Amusement lifted the corners of his mouth again. “Are you asking me out?”
Lydia became acutely aware that they were being overheard. Even so, she kept on, trying not to incriminate herself.
Her answer was neither yes nor no. “I’m expanding on your scenario—and asking for cooperation.”
He moved aside as the young nurse pushed the crash cart out of the room. “With the scenario?”
“With the situation.” Damn it, what was the matter with her? She was supposed to be concentrating on her job, on the man in the bed, not on the tall man in front of her. “Never mind,” she said abruptly. “Forget I said anything.” She nodded toward the bed. “Is he going to be all right?”
Experience had taught Lukas to be cautious in his optimism.
“He’s stable. For the moment,” he qualified. “But I’m going to have to ask you to give me your word that you won’t talk to him tonight. And that you won’t agitate him when you finally do talk to him.”
She didn’t like being talked to as if she were slow witted. “I’ll bring incense and candles,” Lydia retorted.
“And don’t growl.”
She looked at him sharply, aware of the grin on the orderly’s face. “I don’t growl.”
“You growl,” Lukas contradicted. “You’re just so intent, you don’t hear it.”
He glanced over his shoulder at the monitors. Everything looked to be all right. For now, they were out of the woods. But he knew how quickly that could change. So much for catching that program tonight. Maybe the television in the doctors’ lounge had been repaired—but he doubted it.
“I’ll hang around for a little while,” he told the intern. “Call me if he takes a turn for the worse.”
The intern dragged his eyes away from the special agent and nodded with enthusiasm.
Taking hold of Lydia’s good arm, Lukas ushered her from the room.
Caught off guard, she found herself moving out the door before she could stop him. Lydia saw Rodriguez looking at them oddly, then averting his eyes the instant he realized she saw him.
“What are you doing?” she rasped at Lukas.
He pulled the door closed behind them. “Making sure he doesn’t take a turn for the worse.”
Lydia pulled her arm away. “Look, his well-being is important to me.”
Lukas loomed over her. “No,” he contradicted, “it’s not. You just want him conscious long enough to get the information you’re after.”
She wasn’t about to get into an argument with Graywolf. It had be a long time since she’d felt the need to justify herself to anyone. “Is that so bad?”
Yes, it was bad. It meant she had no conscience, but that was her problem, not his. “For one thing, that puts you on a collision course with my oath.”
She decided that the best way to handle this—and him—was with humor. Otherwise, they were both going to butt heads throughout Conroy’s stay at Blair Memorial. “Which oath? The one you took in medical school, or the one I saw you swallowing when you pushed me out of the way.”
“The former, and I didn’t push you,” he corrected her. “I moved you.”
“You certainly ‘move’ hard.” Overhearing, Rodriguez raised a brow as he looked in her direction. Pulling Lukas out of Rodriguez’s earshot, she stood, studying the physician for a moment. And then she smiled. “Maybe I’ve changed my mind, Graywolf. Maybe I do like you.”
He covered his heart with his hand. “I can die a happy man now.”
She snorted. And maybe she’d been too hasty in her reversal, she thought. “Or at least a sarcastic one.”
There it was again, he noted. That spark, that fire in her eyes. He found himself intrigued. “Never knew I was one, until yesterday.”
Her eyes swept over him. Whether she liked him or not, there was no denying that he was one hell of a good-looking man. Or that there was something about him that pulled at her. Hard. “Never too late to learn things about yourself.”
He looked at her, his thoughts taking a deeper, inward turn. “No, maybe not,” he agreed quietly.
The word “magnificent” echoed through his brain as he saw Lydia approach him the following evening. The spark he had witnessed in her eyes had evolved into a full-fledged bonfire and there was anger in each step she took that brought her closer to him. It was obvious she’d come looking for him and it wasn’t just to ask after his health.
Anger became her, he decided. Even if that anger was directed against him.
“You, Graywolf,” Lydia called to him in case he had any ideas about walking away. “You did this on purpose, didn’t you?” It wasn’t a question. It was an accusation.
He placed the chart he was signing down on the nurse’s desk. Technically, he was through for the night. But not if the look in her eyes had anything to say about it, he thought.
“If you want an answer, you’re going to have to be more specific than that.”
Did he think he was going to play games with her? That he could just give her what he probably thought was a bone-melting look and she’d forget all about her job? If he did, he had no idea what he was up against, she vowed silently.
“You deliberately placed my prisoner into a drug-induced coma.”
She was almost shouting at him and all he could think about was kissing her, silencing her mouth with his own. “Drug-induced comas are deliberate, yes.”
His mild tone nearly drove her up the wall. She felt like a child, being patronized.
“Why?” she demanded. “Why did you do that?”
The action had solid medical reasoning behind it. “Because Conroy’ll heal faster that way. He’s on a ventilator and has got tubes running all through his body. His body can’t deal with everything that’s going on and still heal, too. This way, it can focus on the healing process.”
All this trouble, all this concern, for a man who was a worthless human being. Sometimes the unfairness of it all turned her stomach. She spoke before she could think to stop herself. But she’d had nightmares. She’d been at the mall and this time, it had been her father she’d been unable to save.
“What about Bobby Richards?”
He stopped to think but the name meant nothing to him. “Who?”
“Bobby Richards,” she repeated, banking down a wave of emotion. “The boy Conroy’s bomb killed.” She’d made it her business to find out his name. And to give his parents her sincerest condolences. “Tell me, Doctor, how’s he supposed to focus on getting well?”
They were at an impasse. Lukas blew out a breath. “I can’t answer that.”
“No, neither can I,” she told him honestly. “But I’d like to be able to answer the question ‘How are you going to be sure Conroy’s New World group isn’t going to pull this kind of thing again?”
Lukas heard the frustration in her voice. He wished she’d realize that, ultimately, they were on the same team and did have the same goal. He didn’t want to see teens come in with their limbs torn up, or their lives prematurely cut short, either.
“Don’t you have any other sources? Can’t the person who gave you Conroy’s name get you the names of the others in the group?” It seemed to him that would be the most logical way to proceed.
She closed her eyes for a minute and shook her head. “No, he can’t.”
Was she just being too stubborn, like some obsessive dog that had caught hold of something, digging in and refusing to let go? “Why not?”
She opened her eyes again. The image wouldn’t leave. “It’s a little hard to talk with your throat slit. We found his body the morning after the bombing.”
They’d found him on the floor of his rented motel room, a drying pool of blood encircling his head. The informant had bled to death. “Somebody must have found out he tipped us off.”
The informant, Warren Howard, had been a nondescript man whose life had been a series of wrong turns. There’d been no one to mourn over him. So she had. “So, you see, Conroy’s our only hope.”
<
br /> So maybe Ms. Special Agent wasn’t obsessive, he relented. Maybe she was just doing her job. “He’s not going to do you any good dead,” he reminded her.
“No,” she admitted, trying to come to terms with her frustration, “he’s not.”
“And he’s not coming out of the coma tonight.”
She looked at Lukas hopefully. It had been a long, fruitless day, her shoulder ached and she was tired. She needed something to go on, something to hang on to. “Tomorrow?”
“We’ll see. Maybe,” he augmented, taking pity on her.
Lydia raised her eyes to his, surprised at the softer tone.
He supposed, looking back, that it was her eyes that had gotten to him. Otherwise, he wasn’t really sure what his excuse was, or what it was that prompted him to ask, “When do you get off duty?”
She laughed shortly. The work was never really done. “Never.”
He knew how that felt. He took his patients home with him each night, in his head, reviewing their cases in the wee hours of the morning when sleep refused to crawl into bed with him.
“How about technically?”
Lydia glanced at her watch. “An hour ago.”
He’d just seen his last patient, written his last note for the evening, barring an emergency. “Would you like to have that dessert now?”
Lydia looked at him, confused. For a moment she didn’t know what he was talking about. And then she remembered their conversation from the other morning about sharing things over a meal.
A smile found its way to her lips. “Why, are you going to share some things about yourself?”
He’d bet that she was really good at interrogation once she got going. There were things he found himself wanting to learn about her. “Tell you what, we’ll make it a drink instead and it can be an equal trade of information.”
The question why hovered on her lips, but never crossed from her mind into the region of sound. Instead, Lydia smiled and inclined her head.
“All right, Doctor, you’re on.”
They exchanged small talk while they waited for the waiter to return with the drinks they’d ordered. Once the glasses were set in front of them and the waiter retreated, they circled one another mentally, both looking for an opening, a weakness to turn to their advantage.
He raised his glass in a toast. “To discovery.”
“Discovery,” she echoed, then took a long sip of her Screwdriver. She set the glass down. She could almost feel the electricity between them and wondered if he was aware of it, too, and just what it would mean in the long run. “Do I get to go first?”
He nodded. “Ladies usually do.”
Chivalry had long been absent from her life. She didn’t usually encounter it anymore. “You are a throwback.”
He didn’t consider himself a man who could comfortably live beneath any label. “If you did your research, you’d know that the Navaho tribe is matriarchal.”
“A culture of Barbara Stanwycks.” The grin that came to her lips was a fond one. “I could identify with that.”
The name meant nothing to him. “Who?”
She forgot at times that most people hadn’t had the kind of upbringing she had. “A movie star from the forties and fifties,” she clarified. “Always played tough, gutsy women making a mark for themselves in a man’s world.”
He tipped his glass back and let the raw whiskey burn its way slowly down his throat to his stomach. He focused on the sensation and not the fact that he was finding the woman across from him increasingly more attractive, increasingly more desirable. “You watched old movies?”
She nodded. “With my dad. He was a walking encyclopedia of movie trivia. I wanted to please him, so I soaked it up, too.” Lydia blinked, suddenly becoming aware of what she’d just said. “You tricked me.”
His expression was one of silently protesting innocence. “How?”
“I just gave you two pieces of information.” And he hadn’t given her any.
Lukas held up his index finger. “Technically, it’s one—hyphenated.”
She laughed, shaking her head. “You sure you’re a doctor and not a lawyer?”
He liked the sound of her laugh. It went straight to his gut and stirred him. Or was that the whiskey? he wondered.
But there hadn’t been much of that and there had been a time he could put away a pint and not feel it.
“Where I come from, you have to be a little bit of both, with a few other things thrown in, as well.”
She tried to envision him the way he had been as a youth—wild, determined to defy authority. The image pulled her further in.
“Such as?”
“A survivor.” His tone was noncommittal. Lukas indicated her glass. “You want a refill?”
She looked down at it. Somehow half of it had disappeared. “I haven’t finished this one yet.”
He smiled at her over the glass. “I’ll wait.”
I’ll wait. Lydia wrapped both hands around her chunky glass, trying to ignore the very unsettled feeling that had just taken another lunge in her stomach.
Chapter 7
Lydia wasn’t accustomed to dealing with nerves, at least, not her own.
It wasn’t that she was foolhardy, but for the most part, fear had no place in her life. She wasn’t reckless, proceeding through her day with a fair amount of cautious sense, but she never dwelled on what might happen to her, only on what she needed to do. Purpose and duty, that was her focus.
This was different. In every way.
She was sitting across from a man she knew she shouldn’t even be near. Because he was dangerous. Not in the typical FBI sense that she was accustomed to dealing with, but dangerous to her.
Personally.
There was something about Lukas Graywolf, something that drew her to him, even though he wasn’t the type she was usually attracted to. And never with this intensity. Her instincts told her that interacting with Lukas could and would be different.
If she allowed it to happen.
The problem was, she didn’t know whether she should or not.
So then what was she doing here? Exploring?
The truth of it was, she’d gone out for this drink with him on a dare. Her own dare. She’d felt an uneasiness in his presence that was increasingly titillating and had decided to test herself.
Now she wasn’t so sure if that was a good idea. Lydia was growing acutely aware of his eyes on her. So blue, even in this light, they made her think of a cloudless sky. And she felt as if they were delving into her very soul.
That would have given him an advantage over her, she thought cryptically.
“So,” he was saying after what felt like a long, pregnant pause, “what else should I know about you?”
She regarded her near empty drink rather than look at him. It was called regrouping.
“Seems to me you’ve had your turn at asking. It’s your turn to trade now.”
He leaned back, studying her. The warm candlelight made her features that much more sensual. As if the woman needed it, he thought. He wondered if she was even aware of her looks. She certainly didn’t act as though she were. He’d known women who were far less attractive than she who’d used their looks like a weapon. Ms. Special Agent seemed oblivious to what the mirror showed her.
“I don’t know what it is you know about me already. Maybe if you just ask a question,” he suggested, “I’ll see if I want to answer.”
He was qualifying this. She wasn’t surprised. She didn’t even blame him. She intended to do the same. “You like your privacy.”
“If that’s a question, yes.” Tilting his glass back, Lukas drained it of the last few amber drops that had mingled with the melting ice.
Lydia couldn’t keep her eyes off his hands as he replaced the chunky glass in front of him on the table. They looked to be what they were, a surgeon’s hands with long, slender fingers. And yet there was something powerful about them at the same time.
She realized that she wa
s imagining how it would feel to have those same hands stroking her body.
Damn it, she usually had better control over her thoughts than this. What the hell was happening to her discipline?
Lydia cleared her throat, as if that could somehow help clear her mind, as well.
“That was an assumption, actually. I suppose this gives us something in common.” She saw him raise a questioning eyebrow. “I like my privacy, too.”
Slowly, Lukas stroked the rim of his glass with his thumb, his eyes never leaving her face. “So what are we doing here, playing Twenty Questions when neither one of us likes giving answers?”
She felt her mouth growing dry. “I’m not really sure.” As someone determined to be proven fearless, she looked into his eyes. Trying not to allow herself to be drawn into their hypnotic pull. With effort, she reverted to her agent mode, seeking shelter there. “What are you doing here?”
“That’s easy.” He lifted his empty glass in a silent toast. “Having drinks with a woman I find very stimulating.”
Amusement brushed along her lips. “Interesting word for a heart surgeon to use.”
“Who better?” His curiosity about her growing, Lukas decided to see just how willing she actually was to tell him something about herself. “Do you like what you do, Special Agent? Think carefully now.”
She couldn’t decide whether or not he was teasing her by using her title, but she had to admit that she liked the sound of it when he said it. And she didn’t have to think carefully, she knew.
“Most of the time. I know I like making a difference.”
There was a “but” there she wasn’t saying, Lukas thought. Waiting, he finally supplied the prompt himself. “But?”
“But sometimes I don’t.” That’s when the job ate at her. It wasn’t the pieces of the puzzle that kept her awake at night, it was the failures. “Like this last time. We weren’t there in time to stop the bombing.”
“But from what I heard, they managed to get most of the people who were there evacuated. Because you called to warn the security guards.”
Most, but not all. She shut her eyes. “I guess it could have been worse.”
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