“Cage!” She unlatched the chain and opened the door, helpless to do otherwise, though she knew he was almost as dangerous as the shadowy voice on the phone.
She, who prized her independence, could fall for Zachary Cage and bind herself to him as surely as her mother had been bound to her father. And as disastrously.
Weakness. He had become her weakness.
The porch light threw his face into exquisite relief, a study of light and shadow, with shadow taking the upper hand. The rain slicked his hair to his wide brow and plastered his shirt to the chest she’d kissed an hour ago. There was no unfamiliar car in the drive, and she wondered how long he’d been walking.
“I never knew she was sick,” he said, and his voice cracked as though he hadn’t spoken in days. “She didn’t want to worry me, so she went to the doctors alone and never told me about it. Her sister took her to have the lump removed from her breast, and her mother drove her to the first radiation treatment. She told the doctors something was wrong when the burning started, but they prescribed lotion and sent her away. Nothing could be wrong. The linear accelerator’s programming was flawless. But they lied.” His voice was flat now, deadly.
Ripley sucked in a breath as his black eyes pierced her with echoed pain. She remembered the stories of the women who had died from the software bug, treated with fatal doses of radiation when just a little would have saved their lives.
“Cage.” She reached out a hand to him as he stood in the rain and bled from old wounds. But he wasn’t finished.
“She finally called me two days later. I was at a dinner and said I’d call her back.” He turned his face up to the sky as though the rain could wash away the memory. “The plane home was delayed half a day by weather. I called everyone I could think of. Her family. The doctors. Everyone. But she kept getting worse. I barely made it home before she died.” He stepped back until the shadows almost swallowed his tall silhouette. His voice came from the darkness. “I shouldn’t have come here, Ripley. But I’m sorry about before, about what I said. I guess…I guess I thought you deserved to know about her. About Heather. I thought you should know that I failed her.”
A flicker of lightning showed him walking away when Ripley found her voice and raised it over a grumble of thunder. “Cage!” When he turned back, she opened the door wider and gestured with the telephone. “Come inside.”
Chapter Eight
Cage stepped into the cozy apartment he’d followed her to just the day before. The simple elegance of the glossy mahogany furniture and green plants made him feel worse.
She deserved better than a broom closet and another woman’s name.
“I’m sorry,” he repeated, but she didn’t respond any more than she had during his explanation. She just stood there with his dripping jacket in one hand and a cordless telephone in the other. “Ripley?”
She looked at him and the warm brown of her eyes punched him in the heart. “Oh, Cage. I’m so sorry.” Her warmth reached out to him. Humbled him.
Had he thought her cold? Unfeeling? How wrong he’d been. She felt each one of her patients’ pains, each of her father’s careless cruelties. And now she looked like she might cry. For him. It had been a long time since anyone had thought Cage worthy of tears.
He touched her cheek. “Hey. I didn’t tell you about Heather to make you sad. I just thought you deserved to know.” And he’d wanted her to understand why the explo sive chemistry between them could go no further than it had. He was damaged goods. He had been a poor husband back then and would make an even poorer one now. He was five years away from the game. He’d gone back to school and made a new direction for himself. These days he lived a temporary existence, moving from hospital to hospital in search of the next target, the next group of irresponsible doctors to punish.
His life now was one long road trip, without the benefit of a team or the occasional home stand. And as he began to trust Ripley, to see that she was different from the others, he realized she deserved better than that. So much better. She needed his protection right now, not his suspicion.
Not his aching, confused heart.
She shook her head. “It’s not just the story, Cage. It’s worse.” She held the phone out to him as though it was alive. “I just got a phone call.”
The simple words shouldn’t have summoned a sick twist of dread, but he felt it clench in his stomach at the words and the look on her face. The killer had called. He knew it.
She nodded at the question in his eyes. “He…she, I couldn’t really tell. Whoever it was said I was dead if I didn’t make sure the investigation failed.” She tapped her fingers against her lips. “Come to think of it, Leo Gabney said something similar, only he just threatened to fire me.”
Her tone struggled for light, but Cage could see the deep fear beneath. He recognized it in himself, as well.
“Damn it!” The worry gave wings to anger. “What the hell’s going on in your hospital, Ripley? And don’t tell me nobody suspected a thing until we noticed that Ida Mae was contaminated. That’s bull and you know it. What’s been happening in R-ONC? You’ve had five hot bodies in the last six months—don’t tell me you never suspected a thing!”
Cage was shouting and he didn’t care. All the emotions of the past few days rocketed through him, leaving him searching for an outlet. Any outlet. The guilty, edgy desire he felt for Ripley was all churned together with memories of Heather and the telephoned proof of a stalking killer. He loomed over her, not caring that a moment before she’d been ready to cry for his pain. He didn’t want her tears, or her sympathy.
He didn’t know what he wanted from her, but it sure as hell wasn’t pity. He caught the scent of sex on her, and flared his nostrils, realizing he wasn’t quite in control. The thought made him even madder.
“What do you know about the nukes in the broom closet, Ripley? Don’t tell me Leo doesn’t know more than he’s telling. He knows. Your father probably does, too. That’s why they want this kept quiet. They have their priority, don’t they? They want Boston General to be Hospital of the Year, whether or not the patients survive it.” Memories of Albany Memorial hissed from the shadows, reminding Cage that hospitals were not always the benevolent healers they claimed to be. “But what is your priority, Dr. Davis? You know something, or you wouldn’t have gotten that phone call. Tell me.”
All traces of sympathy gone, Ripley’s eyes shot amber sparks at him. “I don’t know anything, you baboon.” She punched him in the chest and he grabbed both her arms to keep her from swinging again and connecting somewhere more important. She squirmed, bringing their lower bodies into close contact as anger sparked from both of them, promising a conflagration.
He realized, suddenly, that he was as afraid for her as he was of her. Afraid of what she might make him want, what might happen to his goals if he gave in to temptation and took the fall.
For an instant, the image of a broken glass rose hovered around the edges of his mind. Then the feel of her soft body against him all but derailed Cage’s thought process. Her scent, sultry and feminine overlain with a hint of sharp, wicked sex, fogged his brain and he shook her, trying to hang on to a thread of sanity. “Tell me, Ripley. What do you know about the radioactivity?”
“I don’t know a thing,” she snapped.
He saw the denial in her eyes and thought he saw secrets beneath, but didn’t wait for the words before he muttered, “Oh, hell,” and leaned in.
And quick as taste, he realized rage wasn’t the only outlet for his churning emotions after all. Ripley was.
Her lips tasted of anger and forgiveness, a potent combination that sucked Cage into the whirl of sensation he’d come to expect yet still wasn’t prepared for. The power whiplashed through him, and with it a sweetness that was born when he’d realized the difference between a doctor and a healer. She cared, he knew. Perhaps too deeply. Just as he could come to care for her. Deeply. Unwisely.
Because a man who lived on the road had no right to lov
e anyone. He’d learned that the hard way.
“Wait!” He drew his head away and heard the thunder of blood through his veins. She deserved better than a man who had failed the woman he loved. “Ripley, I don’t… I can’t give you what you need.” He could give her passion, yes. He could give her his body, but that was all he had to give. And she deserved more.
The desire hummed between them, undeniable and unwise.
“Say my name again,” she demanded, and he groaned as she raked a thumbnail across the damp fabric of his shirt.
“Ripley.”
She nodded, caught his hand and brought it to her face, where the needs battled with the shadow of fear. That lust and nerves could coexist at all baffled him, but he felt it in himself as he saw it in her. Worries twisted with greed until the tension was unbearable. “That’s all I’ll ask you to give me, Cage. That’s all I need from you. All I want.”
But as he sank into her mouth and felt her tongue twine about his like a long-lost friend, Cage wondered whether it would be enough for either of them. Then he didn’t wonder anymore. The achy frustration left over from earlier reared up and claimed his body with a roar, and his hands streaked across her torso, relearning places he’d only begun to explore.
She fell back in surrender now as his lips raced across her face and neck. Her fingernails dug into his shoulders when he bent his head and claimed one taut nipple with his mouth. He felt the power of it. The glory. And he damned the outside world to hell for the next few hours. He needed this. Ripley needed this. The rest of the world outside the dark windows would have to wait.
As if in answer, a pager shrilled.
Her head snapped up, she went on full alert and reflexively slapped at her hip. “Mine?”
“Nope, mine.” Heart pounding on two levels, Cage glanced down at the display. No emergency code. Just a local number he vaguely recognized. “Whistler, I think.”
Ripley untangled herself from his arms and checked her own pager. “Nothing here, so it’s not a patient.” Then she stood there in front of a flight of stairs that he guessed led to the bedroom. And waited.
How many times had he put his work ahead of Heather? He’d lost count a long time ago, and hoped he’d learned his lesson. The internal battle was fierce but short. He didn’t believe the killer would strike at her apartment, not with him there. And he’d asked Security to double the walk-throughs of the Oncology patients’ area.
He’d done his best for now. Until they spoke to Gabney again and convinced him to call in the cops, it would have to be enough. Without another glance at the display, he rehitched the pager on his belt and crossed the room.
He cupped her face in both palms. “Are you sure, Ripley? I don’t think I have another ‘’til death do us part’ in me.”
She linked her hands around his wrists and stood on tiptoe to touch her lips to his. “Then isn’t it lucky for both of us that I don’t believe in happily ever after? I’m not looking for forever, Cage. This is enough for me. Tonight is enough.”
He might have asked her to explain, but she took him under with just her lips and the caring that seemed an integral part of her. Cage felt the hope and the sweetness flow through him and he didn’t ask again. He simply swept her up in his arms and carried her to the bedroom, which was dappled in yellow light from the single street-lamp outside.
If the hairs on the back of his neck shivered to attention as he passed a dark, empty window, he blamed it on the butterfly kisses she rained on his chest. If the splash of the rain against the glass made him shiver, he blamed it on his damp clothing and the chill of the night.
But as they fell to the bed together, he kept his cell phone within easy reach and had a brief moment of wishing it was something else. Like a gun. Then he didn’t think anything more. He simply felt.
Where before it had been flash and fire and the naughty thrill of being in a Boston General maintenance closet, now there was time for a soft touch and sigh, though there was no less urgency. They wrestled with his soggy clothes and hers, and the tangled blankets that seemed to have minds of their own. When at last they were naked and touching from nose to toe, Cage let his eyes drift shut as they kissed.
“Say my name,” she whispered.
He opened his eyes and chuckled. “I know exactly who I’m with, Dr. Davis. Ripley. Don’t doubt it.” And he took his lips on a quick foray that had her gasping and fisting her hands in his hair while the air in the room seemed to thicken almost to steam. Then it was past time for gentleness and sighs. The edgy tension in his gut had Cage rolling to straddle her, lifting her up so they could twine around each other, trapping his aching desire between them until the friction of their bodies was beyond maddening.
“Cage. In the drawer.” She gestured and mumbled something about Tansy being optimistic in loading up the bedside table. When he found the stash of condoms, Cage decided to kiss Ripley’s best friend the next time he saw her.
While he was fumbling with the slippery packet, Ripley tasted him as she had earlier that day, leaving him trembling on the edge of control. Then it was her turn to tremble as he teased her, sliding the tip of his engorged member back and forth across the dewy lips of her womanhood without venturing inside. She arched against him and opened herself fully, raking her nails across his shoulders when he continued the sweet torture.
“Cage!”
He sighed her name while he eased inside inch by torturous inch, as the shadows outside whispered at the edges of his mind, warning him. Taunting him. He ignored them and murmured hot promises against the side of her neck as he relearned the feel of a woman’s body and learned the special feel that was Ripley alone. He’d meant to set an easy pace, but when she spread her legs and arched to take him deeper and deeper still, all intentions of slow lovemaking were erased and he drove into her as he’d wanted to earlier that day.
Hell, as he’d wanted to since their eyes had first met.
“Ripley.” He repeated her name again and again like a prayer, not knowing whether it was for her sake or his, and when she locked her legs around him and he felt the first clenching pull within her, Cage followed her down into that long, sweet, burning spiral. And it was like coming home.
AFTER YEARS OF TRAINING herself to wake up at the first hint of noise, usually after only a few hours of sleep, Ripley was disoriented when she woke slowly the next morning and saw the yellow light of morning out the window. Was she sick?
Then she remembered everything. Ida Mae. Mr. Harris. The broom closet.
Cage.
A quick catalog of her body yielded a few unfamiliar aches and the heavy weight of someone else’s arm across her waist. Not sick, precisely, but probably unwise. Then a sad smile touched her lips. They’d been “unwise” twice more during the night, and though it was time to deal with that awkward, “Well, I’ll call you,” moment, she couldn’t bring herself to regret the experience.
Her parents’ relationship had taught her not to expect poetry and undying love, but she’d been surprised during a string of brief, unlamented relationships to find that not only was love a myth, sex wasn’t all that wonderful either. She’d thought it was her. Now she knew better.
She moved to give the arm across her waist a fond pat and was surprised to find that their fingers were tangled together. When she tried to pull away, his grip tightened.
“Not ready to wake up yet,” he mumbled, and pulled her back until they were curled together like a pair of question marks. Their linked hands curled across her chest and he nuzzled sleepily at her neck. “Much better.”
Part of Ripley wanted to jump up and run all the way to the hospital, where she could avoid the conversation that began, “I really like you, but…” She wished she could keep her memories of how he’d looked into her eyes the moment he climaxed, letting her know that he was with her, and nobody else. She wished she could hold on to the way their skins had touched and their breaths had mingled as they pushed each other up and over the edge. But this wise
part of her knew the moment would soon come when those memories would be tainted by his inevitable withdrawal.
Then there was another, unwise part of her that nestled a little closer to him in the warm cocoon of blankets and held his hand a little tighter, liking the feeling of safety the simple gesture gave her. That part of her wished the morning would never end. And it was that part that had her rolling over and kissing him on the lips when he said her name as though it was time for them to have the discussion.
He let her set the pace, a slow joining in the golden light of morning that had her mind screaming unwise! even as her body reveled in the slide of skin and the scrape of teeth. And when the end came, Ripley felt a part of herself pour into him. Felt a piece of him lodge in her heart.
And knew for sure this had been a terrible mistake. She couldn’t afford emotion. Couldn’t afford weakness.
Couldn’t afford Cage.
They lay together, sweat cooling on their skins, hands still linked above his heart, and Ripley grappled for something sophisticated to say even as she feared his first words.
She was saved by the bell. Or rather, by her pager.
Halfway across the room to grab her own unit, Ripley realized that Cage’s beeper was howling for attention as well and her heart sank. Her pager showed only a hospital extension, and she was reaching for the phone when it began to ring.
She hesitated a moment before picking it up, half afraid that it was the same sexless voice from the night before. When her beeper shrilled again, she clicked the telephone receiver on. “Dr. Davis.”
“Rip, you’ve got to get down here right away.” The relief of hearing Tansy’s voice was short-lived as the tension in the other woman’s voice registered.
“What’s wrong? Not Milo.” Please, not Milo.
“No. It’s Mrs. Cooper. She’s dead, and the Rad Safety goon squad has sealed the room.” Tansy paused. “Ripley, I was in there with her just before she died, but I swear nothing was wrong. She was happy and chattering away.”
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