Heartbeat

by Joan Johnston

  Jack wasn’t so sure. Not when popped balloons sounded like gunshots. A second later, he felt a sharp blow on the back of his head—like a mule’s kick—before his knees crumpled, and he felt himself toppling face-first into the third-base-line powder.

  “The ball hit him right in the head!” “Somebody call 911!”

  “Go find Dr. Hollander!”

  Through the haze, Jack wished he’d been knocked cold. It was far worse to be semiconscious and know what a ruckus he was causing. He’d survived a lot of hard wear in his youth, from getting stomped by a bull in a college rodeo to having buckshot picked out of his hide back home in Hondo, when he’d misjudged old lady Stewart’s determination to stop “that thievin’ varmint stealin’ my watermelons!”

  At thirty-eight, Jack was older and wiser. He didn’t ride bulls, and he didn’t steal watermelons. And these days, if somebody shot at him, he pulled a Colt .45 from his holster—because the SIG-Sauer he’d been issued was usually in the glove box of his pickup-and shot right back.

  It was going to be a dowmight humbling experience explaining to his boss, Captain Harley Buckelew, that he couldn’t start investigating that serial killer on Monday because he’d been clobbered by a female with a baseball bat, especially when she hadn’t gotten within twenty yards of him.

  Jack wondered exactly how bad the damage was. At the moment, he didn’t feel any pain. Must be in shock, he concluded. The headache, and Jack was guessing it’d be a doozy, couldn’t be far off.

  The crowd from the stands swarmed his inert body like maggots on a carcass of stolen beef. Somebody turned him over just as someone else warned, “Don’t move him!” Jack curled his toes in his cowboy boots to reassure himself he wasn’t paralyzed. He wasn’t.

  He scowled as somebody kicked his Resistol out of the way so they could kneel beside him. Sonofabitch! That’s my best hat. Pick it up! Jack thought he’d spoken aloud, but realized when nobody reacted that he must not have gotten the words out.

  “Who is he? Anybody recognize him?”

  “Does he work for the firm?”

  “Does anybody know this man?”

  Jack heard a lot of “uh-uhs” and “napes.” Naturally they didn’t recognize him. He wasn’t a Wainwright & Cobb attorney. He sure as hell hadn’t planned to get caught snooping. Working undercover meant being unobtrusive. Jack was pretty sure that getting knocked flat on a baseball diamond wasn’t what Captain Buckelew had meant when he’d said, “Keep a low profile.”

  Jack had figured he’d take a quick look at the doctor who was supposedly killing his own patients—kids who’d suffered accidents or injury and gone to Dr. Roman Hollander to get better—and get the hell out of there. If he’d headed for the golf course to find Hollander ten minutes ago, like he should have, he wouldn’t be in this fix.

  Jack squinted up at the blur of concerned faces hovered over him. So much for being unobtrusive.

  “I’m okay,” he said. It came out “Mmmk.”

  “What’d he say?”

  “Couldn’t tell. Hey, cowboy, how many fingers?”

  Jack saw a bunch. He figured he was seeing double and guessed, “Two.”

  “Concussion,” a voice said flatly.

  Wrong guess, Jack thought.

  “What’s your name?” the fellow with the fingers asked, beginning a search through Jack’s pockets for identification.

  Jack clamped a death grip on the fellow’s wrist.

  “Hey! What’s your problem?”

  The problem was, if this Good Samaritan kept looking long enough, he was going to find the five-pointed star that Texas Rangers had carried ever since they were formed as a unit in the days when Texas was a Republic. If that happened, Captain Buckelew was going to have Jack’s guts for garters.

  “Jack Kittrick,” Jack forced out.

  “He says he’s Jack Kittrick,” the fellow announced to the gathered crowd. “Anybody recognize the name?”

  Jack heard a surprised female voice say, “I do.”

  “Who is he, Maggie?”

  “He’s the new insurance investigator for San Antonio General,” she said in a husky Texas drawl.

  “What’s he doing here?” the Samaritan asked.

  “I don’t know,” Maggie said, kneeling beside him.

  Jack tried to turn his head to get a closer look at Maggie Wainwright, but closed his eyes and groaned when a searing pain shot up the back of his neck and exploded in his head.

  “He might have come to see me,” Maggie said. “I have a meeting scheduled with him at the hospital Monday morning to discuss some malpractice cases.”

  Jack’s brain wasn’t working quite right at the moment, but he thought he’d just heard Maggie Wainwright say that his meeting on Monday at the hospital was with her. Maggie was counsel for San Antonio General?

  Jack’s head was starting to pound, but he knew better than to relax. It appeared his cover was safe for the moment, but until he was on his feet and out of here, his situation was precarious. Jack felt soft fingers smooth the sweaty hair from his forehead. He opened his eyes and found himself staring into Maggie Wainwright’s worried blue eyes. All four of them.

  Pretty color, Jack thought. Not purple enough for bluebonnets. More like cornflowers.

  “I’m so sorry, Mr. Kittrick. Please lie still.” Maggie put a firm hand on his shoulder to keep him flat, even though he hadn’t made a move since he’d been decked by the ball. “The doctor will be here soon to take a look at you.”

  “He’ll probably sue,” Jack heard someone mutter.

  “Assumption of the risk,” somebody else said. “What do you expect, standing on the third base line like that? It wasn’t as if he didn’t have fair warning the situation was dangerous.”

  Lawyers, Jack thought disgustedly. Standing there making a case against him in court, when what he really needed was some fast medical attention-like whatever drug would knock him out until the headache was gone.

  “How are you feeling?” Maggie asked. “That’s a silly question, I suppose,” she said with a throaty laugh that made him think of tousled sheets. “Your head must be pounding. Something similar happened to me once, and it felt like someone was cracking ice with a hammer inside my head.”

  Jack liked the crooning sound of Maggie’s voice. She sounded in control, but he could feel her hands shaking when they touched his shoulder and brushed at his hair, even though it had to be pretty much off his forehead by now. Her fingertips were cool. He just wished his head didn’t hurt so damned much, so he could enjoy all the attention she was giving him.

  He closed his eyes, hoping to focus them, then opened them again. Two Maggie Wainwrights still hovered over him. Some kind of shampoo smell in her hair—strawberries?—which was brushing against his cheek as she peered into his eyes, and female sweat-the kind he smelled on a woman after some energetic sex—was making him nauseated.

  Which was when he knew he was in bad shape. He loved the scents a woman used to attract a man. This was the first time he could remember being flat on his back with a desirable female leaning over him that he hadn’t indulged himself by touching all the places on a woman there were to touch.

  A guttural sound, as much disgust as pain, rumbled out of him.

  Maggie laid two fingertips on the pulse at his throat, which immediately sped up, causing his head to throb. Jack gritted his teeth and willed his pulse to slow. It never had a chance, because Maggie touched him again, this time brushing at his sideburns. Which he’d better get trimmed before he saw Captain Buckelew again.

  “Make room,” someone said. “The doc’s here.”

  Jack tried to sit up. He didn’t like doctors—never had and never would. His body felt uncoordinated, slow to react, not to mention the objections his head was making to any sort of movement.

  Maggie laid a palm in the center of his chest and pressed him back down. “Shh. Take it easy. Dr. Hollander specializes in head injuries. He’ll be able to tell us how seriously you’re hur
t.”

  Jack suddenly found himself looking into the face of Dr. Roman Hollander, the murder suspect he’d come to investigate.

  Jack believed in first impressions. For instance, he’d known right away he wanted Maggie Wainwright in his bed. To his surprise, when he laid eyes on Roman Hollander, Jack didn’t get the feeling he was looking at a killer. Wearing a hunter green Polo shirt and khaki shorts, Roman Hollander looked more like a professional golfer than the distinguished physician he was. Jack didn’t know too many killers who wore designer clothes.

  He reminded himself that Ted Bundy had looked like a nice college boy. Maybe Hollander didn’t look evil because the murders he had supposedly committed had been intended as acts of mercy. If the children in question had lived, each of them would have faced a long and perhaps unproductive rehabilitative process.

  Jack couldn’t help flinching when the doctor’s hands touched his face.

  “I’m just going to take a look in your eyes,” Hollander explained as he moved a small flashlight across Jack’s range of vision. Jack wondered where the doctor had gotten the flashlight and decided Hollander probably carried one with him the way Jack carried a small but lethal jackknife.

  The pads of the doctor’s fingertips felt smooth on Jack’s face, but there was nothing effeminate about his touch. Jack kept silent, watching Hollander, trying to pretend he wasn’t still seeing two of everything, trying not to look as helpless as he felt in front of Maggie Wainwright.

  Hollander refused to be rushed. He reminded Jack of a horse handler he’d seen working with a stud that had been abused by a previous owner. Hollander’s movements were slow, careful, and compassionate.

  The doctor had silver-gray hair that receded at the temples and wore wire-rimmed glasses that revealed irises nearly as black as his pupils. Rattlesnakes had eyes like that. But there was nothing cold or heartless about the way the doctor was treating him.

  “It looks like he’s got a mild concussion,” Hollander said to Maggie, as though Jack wasn’t lying right there, perfectly capable of hearing and responding.

  “The safest course would be to admit him to the hospital for observation overnight,” Hollander said. “Tell the paramedics to inform the admitting nurse that he’s my patient.”

  “Thank you, Roman,” Jack heard Maggie say. “You’re a godsend.”

  Nobody had asked Jack whether he wanted to go to the hospital. Nobody had asked him whether he wanted a suspected murderer as his attending physician. There was only one word that described the situation he was in. And he was in it deep.

  The captain was going to kill him.

  Jack sat up abruptly to keep anybody from stopping him, and because he figured he might as well get the pain over with all at once. Everything went dark for a second, then cleared.

  “I’m out of here,” he announced.

  Maggie exchanged a glance with Hollander and said, “You can’t just leave. You’ve got a concussion. You need to be in a hospital.”

  Hollander’s grip on Jack’s shoulder belied the softness of his touch. The man was stronger than he looked.

  “Is there anybody at home who can keep an eye on you overnight?” Hollander asked.

  “I live alone,” Jack said.

  The doctor shook his head. “In that case, I’ll have to insist—”

  Jack shoved the doctor’s arm away and struggled to his feet, surprised at how shaky he felt. He grabbed for his hat on the way up and bit his lip to keep from yelling at the pain as he settled the Resistol gingerly on his head. An arm slid around his waist to support him, and he looked down to find Maggie Wainwright hip to hip with him.

  “Please. I’ll worry unless I know for sure someone is keeping an eye on you,” she said.

  “You’re welcome to join me.” Jack put enough innuendo in the invitation to ensure she’d refuse it. Not that he wouldn’t have liked having her come home with him, but he was in no condition to make a move on a pretty woman. All he wanted was to be prone in a dark room until the pounding in his head stopped.

  Maggie looked startled, but stared him straight in the eye. “If that’s the only option you’re going to give me, I may have to take you up on it.”

  Jack couldn’t believe she’d called his bluff. But then, a shrewd negotiator like her probably figured he’d give in and go to the hospital rather than force a perfect stranger to sit at his bedside. Tough luck, baby, Jack thought.

  “I’m not going to the hospital,” he said curtly. “And that’s final.”

  “Then I guess you’re going to have company for the evening,” she said, refusing to let go of him.

  The crowd parted for a tall, square-shouldered, thick-chested man wearing Western attire. He took up a lot of space when he walked, like he expected the deference he got. As he approached, Jack cringed at the glare of sunshine off whatever silver ornament decorated the man’s bolo tie.

  “I’d advise against going anywhere with a stranger, Margaret,” the man said.

  “He isn’t a stranger, Uncle Porter,” Maggie replied. “And he needs my help.”

  “No, I don’t,” Jack gritted out.

  “See here, young man, my name is Porter Cobb—” the man began.

  Jack recognized the name of the managing partner of the firm, but cut him off. “I don’t care who you are. I’m not going to the hospital.” Jack realized that if he didn’t get out of here pretty soon, he was going to pass out and the discussion would be over. ” Excuse me, folks. I’ve got to go.”

  He tried disentangling Maggie’s arm from around his waist, but she held on tight.

  “Paramedics are here!” someone shouted.

  Porter Cobb fixed Jack with a penetrating, hazel-eyed stare. “I believe an overnight stay in the hospital would do you good, young man.”

  It was not a request or a suggestion, but an order Cobb expected to be obeyed. Jack ignored him. He looked at Maggie and said, “It isn’t necessary for you—”

  “Where’s your car?” Maggie hissed in his ear. “Let me help you to it, and we can argue later.”

  That made a lot of sense to Jack. Maggie started walking him through the crowd, which parted before them.

  “What’s he doing on his feet?”

  “Is he all right?”

  “Where’s he going? The paramedics are in the other direction.”

  Jack focused on putting one foot in front of the other. “I left my pickup near the zoo entrance,” he said to Maggie.

  “If I help you, can you make it to your car?” she asked, looking up at him, a worried V appearing at the top of her nose, between her eyebrows.

  “Sure,” Jack said. “But in case I don’t, my house is a one-story white frame with green shutters on Princess Pass, right behind Trinity Baptist Church.” Jack felt darkness closing in. He gave Maggie his address and tag number and told her where he’d parked his pickup. He met her gaze and said, “Just don’t let them take me to the hospital.”

  “What have you got against hospitals?” she asked.

  “People die there.” Jack stumbled two steps further. “No damned hospital,” he muttered.

  Then he passed out.

  Chapter 3

  Maggie went down with Jack as he crumpled. This is crazy, she thought as they landed in a jumbled heap on the cool grass. This guy belongs in the hospital.

  But he had asked her, begged her with those expressive steel-gray eyes of his, not to take him there.

  In the seconds it took Maggie to make up her mind what to do, Jack’s eyelids flickered and he moaned. Thank God. Lord knew she despised hospitals as much as he seemed to, but she would have taken him there. And might still, if he didn’t show more signs of life.

  “Jack,” she said urgently from her perch atop his body. “Jack Kittrick.”

  “What happened?” he mumbled, his eyes still closed.

  “You fainted.”

  “No hospital,” he rasped. He grabbed at her arm, missed, grazed her breast, and ended up with a fisted handf
ul of her bra and T-shirt.

  Maggie froze. It was ludicrous to think she could have a physical, sexual reaction to Kittrick’s touch under the circumstances. He obviously had no idea what he was doing. But Maggie couldn’t help taking notice of the first male hand to touch—all right, clutch—at her breasts in nearly ten years.

  The problem was, she couldn’t even reach up and free herself from Kittrick’s grasp, because one arm was caught beneath his body at the waist, and she had used the other to keep his head from hitting the ground. She tried inching herself off of him, but his hand only closed tighter, pulling her stretchy lace bra up so far on one side that her left breast dropped out from the bottom and landed on his chest.

  Maggie stared at the spot where her naked breast made contact with Jack’s starched cotton shirt. Her breathing became erratic, and she felt warm all over. The breeze must have died down, she thought. A zephyr immediately ruffled a few strands of hair that had escaped her ponytail, and she grimaced. All right. He’s the reason I feel so warm. So what? I’m lying right on top of him. Men have always been more hot-blooded than women.

  But she was catching up fast.

  Maggie took a quick glance around to see if anyone was watching this comedy of errors. They had taken a short cut across the grass to the zoo parking lot, so she supposed that to anyone passing by on the distant walkways, she and Kittrick looked like two lovers dallying in the shade of the live oak.

  No one was going to come running to help her, that was for sure. She was going to have to get herself out of this predicament. Kittrick’s hat had fallen off when he collapsed, and she eased her hand out from under his head. The thick, raven-black hair at his nape was silky to the touch. She hadn’t had her hands in a man’s hair, either, for ten years. Not since the last morning she and Woody—

  Maggie cut herself off. It was never a good idea to indulge in memories. Those pathways became dark and tangled much too quickly.

  Once her hand was free, Maggie reached up to try and pry Kittrick’s fingers loose from her T-shirt and bra.