by Beverly Bird
“Yes, I was.”
“Liar.”
She couldn’t keep a straight face. What was he doing to her? “Don’t make me laugh,” she said desperately.
“Why not? It’s good for the soul.”
“I’m still mad at you.”
He leaned negligently against the nurses’ station. “I keep telling you I didn’t do anything.”
She gave a huffing breath. “Liar.”
He laughed. “So what are you doing tonight, Nurse Matthews?”
“Tonight?” she echoed, her breath catching.
“Let’s have dinner again.”
“You want to eat out two nights in a row?”
“Why not?”
“Well, because…it’s wasteful.”
He leaned closer to her until their noses almost touched and she could see the green flecks in his eyes. Something inside her shook. “Cait,” he said, “I’m a bachelor. I eat in one of two ways. I go out, or I order in. So join me.”
“You should learn to cook,” she said inanely, struggling frantically for her breath.
“Then come over tonight and teach me.”
“No.”
He wasn’t moving back, wasn’t giving her any space. “Why not?” he asked.
“Last night was a one-time thing.”
“We thought that everything that went on in the basement room was, too, but I changed your mind about that.”
She couldn’t get air. Cait looked around frantically. “Sam, not here.”
He looked pleased with himself. “My place it is, then. Seven o’clock. We’ll continue the discussion this evening.” He sauntered off down the corridor.
“I said no!” she shouted after him. “I only agreed last night because of Billy. And damn it, I’m still mad at you!”
She heard his laughter, but he didn’t turn around to respond. Gradually Cait became aware of that feeling again, the sensation that someone was watching her.
She looked around. At least six members of the staff were staring at her.
“He just rescued my cat,” she explained helplessly. Then she hurried off to see to the afternoon meds.
The woman had thought long and hard about the best way to proceed after discovering the pregnancy test. There were so many variables. But as she watched Cait practically run down the hall to the drug room after talking to Sam, she considered her dilemma solved.
She smiled, but the reflex vanished quickly, going brittle and ugly and hard.
Some people had all the luck. They got abducted and they still landed on their feet, whole and unharmed, pregnant and with a killer-handsome physician fawning at their feet. What did that anal-retentive little twit have that she didn’t?
Sam, she answered herself. And a baby.
She’d watched them attack each other in his car last night outside Cait’s apartment. She’d gone back to make sure that her little detour through the place had gone unnoticed—which, to her alarm, it hadn’t—and she’d seen them leave together. She’d waited and they’d come back together, too. They’d stayed in his car. Groping. Touching. Kissing.
Something hot pounded at the woman’s temples. At first, she had hated all of them, everyone who had put her in this position—useless, barren, alone, with huge needs that went unanswered. But since she’d found that pregnancy test yesterday, her fury had focused.
Cait Matthews was her problem.
She herself could have had Sam, given enough time. She could have gotten out of this miserable predicament of her life. But none of that was likely to happen now because the prim little perfect nurse had his child.
The woman wondered if Sam knew yet. From the tone of the last conversation they’d just had, she didn’t think so.
She considered that she might let him in on the secret somehow. But that didn’t actually advance her position. He was already in love with the twit; he just didn’t know it yet. Once he knew about the baby, he would be all over little Cait. The woman was sure of that. Better, she thought, to derail Nurse Matthews before Sam ever found out.
She wondered how to do that, and then it came to her. What if she had that baby, not Cait Matthews?
The idea spread through her head like floodlights being snapped on in every corner. She left the threshold of the supply room where she’d been watching from, walking as though in a trance, playing the scenario out in her mind. She already knew she couldn’t get pregnant, though heaven knew, she’d tried. But judging from that pregnancy test, there was a baby available if she played her cards right. A baby would give her back everything. She might even decide that she didn’t need Sam Walters, after all, if she had a baby of her own. What could he give her if she already had everything?
A baby would restore her old life.
If Cait Matthews lost her mind, she wouldn’t be able to keep the infant. If Sam didn’t know it was his, he wouldn’t take it, either. But a friend might be entrusted to care for it. And then she could just…disappear with it.
Or maybe the state would force Caitlyn to hand the baby over if she was proved mentally incompetent. How difficult could it be to steal a child out of foster care? All those people cared about were the stipends the government paid them for each kid.
The woman began walking faster, toward the nurses’ locker area that was at the far end of the central corridor. It was time, she decided, to push Cait Matthews over the edge.
She had checked this out, too, when she’d peeked at Cait’s file. Her locker was number twelve. The woman found it, then groped in her pockets for something to write on. She found her grocery list and flipped it over. There was a chalkboard in the room, where the nurses left memos to each other. The woman grabbed the pink chalk there and snapped it in two. With the thin end, she began writing:
I KNOW ABOUT YOUR BABY. WATCH OUT. THEY TAKE BABIES AWAY FROM CRAZY WOMEN.
She grinned, folded the note in half and pushed it through one of the vents in Cait’s locker. She was very, very glad that she had noticed the nurse coming out of Dr. Cross’s office a little while ago and had eavesdropped on their discussion.
All things came to those who waited, the woman thought. She let out a sigh, put the chalk back and dusted her hands on her thighs.
She was not going to have dinner with him again, Cait thought, heading for her locker at the end of the day. Every solid, determined thing inside her wanted to fold and melt at the thought of being alone with him again, of touching him again. She couldn’t risk it. She didn’t dare.
On the other hand, what could she possibly do to avoid it? She had the excuse that she didn’t know where he lived so she couldn’t go over there, but she also knew that he would have no qualms about coming to get her. Cait pushed into the locker room. She realized she was wringing her hands and she fisted them. Determination, she thought. Backbone. Pluck and starch and unplumbed depths. She would just take herself out for dinner, she decided, then she wouldn’t be home when he came banging at her door.
She chewed at her lip, her heart sinking slowly with the decision. Was there any harm, really, in seeing him just another time or two before she moved away, of savoring what she could before spending the rest of her life alone?
What was she thinking? Besides, she wouldn’t be alone. Never again. She’d have her baby.
Cait yanked open her locker. A little piece of paper was stuck in the vent, but it was jarred loose by the movement and it fluttered to the floor. She stared at it and didn’t know whether to laugh or to cry. She pressed a shaking hand to her mouth. Damn you, Sam. He’d crept in here and had left his address for her so she’d have no excuse.
She was overwhelmed that he would be that determined over her. She told herself that his fascination with her would wear off eventually. Even he had pretty much said last night that that was his tendency. If she let herself be taken in by it, it would break her heart. But still, this was sweet. Touching.
She bent down and plucked the piece of paper off the floor, pressing it against her chest for a moment. Then she fi
nally sighed and opened it.
I KNOW ABOUT YOUR BABY. WATCH OUT. THEY TAKE BABIES AWAY FROM CRAZY WOMEN.
Cait gave a little cry and dropped the note as though it had bitten her. She reared away from it until her spine crashed into the locker behind her. The metal rang.
“No, no, no,” she whispered. She closed her eyes and opened them again. The note was still there.
But no one knew about the baby.
She went to her knees and snatched it up again. Maybe she really was crazy. Maybe she was flaming mad. Maybe all that was written there was Sam’s address and she was seeing things now, hallucinating. She would run right back to Dr. Cross. She would risk him guessing everything. “Just please,” she groaned, “let the note say something else.”
The same words stared back at her.
She started ripping it. First in big pieces, then in smaller and smaller ones. She gathered them up in her trembling hands and carried them into the lavatory. She dropped them into one of the toilets and flushed.
A few tiny pieces remained. She flushed again until every trace of the note was gone.
Someone knew. How? No one could possibly know! She hadn’t even been to the doctor yet!
She really was losing her mind. Then she realized that this meant just the opposite, and her limbs went to stone. This was proof.
Someone really was watching her, following her, creeping through her apartment. They knew her most intimate secret. They knew she was pregnant. And they knew she’d been seeing Jared Cross. Cait scrubbed her hand frantically over the back of her neck and returned to the locker room. She peered down every aisle until she was sure she was alone.
No one was going to take this baby from her. If her behavior was a little erratic…well, pregnant women got that way and no one ran around snatching their babies from them. That was absurd.
She breathed hard, fast, deep, thinking it through.
The note was gone. She would put it out of her mind and go on with her plans. Because, in the end, there was nothing she could do about it, nothing at all. She couldn’t go to the police with it and she couldn’t tell Sam. Because they’d all want to know what the note had said.
And if someone was watching her, then they could damned well go to hell before she’d let them know they’d terrified her. She wouldn’t act even the slightest bit ruffled, the slightest bit crazy.
Cait gathered her purse out of her locker. She locked it again meticulously. Then she went back to the lavatory to peer at her reflection in the mirror. She slapped some color into her cheeks and left the room.
She was halfway across the lobby when she heard a voice call her name. Cait paused and looked back. It was Tabitha. Her friend hurried to catch up with her.
“Hey, are you all right?”
Cait pasted a wide smile on her face. “Of course. Why?”
“I called you three times and you just kept walking.”
“I have a hundred things on my mind.”
Tabitha grabbed both her shoulders. “I’ve been worried sick about you. Jake said that someone broke into your apartment yesterday.”
Cait’s stomach squeezed. She so badly wanted to trust her. Tabitha was the closest thing to a friend she’d ever had. But she steeled herself. “I think I was mistaken.”
“How can you be mistaken about something like that?”
Cait waved a hand. “I just got paranoid because Billy was outside. But you know what? This morning, as I was leaving, he did it again.”
“Did what?”
“Darted right out the door. As soon as I get home, I’ll call the police and tell them I overreacted and apologize for wasting their time.”
Tabitha looked skeptical. “Billy doesn’t dart. He’s too fat to dart.”
“I’ve had him on a diet.”
Tabitha laughed. “Oh, he must love that. Those few days I had him while you were in trouble, he ate every leftover scrap in the kitchen he could find.”
Cait nodded, feeling a little desperate from holding up the charade. But she didn’t know who was watching her, who was listening. She couldn’t let anyone know she was taking any of this seriously. She couldn’t act frightened and deranged.
“Well,” she said, “I’ve got to go.”
Tabitha squinted at her. “Are you sure there’s nothing you want to talk about?”
Cait blinked innocently. “Why would there be?”
“I’m just curious. I heard you put in for a transfer from Sam.”
“Nancy Walters has a very big mouth.”
“Actually, Sam told me.”
“He can’t be trusted, either.”
Tabitha grinned. “And you two were seen tooling around town in his Maserati last night.”
Cait grabbed her friend’s arm hard. “By who? Who saw me?” Who’s watching me?
“Hey, easy does it.” Tabitha disengaged her grip. “It was Jake.”
“Oh.” Cait let out the breath she was holding.
“You know, there’s an awful lot going on in your life lately that I don’t know about. Let’s have dinner and talk.”
“I—” Cait broke off suddenly as she started to beg off. It was exactly what she had been planning to do. She needed to stay away from home for a while to elude Sam. “That’s a wonderful idea.”
Tabitha looked startled, then she smiled. “Good. Let me just run back to my office and get my things.”
“I’ll wait here.”
Tabitha hurried off. Cait concentrated on nonchalantly studying the decor. No one could know, she kept telling herself.
The woman was beside herself. Damn it, Cait Matthews should be a sobbing, uncontrollable ball of nerves right now! Hadn’t she seen the note? Instead, she chatted, she smiled, she wandered around the lobby waiting, looking as though she hadn’t a care in the world.
“You’re crazy, damn it,” she whispered. “You’re crazy as a loon. And your baby is mine.”
Well, then, she thought, apparently the perfect little nurse needed another nudge out of sanity. The woman left the lobby to set about putting a whole new plan in motion.
Ten
The very first thing Cait did when she got home from dinner was cancel her appointment with the Laredo obstetrician. She called and left a message with his answering service. Then she dutifully put herself to bed for a good night’s sleep and stared at the ceiling.
Near dawn, she finally gave up on sleep, which had been fitful at best. She went into the bathroom and leaned over the basin to splash cold water on her face. Then she trudged into the kitchen for the decaffeinated tea she’d bought. A few sips left her feeling marginally better.
Somehow, through the night, she’d managed to put a few pieces together—or at least she thought she had. How many times in the hospital had she had the urge to look over her shoulder? It had happened here, as well, in her own home. Obviously someone really had been hovering nearby all those times. They’d been listening when she’d placed her call to the obstetrician—from work, at a pay phone in the pediatrics lounge on her lunch break. Someone had overheard her making the appointment.
That purely terrified her. She had to find a different doctor now. She couldn’t take any chances.
She didn’t know what kind of harm this person meant for her or her baby.
She decided to put in for a sick day and drive to Laredo on Friday. She could make a new appointment with someone else in person. And she’d spend the rest of that day looking for an apartment and a new job.
She heard a mewling sound and realized that it came from her own throat. She was going to miss Sam so much.
Her spine snapped straight with that thought. Sam? Not Tabitha? Well, Tabitha, too, she thought. Their dinner last night had been just what she’d needed to get her mind off everything. But she hadn’t confided in Tabitha about this nightmare because Tabitha wasn’t the one who had seen her fall apart the day someone had broken into her home. Tabitha hadn’t spent that hideous time with her in Hines’s underground room. Th
at had been Sam, there whenever she’d needed him. He had touched her and made love to her, had made her laugh. Somehow, through it all, he had crawled past every one of her defenses and left her aching for more.
Last night she’d gotten home to find brownies on her doorstep. The note he’d left had said he’d tried to cook on his own.
Cait laughed a little hoarsely, then closed her eyes. She wished, oh, how she wished, that she could teach him to cook. And that she could believe he would stay around afterward.
She went back to her bedroom and peeled off her nightgown to take a shower. She had to be strong.
Cait managed to keep that thought in her head until Sam cornered her in the meds room just before her shift ended. As she stood on tiptoe looking for something on a high shelf, she heard the door shut behind her. She gasped, thinking the worst, her heart hurtling. She looked around.
“Oh.” She let her breath out shakily. “It’s only you.”
“Thanks for that.” Sam looked vaguely affronted. “Who were you expecting?”
Cait shrugged carefully and changed the subject. “What’s that in your hand?”
He held up her day-off request. “What’s this about?”
Cait hugged herself. Why couldn’t she achieve even one little thing without a confrontation with him? She was starting to feel desperate. “I still have nine sick days stockpiled,” she said. “I thought I would use one.”
“You know you’re going to be sick on Friday?”
She felt her temper twitch. “Okay, then call it a personal day.”
“What do you have to do that can’t be done on a weekend?”
“You know, you can be very domineering. And nosy. It’s none of your business.”
“That’s what you said about switching to another doctor, but it wasn’t true.”
“Well, it’s true this time.”
He raked his fingers through his hair, looking abashed and irritated all at once. “I’m just curious.”
“Okay. I’m running off to marry a sheik.”
He didn’t laugh. His jaw only tightened. “Where did you go last night?”