LITMIR.BIZ

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from Sam Walters before he saw her fall apart.

      “Oh, God, what have I done to my life?” Suddenly Cait’s starched spine crumbled and she leaned against the wall, hugging herself. She was shaking. Badly.

      It was a one-time thing. You know that, right?

      The truth was, she’d spent the past three days in a state of agonized expectancy because she hadn’t actually been sure.

      She hadn’t seen him or heard from him since they’d been rescued from Branson Hines and the underground room where he’d held them hostage until Tabitha Monroe—the hospital administrator, who for some reason felt compelled to be Cait’s friend when Cait very much preferred her solitude—had taken it into her head to have all twelve orange pounds of Cait’s cat pose as a baby in a blanket in an effort to meet Hines’s ransom demands. Cait scrubbed her hands over her face as she stepped into the maternity wing. Tabitha sometimes tended toward extremes, but it had worked. Sort of.

      She veered left. The new wing was like no hospital she’d ever imagined working in. The walls were done in bright, primary colors that jarred her a little in her current mood. She passed the newborns in the nursery without looking at them. Her stride hitched up as she passed the storage room where Branson Hines had cornered twelve employees a week ago, changing her life forever.

      She reached the nurses’ station, then hesitated and looked around furtively.

      No one was here. She’d banked on it. She knew hospital routine and right now, everyone would be gearing up for rounds, cleaning up after breakfast. She stepped behind the desk and found the large brown envelope she was looking for near the computer station. It was the one that would carry memos and other paperwork from this department to other areas of the hospital. She unwound the little string that held it closed, drove a hand into her pocket and came up with a slim, white envelope.

      She’d printed Dr. Jared Cross’s name in neat block letters across the front and underlined it three times. She’d sealed it with a little blob of white wax.

      “Help me, please,” she whispered, “before I lose my mind.” She dropped her envelope into the bigger one, closed it again and fled the maternity wing.

      She could have just gone to his office to ask for an appointment, sparing herself all this subterfuge. For that matter, she could have sent the note via the nurses’ station in her own pediatrics unit. But she didn’t want anyone to know what she was up to. She didn’t want any of her co-workers to go stuffing their own mail inside the pediatrics envelope, recognizing her handwriting on a personal envelope to Dr. Cross.

      They couldn’t know. No one could know what was happening to her. And she certainly couldn’t confide in a stranger, couldn’t go outside the hospital to another psychiatrist. The mere thought nearly crippled her with panic. Maybe she wasn’t his usual prepubescent patient, but Cait knew Jared Cross. He was the director of child psychiatry at Mission Creek Memorial, and something about him had always appealed to her. He was a little gruff, eminently practical, not given to maudlin emotion.

      She would have to trust him with this. There was no one else.

      Cait rode the elevator up to the pediatrics floor in the main building. She was in Chelsea Cambridge’s room when Sam walked in. This time she was ready for him.

      “Good morning, Doctor.”

      He scowled at her as he took the patient’s chart from her hands. “So that’s how we’re going to play this, hmm?” he asked in an undertone.

      Cait hesitated. It was as though they’d never spoken downstairs. Maybe he was going crazy, too. Or maybe she had imagined that whole encounter.

      The very real possibility of that had her stomach rolling.

      “It was a one-time thing,” she said, just to be sure.

      “That it was.”

      She turned away from him quickly to ease down the sheets on the little girl’s bed because she wasn’t at all sure what her expression would reveal at his response. Then she watched him gently palpate the child’s abdomen, and her mind spun away.

      Those hands…

      Cait had a sudden, shattering image of them on her own skin, closing over her breasts, his breath hot where his face had been buried at her throat. She’d thought she’d been dying. Not because of anything Hines had done or might still do, but because for the first time in her life, she’d known what it was to be touched, really touched. And she had craved it, had needed it with something so strong it had vibrated inside her.

      Why had she done it?

      Because he’d been funny and kind and gallant in that room, neither outrageous nor as arrogant as she’d come to believe during the years she’d worked with him. Because she’d been terrified that God would give her no more days after that one, and because there was something huge in life she was going to miss if she didn’t make love with that man right then, right there. Because he was devastatingly good-looking with those sometimes stormy, sometimes laughing eyes and the little cleft in his chin. For once in her life she’d wanted to do something wild and daring and exhilarating. She’d done it because she’d needed him.

      “Nurse Matthews?”

      Cait snapped back. “I’m sorry. What?”

      “Would you like to pay attention here?”

      “I was.” Her breath still felt short. But he’d already looked away from her, toward the interns who had gathered behind them.

      “Okay, guys, this is what you’re not supposed to do when you’re with a patient—phase out on something personal,” he said to them.

      Cait felt her face heat with embarrassment. “I didn’t…”

      He shot her a sardonic look, the kind that only he could muster. He went on with his examination of the child.

      “Coming?” he asked her as the others began leaving the room.

      Cait refused to meet his eyes. “I’ll be right behind you.”

      “Make it snappy.”

      Out of nowhere, Cait felt anger bubble up in her. She gave him a sharp, little salute before she realized she was going to do it. She was fiercely glad when he looked startled.

      They landed in Gilbert’s room next. The boy was back in bed, his color high. “Well,” she said quietly, “he appears none the worse for wear.”

      “Questioning me again, Nurse?”

      “Who, me? I wouldn’t dream of it, my being your subordinate and all.”

      Satisfaction was something hot and sharp under the skin that wasn’t entirely unpleasant, she discovered when he seemed unable to respond. She liked it.

      He gave her his shoulder, picked up Gilbert’s chart and addressed the interns again. That was when she saw Jared Cross hovering in the doorway. Cait stepped quickly aside when the psychiatrist motioned to her.

      “You wanted to see me?” he asked.

      She hadn’t expected him to get her note so quickly, or to act on it so promptly. “Yes.”

      “I’ve got about twenty minutes until my first appointment. Do you have time now?”

      Cait glanced back at Sam. He seemed oblivious to her now. She cleared her throat loudly, but he didn’t glance her way.

      To hell with him, then. “Okay,” Cait said.

      She matched Dr. Cross stride for stride down the corridor to his office at the end of the floor. To his credit, she thought he was mincing his steps a bit, allowing her to keep up. He was a good foot taller than her own five foot two. He was also a gentleman, of sorts. When they reached his door, he pushed it open and seemed to suggest she step through first when suddenly he made a move of his own. They hit shoulders in the threshold. Or at least, Cait thought, her shoulder nailed his upper arm.

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