Dear God, she missed him so much!
Forcing her anguish aside, she focused on the nearly empty streets of Paseo del Real en route to the hospital. Forced herself to think of something mundane. Something that didn’t tear up her insides and make her want to weep.
A college town in central California just east of the coastal range of mountains, Paseo del Real’s population had exploded during the eighties and nineties as people fled the Los Angeles area in search of a quieter lifestyle. They’d brought with them traffic congestion, miles of tract houses, and most of the problems of big cities—including abandoned children, Kristin mused as she pulled into the parking lot of the hospital.
She angled her Volkswagen convertible into a spot near the emergency entrance. The lot was only half full at this hour, mostly vehicles of employees working the eleven-to-seven shift.
Inside, a couple with an infant were waiting in the lobby, an older man was dozing nearby. Kristin waved to the security guard who was lounging against a faux-granite pillar in the center of the room and went through the automatic doors to the nursing station. Adrian Goodfellow was the charge nurse on duty, a woman with brassy-blond hair, a quick silver smile and a heart made of gold.
“Understand you have someone for me, Addy,” Kristin said.
The nurse looked up from the chart she’d been checking and gave a bright smile that lit her eyes. “Sakes, woman, this is Saturday night. Why aren’t you out on the town having a high ol’ time?”
“Same reason you’re here. I’m working.” Both she and Addy were single, but despite Addy’s twelve-hour shifts, she managed to have more dates in a week than Kristin had in a year. Not that Kristin was envious. She’d been burned once by a man and had learned to be wary.
“We gotta do somethin’ about your social life, girlfriend. It’s not healthy for a woman your age—”
“I’m not that old,” she objected. Though granted, between the heart-wrenching cases she handled and her own personal history, she sometimes felt ancient compared to her twenty-four years.
“Shoot, honey, by the time I was your—”
“Addy, there’s a child here,” Kristin interrupted. “No parents, no guardian. I’m supposed to leap into action.”
“Oh, right.” She pulled a chart from the pile on her desk. “You’re gonna love this one. Randy Marshall, a six-year-old minx if I ever saw one. A real charmer. Claims his mother is dead, and he can’t quite remember who he’s been living with.”
Kristin took the chart from her. “Is he hurt?”
“A little smoke inhalation. Doc Plum wants to keep him overnight for observation. They’ll move him upstairs pretty soon.”
“Okay, I’ll go meet our young minx.”
Addy gestured over her shoulder toward a curtained examining room and waggled her eyebrows. “Mike Gables is in there with him now.”
Kristin blinked, confused. “A relative?”
“Lord, no, honey. You really gotta get out more. Mike Gables is the most studly firefighter in town. He’s probably dated every single nurse in the hospital—yours truly included—plus a few of the married ones, would be my guess. In a world of hunks, he rates a solid ten. He’s the guy that rescued the little boy and ended up needing to be checked out himself.”
While it was all very noble that the firefighter had risked his own life to rescue a child, Kristin bristled at the thought of a man who dated every woman he met. She’d fallen once for a sweet-talker who hadn’t believed in commitment, a regular Prince Charming who’d walked out on her at the most critical moment of her life. She didn’t plan to go down that path again.
Squaring her shoulders, she headed for the examining room. As she reached for the curtain, a childish giggle greeted her, followed by the low rumble of baritone laughter.
A disquieting shiver of awareness rolled down her spine and she mentally chided herself. A deep, seductive voice did not make him a ten on her scale.
She pulled back the curtain and was met by two sets of dark brown eyes that flashed with amusement and intelligence. The owner of the older set stood, a slow smile curling lips that could only be described as dangerously kissable. Still dressed in his turnout coat and pants, his jacket hung open revealing a T-shirt pulled taut over a well-muscled chest. His mussed saddle-brown hair invited a woman to tame the rebellious waves.
Damn! An eleven!
Forcing her gaze away from the firefighter, Kristin smiled at the child. “You must be Randy. I’m Kristin McCoy from Children’s Services.”
“Did you bring Suzie?”
Her gaze darted to Mike for an explanation. What she got was a thousand-watt smile.
“His dog. Suzie’s real special to Randy. We rescued her from the fire, too. Had to give her oxygen.”
It was even harder this time to look away from the firefighter, which irritated Kristin no end. Normally she had far better control over her reactions to any man, particularly those who were smooth talkers. But then, she didn’t often meet an eleven.
Her gaze snapped back to the boy. “I’m sorry, Randy. I didn’t know about your dog, but I’m sure someone is taking good care of her.”
The child hung his head. “She probably misses me.”
“Yes, she probably does,” Kristin said softly. It was all she could do not to take the child in her arms and hold him close. But the ability to distance oneself from a client was sometimes all that kept a social worker sane in Children’s Services. That was a struggle Kristin fought almost every day. “Why don’t we talk about where your family is, and then we can get you and Suzie and your family all back together again.”
“I dunno,” the boy mumbled.
“He says his mom’s dead,” the firefighter said. “By the way, I’m Mike Gables.”
“Yes, I know.” She didn’t look at him this time.
“My reputation precedes me?”
“You could say that.”
His amused chuckle teased around the edges of the barrier she’d erected years ago to protect herself from men like Mike Gables.
“Randy, you’re going to have to tell me who you were living with.”
“I can’t ’member. I must have hit my head.”
“Hit your—”
“Amnesia,” Mike suggested mildly. “A bad case of voluntarius forgetingus. It’s in all the medical textbooks. Very serious.”
The boy looked up hopefully. His hair was as straight as Mike’s was wavy and might have been cut with pinking shears it was so uneven. “Yeah, that’s what I gots.”
Kristin suppressed a smile. “I see.” But that wouldn’t help her to locate whatever adults were responsible for Randy. “Maybe he’ll experience a spontaneous cure by the morning. I’ve heard of that happening in cases like this.” She risked a glance at Mike. He looked troubled.
“Can I go to sleep now? I think it’s past my bedtime.”
“It certainly is.” Despite her vow to keep her emotional distance, she reached down and covered the boy with a light blanket, letting her hand linger in a caress. He was about the age Bobby would have…
She thrust the thought aside. “Do you want me to stay until they take you upstairs?”
His eyelids drooping, he shook his head.
Mike gestured that they should leave. Instinctively, Kristin knew she shouldn’t go anywhere with the man, not even as far as the nurses’ station. But it seemed childish to object.
He followed her out of the cubicle, a little too closely, she thought. She could feel his eyes on her, the heat of his body warming the air around her. Or maybe she just imagined that he’d slipped inside her personal space. Whatever the case, her skin flushed and the hairs on her nape rose. To her dismay, she suddenly wished she’d worn an austere business suit tonight instead of casual slacks and a boat-neck T-shirt. Protective armor to bolster her good sense would have been a good idea, too.
Behind her, Mike was fascinated by the sassy sway of her ponytail—like a determined red flag warning him off—in contras
t to the inviting swing of her hips. A woman of contradictions, he suspected. But then, what woman wasn’t?
He smiled to himself. This one had green eyes, not bright like spring grass, but a deeper shade that made him think of a forest glade that held dark, painful secrets. An intriguing thought and more fanciful than was his usual style.
She stopped, turned abruptly, and he almost ran into her. A part of him wished he’d taken advantage of the opportunity to touch her, to see if her skin was as soft as it appeared. Maybe later….
She looked up at him with those deep, secret-filled eyes. “Did Randy tell you anything about who’d he’d been living with?”
“Nope, and I don’t think he’s going to either.”
Her nicely arched auburn brows lowered into a frown. “Why not?”
“The house had been vacant a long time. I’d guess they were squatters and maybe left him on his own while they went off to the movies or something. From what I saw, they didn’t have much in the way of possessions. Itinerants would be my guess and probably leery of the law.” He shrugged. “Maybe the cops can find out something from the neighbors but I wouldn’t bet my paycheck on it.”
“If I can’t find his family or a responsible adult, I’ll have to place him in foster care.”
“A typical bureaucratic response.”
She looked surprised by his sharp tone. “That’s how the system works. You can’t leave a child alone.”
“Sometimes it’d be better for the kid,” he muttered, knowing full well that wasn’t the case for a boy as young as Randy. Unless someone turned up, he’d become just another cog in the system, and a pretty damn helpless one at that. But Ms. McCoy—social worker—being on the other end of the stick, couldn’t fully understand that. “Maybe he’s already in the system. Maybe that was a foster family he was living with and he’d just as soon not go back.”
“Our foster families aren’t usually squatting in an empty house,” she said defensively. “They’re checked out better than that.”
“Usually.”
“Could he be a runaway?”
“Pretty young for that. And I think there was too much stuff in there for him to have carried it on his own—an old cot he slept on, a mattress in the master bedroom and some basic equipment in the kitchen.”
“Then it’s a mystery, isn’t it?” She glanced around as the double doors opened to the ambulance entrance and an elderly man was brought in on a gurney.
Addy swept past them with a clipboard and a tray of supplies for the new arrival.
“Hey, don’t wear out your dancing shoes, Addy,” Mike warned with a grin.
“Sugar, if you’re askin’, I’m dancing.” She laughed as she vanished into the examining room with the patient.
Mike smiled after her. He’d dated Addy a couple of times, his limit with most women. She was fun, full of laughter and a helluva good dancer. But he’d found if he saw a woman more than once or twice they got the wrong idea. A few laughs, a bottle of wine and a bouquet of flowers were all any woman could expect from him. A man who’d been raised in a dozen different foster homes in the same number of years didn’t know anything about commitment.
When he turned back to Kristin, she’d set her jaw in a stubborn line. “If you’ll excuse me, I’m going to call the police and ask them to check with the neighbors first thing in the morning. Maybe they can learn something of value.”
“Maybe,” he said noncommittally, wondering why she’d gone all torque-jawed on him. He didn’t usually have that effect on a pretty woman.
“Meanwhile, I’m sure you have other things to do. I’ll look in on Randy later to see that he’s settled comfortably in his room.”
With that, she turned on her heel and marched out of the emergency room. Mike watched the red semaphore wagging its danger signal. Definitely an intriguing woman. Too damn bad she was a social worker.
“Good lookin’, isn’t she?” Addy dropped a patient chart on the counter and unhooked her stethoscope from around her neck.
“You could say that. But I get the feeling she doesn’t like me very much.”
“What? A woman capable of resisting your charms? Bet that doesn’t happen often.”
“Nope, it doesn’t.” And Mike couldn’t quite help but think he’d enjoy the challenge of changing Kristin’s mind, no matter what her job was.
Chapter Two
Mike spent his day off on the boat he kept in the marina at Morro Bay. Something always needed to be done—the motor overhauled, the decks wiped clean, the scuba gear checked. Not that he objected. On a sunny day, it was a helluva nice way to spend some time—with the added bonus of frequent female companionship as women dropped by to say hello.
Funny how this time he’d compared them all to a green-eyed redhead he’d met only briefly in the emergency room. And they’d all come up short.
Now, as he parked his pickup behind Station Six the next morning, he was ready to get back to work on his twenty-four-hour eight-to-eight shift. He wasn’t an adrenaline junky, but he needed some serious work to keep his mind off a libido that had a will of its own. He was kind of hoping they’d be training on the tower today. A few trips up and down that sucker hauling a mile of hose over his shoulder and he’d sleep just fine tonight. No fantastic dreams featuring a redhead to interrupt his Zs.
Dressed in his uniform, duffle bag over his shoulder, he went inside, taking the stairs to the third-floor living quarters two at a time.
“Hail, our hero!” Virtually all of the members of C-shift were waiting for him in the dining hall along with every guy on B-shift, about to go off duty.
Mike halted in his tracks. “What’s going on?”
Logan Strong, a C-shift member of the ladder truck company, produced a huge picture pasted on a three-by-four-foot poster board, a blowup of a newspaper photo. Mike squinted, trying to make out the grainy reproduction.
“The fair city of Paseo del Real—or at least the press thereof—has declared you a hero,” Logan announced, grinning broadly. “Congratulations.”
Oh, shoot! The picture was of Mike carrying Randy to the ambulance, the kid wearing his helmet. The headline read, Hero Rescues Child from Fiery Inferno.
“Ah, come on, guys. I didn’t do anything—”
“You got that damn straight,” Jay Tolliver said. “I could have been the hero if you hadn’t pushed your way inside before me. Think how many points I would have made with Kim if you’d let me go first.”
Mike lowered his duffle to the floor. “You don’t need any points with your new bride, Tolliver. She’s already nuts over you, though we’ve gotta question her judgment in that regard.”
Jay laughed, and so did the rest of the crew.
With a shake of her head that set her dangling earrings in motion, Emma Jean Witkowsky, the dispatcher, said, “I knew the minute I saw that picture in yesterday’s paper something good would happen. They’re setting up a trust fund for that sweet little boy so he can go to college.”
“We can always count on your psychic ability to tell us what’s going to happen—right after it happens,” Mike teased.
Lifting her chin, she set her jewelry in motion again. “It’s my Gypsy blood.”
Given her dark eyes and nearly black hair, it was entirely possible Emma Jean was a Gypsy, but Mike didn’t believe the psychic business for a minute. She was more often wrong than right, not that she’d admit it.
Crossing the room, Logan presented Mike with the photo. “I bet you made a deal with the photographer so you’d get the really big bucks at the bachelor auction this week.”
“Some of us hero-types don’t need any extra help. The ladies are crazy about me.”
“Yeah, and the feeling is mutual.”
Everyone in the room hooted and hollered, but Mike couldn’t deny that was true. He liked women, liked to see their eyes light up when he flirted with them—old ones, young ones, it didn’t matter. But he made it a point not to let any relationship go too far. The las
t thing he ever wanted to do was hurt a woman by leading her to expect more than he could give.
Ray Gainer, a fireplug of a man, arrived, duffle slung over his shoulder.
“Hey, you’re late,” Logan pointed out.
Gainer shrugged and gave everyone a sheepish grin. “Long ride back from Vegas.”
“Hot dog! That means Gainer’s buying the ice cream today,” someone shouted.
“No way! I lost my shirt this trip, and my wife’s gonna skin my hide if she finds out about it.”
The friendly bantering back and forth continued for a few more minutes, then the guys from B-shift headed home and Mike took the photo and his duffle into his room, stowing them both in his locker. Arnie Switzer, who slept in the room during B-shift, had left the place spotless as usual. Firefighters were good about that, neat and tidy, at least at the station house.
Firefighters also worked hours that were different from the rest of the world. Typically, they pulled three twenty-four-hour shifts a week with a day off in between, then they had four days off in a row. That meant a firefighter had plenty of time to moonlight on another job, or in Mike’s case, go scuba diving or hang out at the marina.
Closing the door on the locker, Mike gave some thought to the bachelor auction that was coming up. It was for a good cause, the burn unit at the hospital. Giving up a few hours of his free time wasn’t a hardship.
He smiled to himself. Maybe he ought to invite Kristin McCoy to the event and slip her a few extra bucks to bid on him.
Then again, she hadn’t exactly warmed to him. Given his luck, she’d use his money to run up the bid on Logan, a quiet, serious guy women couldn’t seem to resist. Mike didn’t want to waste his money promoting Logan’s love life.
KRISTIN KNELT in front of Randy, her heart nearly melting at the sad look on his face. His arms were wrapped tightly around a paper sack filled with clothing she’d dug up from the emergency supply—pants and shirts that were probably too big for his slender frame. He’d look like a lost waif, which is exactly what he was. The police hadn’t been able to trace the couple he’d been living with in the vacant house, the neighbors hadn’t had a clue who they were, and Randy still wasn’t talking.
With Valor and Devotion Page 2