Doctor Seduction

by Beverly Bird

“Who told you that?”

  “Sam Walters.”

  Tabitha’s brows climbed her forehead. “Tell me all about that.”

  Cait felt treacherous heat trying to steal over her again. “There’s nothing to tell.”

  “Hmm. Well, apparently he got to know you a whole lot better in three days than I have in months.”

  “He didn’t get to know me.”

  “Then explain this business about depths.” But Tabitha didn’t wait for an answer. She began pulling cartons out of her own bag, then helped herself to the cupboard and got plates. “Where are your wineglasses?”

  “Um, I don’t have any.” Cait hurried to another cupboard and found two jelly glasses. Buy a jar of jelly and get a glass you could use forever, to boot. Who could argue with that?

  Tabitha tucked her chin as she considered them, then finally shrugged in acceptance. She plucked the cabernet out of its bag. “What are the odds that you actually own a corkscrew?”

  “Excellent.” Cait pulled one, still wrapped in plastic and cardboard, from a drawer. Then she shrugged sheepishly. “It just seemed like one of those things everyone should own. It was on sale.”

  Tabitha took it and attacked the bottle. Five minutes later, they were seated and dishing up Chinese food. Cait discovered the almond chicken wasn’t half-bad.

  “There was one home I was in—I think I was about eight—where the husband worked nights and the woman was always shoveling takeout at us kids,” she explained. “I think that’s where I learned an aversion to Chinese food.”

  Tabitha’s fork stalled on its way to her mouth. “Takeout is relatively expensive.”

  “That particular family had a lot of state kids.” And they received a stipend from the government for every one of them, Cait thought.

  “You never talk much about your childhood,” Tabitha said.

  Cait got up for more wine. “I’m sorry.”

  “For what?”

  “For boring you.” She poured, topping off both glasses without thought.

  “You’re not. I’ve always wondered what makes you so straitlaced.”

  “I have unplumbed depths!” Cait burst out. Then she flushed.

  Tabitha’s brows lifted again. “Sorry. I forgot that part.” She chomped down onto an egg roll. “You’ve been through a lot lately. What happened in that underground room, anyway? You never did tell me.”

  Cait felt her skin turn to glass. “Nothing.”

  “You spent seventy-two hours in there.”

  “Hines was in and out. He didn’t stay, but we could hear him walking around in the house upstairs whenever he was around.”

  Tabitha waited. “And?” she prompted when Cait said nothing more.

  Cait kept chewing, focusing hard on her food. But Tabitha remained quiet, waiting, not willing to change the subject.

  Cait sighed and put her fork down. “He already had bottled water and crackers down there in the basement. I told Jake that. Jake said that was because Hines had planned the whole thing.” Tabitha’s Jake had been the detective assigned to the hostage situation. “So we ate and we tried to figure out ways to get free. But the basement door was locked from the outside and the windows were so tiny not even I could fit through one. We tried banging on them for a while, but they faced the backyard and no one heard us.”

  “What did you talk about?”

  Everything but how old she was when she was potty-trained, Cait thought. She sipped wine, then suddenly found it hard to swallow. “Mostly about me. I think I was nervous. I must have talked a lot.”

  Tabitha nodded. “That makes sense.”

  “And he called me a sparrow. A rigid sparrow. I just felt like I had to defend myself against that.” So she’d given him her whole life story.

  “You told him about the foster homes?” Tabitha looked surprised.

  Cait shrugged. “No one was ever unkind to me in any of them.”

  “What else?” Tabitha asked. “What else did you two talk about?”

  “I don’t know!” Cait cried. “Missed chances. Lost dreams. Plans for the future. What do two people talk about when they’re stuck in a room together for hours and hours on end?”

  “Talk wouldn’t have been high on my list of guesses in the first place,” Tabitha said dryly. “That’s not Sam Walters’s rep with a good-looking woman.”

  “Nothing happened!” Cait shouted. Then she went still, frowning. “Good-looking? I’m not good-looking.”

  “You’re cute as a button and haughty to boot. Get off it.”

  “Haughty?”

  Tabitha nodded. “With that don’t-touch-me air you’ve got going on.”

  “How can you say that?”

  “I just think it would be a real challenge for a Sam Walters-type to see if he could touch you.”

  The hurt that raced through her almost stole Cait’s breath. It was very cold and seemed to numb her nerve endings. Was that all she had been? A challenge?

  Of course, she thought. It was the only thing that made sense. He’d gone out of his way this morning to make sure she knew it had been a one-time thing. Why, then, had she believed that it’d had something to do with getting to know her?

  “Well, he didn’t,” she said tightly. She stood quickly to take her plate to the sink.

  “I’ll pass the word, then.”

  Cait whipped back to face her. “Why?”

  “Because everyone in the hospital is wondering and it will kill the rumors. Come on, Cait. Pretty nurse. Knockout womanizing doctor. One basement room. Three days. What would you think?”

  “I wouldn’t think about it at all! It would be none of my business!”

  “Unfortunately the rest of the hospital staff doesn’t share your high ideals.” Tabitha stood, as well, and began cleaning up the takeout packages.

  Cait hugged herself, distraught. Now she was another Sam Walters statistic!

  Tabitha glanced her way and her expression softened. She dropped a hand on Cait’s shoulder in comfort. Cait twitched. She wasn’t used to being touched. Tabitha took her hand away.

  “It’ll all blow over as soon as Sam sets his sights on something else in a skirt,” she assured her. “That’s the way gossip mills run. Anyway, I’ve got to go. I told Jake I’d be back in an hour.”

  “Of course. Thanks for stopping by.” Cait realized that this time, for the first time, she genuinely meant it.

  They were halfway back to the door when Tabitha turned around. “I almost forgot. I’m supposed to pester you about coming to the hospital’s End of Summer Ball next weekend.”

  Cait frowned. “Who told you to pester me?”

  “Jake. And Jared Cross.”

  Her heart gathered itself into a knot and cannon-balled into her toes. “You talked to Dr. Cross?”

  Tabitha looked at her strangely. “He’s my director of child psychiatry. I talk to him on a regular basis.”

  “About me?” Her sessions with him were supposed to have been confidential! Or had someone noticed her visiting him? Had rumor gotten out some other way? Tabitha was right about one thing. The hospital-employee environment was closeknit, with people spending long, stress-filled hours together. Gossip was rife.

  But Tabitha was shaking her head. “I talked to him about all my staff who were involved in that nightmare. I wanted to know if I could help in any respect.”

  Cait finally let her air out. That made sense. It was something Tabitha would do.

  “And he mentioned that everyone needed to get back on with their lives as expeditiously as possible,” Tabitha continued.

  Cait nodded. “But I never do balls or that sort of thing.”

  “I think you should do this one,” Tabitha said. “Jake thinks it will be good for you, too. He’s expected to be released from the hospital by then. Besides, everyone is talking about you. You should stop in, even for a little while, to show them that you’re absolutely fine.”

  Cait choked on a laugh. “If I showed up at the ball, they’
d buzz about it for a week. That would be uncharacteristic of me.”

  “So’s a bag full of wine and schnapps, sweetie, but I won’t tell anyone.”

  Cait pressed a hand to her heart. Tabitha was right. She’d been off the wall lately. But she really didn’t want the rest of the hospital staff to know that.

  “Unplumbed depths,” Tabitha reminded her.

  Cait blushed. “I’ll think about it.”

  She waved her friend goodbye and meticulously redid all the locks on her door. Then she went back to the kitchen and eyed the bottle of schnapps.

  The thought of actually attending a hospital ball had her unscrewing the cap and sipping right from the bottle.

  Sam hit the play button on his answering machine one more time and listened to Kimberlie Leon’s message as he unknotted the tie from his neck. She was persistent, he thought. He liked that in a woman.

  Her voice sounded like smoke. “You cut me off today before I could ask you what I wanted to ask you,” she said. “Bad boy.”

  “That’s me,” Sam said into the pause.

  “I’d like to invite you to attend the End of Summer Ball with me. Being new at the hospital, I’m groping for a date.”

  “Somehow I doubt that.” Sam tossed his tie onto the back of the sofa.

  Kimberlie left her number. “If I miss you tonight, catch up with me tomorrow at the hospital. Please?”

  “You can bet on it.” He finally hit the erase button on his machine.

  Houdini barked his appreciation of the coup. He was a somewhat overweight golden retriever. The extra pounds were courtesy of the dogcatcher who picked him up on a regular basis and brought him home from his shenanigans whenever Houdini took it into his canine head to roam the neighborhood. The predilection cost Sam twenty-five dollars a pop. Sam figured that at least half the fee went toward the doggy biscuits the dogcatcher routinely fed Houdini. The two of them were great pals.

  The dog barked again.

  “Okay, you want to go out.” Sam scowled. “Just hold on to your pants for a minute.”

  He went into his bedroom, dropping clothes on the way. He stepped over a pair of running shoes in the hallway. No big deal. The maid was coming in two days and the place would be spotless again. Besides, he never entertained at home, anyway—at least not women. He figured if he ever invited one here, she’d take it as a sign that he was serious about her.

  “Never happen,” Sam said aloud. He changed into a pair of gym shorts and a sweatshirt and went back to the kitchen for Houdini’s leash, snapping it on to the dog’s collar. Then he went barefoot to the door.

  As he opened it onto the veranda that fronted all the condominiums on the third floor, the dog surged forward and nearly knocked over Ricky Mercado, who lived next door. “Sorry,” Sam said. He reeled Houdini back in. It had taken him months on a waiting list to snag this apartment. On most occasions, when he remembered to care, he didn’t want to tick off his neighbors.

  Especially neighbors with mob ties. Though, in Mercado’s case, that was rumored to be a thing of the past.

  “No problem,” Ricky said easily enough, unlocking his door. “I’m having a bad night, anyway. A precious little blonde just shot me to my knees.”

  Sam felt an unseen fist hit his stomach while an image of deep-blue eyes and short blond hair tried to fill up every one of his senses. “Precious little blondes can be trouble.”

  “Tell me about it.” Mercado stopped in his open doorway and laughed. “She was a nurse. I guess the law-abiding type still doesn’t go for my reputation.”

  A nurse? Sam felt something strange happen to his heart. Okay, Mission Creek had its fair share, he thought. But small and blond? “Uh, where did you see her?”

  “Outside Signey’s Liquor. Why?”

  “No reason. I was just curious.” Sam breathed again. Not Cait Matthews, then. She was the last woman in the world who’d stop and buy liquor on her way home from work. She was straight as an arrow.

  But this one had shot down Ricky Mercado—and what kind of a woman would do that? One who was straight as an arrow, he answered himself.

  And Cait had been acting odd lately. Odd enough to be buying liquor, at any rate.

  “What was her excuse?” he asked. “Did she even give you one?”

  “She said she had plans.”

  Ricky went into his condo and shut the door. Houdini made a sudden lunge for the stairs and nearly pulled Sam off his feet. He glanced back twice at Mercado’s apartment door before he let the dog lead him downstairs.

  They reached the enclosed pet area, a five-hundred-square-foot area beside the pool bound by white fencing and signs saying Curb Your Dog in large red lettering.

  “Yeah, yeah,” Sam said. He opened the gate, let Houdini inside and snapped off the leash. The retriever bounded for the far fence and leaped over it with one strong thrust of his hindquarters. Sam went upstairs to write another check to the animal-control officer.

  He didn’t think about Caitlyn again until he happened to glance at Ricky Mercado’s closed apartment door. A little blonde in a nurse’s uniform. The odds were astronomical that the woman had actually been Cait, he told himself.

  He let himself inside and went to the kitchen for a beer, peering skeptically at the rest of the refrigerator’s contents while he was there. A box of leftover pizza. Two limes from the gin-and-tonics he’d shared with a redhead downstairs at the pool the weekend before his life had hit a major bump, landing him in Branson Hines’s basement. With a little blonde in a nurse’s uniform.

  Okay, he owed it to himself to be sure, didn’t he? Even if the odds were really remote.

  Sam took the beer back to a living room filled with sleek black leather furniture and plush white carpeting. Houdini—bless his soul—had so far spared the carpeting. The dog liked to do his business in the wide open spaces. Sam picked up the cordless phone on the sofa and hit the on button with his thumb.

  Dead as his parents’ marriage, he thought, listening for a dial tone, hearing none.

  He’d forgotten to recharge it again. He took it to the end table and plugged it into the base there, then went back to the kitchen to use the wall phone. It was red. The last owner had had some serious deficiencies in taste. Sam picked that phone up, then he stalled.

  This was not a woman whose number he’d committed to memory. Probably because it had never occurred to him before to call her or anyone like her.

  What the hell were her plans tonight, anyway?

  “Probably not even the same nurse,” he muttered aloud. And why should he care, anyway?

  Because, damn it, he really hated to be used as a springboard for some California intern. It was insulting. And why else would Cait have turned down someone like Ricky Mercado unless she was seeing the California intern tonight? Sam hung the telephone up again with a slam and turned around to look for a phone book. Where the maid put it was a mystery likely to remain unsolved for quite some time.

  He turned back to the telephone and picked it up again, calling information. She had an unpublished listing. He was getting seriously annoyed. Whom did she chum around with at the hospital? Who might know her phone number? No one came to mind. But they’d both spent some significant time with the police a few days ago. Sam finally tapped in the city number. That he knew by heart from retrieving Houdini.

  He reached the police department and identified himself. He told the desk sergeant a tall tale about his still having Cait’s wallet after their ordeal. It had fallen out of her purse when they’d been escaping, and he’d stuck it in his own pocket for safekeeping. He’d only just discovered it. The cop hesitated, then tried to get him to bring it to the police station. Sam finessed him, telling him he would take it to the address on her driver’s license. He’d just been trying to avoid showing up at her door unannounced, he lied. After everything she’d been through, a surprise knock might alarm her.

  The man finally coughed up the number. “I still got it,” Sam murmured, hanging u
p again. “The old powers of persuasion.” Then he did something he couldn’t remember doing since his fourteenth birthday. Reciting the number aloud, he went to a drawer, got out a fast-food napkin and a pen, and wrote the number down for future reference.

  He went back to the telephone and tapped it in. He was rewarded for his efforts by a monotonous and irritating beeping.

  Her line was busy. What the hell did that mean? She was probably talking to Estrada, finalizing their plans, he realized.

  Who cared?

  Sam was thoroughly disgusted with himself. He picked up the telephone one last time to call Kimberlie Leon back. He never went to hospital events. They were just an excuse for employees to brown-nose their superiors, or for amateurs to get drunk and do stupid things that would haunt them for another two years. But Dr. Leon was a little too enticing to turn down.

  Besides, going out with her would take his mind off precious little blondes in nurse’s uniforms like nothing else could.

  Cait’s head was buzzing a little.

  She stood in her kitchen, munching on a fortune cookie. In retrospect, she thought, it had been an amazing day. She giggled and reached for the bottle of cactus schnapps again. “Very good stuff,” she pronounced. “A woman with unplumbed depths could certainly be expected to appreciate such a thing.”

  She drank and swallowed, hiccuping a little. She was out of control, she thought again…and she was free.

  Something tried to kick inside her chest. Had her mother been drinking cactus schnapps before she’d dumped her two-year-old daughter on an aunt and disappeared for all time?

  Cait decided she didn’t want any more, after all. She put the schnapps bottle back on the kitchen counter with a loud thud. She hadn’t inherited her mother’s cold heart or her indifference, she assured herself. If anything, she cared too much about things. She cared so much that the idea of just being a challenge to Sam Walters cut her to the bone.

  Suddenly she was enraged by the thought. She was beside herself with it. She wanted to know. She had to know. She went to the telephone and called information.

  “I need a number for a Dr. Sam Walters, please.”

  “Address?” the tinny voice came back.