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She gave Patrick a warm smile. Gavin liked the way she treated his son, especially as he missed his mother so much. He went back to resting his chin on a pedestal made from two fists, and thought he could get used to looking at Beth.

      “That’s cold,” Patrick protested. “It tickles.” He giggled and contorted while she drew lines and letters on his back.

      “OK, let’s get all the squirming over with before we start the test.” She tickled his sides until he laughed so hard he relaxed.

      It took a special woman to know how to work with kids. He’d give her that. Gavin optimistically calculated the odds of getting to know Bethany Caldwell better. He genuinely wasn’t a cad. Not asking her full name or getting her number really had been beneath his usual standards. And never in his life had he carried on with a woman he hadn’t even been introduced to. But, as they said, there’s always a first. Hell, if they’d been dating and the sex had been that amazing, he’d have sent flowers the next day. But that night, with the strong sexual current flowing between them, his good sense had gotten left behind. And when Carmen had beeped him and alerted him about Patrick, well…

      Now the question was, how could he make up for it?

      Intense itching ratcheted up in wicked swirls around the test patches on his back. “Am I allowed to scratch?”

      “Absolutely not.”

      “You’re sadistic, you know that?”

      “What’s sadistic mean?” Patrick asked as Beth made the first scratch on his back. He didn’t protest, but his face turned red from trying to hold still.

      “It means she made my back itch a lot and won’t let me scratch it.”

      “It’s one of the perks of the job,” she said, looking playfully at him for the first time that evening. He remembered that look.

      Beth quickly finished testing Patrick without a peep coming from him. Gavin wondered why his back felt on fire but his son wasn’t complaining at all.

      “OK, guys. Now you have to lie here for twenty minutes.”

      “Hey, where are you going?” Gavin asked.

      “To clean up the work station. It’s closing time. Talk amongst yourselves.”

      He lay there like a good boy trying to be teacher’s pet but his skin flushed from warm to hot, beginning from the top of his head downward. His scalp felt tingly. “Does your head itch?”

      “Nope,” Patrick said, looking very comfortable. “Hey, let’s arm-wrestle.”

      Gavin cleared a tickle in his throat. His lungs twitched and itched inside. His beeper went off. He sat up. “Maybe later.”

      Using the wall phone, he dialed in the familiar ER numbers. “Riordan.” He coughed while he listened, then glanced at his arms. They were covered with the beginnings of hives. Patrick’s back looked pale, other than a few red dots and lots of writing.

      “I’ll be right down. Contact Orthopedics and the plastic surgeon on call.” He hung up.

      Beth reappeared at the door. Her eyes flashed both a double-take and alarm when she saw Gavin. “Are you all right?” She glanced at Patrick to make sure he was OK.

      “A four-year-old was just brought into the ER. I’ve got to go,” he said, as the intense itching from his back spread all over his body.

      “You can’t leave. It looks like you’re having a systemic reaction. And you can’t leave a minor alone during skin testing. California law.” She reached into the cupboard for a syringe and a vial.

      The soles of his feet and palms of his hands joined the tornado of itching traveling across his skin. “They’re waiting for me.”

      She wiped his arm with an alcohol swab and popped him with a needle.

      “Ouch! Hey, what was that?”

      Patrick looked on in alarm. “Do I gotta have that, too?”

      She shook her head. “No, you’re fine. But your dad is having a big reaction to the testing.”

      Patrick coughed.

      “That was epi. Here, take this.” She handed Gavin a small foil packet she’d torn open. “It’s an antihistamine. Dissolve it under your tongue.” She turned him round and assessed his back. “Good God, a whole section of the testing has run together into one huge welt. Let me check your blood pressure.”

      “I told you I have to go.” He coughed and Patrick coughed along with him. Irritation accompanied his racing pulse and his lungs wheezed. Tight, resistant huffs replaced his normal breathing.

      “Sit down.” She gave his chest a firm shove and angled him into a chair. “You won’t do anyone any good if you collapse in the elevator.” She fastened the blood-pressure cuff around his arm, pumped it up, and listened with her stethoscope. He flashed her an annoyed stare. Unfazed, she bent forward in silence, almost head to head with him as she listened to his blood pressure.

      He started to stand up.

      “Hold your horses. Good. Your pressure hasn’t dropped. Let me listen to your lungs.” She placed the cold stethoscope bell first on his chest then on his back and commanded him to breathe in and out for each. “I hear a little wheezing, but not bad. Let me roll you down to the ER in a wheelchair. You shouldn’t be running around like this. And you can’t leave Patrick alone here.” She glanced at his back. “Man, you should be a bubble boy.”

      “Yeah, I’ve always been special. Look, this is ridiculous. I can walk.”

      “Maybe you can, but we don’t want to spread this reaction any further by increasing your circulation with physical activity, so you’re going in a wheelchair.” She reached into the cupboard again and tossed him a small gray canister and then an aerochamber. “Take a couple of hits off that while I get the wheelchair.”

      He felt like an insolent teenager screwing up his face at a teacher’s stupid idea, but did what he had been told for Patrick’s sake. The woman was as pushy as his ER nurses, but he trusted her knowledge.

      Before Beth left, she’d obviously become aware of what Gavin had been noticing for the last few weeks—Patrick’s troublesome, persistent cough. He kept coughing as though he had a nervous tickle.

      “Maybe you should take your asthma medicine, too,” she said.

      “I don’t have it with me.”

      “Later, when we have time, I’ll teach you about keeping peak-flow records and carrying your inhaler wherever you go, but for now, use what I gave your dad. You guys both need a bronchodilator.”

      She disappeared around the corner. Gavin heard her explain to Dr Mehta over the intercom what was going on, while they did what they were told.

      Reappearing and rolling the wheelchair behind him, Beth caught the backs of his knees and pushed his shoulder down to force him to sit. She handed him his scrub top and lab coat and gave Patrick his basketball jersey.

      “Would you like an ice pack or should I put some cortisone cream on your back before you get dressed?”

      “Don’t have time now, but I’d definitely like to take a rain-check on the second part.” Though nervous about his reaction to the testing, he couldn’t resist horsing around to lighten her intense mood and help himself relax. He lowered his voice. “My choice of cream, though.”

      She lightly cuffed his shoulder and rolled her eyes toward Patrick. Ignoring Gavin’s come-on, she spun the chair round and pushed it toward the door. “I’m missing dinner because of you, and I already skipped lunch today.” With the clinic normally closing at five o’clock and it now being almost six o’clock, the hall was empty.

      “Nurses are tough. What about our dinner?” He gestured to his son. “You know, I think you owe us

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