by Beverly Bird
“I guess I would know.” His gaze fell to her breasts.
Heat poured through her, almost making her knees buckle. Why was he talking about that? “Don’t talk about that. It was a one-time thing.”
“Yeah, it was. But I was just making an observation.”
“Well, don’t.”
“You’re blushing,” he said.
“I don’t blush, either.”
“Right, and you don’t cut men off at the knees.”
“What? I never did that!”
He needed to talk about this, Sam realized. Coming back to this room sure as hell wasn’t doing it for either of them. She was still just as unpredictable as she’d been all day. So he needed to put what had happened between them right out there in the air and toss it around a little, he decided. Then he could forget about it.
“Show me how,” he whispered.
“Show you what?” Sam noticed that her voice went thin. It was almost a squeak.
“That’s what you said to me when I kissed you.” He watched more color fly into her face. “Face it, lady, you were the instigator in all that.”
“That’s preposterous!” Now her eyes were shooting fire. “You kissed me! It was the farthest thing from my mind! We were sitting there sharing that bag of peanuts you found in your pocket, then you started feeding them to me and then you just…you just…kissed me!”
That was exactly how it had happened, Sam thought, so he wouldn’t win any points trying to argue it. He tried another tack. “And you needed me to tell you how to kiss? Was that why you said, ‘show me how’?”
“No!”
“Then the rational deduction is that you were not talking about kissing when you said those words.”
“I don’t even remember saying them!”
“Oh, honey, you said them. Trust me on that one.”
“Well, then, I was…I was…”
Sam waited.
“Go to hell!” she shouted.
He threw back his dark head and laughed. “I was waiting for you to say something like ‘You, sir, are no gentleman.”’
She sniffed. “Except we always knew that.”
Sam found himself closing the distance between them. “Four years, and I never knew you had such a tongue on you, Nurse Matthews.”
She backed up against the door. “You’ve seen the last of my tongue.”
“Have I?”
“What’s gotten into you? It was a one-time thing!”
“So was the burning bush, but people are still talking about it.”
“I don’t want to talk!”
“That’s a change, then. You did it nonstop the whole time we were in that room. The only thing you didn’t tell me was at what age you were potty-trained.”
She pressed her hands to her cheeks. “There was nothing else to do but talk.”
“Oh, we thought of something.”
She moved her hands to clap one against her tummy. “Stop this.”
Okay, he thought, relaxing for the first time all day. He knew a rattled woman when he saw one. She wasn’t as indifferent to that whole business between them as she pretended to be. His ego was assuaged.
Now, he thought, he could put it behind him.
He took another step toward the door and she jumped back again, hitting it so hard the collision hurt him. His first instinct was to ask if she was all right. He touched a finger to the underside of her chin, instead. “Relax.”
She smacked his hand away. “Don’t touch me!”
He backed up gladly. Her skin was too soft. “Are you going to stand there all night, or are you going to move so I can leave and go home?”
Cait jerked aside so he could get to the door. “Be my guest.”
He opened it and stepped through.
“You said I was rigid, too,” she said suddenly. “You didn’t just call me a sparrow. You said I was rigid.”
He looked back at her. The conversation was supposed to be finished. He’d done what he’d meant to do. He’d gotten her out of his blood. But now something in his gut hitched all over again.
“You were rigid,” he said, “right up until you started taunting Hines like some kind of madwoman.” And that had blown his mind away.
She gave a quick little nod. “Okay, then. I just wanted to get that straight for the record.”
“Consider it straight. You have unplumbed depths, Nurse. Duly noted.” Damn it! She looked bewildered and pleased by the compliment, and he felt something go hinky in him again. He felt himself wanting to kiss her one more time.
“Let’s go,” he said quickly. “Are you done communing with the laundry chute?”
She stepped through the door after him and shut it smartly behind her. “In my own fashion. I might mention that at least I didn’t destroy my knuckles in the process.”
Sam looked down at his right hand. She was right. He was bleeding. He felt marginally like an idiot until they took four or five strides down the hall. Then he was distracted by the nervous shift of her shoulders. She hesitated and looked back the way they’d come.
“What?” he asked.
She shook her head. “Nothing.”
He walked with her to the employees’ parking area. He wasn’t surprised when she stopped beside a car that was small, practical and ugly. It was exactly what he would have expected her to drive—a week ago. That comforted him a little until he got to his Maserati and looked back.
Then he watched her through her windshield. She started playing with that damned zipper again, the one on the front of her scrubs top. She tugged it down a little. He got a peek of skin—he knew it was as smooth and pale as alabaster—then she fanned herself from the heat with her hand. She reached to the passenger seat and a second later she pushed dark, wraparound sunglasses onto her face. When she turned out of the lot, the wind tickled her hair through the open windows.
It was over, damn it. Over. A one-time thing. But suddenly Sam had to inhale hard just to breathe.
The woman tailed them as far as the lobby, her anger pushing hot and steady at the inside of her skull.
It had been a bit of luck, finding them together. Otherwise, she would never have known that they were still cozy. Up until now, she’d just been keeping an eye on him. He was her answer, her way out, the clever doctor who collected women like trophies, then tossed them aside.
He was the one who would give her everything she’d ever wanted. Except now…now he’d come out of that storage room with the breathless little blonde. It was a wrinkle and it infuriated the woman. It caught her off guard and was going to force her to adjust her plans.
She waited until they turned out of the corridor, then she hurried after them. She’d had a bad moment when the bitch looked back over her shoulder as though knowing she was being watched, and that made her more cautious. She finally landed in the lobby at the same time they pushed through the outside doors.
She hurried to the glass and watched him standing there, staring after the sweet, wimpy nurse.
She’d have to fix this, she thought. This time she wasn’t going to lose.
Three
Normally Cait used the drive home from work to plan the evening ahead. She considered which chores she could do to free up time on her days off for more pleasurable pursuits, like scouting out a flea market. She thought about what new book she might start reading and letters she really ought to write.
But tonight, as she pulled out of the hospital parking lot, she decided that what she really wanted most in life was a glass of wine.
What had that been back there with Sam? Her heart had stopped gallivanting, but still thudded in a strange way. The pit of her stomach still felt ticklish. He’d been teasing her, she thought, and he had mentioned it. Not once, not twice, but repeatedly.
Yes, she decided, she definitely wanted a glass of wine. It would be very soothing. She pulled over to the curb for a moment because she wasn’t quite sure how to go about such a thing. Stop at a bar? She’d noticed the
Saddlebag at the edge of town a time or two, and there was always the Lone Star Country Club. But truth be told, her insides went a little squirmy at the idea of sashaying into such an establishment by herself. Okay, she thought, she’d find a liquor store.
She pulled away from the curb and spotted one a few minutes later. It occurred to her that she’d passed it every morning and night on her way to and from the hospital without ever really noticing it. Of course, she felt very strongly about keeping her eyes on the road while she was driving. A fender bender would really disrupt her life. But these days such a calamity seemed like…well, less of a calamity.
“Being taken hostage with God’s gift to women is infinitely worse,” she muttered, and pulled her little car up to the curb one more time.
She got out and locked the door. She was halfway across the sidewalk when it happened again, that itchy feeling at the back of her neck, the humming urgency inside her to make sure the car was absolutely secure. Cait stalled and rubbed a hand over her nape.
“No,” she said. She wasn’t going to do this anymore. She was going to get better.
“I didn’t even ask you yet,” said a man approaching up the pavement.
Cait turned her head, then literally gaped at him. He was one of the best-looking men she’d ever seen, right up there with Sam Walters. Why had she never noticed before how many truly handsome men there were running around Mission Creek?
“I beg your pardon?” she asked uncertainly.
“You said no.”
She laughed a little breathlessly as she understood. “I did that, yes.”
He grinned. “One of my best friend’s wives talks to herself a lot, too. They haven’t slapped her into the nuthouse yet.”
Cait nodded. “I just started doing it recently,” she admitted.
He threw back his dark head and laughed. “Points for honesty,” he said. “I like that. I’m Ricky Mercado, by the way.”
“Oh! I’ve heard of you.”
“Good or bad?”
“Bad, actually.” Had she really just said that?
He didn’t seem offended. “Well, I’ve reformed.”
“How much?” Cait almost choked on her tongue. Was she flirting again? Such a thing could only get her into hot water, especially with this man. She had to knock it off right now.
“Listen,” he said, motioning at the store, “if you were heading in there for something to drink, why don’t I spare you the trouble? I’d really like to take you out for a cocktail.”
Cait felt the sidewalk shift beneath her feet. He wanted to take her out? Just like that? “Thank you, no.”
“You’re sure?”
“I’ve got plans,” she lied, and was shocked at the ease with which the words rolled off her tongue.
“Too bad.”
He looked as if he meant it, she thought bemusedly. She took another step toward the liquor store. A man like Ricky Mercado would gobble her up whole. There was something dangerous about him, some mob connection if she remembered correctly, not to mention his very air. Then again, the mob in Mission Creek had been more or less dismantled over the summer.
Was she actually thinking about accepting his offer? Cait fled into the store before her tongue could betray her again.
After twenty minutes she finally made her choices—a cabernet and something intriguingly called cactus schnapps.
The cost exceeded the cash she had in her purse, as it was right before payday, so she had to use a credit card. Normally she only used credit cards for emergencies. She almost changed her mind, but the clerk was looking at her impatiently. Vowing to write a check for the balance that very night, before they could charge her interest, she handed over the plastic.
She’d never be able to buy her own home if she tossed money away on such things as interest payments on credit cards, she thought. Then she had the sudden realization that it hadn’t seemed very important when she’d been coming undone in Sam Walters’s arms.
“Stop!” she told herself. She had to stop dwelling on him! Cait pressed her hands to her cheeks.
The clerk stopped moving just as he was about to run the card through a little machine. “You don’t want to buy it, after all?”
“Of course I do.” Cait waved a hand impatiently. “Just finish there.”
Three minutes later she hurried back to her car with her purchases. When she got home, her landlady was pouring water on the flowers lining the walkway of the pretty white house on the street. Cait lived above the garage in the back. After she tucked her car into one of the spaces, she came out to find the elderly woman waving to her.
“Hello, Mrs. Brody!” she called back.
“What have you got there?” The old woman motioned to the bag in Cait’s arms.
“This?” Cait looked down at the bag. “I thought I’d have a glass of wine with supper.” She decided not to mention the cactus concoction.
She looked up in time to see the woman frown. Cait remembered too late that Mrs. Brody was a teetotaler.
“It’s been a particularly difficult week,” Cait added.
The woman’s expression softened. “Poor dear. What all happened to you in that man’s basement, anyway?”
“Nothing!”
The woman looked flabbergasted at the outburst. Cait turned tail and jogged to the steps at the side of the garage that led up to the second floor. She ran up them and closed the door hard and securely behind her.
The best thing she could do with herself now was prepare supper, she decided, and sip some wine while she cooked. She set the bag on her kitchen counter and hurried to the bedroom to change out of her scrubs.
It was a room she’d always cherished. There was a blue-and-white Amish wedding-ring quilt on the single bed. The furniture was pine and somewhat plain, but she’d added blue Cape Cod curtains to the single window and had warmed things up with a cheval mirror in one corner and a quaint antique washstand in the other. There were a few blue-silk flower arrangements, as well, and a solitary framed photo on the dresser of the mother she couldn’t remember.
Cait stripped out of her scrubs and shoved everything into the hamper just inside her closet door. A knock sounded at the front door at the same time.
Several months ago, such an event would have been preposterous—she never had visitors. But lately Tabitha Monroe had taken to stopping by without warning. Or it could be Mrs. Brody, she thought, to pass further opinion on her bottle of wine. It could even be Sam.
Her heart stalled.
Given their conversation this afternoon, she was no longer even remotely sure what he was capable of. Cait rushed to the dresser and dragged out a pair of shorts, hopping into them on her way to the closet. She snagged a short-sleeved blouse off a hanger and buttoned it with fumbling fingers as she headed back to the living room. She was about to pull open the door when everything inside her froze.
It could be Sam…or it could be Branson Hines. Or some other raving lunatic determined to unravel her life. “Hines is in jail,” she whispered resolutely. “And it can’t happen to the same woman twice in one lifetime.” Then again, why couldn’t it? Where was that written?
“Cait?” Tabitha’s voice came through the door. “I know you’re in there. Mrs. Brody said you just got home.”
Cait breathed again and threw the locks. She’d had two more installed yesterday, and though she didn’t remember doing it, she had obviously engaged all three when she’d come in a little while ago. “Hi,” she said.
The breeze plucked at Tabitha’s dark-blond curls. She held a large brown bag and she shoved it toward her. “I brought Chinese.”
Cait took the bag because she knew Tabitha would let go of it one way or the other. The hospital administrator was trying hard to improve on her workaholic tendencies, but she still had a waste-no-time edge to her. “I don’t like Chinese,” Cait protested.
“Everybody likes Chinese,” Tabitha scoffed. “Can I come in?”
Cait also knew from past experience
that it would do no good to say no. And she actually liked Tabitha. Her friendly persistence just made her nervous. “Sure.” She stepped back from the door.
Tabitha swept inside. “I didn’t think you needed to be cooking on your first day back to work,” she said by way of explanation.
“I find cooking therapeutic.” But Cait carried the bag into the kitchen and peered into it before she set it down and returned to the living room. “There’s enough in there for five people!”
“Two,” Tabitha corrected. “I’m joining you. I’ve already been to visit Jake. I’ll go back to the hospital after we eat.”
At the mention of Jake White, Cait recalled that the cop had actually proposed to Tabitha. It left Cait with a vague, wistful feeling.
“How’s he feeling?” she asked. Jake had been shot rescuing Sam and her from Hines.
“He’s chipper. Eager to go home. How’s Billy?”
On cue, the cat belly-wormed his way out from beneath Cait’s dark-red Western-style sofa. “Not so chipper,” she said. “I think you cost him one of his lives.” Disputing that, the cat yawned and began cleaning himself as though he hadn’t a care in the world.
“How was I supposed to know he was going to freak out like that and nearly botch the rescue?” Tabitha went and gathered up the cat, crooning to him.
“Cats hate loud noises. Gunshots especially. Hostage scenes are not their favorite things.”
“Poor baby.” Tabitha stroked him, then she put him down again abruptly. “Okay, break out the Mandarin beef.”
Cait wrinkled her nose.
“It’s for me. I brought you almond chicken. That can’t bother your sensibilities too much.”
Cait nodded. She never ate red meat. It just seemed so…barbaric.
Tabitha had already invaded the kitchen. Cait followed her in time to see her open the bag from the liquor store. “Hey, what’s this?”
Cait flushed. “I sort of got a wild hair on my way home from work.”
“You did?”
Cait pulled her spine straight. “I have unplumbed depths.”