It was a mistake. He knew it the moment the latch clicked and his body bumped up against hers in the darkness. She gasped slightly at the contact and his heart thundered in his ears.
He fumbled for the dangling cord of the single light bulb and was only vaguely surprised when he pulled it and nothing happened. The footsteps passed in the hallway before fading again, but neither of them moved to open the door. Cage closed his eyes and felt the headache recede as a new tension took over.
Over the taint of chlorine, he could smell the lingering fragrance of her shampoo and a hint of the chocolate bar he knew she’d smuggled to Milo. And in the tiny, awkward broom closet where Ripley had almost died the day before, the realization hit Cage like a fist to the chest. She wasn’t anything like the doctors he’d known. She cared. She felt her patients’ pain. She hurt when they hurt. She understood. And it was that understanding that opened the barriers around his heart, just a crack.
“I was a lousy husband,” he said into the darkness, and it helped knowing she was there, listening. “I was on the road all the time, never at home with her where I belonged. We used to talk about the things we’d do when I was finished pitching for Texas. Five years, maybe eight if I got lucky and my shoulder held out, then we were going to be together like a normal married couple.” Have a baby, whispered a quiet voice in the back of his mind, making his soul ache.
He let his head drop forward, and found that his brow rested perfectly on the top of Ripley’s head. And though it was so wrong, it felt right. He let out a big sigh and their breaths mingled in warm intimacy.
She drew back slightly. “My father was like that when I was growing up. By the time he left Boston General, my mother had packed her bags. She got tired of waiting around for him to come home for dinner, so when I left for med school, she escaped for the fairways.”
Oddly, the comparison angered Cage. Though he scourged himself often enough over neglecting Heather, he didn’t like that Ripley saw parallels between him and Howard Davis. He reached for her, holding her still when she would have drawn away. “I’m not your father, Ripley.”
“And I’m not your wife,” she fired back, “but I can feel you comparing us whenever I get too close to you. Long before my father said anything, I knew she was there in your mind. And even if I wanted something serious to happen between us, I’d know it was no use—because no living woman will ever match up to her.”
Cage bowed his head, knowing she was right about one thing, but not the other. It was true that he’d compared her to Heather time and again. But it wasn’t Ripley he’d found lacking. “Ripley, I—”
“It doesn’t matter, Cage,” she told him gently, moving to stand closer, just a breath away. “Because I’m not looking for something serious between us. I don’t do serious, it’s just not worth it.” She touched his face, and her fingertips left flames behind.
The darkness pressed them together. Footsteps in the hallway approached, then paused. Feeling a frisson of fear ripple through her, Cage leaned down until her warmth feathered his face. “Don’t worry, I’ll keep you safe.”
It wasn’t until another set of footsteps met the first in the hallway, and cheerful female voices rose in greeting, that he realized just how close he and Ripley had gotten to each other. Just a breath away. And when both women moved off down the corridor together, he leaned down, or she leaned up, he couldn’t say which. He just knew that one moment they were two separate people, and the next they were joined as their lips met and clung.
And the fire ignited.
It was the same as it had been before only more so. Cage almost staggered with the impact when Ripley wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him as if her very life depended on it. And then it was his life in the balance, as the breath backed up in his lungs and his heart stuttered with the feel of her in his arms.
He’d expected the power this time, expected the bittersweet nostalgia of a cocky young man who’d lost everything. Heather was so close to the surface of his mind right then. It was so dark in the little closet. If he’d wanted to, he could have pretended it was her gasp he swallowed, her hand that guided his to touch a breast through thin, clinging fabric.
Her nipple that pointed in his palm.
But the larger part of him knew it was Ripley’s taste that exploded on his tongue and Ripley’s fingers that dug into his shoulders as he deepened the kiss and wedged his leg between hers, needing to get closer to her warmth. Closer.
He’d been cold for so very, very long.
He tore his mouth free long enough to ask, “Are you sure?”
“I’m tired of being afraid, Cage. I’m tired of looking over my shoulder and thinking that everyone I meet in the hall could be a killer. I need this, right here, right now,” she said between kisses as her busy fingers unbuttoned most of his shirt and she transferred her mouth to his chest. “I need to feel alive. I need to feel like there’s something beyond the hospital. Can’t you feel it?”
And the hell of it was, he could feel it. He felt the press of reality beyond the broom-closet door. He felt the security of the small, dark space, and the knowledge that once he pulled the key from his pocket and slipped it into the lock on their side, nobody could unlock it from the outside. From the reality side.
“I feel it,” he said, and kissed her again. Fast. It was all happening so fast against a backdrop of breathing and sighs, rustling cloth and frantic whispers. The walls seemed to press close. Cage felt a row of shelves at his back and was grateful for the support when his knees threatened to buckle. Remembering the bottles of cleaning fluid, he shoved away from the shelving and spun them around, banging his bad shoulder against the door in an effort to find support. “But Ripley, I can’t promise you anything.”
“I don’t want promises, Cage. Promises are what my father gave my mother. I don’t want them. I just want not to be alone right now. I just want you to be with me.” He wasn’t even sure she knew what she was saying anymore, as her busy mouth traveled down his stomach and his fingers tangled in her hair. He flung his other arm backward, flailing for an anchor amidst the whirling sensations. He didn’t think his legs were going to hold him much longer. All the blood in his body seemed suddenly concentrated elsewhere.
He leaned back, hard, against the door and boosted her up to wrap her legs around his waist. Then they were perfectly aligned, mouth to mouth. Center to center. Need to need.
Where had all this feeling come from? The warmth swamped him. The greed almost flattened him. And the hot, groping want roared up and battered down some of the cold emptiness that had been with him, it seemed, forever.
Oh, yes. He knew about being alone.
His hands slid up her torso to touch her breasts beneath a sly slide of lace. He could feel the softest place, where the smooth skin gave way to crinkled flesh and hard points. She arched against him as his mouth found one of those tight little buds through her shirt.
The room spun. Faster. Harder. Her legs loosened at his waist and she dropped her feet to the floor. Cage felt his zipper give way. When she freed him, the smooth slide of her hand had his head snapping back. Five years worth of needs, maybe even a lifetime’s worth, was suddenly centered on a single point of contact.
If he didn’t have her, then and there, he might die. But there were practicalities he couldn’t avoid.
“Wait. I…I haven’t got…” This was a hospital, he thought with insane clarity. There had to be a condom somewhere. Anywhere.
“Don’t worry about it, this is for both of us” she said, and he burrowed his fingers in her hair as she kissed his lips one last time, then trailed her way down his chest, and lower…
His fingers tightened and he spread his legs to brace himself. “Don’t. You don’t have to if you don’t want to—”
Apparently she did want to. He swore sharply, reverently, when her lips closed over him in one sure, bold move. His buttocks clenched as every molecule of his body concentrated itself in one hard, pulsing pla
ce. He clenched his teeth to keep from yelling when her clever mouth and silky tongue took another deadly swing at the barriers around his soul.
He dug his fingers into her scalp, into her shoulders as he felt the power build. He felt cherished. Healed. Wanted.
Needed. And that was the most dangerous feeling of all.
Pulling her up, he somehow got her jeans down to her knees. Her hand found his slick shaft and her mouth fused to his as Cage held her off the ground with one arm and stroked his other hand straight down her stomach to the wet, waiting, wanting place below.
Though his fingers found her center with more force than finesse, she stiffened against him and whimpered into his mouth, “Cage.”
“Yeah, honey.” Almost beyond himself from the friction of her hand, he found the hard little button within its velvet folds and stroked it once, twice. She turned her head into his shirt and tried to muffle a scream as her body jerked and he felt the hard pulses begin. Her hand tight ened, and when he poured himself into her palm, the pleasure carried a knife-edge of pain, as though he’d lost a part of himself in the spasm.
And then he didn’t care. He didn’t care that he was half propped up against the door of a stinking broom closet. He didn’t care that his pants were around his ankles or that she’d never unbuttoned the collar of his shirt.
He cared only for the woman wrapped around him, still shaking with the last precious aftershocks. Their scent surrounded him. Filled him.
Humbled him and gloried him.
How long had it been since he’d felt this relaxed, this complete? A ghost’s whisper at the back of his mind knew the answer, but he chose to ignore it. This wasn’t about the past. It was about right now.
He turned his lips into her hair and cuddled her against his chest, trusting his legs to hold out another minute. When she murmured and snuggled close, he smiled and rested his cheek on her head, knowing something fundamental had happened between them. Within him. And when she whispered, “Cage,” in a wondering murmur that told him he wasn’t alone, he smiled and whispered her name.
The suddenness with which she pushed off his chest was no more startling than the open hand that cracked across his cheek.
“What the hell?” He jolted away from the door and stumbled, feeling his pants cling at his ankles. “What’s wrong? I thought—”
“Well, you thought wrong,” she spat, adding as an afterthought, “Jerk.” She yanked her jeans up before she opened the door, then she jammed her shirt into the waistband and glared at him in the half light. “I’m going to say this one more time, okay?” He winced as the volume increased. “My name is Ripley!”
And she was gone, leaving the door half open and Cage standing bare-assed in the center of the broom closet. He groaned, then swore aloud when he realized that he’d just done the unthinkable.
He’d called her Heather.
MOVING FAST UNDER A cloud of righteous indignation, Ripley rounded the corner just outside her office and ran headfirst into Cage’s assistant, Whistler. And as quickly as that, fear replaced the anger. How had she forgotten, even for a moment, what was happening in her department?
“What are you doing here?” she barked, part of her fearing there had been another emergency call, and part of her registering that though Whistler had no official business at Boston General on the weekend, she’d seen him twice now.
The radiation tech blinked. “Picking up some logbooks I forgot on Friday?”
“Are you asking me or telling me?” she snapped with a blend of nerves and hurt, then winced because it sounded like something her father would say. “Sorry, I’m in a filthy mood.”
“That’s okay.” Whistler shrugged. “I’m not big on working weekends, either.”
Yet he’d been at the hospital both days. A shiver tickled at the base of her spine. “Why is that, exactly?”
Whistler glanced at the green loose-leaf binders tucked in the crook of his left arm. “Because of the new boss. And the radioactive bodies. Take your pick.” Before she could respond, he glanced down the hall behind her. “Speaking of which, have you seen Cage? His coat is in the office, but I can’t find him.”
The name sent a bolt through Ripley that was equal parts lust, anger and guilt. She wouldn’t forgive his calling her the wrong name. But she was a grown woman. She knew seducing a man with baggage was a sure road to disaster.
Lucky for her, she had her emotions securely strapped in for the ride. She muttered, “We were scanning the injectables for contamination.”
One of the binders fell to the floor with a clatter. Muttering an apology, Whistler fumbled to retrieve it, almost losing the others in the process. When he straightened, he edged around her. “You know where he is now?”
“In the broom closet,” she said, feeling a vague disquiet, and a sense of guilt when the radiation tech muttered a goodbye and bolted for the closet. Then she remembered being cradled in Cage’s strong arms while his heart beat a steady, sated rhythm beneath her cheek. She remembered thinking that maybe this was what the poets got so excited about, the thing that bound two people together close enough that they would gladly die to save each other.
She remembered thinking that maybe this was what led to happily ever after.
Then she remembered hearing him whisper his dead wife’s name and she didn’t feel mean anymore. She felt justified. And as she grabbed her coat from her office, she found herself hoping that Cage still had his pants down when Whistler opened the door.
RIPLEY’S APARTMENT seemed so empty without a Siamese yowling at the door that she almost climbed the stairs right away to retrieve Simon. Then she remembered it was bingo night for most of her neighbors. The cat-sitter wouldn’t be home until well after ten.
The blinking answering machine provided the only motion in the simple living room, and butterflies chased each other around in her stomach as she punched the play button.
What if there was nobody on the other end of the line?
The machine beeped and a scratchy, tinny version of Tansy’s voice filled the room. “Rip? I wanted to let you know that I’ll be in late tomorrow. I have…something I need to do. Okay? So I’ll see you around lunchtime.” Tansy’s voice seemed odd, and she paused a moment before hanging up. A dull dread settled in Ripley’s chest and she was across the room, picking up the phone to call her friend when the next message began. Maybe Tansy was ready to talk about whatever had been bothering her.
Ripley quickly shouldered aside the thought that Ida Mae’s death and Tansy’s problems seemed to have coincided.
The machine beeped and played back another familiar voice. “Caroline, I—” She deleted her father’s message with a vicious stab and was about to cancel the playback when Cage’s voice boomed out from the cheap speakers.
“Ripley? Are you there? Please pick up if you are.” There was a pause, and her finger hovered over the delete button as her inner muscles clenched around the place where his fingers had been. She had wanted, needed the release she’d found with him. But it couldn’t happen again. Cage, it seemed, was a new weakness she would have to fight. “No? Well, call me when you get home so I know you got there safely. Please? I need to know you’re okay, and I want to talk to you.” He rattled off a phone number and it surprised Ripley that it was unfamiliar.
How could she know how he tasted, yet not know his number?
The machine replayed a sales call that she promptly cut off. Ripley’s face burned as she remembered just how intimately she knew Cage now. What had possessed her? She didn’t do things like that. Not with the men she usually dated—though “usually” was being generous—and certainly not with a man she’d just met. A man she wasn’t even sure she liked.
But she’d wanted to do it. Needed to touch him. Taste him. The feel of his velvet steel in her mouth had been a bigger turn-on than the most expensive candlelit dinner or the most beautiful moonlit night.
And they’d been in a broom closet! Her clothes stank of cleaning solvents. Ri
pley smothered a sound that was halfway between a laugh and a sob and jumped when the phone in her hand began to ring.
She answered it automatically. “Hello?”
“Caroline, I—” It felt good to be the one who cut the connection, and Ripley felt a spurt of power. She’d had enough of her father’s interference. In fact, she’d had enough of her father. He and Leo wanted the Hospital of the Year? Well, they could go to hell with the award for all she cared.
The phone rang again almost immediately, and she answered it. “Father, we are not—”
“Do you believe in angels, Ripley?” The whisper was soft, ethereal, neither masculine nor feminine. A shiver started somewhere in Ripley’s belly, where her muscles still ached from Cage’s touch.
“Who is this?”
“They walk among us, you know. Not the ones who died at peace, but the other ones. The angry ones that God forgot. We see them every day, but we don’t really see them, do we?”
“How did you get this number? It’s—”
“Unlisted. I know.” There was satisfaction in the words, and a wistful note. “Don’t be frightened. I mean you no harm. I’m on your side. I only want to help them. But Cage…Cage doesn’t understand. You must stay away from him, Ripley. You must. He’ll ruin everything.”
Though she wanted to hang up, Ripley couldn’t bring herself to cut the connection. There was pain in the whispered words, and a familiar cadence she couldn’t place. “Who is this?”
There was a pause, then the barest hint of a whisper. “I’m a friend, with a warning. Get rid of Cage and stop your investigation…or die.”
Ripley stared at the phone for a handful of heartbeats while the fear and the awful shivering wrongness of the voice on the phone fled through her and left her empty. Alone.
Afraid.
The sudden peal of the doorbell made her jump, and Ripley froze. Oh, God. Her eyes skittered to the window, where a single feeble streetlight battled the rainy gloom.
The doorbell rang again, and then the knocking started, followed by a voice. “Ripley? Open up, it’s me.”
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