“Give it up, Dr. Sandor.” The nurse let out a long breath. “I don’t know what the head of the hospital thought you could do that we haven’t.”
“My sentiments exactly,” he growled.
“Well, I hate to leave you, but I’ve already worked three hours of somebody else’s shift. My replacement has finally arrived.”
“Thanks for the help,” he murmured as the nurse left. He could think better in the silence anyway. There was some reason why Ms. Miller didn’t want to come back. Maybe she just didn’t care what happened to her. He’d been there before and he knew how hopeless that was.
Dr. Nikolai Sandor sat down in the hard straight chair beside her bed and closed his eyes. What in hell was he supposed to do?
Karen heard the closing of a door and now—blessed silence. Finally, they’d gone and left her alone. She felt herself beginning to drift, as if all restraints had been lifted and she could escape to a place where she could be and do what she wanted.
Then came the familiar voice again, low and deadly.
“I’m not going to let you do this, Ms. Miller. You can’t drop out of life. I know you don’t understand, but you’re my final payment on a very big debt. You’re my second chance. I won’t let you go.” Then he added softly, “I need you to live.”
The voice had changed. It didn’t growl any longer. Instead, it had turned compassionate and compelling, reaching out like hot smoke, forcing itself past the layers of shadows in which she hid. She was responding in spite of herself.
“Squeeze my fingers, darling,” he coaxed, pressing two fingertips against her small palm.
Don’t call me darling. You have no right. Don’t touch me like that. She didn’t return his squeeze.
“You’re so cold. Let me warm you.” She felt the bed shift as he sat down beside her, pulling the blanket over her, tucking it about her shoulders.
A desperate fear of being held swept over her.
“I saw that, princess. Your monitor gave you away. You know I’m here. Was it my touch?” He squeezed her hand again. “Come on, darling Karen. Come back to me.”
She fought him. Stop calling me that. Go away.
“Damn! It’s gone. Nothing, not even a blasted beep. This is hard for me too, princess. Don’t back away from me. I know this has been a traumatic time for you, but you hear me, I know you do.”
I hear you. She heard his voice, low and seductive. It was a laughing voice, now dangerously tight. She’d heard it before. Was it real? She couldn’t remember. No, it was the voice of the man in the book, the voice in her dream.
For weeks now she’d been haunted, first by the story, then the dream of a Scottish woman and her Gypsy lover. Like a voyeur, she’d shared their lives, living through them, experiencing the awakening of the senses, of love and delicious desire. Eagerly she’d embraced the dream when it came, seeking the passion that was missing in her life. A dream was safe.
But the dream had become more substantial than her real life. When the Gypsy’s heart had raced, she’d felt it as if she were the heroine. When he’d kissed the woman, it had been her lips he’d kissed. Even so, she’d known that it was a dream. Still, that didn’t stop the overwhelming sadness that swept over her when the woman had been abandoned. When the woman in the story had lost her lover, nothing mattered; Karen had wanted to die.
She didn’t know why or how, but even though it was a dream, she understood the waiting woman’s despair. She understood loneliness very well. Yet, she was not totally alone. Only fragments of her former life remained—a library—books. Without knowing why, she knew that the characters she read about were the only friends she’d allowed herself.
Then an intruder had entered. He’d called. A newspaper reporter, he’d said. He’d found her and was on his way to see her. Only vaguely did she remember hanging up the phone and walking out the door.
Then came the pain, terrible waves of unrelenting pain reached inside her head and sucked away whatever peace she’d thought she’d found. Hour after hour, it slammed into her before slowing, until gradually all the fear had gone away. Everything was warm and soft. She didn’t have to feel.
Now this new stranger with the deep, sensual voice had penetrated her safe haven, pulling at her. With that pull came the pain again, but this time the agony was in her chest. She was confused. Like the woman in her dream, her heart hurt. She’d cursed the stranger and wished for him to go away. Then he’d touched her and suddenly she felt a different kind of ache.
For a moment Karen had let herself respond. If he wanted to call her Karen Miller it couldn’t hurt her because this was all a dream. It wasn’t even her dream she was bringing back to life. The man and the desire belonged to the Scottish woman in the novel. So long as it didn’t touch her, she was safe.
The man caressed her hand. “This is all new ground for me, princess, reaching out to a woman. I don’t know where I’m going, but I remember another time, another woman who made up her mind to die. Nothing I did stopped her. This time I don’t intend to fail.
“I know you must be confused. You don’t have to understand yet, just know that this darkness won’t keep you from hearing and responding to the voice of someone who cares about you.”
Nobody cares about me.
“You see, darling, I know what you’re thinking. You don’t have to wake up and talk to me, just feel my presence and remember.”
Remember? No, I don’t remember anything. A fingertip touched her face. It followed the curve of her cheek across to her lips, rimming them in a caress before moving away.
She held her breath, her action almost imperceptible, but Niko could tell. Again he touched her cheek, improvising as he spoke. If she didn’t have anyone to care about her, he’d give her someone. “You don’t even have to open your eyes, princess. I can tell from your monitor that you know I’m here.”
No! She wasn’t there. With every ounce of her being she willed herself back into that cloud of blackness that had swirled around her, concealing her, closing out the sound of the voice.
“Damn!” He was losing her again. The only way he could be certain that she’d even heard him was by the slight pulse change on the screen. He had to work fast.
This time, in an agitated gesture, he shook her. “This is serious, princess. You aren’t going to ignore me. Not after—after—” he improvised desperately, “all we’ve been to each other. I want to kiss you, and kissing a woman who’s asleep isn’t enough for me, or you either.”
He was rewarded with a definite fluttering on the monitor. Her heart rate was increasing. It wasn’t friendship she needed, but something more. She needed a physical connection. He had to make it more personal. But could he without violating his medical oath? A doctor didn’t become physical with his patients. It was forbidden.
Still, what was the alternative? Not using every option could do greater harm. A sense of intimacy invoked the only real response he’d seen. He had to make her trust him, to believe that they were more than strangers. He had to make her want to come back, if not to life, to him.
He studied her, noticing the slight flush on her cheeks. Damn! He was nervous. It had been so long. Any relationship he’d had in recent years had been with women who were interested in the same thing as he, pure sex, nothing personal. Since his residency, when he’d been known as the wild Gypsy lover, the only sweet talk he’d engaged in had been superficial, for one purpose only, to raise money. Now he had to reach back to a time when he used his charm to create physical desire. It had been a game, a game which he’d most often won. He’d put aside that kind of playing, but he still remembered. The only difference was that this was fantasy, not reality.
“Don’t close me out, princess! I am going to kiss you again, just like I’ve kissed you before. You welcomed me then. Remember?”
No, I won’t listen. I have no memory. Everything is gone. I made it go away.
“I like your lips. They’re just full enough to tempt and yet they don’t demand
. They’re graceful, like an invitation issued without thought. I want to pull them between mine and nibble, gently at first. Then, when you give in to me, I’ll take your mouth like I want to take your body.”
What are you doing? I don’t know you.
“You haven’t forgotten. Of course you haven’t. Don’t you remember how right it felt?” His fingers, somehow without his knowledge, had splayed across her rib cage, not moving, but lying there possessively. He jerked away, inadvertently skimming her breast with the back of his hand. And miraculously, she responded. Her heart rate zipped across the monitor screen.
Niko swallowed hard.
He’d found his answer—touch.
He leaned forward, stunned at what he’d learned. He was close enough to kiss her, really kiss her, as he’d promised. But this time it was his pulse that was racing. He pulled back. What in hell was he doing, practically seducing an unconscious woman?
The ICU nurse stuck her head through the door. “Something wrong in here?”
“No—nothing!” He watched Karen’s vital signs begin to slow again.
“I saw the monitors. She was showing some response. How’d you do it, Dr. Sandor?”
“I just talked to her,” he snapped. “Standard procedure for semicomatose patient care.”
“Well, it’s gone now,” the nurse said as they both watched the lines settle back down. “You’d better do more of whatever you were doing.”
He let out a deep breath, biting back an involuntary grin. If she only knew. He’d have to think about how to use what he’d learned.
The nurse’s footsteps moved away and there was nothing but prolonged silence again. Niko considered the problem and Karen slept.
Friday the 13th—12:00 noon
It was lunchtime, and though he was certain that she had responded to the inadvertent touching of her breast, he couldn’t bring himself to try that again. He was convinced that she could hear him. He couldn’t touch her to give her intimacy. There had to be another way. He’d just have to convince her they were more than friends, set up a fantasy that she’d believe.
“I remember the first day I saw you,” he began, “standing there in the sunlight with your hair tousled by the wind. I wanted you to walk with me, but you turned away.”
I don’t know you.
“Your face was open and honest, but I saw the fear just beneath the surface. You didn’t trust me. I was a fool to come on to you so strongly. There must have been a better way, but I was just so damned young and there didn’t seem to be enough time to win you slowly. We were so wrong for each other, yet I couldn’t make myself go. Don’t you remember?”
Remember—No. Yes. You touched my cheek and called me “princess.” It was wrong. I was promised to another. No, that wasn’t me. That was the woman in the dream. It’s all so confusing. I can’t remember. I wish I did.
She hadn’t moved, but the vital signs were stronger. He could swear that she was listening, but nothing moved, not even the corner of her mouth. He’d pleaded with his sister, using every medical method he’d been taught. Like Karen Miller, she hadn’t responded at all. But she, too, had known he was there.
Niko laid his hand gently on Karen’s upper arm. “You turned away then, just like you’re doing now, and I knew if I wanted to win you, I had to take the time to woo you slowly. That sounds strange, woo you. In this fast-paced world where men and women sleep together before they even know each other’s name, courtship is a forgotten art.”
Go away. I’m confused. I don’t want to hear your voice. You’ll just make me love you and then you’ll be gone.
“I’m a Gypsy. I don’t ever tell people that. They wouldn’t understand. My grandfather was from the old country. He was known as the heartbreak king. All the women loved him, even the gaje. That’s the Gypsy word for whites. My mother always said that I’m just like him. She may be right. I know I like touching. I like making love. You like it too.”
No, you can’t be a Gypsy. You’re not real. I won’t let you do this to me.
“It isn’t true, you know, what they say about us. Gypsies don’t have special powers that turn a woman’s head. They simply say what a woman wants to hear. So what if it’s a lie, they ask, is there something wrong with making a woman happy?”
Yes, when it turns into hurt.
“Oh? You don’t believe that I can be honest? Well, let’s pretend that you and I are meeting for the first time. I’d say, ‘You’re a beautiful woman, Karen. I like your body. It’s sleek and smooth, like an ice princess. But I don’t believe you’re cold inside.’ ”
Karen? Is that really my name? I don’t remember.
He rubbed her arm, sliding his hand down to clasp her wrist.
“No, you’re not cold. Beneath that calm rages a fire, waiting to respond to my touch. Sorry. I’m doing it again, scaring you with my desire. Let’s take it slow. Just open your eyes and look at us. Together we make a spectacular couple. You with your silver angel hair and me, dark as Lucifer himself and twice as sinful. An angel and her Gypsy lover.”
This isn’t happening, one part of her mind warned. I don’t know you. God knows, I wish I did. I wish somebody cared about me. But there are only people who would hurt me.
“Why are you closing me out, Karen? I’m trying to tell you how I feel. Hear me, Karen. Listen.”
Why are you doing this? Why would you want me? I’m just a plain, ordinary woman who wants to be left alone.
Niko stood up and removed his lab coat. Beneath it he was wearing his usual wrinlded jeans and faded T-shirt. He propped his scruffy Nikes on the end of the bed and studied the woman. There seemed to be a bit more color in her face. She was lovely. Nothing like the woman he was creating in his fantasy, but a beautiful woman all the same.
“I’m doing it again, going too fast,” he whispered. “I’m sorry. It’s just so hard to go slowly when I want to pull back those covers and lie down beside you. But I won’t. I’m just going to stay with you and talk. I want to explain about me and my life. I didn’t mean to go away and leave you, but I had to do it.”
He paused. He never talked about himself, and now he was drawing on his own past to find some kind of common ground to reach her.
In the silence of the ICU he heard the whir of the machines, the breathing, pumping sounds of monitors that were the signals of life. Beyond the hospital walls came the wail of a siren. It grew louder until it reached the doors beneath the window where he was sitting.
Niko rose, pulled back the blind, and looked out into the darkness of the day. Rain pelted the street, melting the snow streaked with gray dirt and debris. It was winter. The time of nature’s death.
“Just like you,” he went on, talking as much to himself as to her, “something happened, something that almost killed me. I haven’t talked about it before. I’m not even sure that I can. Just believe me when I say I need you to come back to me. I need you to live.
“I won’t lose you again.”
TWO
Friday the 13th—Mercy General Hospital—1:00 P.M.
“Mac, I don’t know,” Niko said into the phone at the nurses’ station. “I’m not getting anywhere.”
“So, are you giving up?”
That stopped Niko. Giving up? Was he? No, Mac hadn’t given up on him all those years ago, and he hadn’t been allowed to give up either. He owed Lincoln MacAllister for his medical career and his sanity.
“Of course not. I just don’t know what else to do. I’m convinced that she hears me when I speak to her, but I get a response from her only when I talk to her as a man.”
“A man?” Mac questioned. “I don’t understand. What else could you be?”
“Her doctor. I make comments about the accident—about her giving up. Nothing. She doesn’t seem to care. A beautiful woman like her, and she’s willing herself to die.”
“It happens, Niko,” Mac said. “We both know that.”
“It still makes me mad as hell. I might as well tell you, th
at’s when I blew it.”
“Oh? How?”
“I told her I cared. That I didn’t want to lose her. That she was important to me.”
“So you took off your doctor’s coat and treated her like a woman and you got to her.”
“I actually touched her. But I’m not sure how smart that was, Mac. Right now, in her state, she’s confused. I could plant false ideas in her mind. Then she wakes up and—”
“What? She’ll think you’re a man she’s involved with? Would that be so awful?”
“It’s unprofessional as hell. I could lose my license.”
“I’ve always worked on the theory that desperate situations call for desperate measures. Besides, it wouldn’t be permanent, would it?”
“I doubt it. But it could do her great harm psychologically.”
“Maybe,” Mac mused. “But save her and we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. I mean, if it means creating a false past life for her, one that she looks forward to, I say, why not?”
Why not? Niko thought as he swallowed the last of the coffee in his paper cup and crumpled it in his hand. Because it put him in her life, made him personally responsible for it. He’d steadfastly refused to take that kind of risk for more than six years. Because her name was Karen.
Still, Mac had asked and he couldn’t refuse. He owed the man too much. Whom was he kidding? He’d do it, not just for Mac, but for her. Once she woke up, he’d get her to the hospital shrink and let him straighten it out.
Niko headed back to her cubicle. If he were going to delve into a fantasy, he’d make damned sure it was good enough to get her up and going.
He just hoped that he wasn’t the one to suffer posttrauma damage.
Niko went back to her side and pulled his chair close to her bed. He’d already been talking to Karen Miller for the better part of three hours. He hadn’t told Mac, but something about her was getting to him. She was so damned vulnerable, lying there in a faded blue hospital gown, her eyes closed, her chest faintly moving.
“I don’t know why you walked in front of that taxi, princess—” He should call her by her real name, but he still wasn’t comfortable with that. Princess was more intimate and less threatening to his own peace of mind. “The driver said you didn’t even look up before stepping into the street. What were you doing? Didn’t you think anyone would miss you?”
Mac's Angels : Sinner and Saint. a Loveswept Classic Romance (9780345541659) Page 2