by Beverly Bird
Sam let go of Cait’s hand to rub a hand over his forehead and groan. She missed his touch. She wanted to reach out for him again. She fisted her hands together in her lap, instead.
“What does that mean?” she asked.
“That the ill-mannered monster is running hell-bent-for-leather all over Mission Creek again,” Sam muttered.
She shot him a glance. “Like owner, like dog. But I meant the situation with my apartment.”
“I don’t run all over Mission Creek,” Sam protested. He sounded offended.
“That’s not what Dr. Leon was saying today.”
“My spot on the dance floor with her wasn’t even cold before your intern jumped into it.”
Cait pulled her spine straight. “He’s hardly my intern.”
Officer Needles cleared her throat. “Can we get back to the situation at hand?”
Cait flushed. “Of course.”
“There’s really nothing we can do without any sort of ID to go on,” she explained. “If your landlady had been home and we had some sort of description of anyone suspicious…” She trailed off.
Cait shrugged, feeling fragile.
“You’ve got good locks on your front door there,” the woman said. “But I’d add one to that garage door, as well.”
“I’ll take care of it,” Sam said.
Cait stared at him. “I’m perfectly capable of installing locks. I did the other two.”
“You did the other one,” he said. “The bottom one is crooked. That’s not the work of a professional. You had someone install just the dead bolt.”
He was right. She hugged herself, embarrassed. “I was saving money.”
“Well, then,” Officer Nodesky interrupted again. “We’ll keep an eye on the place, of course, and we’ll have the candle snuffer checked for prints, but there’s not much else we can do at this point.”
“I understand,” Cait said quietly.
“Call right away if you have any other problems, or if you discover something’s missing that we can trace.”
“I will.”
Officer Needles looked around. “With all these antiques and nothing apparently missing, it doesn’t seem like a burglary,” she observed.
“None of it is expensive,” Cait said. “Flea-market stuff, mostly.”
“Well, I didn’t know that, so how would a thief?” the cop asked.
Cait nodded. The woman had a point.
When she let them out and looked back, Sam was still on the sofa. “Thank you,” she said stiffly. “You can go now.”
He settled back, instead, and crossed an ankle over the other knee. “Where’s the remote control for your TV?”
Cait’s brows lowered. “Why on earth would you want that?”
“Because I’m going to watch the news while you take a shower.”
“I take my showers in the morning.” She didn’t trust where this was going.
He got up and prowled around the living room until he found the remote on an end table. He clicked the TV on. “Still, you’ll probably want to change. You don’t want to go out for dinner in scrubs.”
Her heart chugged. “I’m not going out for dinner with you. I’ve already told you that.”
“But that was before I rescued your cat from a tree.”
“Your dog put him there!”
Sam sat again and flicked channels. “Still, I ought to get something out of this.”
“You’re conniving!”
“It’s called persuasion. You’ve got ten minutes, Cait. If you don’t leave here with me, I’m not going.”
Cait backed off warily toward her bedroom and the shower. She believed him.
Or maybe she just wanted to.
Eight
They went to Coyote Harry’s.
Cait’s stomach heaved a little at the thought of such spicy food, but she followed Sam resolutely out of her apartment. She told herself that she just wanted to get this over with, but something in her veins fluttered, like butterflies dancing in her blood.
This was a date.
It was a date with the most eligible bachelor in the hospital, she thought, fighting off a shiver, with a man who’d already rocked her soul once and made her want to give everything she could give. She tried to tell herself again that she’d made love with him in that room because she’d thought she was going to die. But she knew, somehow she knew, that if she’d been trapped in there with Kenny Estrada, the same thing wouldn’t have happened.
Sam had just changed something inside her.
The women at the hospital were buzzing about Estrada lately, but the intern couldn’t hold a candle to Sam, Cait thought. Kenny’s sex appeal was…forced. Sam’s was as natural as the sun rising, an easy charm that came from being utterly comfortable in his skin. Sam’s appreciation of women was genuine and unapologetic. He was funny, lovable and brilliant.
Now she was rhapsodizing about him. Cait stopped dead beside her car.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
Cait recovered and slid her key into the door lock. “I’m letting you feed me.”
He scowled. “That’s a hell of a way to put it.”
“What would you like me to say?”
“How about that we’re going to share an enjoyable evening together?”
Her breath hitched. “That remains to be seen.”
“Well, we’re not going to do it in that.” Sam gestured at her vehicle.
Indignation tightened her spine, a reaction a whole lot better than hitching breaths and butterflies in the blood. “What’s wrong with my car?”
“It’s a sparrow car, and you’ve got more pluck than that. Come on, mine is right up the street.”
Pluck? That startled her enough that she forgot the affront to her car and followed him down the driveway.
“Why aren’t you parked here?” she asked when the oddity hit her.
Sam didn’t answer immediately. Cait caught up with him and glanced at his face. Did he look embarrassed?
“Houdini and I were out for a drive when we decided to walk,” he said after a few strides.
“You named your dog Houdini?”
“He’s a magician.” They started up Euclid Street side by side. “He can get out of any restraints you put him in. He was like that even as a puppy.”
“Then why did you bother tying him to my tree?”
“Appearance sake.”
Cait laughed.
Sam liked the sound of her laugh. Light and quick, it was almost as though it startled even her. When they’d been in that basement room, he’d tried his damnedest to coax it from her. Laughing had banished the stark fear from her eyes for a little while, and the sound of it had eased the panic and fury knotting his own midsection, as well. “Why Billy?” he asked. “That’s kind of…rigid sparrowish.”
Her laughter ended on a choke. “You drag me out for dinner, then you insult me?”
His gaze cut to her. “I’m being honest. ‘Billy’ is not creative.”
She brought her chin up. “A lot you know. It’s short for Billy the Kid.”
He watched her chin warily. “Okay. That’s creative.”
They reached his car. It was red, sleek, hot, incredible. Cait’s pulse shivered a little at the idea of actually riding in it, but it was a good feeling. She slid onto the rich leather of the seat with a sigh and he closed the door behind her.
“You like the concept of the Old West,” he guessed when he got behind the wheel. He glanced at her and one corner of his mouth crooked up. “Desperados and cowpokes? You would have done well in Texas 130 years ago.”
Cait was so startled she almost lost her breath. “I would have?”
“You’ve got starch.”
“Is that another insult?” She was still working over the “pluck” business, not sure what to make of it. He was getting to her, she thought desperately. Cait hugged herself.
“It’s a compliment. I can just picture you toting a rifle around, warning var
mints off your land.”
A smile got away from her. She liked the image.
“The women who followed their men to settle here were tough,” Sam said. “So are you.” Suddenly he thought of that business with her chin again. It wasn’t arrogance or disapproval that spurred the reflex, he realized. It was courage.
She’d done it a lot in that underground room.
He pulled up the Maserati at a parking meter in front of the Tex-Mex restaurant.
“Aren’t you afraid you’ll come back to find the hubcaps missing?” she asked. Coyote Harry’s was at the very edge of what could be considered the good part of town.
“They’re insured.” He shrugged.
“Does anything ever worry you?”
He thought about it. “Sure. World hunger. Holes in the ozone. Dying patients. Things worth worrying about. Not hubcaps.”
Cait found herself wishing she could go through life like that. She sighed. She hoped her baby inherited some of that tendency. With the thought, she nearly tripped.
“Hey, are you okay?” Sam asked.
“I’m fine.” How many times had she said that to people lately? she wondered. As though repeating it often enough would make it true.
The restaurant wasn’t busy on a Monday night. They got a table right away. Something astounding happened to Cait as she sat. Her stomach rumbled with hunger this time. The smells coming from the kitchen were delicious. She’d thought this sort of food would send her rushing to the nearest washroom. Maybe it would yet. But at the moment she was ravenous, and suddenly she craved it.
She ordered fajitas and a side order of chili, forgetting that it would be chock full of the beef she usually avoided. But when Sam asked her if she wanted a beer to wash it down with, reality crashed in on her again.
“Uh, no.” She asked the waitress for a glass of milk, instead.
“Beer’s part of the whole experience,” Sam said. “Try a Corona.”
“I don’t drink.”
He sat back in his chair, scowling. “I think that’s the first lie you’ve told me. Not a good foot to get started on.”
“We’re not starting anything.” Her heart punched her breastbone. “Besides, I really don’t.”
“You had champagne at the ball and Ricky Mercado saw you going into a liquor store.”
Cait’s jaw dropped. “How do you know about that?”
“He lives next door to me.”
“And you talked to him about me? I never even told him my name.”
“Lucky guess.”
He got that embarrassed, discomfited look on his face again. Cait watched him for a moment, wondering what it was about. Then something desperate welled up inside her. She didn’t want him to think she was lying. She couldn’t tell him the truth, God knew, she couldn’t do that. She might have tried a beer if she wasn’t pregnant. But it mattered to her that he not think she was a liar.
“I never used to drink.” She flailed mentally for words. “But I stopped at the liquor store that day because…well, it was the day you cornered me in the storage room.”
“‘Cornered’ you?”
Cait pulled her spine straight. “I was there first.”
He grinned to himself, obviously pleased about something. “I got to you, then,” he said.
Cait leaned back in her chair as the waitress brought her chili. “You mentioned…you talked about…” She trailed off. The smells from the bowl in front of her were heavenly. She completely forgot what she was about to say and dug in.
Sam watched her. “Cait, nobody’s going to ask you to leave some for the next guy. Easy does it.”
She raised her eyes to him, chewing, then swallowing. “What?”
He motioned at her bowl. “Slow down before you give yourself heartburn.”
“Now you’re criticizing my table manners.” She put down her spoon.
“Nope. I hate women who pussyfoot around their dinner plate, nibbling on the garnish. It seriously ticks me off when they leave their meal for the kitchen dogs.”
“They only had kitchen dogs in the Old West.”
He grinned. “Trust me, they have them at this end of town, too.”
“Well, the dogs can’t have any of mine.”
He threw back his head and laughed. Cait found herself smiling, too. It delighted her when she could turn the tables on him and repay the favor a little. His humor had helped her survive three horrible days.
“I mentioned what?” he asked. “You were talking about the storage room.”
She looked up as she reached for a tortilla to sop up the chili. “I beg your pardon?”
“You started to say something before you fell on that bowl like you hadn’t eaten in a month. You said I talked about something.”
Cait felt her blood shiver again. “Oh. You talked about…it.”
“It?”
“What we did there in the basement.”
He wiggled his brows. “It was fun, wasn’t it? So why do you want to transfer to another department?”
I have to. She choked at the thought. “It was a one-time thing. And it had—has—nothing to do with our professional association.”
“It doesn’t have to be a one-time thing.”
Cait stared at him. Her blood pounded in her ears. What was he saying? In that moment she could feel his hands on her all over again, as though weeks hadn’t passed since he’d touched her. “That’s what you wanted. You said so.”
He drank from his beer mug as though it would drench some of the desperation he was feeling. “What if I told you that I want to start all over again? That I want to go back to before we met in the lobby on your first day back to work and have a fresh start?”
Cait grabbed her milk and gulped. “We can’t do that.”
“Why not?”
“It’s an escapable fact that you can’t turn back time.”
“The human mind can do anything it wants to do. You’re proof positive of that.”
“Me?” she asked. Just then the waitress brought her fajitas. Cait looked up at her with a world of gratitude for the interruption.
“You,” Sam said after the waitress deposited their plates. He wouldn’t let the subject drop.
“I’m practical,” she squeaked. “I move ahead.”
“And that’s admirable. Let’s face it, otherwise you could have turned into another Branson Hines. But going back isn’t always bad, either.”
Hines? “I would never hurt anyone like he did!” She was horrified.
“That’s my point. He’s nasty and bitter about the cards life dealt him.”
She tried to wait while he cut into his chimichanga. But she was too hungry. She took another bite of her food.
“You had rough beginnings,” Sam said.
She closed her eyes briefly. “I talked too much in that underground room.”
He ignored that. “Look at someone like me, for example. I can’t take the kind of credit you can for where I’ve landed in life.”
“But you’re a doctor.”
“All the opportunities for that were given to me. You made yours.”
Suddenly, absurdly, she wanted to cry. “I did that, yes.” She closed her eyes briefly. She wasn’t sure anyone had ever complimented her so much.
“Cait, you’re an incredible woman. I just want a chance with you.”
She looked at him. His eyes looked as if he meant it. But she couldn’t let herself believe it. “Why are you saying these things? You can’t need a nurse that badly.”
Sam felt something warm and helpless move over him. “No. I don’t. I just don’t want you to close the door on us.”
The waitress chose that moment to come back to their table. “Dessert?” she asked brightly.
Sam looked at Cait’s denuded plate. Whoever thought she could eat like that, the little sparrow? “Two of everything,” he said to the woman.
Cait sat back quickly. “Oh, no. I’m full now.”
“The sopapillas are terri
fic,” he said. “With coffee.”
She shook her head firmly. “Too much cholesterol. And caffeine.”
“Cait.”
Her gaze shot to him. “What?”
“It’s an undeniable fact that if we spend our entire lifetimes only putting the proper things in our bodies, a truck will come along and flatten us. Something is going to get you.”
“Not if I can help it.”
He laughed and realized that this was the best night he’d had in a very long time.
“So what do you say about that transfer?” he asked when he finally paid the bill.
“I’m moving over to Dr. Eckle’s unit on Wednesday.”
“You really think so?”
Her eyes chastised him. They were so calm, so blue, so sure, he thought. “Yes. But thanks for the meal.”
He felt frustration tug at him. “Damn it, Cait, it makes no sense for you to transfer.”
Something between sadness and determination moved in her eyes. “Yes, it does.”
“Then explain it to me.”
She hesitated. “I can’t.”
One look at her jaw told him he wasn’t going to get any more out of her. Damn it, what was going on here? Then his ex-wife’s words came back to him. That patented Sam sex appeal.
He didn’t know what else to try.
“Okay,” he said equably. “Are you ready? Let’s go.”
She blinked at him. “Okay?”
“You want the transfer. I give up. I’ll take you home.”
He watched as she stood and gathered up her purse. She looked back at the table a little longingly. “You didn’t leave anything for a doggy bag,” he pointed out.
“I was thinking about taking some scraps for Houdini.”
“He’s in Oklahoma by now.”
She looked at him, wide-eyed. “Are you serious?”
“Yes and no. But he’ll be back on my doorstep before midnight with a bill from the dogcatcher in his mouth.”
“Why do you even own a dog?” she asked.
He found himself seriously thinking about it as he unlocked the passenger door of his car for her. His hubcaps were all still in place, which he considered a minor miracle. Maybe she was some kind of good-luck angel. They’d come out of that basement room alive, after all.
“I grew up with four brothers and sisters,” he explained finally.