by Beverly Bird
He smiled warmly. “I’d hoped you’d turn up. I saw your name on the admittance forms.” He left Louie’s bedside and came to meet her. “He’s stabilized,” he told her. “Vital signs are good. He’s not out of the woods yet by any means, but I think he’ll make it. He’s breathing pretty well with the help of the regulator.”
“Yes.” She had noticed.
“The speed with which you acted is commendable. I’d say you saved this one.”
Catherine managed a smile. “My methods won’t win accolades, and as far as the speed goes, I had help.”
He scowled. “Help?”
“Jericho Bedonie. Have you met him?”
“The name doesn’t ring a bell.” He brushed past the subject, clearly not interested in pursuing it. “Questionable methods have been overlooked before.”
“I hope so. I had no choice.”
Richard hesitated. “I wouldn’t even include mention of it, but this patient’s file will be gone over with a fine-tooth comb. Any treatment must be listed meticulously, especially as it appears he might live. The CDC will want to know why.”
“I understand.” She looked at her watch again. She’d been gone thirty minutes now. She had to get back downstairs.
“Are you ready to leave? Do you need a lift? I’m just about finished here.”
Catherine shook her head. “Jericho’s waiting somewhere.”
Richard grinned good-naturedly. “Do I detect competition?”
For a moment she only gaped at him. Competition? For that to be the case, Richard would have to be in the running and Jericho would have to be interested in her as more than...than what? How was he interested in her? She thought of the way he had kissed her and the fact that he wasn’t tied up with Ellen after all, and her pulse skipped.
Richard watched her expression change. “Ah, I do.”
“No.” She shook her head, if for no other reason than there was no rivalry possible between the two men. They were simply too different for them both to appeal to the same woman, any woman. Richard was suave, smooth. Jericho was rough and brutally honest, unapologetically male.
She managed a small smile. “I’d better find him.”
“I’ll try to pull the interview on this one, too. Maybe I’ll see you soon.”
She was already backing into the chamber. “That’d be fine.”
She hurried past the nurses’ station again, absently noticing a man standing there in the ever-present boots and jeans. But his jeans were pressed, his boots were unscuffed and he was reading a chart. Something about him made her hesitate. She looked at him closer, frowning.
“Is this all you’ve got?” he asked the floor nurse.
The woman answered with forced patience. “That’s the admitting form, Dr. Kolkline. The rest of the paperwork is down in his room with the doctors who are working on him.”
Catherine felt her blood drain. She felt cold.
In the next moment, rage burned through her. It made her pulse thunder and her hands clench. She took a step closer to him.
“Dr. Kolkline,” she repeated carefully.
The man looked up at her. “Yes?”
“Abe Kolkline? You’re supposed to be working out of the Shiprock clinic on the Res?”
He nodded, then a wary look came over his face. “Who are you?”
“I’m your new extern.”
His expression cleared into a jovial look she knew all too well. Paddy had once been able to drink with the best of them.
“Tracked me down, did you? I’ve been meaning to get out there—”
“Then why didn’t you?” she spat.
Surprise flew over his well-worn features. “Now hold on a minute, young lady.”
Hold on. Yes, she had to do that. Catherine closed her eyes, trying to get control of her dangerous temper. Her chances for a residency were already tenuous at best. For all she knew, Kolkline had some significant clout with the Service, and if that were the case, it would be like pulling teeth to get a recommendation out of them if she blasted him.
But what kind of reference was she going to get anyway? Not only had she defied laws and medical ethics to treat Louie, but she had been working for nearly a month without supervision because this man never bothered to show up.
Hold on? Like hell she would.
“Has it occurred to you that you’re being grossly unfair to me?” she demanded. “I came here to learn. I can’t do that without you. I came here to save people, but I’ve already lost a patient and I blame you for that, too! Do you even know a teenage girl died out there because she was stricken with this damned disease and there was no doctor to treat her? I couldn’t give her anything but aspirin!”
She realized, appalled, that she was going to cry. The tears were hot, brimming, but she blinked them back furiously. She had given Louie something stronger than aspirin, and he had lived. But while she had been hung up on rules, Lisa had died. Maybe the difference meant nothing, but guilt strangled her.
Then it was washed away by fresh fury. If Kolkline had been there in either case, they were decisions she would never have had to make.
“Those people out on the Res might not know they need you,” she snapped, “but you’re the only qualified medic they have in that area. If you’re not interested in serving them, then why don’t you go somewhere else? If you’re not interested in practicing, then why don’t you just retire?”
But she knew. Of course, she knew. His hand shook badly as he held the chart. His eyes were bloodshot and a network of broken capillaries marked his cheeks and his nose. The smell of cheap whiskey came off him in waves.
Like her, he was hiding in a place where even the wind could get lost. Unlike her, he was hiding from life itself.
Catherine let out a deep, shaky breath, then she jolted at the sharp sound of singular applause coming from behind her. She whipped around to see Jericho standing in front of the elevator.
He was clapping at her outburst, but his face was stony. Was he approving or mocking her?
“My advice to you,” Kolkline said hoarsely, “is to get out of medicine while you still hold some high ideals.”
She spun back to him. “Thanks to you, I might not have a choice. But I’m here for two more weeks, and in the meantime I don’t need you. I’d be more than satisfied with a phone number where I can reach you to approve prescriptionary medicines.”
“So be it,” he said tightly. He grabbed a piece of scratch paper and wrote on it in a spidery hand. Catherine snatched it from him.
“Thank you.” She stalked past Jericho, shooting him a warning look. “Don’t you dare say a word.”
* * *
She got all the way back to the parking lot before she remembered that they had come in his Rover. She waited at the truck, feeling foolish.
He arrived a few minutes later, unlocking her door silently, looking at her only long enough to quirk a brow. She got in and waited as he slid behind the wheel and dropped a brown paper bag on the seat between them.
“What’s that?” she asked.
“Thought you told me not to say anything.”
“Since when do you listen?”
He laughed. The tension shimmied out of her. The rough sound of his voice seemed to reach inside her and soothe her soul. She managed a tremulous smile.
“Is your temper an Irish thing too?” he asked dryly.
“Now that you mention it.”
“Kolkline had it coming. Won’t do any good though.”
“I know. But at least I got his phone number.” She folded it and slid it into her jeans pocket, then she was appalled to realize that her throat was closing again over unshed tears.
“God,” she groaned. “Everything’s sliding right through my fingers like sand. He’ll report me, too.”
Jericho’s gaze sharpened at her strangled tone. “Something tells me he doesn’t contact the Service very often. He’s got his own skeletons to protect.”
Catherine nodded. It was all s
he could manage.
He was driving on the roads this time. She looked around dully and realized they were back on U.S. Route 666. But then he suddenly turned off, heading east onto the desert. She held on to keep from hitting her head again, scowling.
“Where are you going? The clinic’s over the other way.”
He didn’t answer. The Rover hurtled up through a rocky gorge before coming out on a low butte. She looked up through the windshield. Catherine felt her breath snag. She had never seen so many stars in her life. They looked different here than they did even from the isolated medical trailers. They danced and twinkled, close enough to touch.
“Come on,” he said, pushing open his door, grabbing the bag.
Catherine hesitated, then followed him. “If you’re going to abandon me up here, I guess there are worse places to die,” she muttered.
His laughter came again, low and amused. Then he took her hand.
Her heart jolted. Such a simple gesture...and such a huge, telling one coming from him. But what did it tell? More about her own feelings than his. He guarded his so ferociously, but something hot curled inside her even at the contact of their hands.
They went to the edge of the butte, their fingers linked. Then Catherine gasped again. Below them, the desert was alive.
She saw a bright, beady pair of eyes dart in and out of a shadow. There was no moon, but the stars gave more light than she ever would have believed possible. She had always thought the night was a clutching thing, a pervasive darkness, but she was wrong. A hawk glided past on his way to the desert floor, a magnificent shape just darker than the sky.
“She’s not always unforgiving,” Jericho mused. “Sometimes she’s at peace, just breathing with the rhythms of life, and in those times she can soothe you.”
Catherine started to ask who he was talking about, then she understood. He was speaking of the land as if it were a woman he knew intimately and loved. She supposed, in a way, that was true.
He dropped her hand to open the bag. “Figured you might need some soothing,” he went on.
“But Louie is going to live.”
“I know. I checked while you were among the missing. All the more reason for this.” He pulled out a bottle of wine, a still-packaged corkscrew and a bag of Doritos. “The survival rate isn’t high with this thing, but it looks like we claimed one small victory against it. Congratulations, Cat Eyes.”
“A celebration,” she murmured. Her voice sounded high, oddly pitched. She wondered if he noticed.
She was moved almost beyond speech. It was a gesture Richard Moss would have made carelessly. But from this man, she knew such kindnesses came deep from the heart...just like when he had taken her hand. Both would have been thought about and pondered, because he didn’t do anything casually. More than that, he would have had to have bought this stuff in that quick half hour when she was upstairs.
Yes, it had been deliberate. Her heart moved again hard.
“Thank you,” she managed.
He lifted a brow at her as he worked with the corkscrew. “You’re too easy.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Ever occur to you that a man might have ulterior motives?”
This time her heart slammed. She admitted to herself that he wouldn’t need the wine.
She swallowed carefully. “Do you?”
“Yeah. I thought it might loosen your tongue.”
She stiffened and he was close enough to feel it.
“I don’t get drunk.”
“Never?”
“Once or twice in college.”
“And what did you do then?”
She grinned suddenly. “I passed out. If I said anything, I did it in my sleep.”
“Did you have secrets then, too?”
Her smile faded. “No.”
He handed her the bottle for the first swig. She gulped, suddenly needing it, then her eyes widened. It was a very good, very crisp chardonnay. He dwelled in a dark world of mystical incantations, yet he was sophisticated and sensitive enough to chose the perfect wine for a night when the stars looked alive.
Good wine, Doritos, and not even a paper cup in sight. Something about him was starting to call to her in far more than a physical sense. She knew it should frighten her, but it just left her...defenseless.
She exchanged the wine for the Doritos. Jericho took the bottle, moved a bit closer to the edge and sat. After a moment, she joined him.
“You’re not Lanie,” he said finally.
Her heart drummed. “No.”
“Who then?”
“If someone asked you, what would you tell them?” she countered. “Would you say I’m Lanie McDaniel, or that you think I’m someone else?”
“Who’d ask me?”
She licked her lips, then shook her head. “I’m not sure.”
“What the hell have you done?”
She closed her eyes briefly. Suddenly she wanted to tell him everything so badly she ached with the need. She trusted him; she could no longer doubt the sanity of it, she simply did. She knew he would stand by her, protect her. If he genuinely liked her, then he would be that kind of man. He would do it, or he would die trying.
Something cold dashed through her. That was exactly why she couldn’t tell him.
“I was in the wrong place at the wrong time,” she whispered finally. “Before that I made some horrible, very naive choices.”
She thought she saw him flinch. “It happens,” he said shortly.
They stared out at the starlit desert for a long time in silence. Then he put the wine bottle aside very deliberately. Something about the gesture made her pulse start scrambling again.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m going to make a naive choice and pray that it’s not horrible. You going to go crazy on me this time, Cat Eyes?”
She had to stop this, and knew she wasn’t going to. Somewhere along the line, the decision really had stopped being hers to control.
“No.” She let the word out on a shaky breath.
“Good,” he said very quietly. “Because I’m going to make love to you. When you’re hot and wet and naked in my arms, maybe the only secrets left will be ones that don’t matter.”
Chapter 11
The air was becoming cool since the sun had set. When Jericho leaned closer to take her mouth, the contrast made the heat of him seem enough to burn her.
Everything about him was slow this time, she thought, as if he would give her time to panic, to run, to change her mind even though she had said she wouldn’t. She wanted this. She wanted to be naked and feel his warm breath on her skin, she wanted him to brand her with his own special fire. She wanted it as she had never wanted anything before in her life, and if she was wrong in her instincts about him too, then she would pay for it later.
She found his broad shoulders with her hands, trying to pull him closer, but he didn’t deepen the kiss. His hands closed around her waist, holding her away, keeping her from moving. Yet she could feel the tension in his grip, the hunger. For her.
Then she understood.
“Last chance, Cat Eyes.” His mouth slid to her neck and his voice was thick and raw.
“No,” she breathed.
“No, as in stop, or no, you don’t want the easy out I’m giving you? I’m not going to let you take me halfway again.”
“I don’t want you to stop.”
He caught her hand, raising it to his mouth. He ran his tongue across her knuckles and she clenched her fist as something wild and unexplored tightened inside her. He turned her palm up and put pressure on her wrist until her fingers flew open again. Then he bit down gently on the spot his own fingers had touched.
Need screamed up in her—crazy, yes, but so much stronger than anything she had ever known before. She cried out and pulled away to bury her hands in his hair again.
He watched her face change, her eyes seem to darken with turbulence. She had made him feel again, had made him want, when he
had learned long ago that it was safest not to want a woman too much. She had slid into his world like one of the water pixies that the Navajo believed lived below the streams. They were delicate and dancing, and he’d thought she was far too fragile to survive the demands that he knew he could make. Yet here she was, coming back at him, as hungry as he was. And so, for this time at least, he would be hers.
He had intended to love her with finesse and care. But she finally managed to push against him and the heat of her punched into him. He knew then that he could only be the man he was. While their tongues met roughly, he pulled at her T-shirt where it was tucked into her jeans. She shrugged out of her jacket even as he pulled the shirt over her head.
She wore no bra, but he had noticed that before, noticed without wanting to. She had in the beginning, but then the ageless simplicity of the land seemed to have caught her. Now he ripped his own shirt off as well, buttons spattering, and dragged her hard and suddenly against him.
Skin to skin. How long she had wanted this without even admitting it to herself! She pressed against him, savoring the smooth-hard texture of his chest, then his mouth stole the last of her air.
Catherine felt pain bite and fade as his lips crushed hers against her teeth, but she dug her fingers deeper into his skin, unwilling to let him stop. He lowered her into the sand, until the full, hot weight of him settled atop her. His mouth moved to her cheek, her ear, then behind it to a place that was exquisitely sensitive, though she had never known that before. He buried his face there as he tugged frenziedly at her jeans.
She lifted her hips to help him, her hands fumbling with his belt. Then they were naked, wrapped together, and his hand closed over her breast again. His breath was intimate and warm and damp against her neck, and it made everything coil inside her so tightly it was a new kind of agony.
His thumb found her nipple and stroked there. Then he touched his mouth where his thumb had moved, drawing her in between his teeth. She pressed his head there urgently.
“Yes,” she breathed. “Yes.”
Her wanting rocked him. In that moment, if never again, she wanted him more than she needed breath. There were no games, no pretensions, no lies. There were no mewling sighs and ladylike whimperings. She was what he had wanted for so long, the woman he had always hoped for but had stopped expecting to find.