sam Walters. Why had she never noticed before how many truly handsome men there were running around Mission Creek?

“I beg your pardon?” she asked uncertainly.

“You said no.”

She laughed a little breathlessly as she understood. “I did that, yes.”

He grinned. “One of my best friend’s wives talks to herself a lot, too. They haven’t slapped her into the nuthouse yet.”

Cait nodded. “I just started doing it recently,” she admitted.

He threw back his dark head and laughed. “Points for honesty,” he said. “I like that. I’m Ricky Mercado, by the way.”

“Oh! I’ve heard of you.”

“Good or bad?”

“Bad, actually.” Had she really just said that?

He didn’t seem offended. “Well, I’ve reformed.”

“How much?” Cait almost choked on her tongue. Was she flirting again? Such a thing could only get her into hot water, especially with this man. She had to knock it off right now.

“Listen,” he said, motioning at the store, “if you were heading in there for something to drink, why don’t I spare you the trouble? I’d really like to take you out for a cocktail.”

Cait felt the sidewalk shift beneath her feet. He wanted to take her out? Just like that? “Thank you, no.”

“You’re sure?”

“I’ve got plans,” she lied, and was shocked at the ease with which the words rolled off her tongue.

“Too bad.”

He looked as if he meant it, she thought bemusedly. She took another step toward the liquor store. A man like Ricky Mercado would gobble her up whole. There was something dangerous about him, some mob connection if she remembered correctly, not to mention his very air. Then again, the mob in Mission Creek had been more or less dismantled over the summer.

Was she actually thinking about accepting his offer? Cait fled into the store before her tongue could betray her again.

After twenty minutes she finally made her choices—a cabernet and something intriguingly called cactus schnapps.

The cost exceeded the cash she had in her purse, as it was right before payday, so she had to use a credit card. Normally she only used credit cards for emergencies. She almost changed her mind, but the clerk was looking at her impatiently. Vowing to write a check for the balance that very night, before they could charge her interest, she handed over the plastic.

She’d never be able to buy her own home if she tossed money away on such things as interest payments on credit cards, she thought. Then she had the sudden realization that it hadn’t seemed very important when she’d been coming undone in Sam Walters’s arms.

“Stop!” she told herself. She had to stop dwelling on him! Cait pressed her hands to her cheeks.

The clerk stopped moving just as he was about to run the card through a little machine. “You don’t want to buy it, after all?”

“Of course I do.” Cait waved a hand impatiently. “Just finish there.”

Three minutes later she hurried back to her car with her purchases. When she got home, her landlady was pouring water on the flowers lining the walkway of the pretty white house on the street. Cait lived above the garage in the back. After she tucked her car into one of the spaces, she came out to find the elderly woman waving to her.

“Hello, Mrs. Brody!” she called back.

“What have you got there?” The old woman motioned to the bag in Cait’s arms.

“This?” Cait looked down at the bag. “I thought I’d have a glass of wine with supper.” She decided not to mention the cactus concoction.

She looked up in time to see the woman frown. Cait remembered too late that Mrs. Brody was a teetotaler.

“It’s been a particularly difficult week,” Cait added.

The woman’s expression softened. “Poor dear. What all happened to you in that man’s basement, anyway?”

“Nothing!”

The woman looked flabbergasted at the outburst. Cait turned tail and jogged to the steps at the side of the garage that led up to the second floor. She ran up them and closed the door hard and securely behind her.

The best thing she could do with herself now was prepare supper, she decided, and sip some wine while she cooked. She set the bag on her kitchen counter and hurried to the bedroom to change out of her scrubs.

It was a room she’d always cherished. There was a blue-and-white Amish wedding-ring quilt on the single bed. The furniture was pine and somewhat plain, but she’d added blue Cape Cod curtains to the single window and had warmed things up with a cheval mirror in one corner and a quaint antique washstand in the other. There were a few blue-silk flower arrangements, as well, and a solitary framed photo on the dresser of the mother she couldn’t remember.

Cait stripped out of her scrubs and shoved everything into the hamper just inside her closet door. A knock sounded at the front door at the same time.

Several months ago, such an event would have been preposterous—she never had visitors. But lately Tabitha Monroe had taken to stopping by without warning. Or it could be Mrs. Brody, she thought, to pass further opinion on her bottle of wine. It could even be Sam.

Her heart stalled.

Given their conversation this afternoon, she was no longer even remotely sure what he was capable of. Cait rushed to the dresser and dragged out a pair of shorts, hopping into them on her way to the closet. She snagged a short-sleeved blouse off a hanger and buttoned it with fumbling fingers as she headed back to the living room. She was about to pull open the door when everything inside her froze.

It could be Sam…or it could be Branson Hines. Or some other raving lunatic determined to unravel her life. “Hines is in jail,” she whispered resolutely. “And it can’t happen to the same woman twice in one lifetime.” Then again, why couldn’t it? Where was that written?

“Cait?” Tabitha’s voice came through the door. “I know you’re in there. Mrs. Brody said you just got home.”

Cait breathed again and threw the locks. She’d had two more installed yesterday, and though she didn’t remember doing it, she had obviously engaged all three when she’d come in a little while ago. “Hi,” she said.

The breeze plucked at Tabitha’s dark-blond curls. She held a large brown bag and she shoved it toward her. “I brought Chinese.”

Cait took the bag because she knew Tabitha would let go of it one way or the other. The hospital administrator was trying hard to improve on her workaholic tendencies, but she still had a waste-no-time edge to her. “I don’t like Chinese,” Cait protested.

“Everybody likes Chinese,” Tabitha scoffed. “Can I come in?”

Cait also knew from past experience that it would do no good to say no. And she actually liked Tabitha. Her friendly persistence just made her nervous. “Sure.” She stepped back from the door.

Tabitha swept inside. “I didn’t think you needed to be cooking on your first day back to work,” she said by way of explanation.

“I find cooking therapeutic.” But Cait carried the bag into the kitchen and peered into it before she set it down and returned to the living room. “There’s enough in there for five people!”

“Two,” Tabitha corrected. “I’m joining you. I’ve already been to visit Jake. I’ll go back to the hospital after we eat.”

At the mention of Jake White, Cait recalled that the cop had actually proposed to Tabitha. It left Cait with a vague, wistful feeling.

“How’s he feeling?” she asked. Jake had been shot rescuing Sam and her from Hines.

“He’s chipper. Eager to go home. How’s Billy?”

On cue, the cat belly-wormed his way out from beneath Cait’s dark-red Western-style sofa. “Not so chipper,” she said. “I think you cost him one of his lives.” Disputing that, the cat yawned and began cleaning himself as though he hadn’t a care in the world.

“How was I supposed to know he was going to freak out like that and nearly botch the rescue?” Tabitha went and gathered up the cat, crooning to him.

“Cats hate loud noises. Gunshots especially. Hostage scenes are not their favorite things.”

“Poor baby.” Tabitha stroked him, then she put him down again abruptly. “Okay, break out the Mandarin beef.”

Cait wrinkled her nose.

“It’s for me. I brought you almond chicken. That can’t bother your sensibilities too much.”

Cait nodded. She never ate red meat. It just seemed so…barbaric.

Tabitha had already invaded the kitchen. Cait followed her in time to see her open the bag from the liquor store. “Hey, what’s this?”

Cait flushed. “I sort of got a wild hair on my way home from work.”

“You did?”

Cait pulled her spine straight. “I have unplumbed depths.”

“Who told you that?”

“Sam Walters.”

Tabitha’s brows climbed her forehead. “Tell me all about that.”

Cait felt treacherous heat trying to steal over her again. “There’s nothing to tell.”

“Hmm. Well, apparently he got to know you a whole lot better in three days than I have in months.”

“He didn’t get to know me.”

“Then explain this business about depths.” But Tabitha didn’t wait for an answer. She began pulling cartons out of her own bag, then helped herself to the cupboard and got plates. “Where are your wineglasses?”

“Um, I don’t have any.” Cait hurried to another cupboard and found two jelly glasses. Buy a jar of jelly and get a glass you could use forever, to boot. Who could argue with that?

Tabitha tucked her chin as she considered them, then finally shrugged in acceptance. She plucked the cabernet out of its bag. “What are the odds that you actually own a corkscrew?”

“Excellent.” Cait pulled one, still wrapped in plastic and cardboard, from a drawer. Then she shrugged sheepishly. “It just seemed like one of those things everyone should own. It was on sale.”

Tabitha took it and attacked the bottle. Five minutes later, they were seated and dishing up Chinese food. Cait discovered the almond chicken wasn’t half-bad.

“There was one home I was in—I think I was about eight—where the husband worked nights and the woman was always shoveling takeout at us kids,” she explained. “I think that’s where I learned an aversion to Chinese food.”

Tabitha’s fork stalled on its way to her mouth. “Takeout is relatively expensive.”

“That particular family had a lot of state kids.” And they received a stipend from the government for every one of them, Cait thought.

“You never talk much about your childhood,” Tabitha said.

Cait got up for more wine. “I’m sorry.”

“For what?”

“For boring you.” She poured, topping off both glasses without thought.

“You’re not. I’ve always wondered what makes you so straitlaced.”

“I have unplumbed depths!” Cait burst out. Then she flushed.

Tabitha’s brows lifted again. “Sorry. I forgot that part.” She chomped down onto an egg roll. “You’ve been through a lot lately. What happened in that underground room, anyway? You never did tell me.”

Cait felt her skin turn to glass. “Nothing.”

“You spent seventy-two hours in there.”

“Hines was in and out. He didn’t stay, but we could hear him walking around in the house upstairs whenever he was around.”

Tabitha waited. “And?” she prompted when Cait said nothing more.

Cait kept chewing, focusing hard on her food. But Tabitha remained quiet, waiting, not willing to change the subject.

Cait sighed and put her fork down. “He already had bottled water and crackers down there in the basement. I told Jake that. Jake said that was because Hines had planned the whole thing.” Tabitha’s Jake had been the detective assigned to the hostage situation. “So we ate and we tried to figure out ways to get free. But the basement door was locked from the outside and the windows were so tiny not even I could fit through one. We tried banging on them for a while, but they faced the backyard and no one heard us.”

“What did you talk about?”

Everything but how old she was when she was potty-trained, Cait thought. She sipped wine, then suddenly found it hard to swallow. “Mostly about me. I think I was nervous. I must have talked a lot.”

Tabitha nodded. “That makes sense.”

“And he called me a sparrow. A rigid sparrow. I just felt like I had to defend myself against that.” So she’d given him her whole life story.

“You told him about the foster homes?” Tabitha looked surprised.

Cait shrugged. “No one was ever unkind to me in any of them.”

“What else?” Tabitha asked. “What else did you two talk about?”

“I don’t know!” Cait cried. “Missed chances. Lost dreams. Plans for the future. What do two people talk about when they’re stuck in a room together for hours and hours on end?”

“Talk wouldn’t have been high on my list of guesses in the first place,” Tabitha said dryly. “That’s not Sam Walters’s rep with a good-looking woman.”

“Nothing happened!” Cait shouted. Then she went still, frowning. “Good-looking? I’m not good-looking.”

“You’re cute as a button and haughty to boot. Get off it.”

“Haughty?”

Tabitha nodded. “With that don’t-touch-me air you’ve got going on.”

“How can you say that?”

“I just think it would be a real challenge for a Sam Walters-type to see if he could touch you.”

The hurt that raced through her almost stole Cait’s breath. It was very cold and seemed to numb her nerve endings. Was that all she had been? A challenge?

Of course, she thought. It was the only thing that made sense. He’d gone out of his way this morning to make sure she knew it had been a one-time thing. Why, then, had she believed that it’d had something to do with getting to know her?

“Well, he didn’t,” she said tightly. She stood quickly to take her plate to the sink.

“I’ll pass the word, then.”

Cait whipped back to face her. “Why?”

“Because everyone in the hospital is wondering and it will kill the rumors. Come on, Cait. Pretty nurse. Knockout womanizing doctor. One basement room. Three days. What would you think?”

“I wouldn’t think about it at all! It would be none of my business!”

“Unfortunately the rest of the hospital staff doesn’t share your high ideals.” Tabitha stood, as well, and began cleaning up the takeout packages.

Cait hugged herself, distraught. Now she was another Sam Walters statistic!

Tabitha glanced her way and her expression softened. She dropped a hand on Cait’s shoulder in comfort. Cait twitched. She wasn’t used to being touched. Tabitha took her hand away.

“It’ll all blow over as soon as Sam sets his sights on something else in a skirt,” she assured her. “That’s the way gossip mills run. Anyway, I’ve got to go. I told Jake I’d be back in an hour.”

“Of course. Thanks for stopping by.” Cait realized that this time, for the first time, she genuinely meant it.

They were halfway back to the door when Tabitha turned around. “I almost forgot. I’m supposed to pester you about coming to the hospital’s End of Summer Ball next weekend.”

Cait frowned. “Who told you to pester me?”

“Jake. And Jared Cross.”

Her heart gathered itself into a knot and cannon-balled into her toes. “You talked to Dr. Cross?”

Tabitha looked at her strangely. “He’s my director of child psychiatry. I talk to him on a regular basis.”

“About me?” Her sessions with him were supposed to have been confidential! Or had someone noticed her visiting him? Had rumor gotten out some other way? Tabitha was right about one thing. The hospital-employee environment was closeknit, with people spending long, stress-filled hours together. Gossip was rife.

But Tabitha was shaking her head. “I talked to him about all my staff who were involved in that nightmare. I wanted to know if I could help in any respect.”

Cait finally let her air out. That made sense. It was something Tabitha would do.

“And he mentioned that everyone needed to get back on with their lives as expeditiously as possible,” Tabitha continued.

Cait nodded. “But I never do balls or that sort of thing.”

“I think you should do this one,” Tabitha said. “Jake thinks it will be good for you, too. He’s expected to be released from the hospital by then. Besides, everyone is talking about you. You should stop in, even for a little while, to show them that you’re absolutely fine.”




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