LITMIR.BIZ

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know. That’s why I’m asking. You tell me. Something else that might have rocked your world during that time?”

      She’d made love with Sam. “Absolutely not.”

      “People react in some startling ways when they think their time is running out.”

      “Not me.”

      “They do uncharacteristic things.”

      “I never got uncharacteristic until I got home again. That’s when all this started.”

      Cross stood. “You’ll tell me sooner or later. I do want you to make another appointment. It would probably work best if you came in on your day off. We’ll have more time together that way.”

      Cait pushed to her feet, as well. “Okay.” She was back to being polite and agreeable. For now, she thought a little wildly. Who knew how long it would last?

      “I’m sorry this happened to you, to everyone Hines touched.”

      Cait nodded. “Thank you. But he’s gone now.”

      “With my help, you’ll get the old Caitlyn back. But I seriously doubt if she’ll ever be quite the same person she was before all this happened.”

      Cait squeezed her eyes shut. She was so desperately afraid of that. “I’ve got to go.”

      She fled Cross’s office without making a second appointment, but they both knew she would be back.

      Hines can’t take me away from me! she wanted to holler. And as for Sam…well, just as he had said, it was a one-time thing. Time would pass and what they had shared would fade from her memory. And that was best. It was why she had prayed since they’d been released from that room, that he wouldn’t call her, wouldn’t try to get in touch with her. She’d seen woman after woman hang with bated breath on a man’s every whim and action and spoken word—every one of those things out of their control. She would not let that happen to her.

      Cait turned into the nurses’ station again and came nose to nose with Sam’s angry face.

      “Where the hell have you been?” he snarled.

      Two

      The world was clearly going to hell in a handbasket, Sam thought, watching Cait open and close her mouth in shock at his outburst.

      One minute everything had been perfectly normal. He’d known himself inside and out. The world around him was just predictable enough to offer comfort without driving him crazy. Then Branson Hines had crashed into his life, showing him that he wasn’t so much the hero, after all. And now that they were free of the man, this woman seemed to stubbornly resist going back to the way she was supposed to be, the way she’d always been before.

      “Excuse me,” she said, trying to step around the desk and pass him.

      “The hell I will.” He blocked her way. “You owe me an explanation.”

      “For what, pray tell?”

      “Pray tell?” Suddenly Sam grinned. That was the Caitlyn Matthews he’d always known. Then again, the old Nurse Matthews had never argued with him or contradicted him. And now, unless he missed his guess, she was actually questioning him about his annoyance.

      His blood pressure spiked again. “You walked out on me in the middle of rounds!”

      “No, I did not.”

      “You were there, then you just wandered off.”

      “I attempted to tell you I was leaving. You wouldn’t acknowledge me.”

      “Maybe you didn’t try hard enough!”

      “Would you kindly stop shouting? You’re embarrassing me.”

      “I ought to write you up for this! To hell with your pride.”

      Then she shocked him. She placed both hands on his chest and shoved. “You’re in my way.”

      “I’m—” He broke off, dumbfounded, his thoughts fragmenting. “You’re out of your mind!”

      She swiveled on one hip to glance back at him. “Could be. If I were you, I’d watch my step. There could be an ax murderer lurking inside me. You wouldn’t want to tick her off.” Then she walked away.

      “You know, after everything that happened to us last week, I don’t think that’s very funny,” he called after her.

      Sam heard his own words and almost choked. He was the practical joker of the pediatrics floor, the one to whom not much was sacred, unless it affected a patient, the one who took a very sick boy speeding around federal land in a Maserati the day before surgery.

      Caitlyn seemed to catch the incongruity of his statement, too. She stopped again. “I know what Hines took from me, Sam,” she said, looking back. “What did he take from you?”

      He refused to be sidetracked. “A nurse, for starters. What if I had needed you ten minutes ago?”

      “As you pointed out earlier, there are plenty of others on the floor who can do my job. I’m non-essential.”

      “Damn it, I never said that.” He’d always had a good rapport with the nursing staff. After all, most of them were women.

      “You implied it, then.”

      “I was making the point that I had to come back to work. You didn’t!”

      “You’re shouting again, Sam.”

      He was going to choke her.

      Then it hit him. She’d never once called him by his first name until the time he’d buried himself inside her in that room. Even when Hines had been shuffling them along at gunpoint, she’d called him Dr. Walters. Now she’d said Sam twice in the last minute.

      Things were getting way out of hand.

      “Go back to work,” he said shortly.

      “I was trying to until you detained me.” She set off down the corridor again, her tight little hips twitching. Had they ever twitched before? He couldn’t be sure. He’d never quite gotten past her cool stuffiness until she’d whispered, “Show me how” in his ear.

      So he had. He had shown her. And now he couldn’t get her out of his mind.

      “Doctor?” One of the other nurses approached him, frowning. “Are you all right?”

      “Why wouldn’t I be?” Stupid question, Sam thought. But Hines had derailed him a lot less than little Miss Fancy Hips, who’d just turned into a room down the corridor.

      Sam brought his focus back to the nurse before him. Her name was Angelina Moffit. She was a brunette of staggeringly appealing proportions—the type he usually went for. He opened his mouth to tease her, then just waved a hand in abject disgust with himself. For the first time in his memory, words failed him. “Oh, to hell with it.”

      He left her and started down the hall. This, he thought, was going to end right here and now. He caught up with Jared Cross just as the psychiatrist was ushering a woman and her daughter into his office. “I need a minute with you,” he said peremptorily.

      Cross lofted a brow. “Most people make an appointment.”

      “I don’t have time for that. This can’t wait. It’s important.”

      The psychiatrist watched him for a beat, then nodded. He stuck his head in his office and said a word to the woman, then he returned. “Five minutes.”

      “Fine.” Sam turned to a door across the hall and threw it open. He stepped into his office after Cross and closed the door, being careful to turn the lock. “Have a seat.” He said it like an order.

      “That’s usually my line.” But Cross sat. “What’s going on?”

      Sam went behind

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