by Cindy Dees
Sloane woke with a jerk as Chloe whimpered in her sleep.
Good grief. She might as well be holding a furnace in her arms. Chloe was still burning up. Carrying her carefully into the kitchen, Sloane ran the thermometer across her little girl’s forehead again.
103.6.
Oh, no.
She transferred Chloe’s head to her shoulder, grabbed the baby bag, stuffed her feet into fleece boots and headed for her car. Chloe didn’t fully wake up as she got her buckled into her car seat and tucked a blanket around her. Trying to stay calm, Sloane quickly climbed behind the wheel and pulled out of the driveway.
She breathed a sigh of relief when the emergency room was empty as she carried Chloe inside. A nurse showed her to an examining room and agreed to stay with Chloe while Sloane went out front to fill in paperwork and hand over insurance information.
She rushed through a pair of swinging doors that led back to the check-in station...and plowed face-first into a man’s chest. He must have been standing just beyond the doors. Sloane, at five-foot-three and not much over a hundred ten pounds, barely budged the much larger person.
She inhaled sharply, and the scent of pine trees and fresh air filled her lungs. It was as rugged as the Rockies, as big as the endless skies, as free as a bald eagle soaring. She inhaled again, relishing the scent.
Powerful, gentle hands grabbed her upper arms and steadied her. Which was just as well. Suddenly, she was feeling a tiny bit dizzy.
“Sloane? Sloane Colton?” the man murmured in shock.
She looked up into a pair of familiar aspen-green eyes.
“Liam?” she blurted, equally shocked to have bumped into Fox’s childhood best friend.
Bookish, but charming. Smart, but self-deprecating. A good skier on the high school ski team. More handsome than he realized... All the girls had loved Liam. But he’d been oblivious. Suppressing a sigh, Sloane’s eyes drifted over him. He had been tall and skinny in high school but had grown taller since she’d last seen him. And had filled out. A lot. In all the right places. My goodness.
“Liam Kastor, at your service. I was friends with...”
“Fox. I remember. You two tortured me incessantly in junior high and high school.”
“We did not! We just were looking out for you.”
She snorted. “You two drove me crazy.”
“You studied too much to even notice our hijinks.”
Lord, it felt good to smile. She set aside the strange sensation of happiness. “I would love to argue the point with you, but my daughter’s here and I need to give these folks my insurance information and get back to her.”
“Of course,” Liam said quickly, stepping away.
She whipped through a daunting stack of medical history and personal information and then hurried back to Chloe’s room. The nurse looked up when she slipped inside. “The doctor has already been in to take a peek at your daughter. He’d like you to try to get a bottle laced with some medicine down her.”
Sloane nodded.
Chloe still didn’t become fully alert when Sloane picked her up and popped a bottle in her mouth. Little Bug only glanced around the strange room, then closed her eyes and turned her cheek to Sloane’s chest.
She looked up at the nurse in worry. “This is totally unlike her. She’s usually wide awake anywhere new. Wildly curious. Full of questions.”
“She’s a sick little camper. You did good to bring her in when you did.”
“Any idea what she has?”
“Not yet. There has been a nasty virus going around, though. We’ve seen a half-dozen kids with it in the past couple of weeks.”
The doctor came back in a few minutes, and Sloane laid Chloe on the bed. He did the usual doctor things—listened to her breathe, took her pulse, and looked at the chart where the nurse had written down Chloe’s vitals. He looked up at Sloane. “I’d like to do a quick CT scan of Chloe’s abdomen. Also, her temperature is continuing to spike, and we need to get control of that.”
Sloane frowned. She knew in her gut that he wasn’t telling her everything. “What do you suspect?”
“Nothing yet. I’m just eliminating various possibilities.”
“Look. I’m a lawyer. I deal much better with blunt than tactful.”
“Okay. Your daughter’s belly is painful to the touch. But her reaction is generalized and I can’t pinpoint a source of pain. Could be her spleen. Could be appendicitis. Maybe something else altogether.”
“Worst case?” Sloane bit out.
The doctor shrugged, and she didn’t like the evasiveness that entered his eyes. He answered, “Worst case, we admit her and watch her.”
“You’d make a lousy poker player, Doctor. Wanna try that, again?”
The guy sighed. “I administered a massive dose of a broad spectrum antibiotic in that bottle you fed her. Based on what the CT shows, we may need to put her on an IV drip and throw more antibiotics at her. If her fever doesn’t start responding to the meds soon, we’ll have to take measures to cool her head and protect her brain from injury.”
Sloane nodded stiffly, too scared to do much more. Still, she would rather know what they were up against than not. The nurse wheeled Chloe’s bed out of the room, leaving Sloane to wait. And worry. And imagine the worst.
A need to do something overwhelmed her, and she jumped up. The room was too small and too crowded with machines for a good nervous pace, so she went out into the hall to stride back and forth.
“We have to stop meeting like this.”
She looked up, startled, as she all but face-planted against Liam Kastor’s chest. Again. “I’m so sorry.”
“How’s your daughter?” he asked, cutting off her apology.
“They don’t know. Sick. Her fever’s not coming down.”
“What can I do to help?” Liam asked quietly.
“I have no idea. She’s never had a bad fever before.”
He smiled gently. “I was talking about you. Is there anything I can do for you?”
“Oh!” The idea of a man lifting a finger to take care of her was a completely foreign concept. “Distract me. Keep me from panicking.”
“Do you want me to call Fox?”
“God, no! He wouldn’t know what to do and would call Mara. And she would call everyone in the whole blessed Colton clan.”
“There is that,” Liam replied dryly. “When’s the last time you ate?”
She frowned. She hadn’t gotten around to eating because she’d been more concerned with taking care of Chloe. And earlier, she’d left The Lodge before dinner had arrived. “Lunch, I guess.”
Liam asked a nurse at the station in front of Chloe’s room to call him as soon as Chloe was brought back, and then he whisked Sloane down the hallway. “Come with me. Cafeteria’s this way. Food’s terrible, but the coffee’s outstanding.”
“How do you know that?” Sloane asked. Did he work here? The nurse had clearly known who he was and had his phone number. “Are you a doctor?” she blurted.
“Me? Never.”
“What brought you to the emergency room, then? Do you have a loved one here? I’m sorry to be so insensitive. I’m such a mess right now—”
He stopped just inside the door to a small lounge with linoleum-topped tables, plastic chairs and institutional fluorescent lights. Gently, he laid a fingertip on her lips. “I’m a police detective. We were shorthanded at the station tonight, so I volunteered to transport a prisoner who got sick in the drunk tank.”
“You’re a cop?”
He grinned and steered her over to the coffeepot.
“How was law school?” he asked over his shoulder.
How—Fox. Of course. “It was hard. But fascinating.”
She scrutinized him as he studied the self-service line. She supposed some people might call him boyishly
handsome, but she sensed a quiet strength in him. Mature. Reliable.
Funny, but a few years ago, she would’ve called Liam boring. And then she went and married an exciting man who took her straight to hell. Boring was starting to look pretty darn good these days. It was amazing how time and life changed a person’s point of view.
“How do you like your coffee?” he asked.
“As black as my soul,” she replied dryly.
“Do tell,” he replied mildly. One corner of his mouth turned up sinfully, though, for just a moment. “Tuna salad okay with you?”
She picked up the cups of coffee and carried them to a table while he went to a vending machine and bought two sandwiches in triangular plastic packages, two bags of chips, a packet of baby carrots and a bag of apple slices.
He dumped his haul on the table and slid into the seat opposite her. “I haven’t seen you around Roaring Springs since you left for college. What have you been up to since then, Sloane?”
She ripped open a sandwich package and bit into the day-old bread and nearly dry tuna. Not that she cared what anything tasted like at the moment. “After I graduated from law school at Colorado State, I moved to Denver and got a job as a criminal defense attorney at Schueller, Mangowitz and Durant.”
Liam whistled under his breath. “That’s a high-powered firm.”
She rolled her eyes. “The women there call it Chauvinist, Misogynist and Douchebag.”
“Ouch. That bad?”
“Worse,” she growled.
“I sense a story.”
“Don’t be a detective tonight, okay?”
He threw up his hands. “No interrogations out of me.” He took a cautious sip of his coffee. “Am I still allowed to ask what brings you to Roaring Springs—as a friend-slash-past-tormentor? ”
She shrugged, sipping at her own coffee. “I’ve moved back home with Chloe—she’s my daughter—to give her a better life.”
“Better than what?”
Darn it. He was being all perceptive, again. “Better than a rotten father and a failed marriage.”
Liam laid his hand on top of hers briefly. Just a quick touch of his warm, calloused palm on the back of her hand. But the comfort offered was almost more than she could bear right now. She was too worried about Chloe. Her emotions—usually carefully suppressed—were too close to the surface.
She spent the next few minutes fixedly concentrating on her food and regaining her emotional equilibrium. Or trying to, at least.
As if he sensed her teetering on the edge of a breakdown, he gathered up the empty food packaging and said briskly, “Take the chips with you. Let’s go see if there’s any news on your daughter.”
As they walked back to the emergency ward, he said quietly, “The docs here are excellent. Chloe’s in good hands.”
She nodded, her throat too tight for a response.
Liam’s timing was perfect because, as they rounded the corner into the emergency area, the nurse who’d taken Chloe away for the CT scan came toward them.
“Where’s my daughter?” Sloane demanded, her inner mama bear on full alert.
“Come with me, Mrs. Durant.”
“Colton. Ms. Colton. I’m not keeping my ex-husband’s name.”
“Right. The doctor would like to admit your daughter overnight.”
“Why?” Sloane croaked.
“The doctor will fill you in.”
She wanted to scream as the nurse walked at far too leisurely a pace to an elevator. Sloane was barely aware of Liam holding the elevator door for her as it opened on the third floor, or that he kept pace beside her as she charged for the doctor standing at the far end of the hall.
Please God, let Chloe be all right. She was Sloane’s entire world.
The doctor stood just outside a room with a glass window in the wall. Inside the dimly lit hospital room, Chloe was asleep in a stainless steel crib. She looked so tiny and lost among the wires and blankets.
“What’s wrong?” Sloane demanded without preamble.
“She doesn’t have appendicitis, or an intestinal blockage, or an enlarged spleen. But since her fever still hasn’t broken, I want to keep her here for observation until we can get her temperature down to a safe level. This is probably just the virus that’s been going around. But babies can get hit hard by things like this.” Fixing his gaze on hers, he asked calmly, “Has your daughter been sick recently? Under unusual stress that might have compromised her immune system?”
“Oh, God.” Guilt crashed in on her. “We moved from Denver recently as part of my divorce. It’s been hard on Chloe, and she has been reverting to baby behaviors. I had no idea I compromised her immune system. I’m a terrible mother. I should have realized something like this would happen—” She broke off on a sobbing breath.
Arms came around her, gentle and strong. She didn’t care whose they were. Her baby was seriously ill and she’d completely missed the signs until Little Bug was burning up with fever. Ivan was right. She wasn’t fit to be a mother. Chloe would be better off with him and the expensive professional nanny he would hire to raise his daughter for him.
The doctor commented from somewhere beyond the circle of Liam’s arms, “This virus comes on fast. You didn’t miss any warning signs, Ms. Colton. The fever was likely the first symptom anyone would have noticed. And you got her here before the fever became dangerous.”
Sloane lifted her head to glare at the doctor. “Don’t coddle me. I suck as a parent.”
Liam’s voice rumbled with light humor in her ear. “You couldn’t suck at anything you put your mind to.”
She would have argued with him, but the doctor commented, “If you’d like to spend the night with Chloe, there’s a daybed in her room by the window.”
Duh. Of course she was staying with Chloe. Her baby would be scared to death if she woke up in a strange place and Sloane wasn’t there for her.
Liam said briskly, “Give me your keys, Sloane, and I’ll run by your place and pick up a few things for you. Toothbrush, a change of clothes...”
For the first time since she’d arrived at the hospital, it dawned on Sloane that she was wearing her pajamas. Thank God she’d put on her practical flannel pajamas consisting of a manly shirt and pants. Liam would think she was a total weirdo if she’d been wearing her footie onesie that matched Chloe’s.
Not that she cared what Liam, or any man, thought of her, of course.
“You don’t have to. I can call my brother to run by and pick up some stuff—”
“And alert the entire Colton clan that Chloe’s sick? They’ll descend upon you like a swarm of locusts, and you won’t get a moment’s rest tonight. You need your sleep, too, you know.” He held out an expectant hand.
He was totally right. “Good point.” She dug around in the baby bag, where she’d randomly tossed her keys earlier. It took an embarrassingly long time, but she finally came up with them. “You’re sure about this?”
Liam grinned. “It’s my job, ma’am. Plus, my prisoner is passed out and likely to stay that way for several hours.”
She rolled her eyes at him. But truthfully, she was grateful for the help.
“I’ll be back in a jiffy. Go be with your daughter and get some sleep if you can. I’ll drop off your things with the nurses so I don’t wake you up.”
What was this? Consideration for her comfort? Huh. So that was what it looked like when a man was decent and caring. Who knew?
Liam turned and headed for the elevator, and she tiptoed into Chloe’s room.
She couldn’t resist brushing the hair off Chloe’s forehead and dropping a featherlight kiss on Little Bug’s hot cheek before she stretched out on the daybed, bunched up the lumpy feather pillow under her head, and pulled a blanket over her shoulders.
She stared at her daughter for a long time while sleep refused to
come. The weight of being a single parent, for real now, not just in practical application, landed heavily on her shoulders. She prayed for wisdom to make the right decisions for her baby girl to keep her safe and healthy.
Everyone had told her she had this. That she was a great mom. That she would be better off without her spouse. How hard could it be to raise just one child by herself?
But suddenly, she wasn’t so sure she had this at all.
Chapter 2
Sonofagun. Sloane Colton was back in town. And single, to boot. His boyhood prayers had finally been answered—just a decade and a half too late. The universe had one hell of a sense of humor.
If only Liam had known back then what he knew now about life and about women now. He would’ve gone after her with both barrels back in high school if he’d had the confidence to tell her how he’d felt about her. Instead, he’d kept his feelings hidden. But he’d learned since then to rip the lids off boxes and expose the truth, be it in solving a crime or in personal relationships. Life was too short to waste time being shy.
Sloane had only gotten more beautiful with age, which anyone could have seen coming if they bothered to take a good look at her back in high school. What he hadn’t predicted, though, was the sadness lurking in her big, expressive hazel eyes. Like she’d given up on herself. What had done that to her? She’d been braver than just about anyone he knew.
A need to understand her, to find out what had happened to her, surged through him. She looked as if she could use someone to protect her. Which was quite a change from the girl he’d once known.
Ever since he’d met her at the ripe old age of seven or so, Sloan had been a firecracker, fully able to take care of herself. She raced through life like a runaway train, flattening every obstacle that dared step into her path.
Not that her fierce independence had prevented her older brother, Fox, from looking out for her just as fiercely. Of course, as Fox’s best friend, it had fallen to Liam to help defend Sloane over the years. A task he’d taken on with secret relish—
Let it go, buddy.
His fantasies of Sloane Colton were just that. Fantasies. She would never see anything in a plain, ordinary, hometown guy like him. If only he could show her who he was now—