Читать книгу Doctor Seduction - Beverly Bird - Страница 10

Normally Cait used the drive home from work to plan the evening ahead. She considered which chores she could do to free up time on her days off for more pleasurable pursuits, like scouting out a flea market. She thought about what new book she might start reading and letters she really ought to write.

But tonight, as she pulled out of the hospital parking lot, she decided that what she really wanted most in life was a glass of wine.

What had that been back there with Sam? Her heart had stopped gallivanting, but still thudded in a strange way. The pit of her stomach still felt ticklish. He’d been teasing her, she thought, and he had mentioned it. Not once, not twice, but repeatedly.

Yes, she decided, she definitely wanted a glass of wine. It would be very soothing. She pulled over to the curb for a moment because she wasn’t quite sure how to go about such a thing. Stop at a bar? She’d noticed the Saddlebag at the edge of town a time or two, and there was always the Lone Star Country Club. But truth be told, her insides went a little squirmy at the idea of sashaying into such an establishment by herself. Okay, she thought, she’d find a liquor store.

She pulled away from the curb and spotted one a few minutes later. It occurred to her that she’d passed it every morning and night on her way to and from the hospital without ever really noticing it. Of course, she felt very strongly about keeping her eyes on the road while she was driving. A fender bender would really disrupt her life. But these days such a calamity seemed like…well, less of a calamity.

“Being taken hostage with God’s gift to women is infinitely worse,” she muttered, and pulled her little car up to the curb one more time.

She got out and locked the door. She was halfway across the sidewalk when it happened again, that itchy feeling at the back of her neck, the humming urgency inside her to make sure the car was absolutely secure. Cait stalled and rubbed a hand over her nape.

“No,” she said. She wasn’t going to do this anymore. She was going to get better.

“I didn’t even ask you yet,” said a man approaching up the pavement.

Cait turned her head, then literally gaped at him. He was one of the best-looking men she’d ever seen, right up there with Sam Walters. Why had she never noticed before how many truly handsome men there were running around Mission Creek?

“I beg your pardon?” she asked uncertainly.

“You said no.”

She laughed a little breathlessly as she understood. “I did that, yes.”

He grinned. “One of my best friend’s wives talks to herself a lot, too. They haven’t slapped her into the nuthouse yet.”

Cait nodded. “I just started doing it recently,” she admitted.

He threw back his dark head and laughed. “Points for honesty,” he said. “I like that. I’m Ricky Mercado, by the way.”

“Oh! I’ve heard of you.”

“Good or bad?”

“Bad, actually.” Had she really just said that?

He didn’t seem offended. “Well, I’ve reformed.”

“How much?” Cait almost choked on her tongue. Was she flirting again? Such a thing could only get her into hot water, especially with this man. She had to knock it off right now.

“Listen,” he said, motioning at the store, “if you were heading in there for something to drink, why don’t I spare you the trouble? I’d really like to take you out for a cocktail.”

Cait felt the sidewalk shift beneath her feet. He wanted to take her out? Just like that? “Thank you, no.”

“You’re sure?”

“I’ve got plans,” she lied, and was shocked at the ease with which the words rolled off her tongue.

“Too bad.”

He looked as if he meant it, she thought bemusedly. She took another step toward the liquor store. A man like Ricky Mercado would gobble her up whole. There was something dangerous about him, some mob connection if she remembered correctly, not to mention his very air. Then again, the mob in Mission Creek had been more or less dismantled over the summer.

Was she actually thinking about accepting his offer? Cait fled into the store before her tongue could betray her again.

After twenty minutes she finally made her choices—a cabernet and something intriguingly called cactus schnapps.

The cost exceeded the cash she had in her purse, as it was right before payday, so she had to use a credit card. Normally she only used credit cards for emergencies. She almost changed her mind, but the clerk was looking at her impatiently. Vowing to write a check for the balance that very night, before they could charge her interest, she handed over the plastic.

She’d never be able to buy her own home if she tossed money away on such things as interest payments on credit cards, she thought. Then she had the sudden realization that it hadn’t seemed very important when she’d been coming undone in Sam Walters’s arms.

“Stop!” she told herself. She had to stop dwelling on him! Cait pressed her hands to her cheeks.

The clerk stopped moving just as he was about to run the card through a little machine. “You don’t want to buy it, after all?”

“Of course I do.” Cait waved a hand impatiently. “Just finish there.”

Three minutes later she hurried back to her car with her purchases. When she got home, her landlady was pouring water on the flowers lining the walkway of the pretty white house on the street. Cait lived above the garage in the back. After she tucked her car into one of the spaces, she came out to find the elderly woman waving to her.

“Hello, Mrs. Brody!” she called back.

“What have you got there?” The old woman motioned to the bag in Cait’s arms.

“This?” Cait looked down at the bag. “I thought I’d have a glass of wine with supper.” She decided not to mention the cactus concoction.

She looked up in time to see the woman frown. Cait remembered too late that Mrs. Brody was a teetotaler.

“It’s been a particularly difficult week,” Cait added.

The woman’s expression softened. “Poor dear. What all happened to you in that man’s basement, anyway?”

“Nothing!”

The woman looked flabbergasted at the outburst. Cait turned tail and jogged to the steps at the side of the garage that led up to the second floor. She ran up them and closed the door hard and securely behind her.

The best thing she could do with herself now was prepare supper, she decided, and sip some wine while she cooked. She set the bag on her kitchen counter and hurried to the bedroom to change out of her scrubs.

It was a room she’d always cherished. There was a blue-and-white Amish wedding-ring quilt on the single bed. The furniture was pine and somewhat plain, but she’d added blue Cape Cod curtains to the single window and had warmed things up with a cheval mirror in one corner and a quaint antique washstand in the other. There were a few blue-silk flower arrangements, as well, and a solitary framed photo on the dresser of the mother she couldn’t remember.

Cait stripped out of her scrubs and shoved everything into the hamper just inside her closet door. A knock sounded at the front door at the same time.

Several months ago, such an event would have been preposterous—she never had visitors. But lately Tabitha Monroe had taken to stopping by without warning. Or it could be Mrs. Brody, she thought, to pass further opinion on her bottle of wine. It could even be Sam.

Her heart stalled.

Given their conversation this afternoon, she was no longer even remotely sure what he was capable of. Cait rushed to the dresser and dragged out a pair of shorts, hopping into them on her way to the closet. She snagged a short-sleeved blouse off a hanger and buttoned it with fumbling fingers as she headed back to the living room. She was about to pull open the door when everything inside her froze.

It could be Sam…or it could be Branson Hines. Or some other raving lunatic determined to unravel her life. “Hines is in jail,” she whispered resolutely. “And it can’t happen to the same woman twice in one lifetime.” Then again, why couldn’t it? Where was that written?

“Cait?” Tabitha’s voice came through the door. “I know you’re in there. Mrs. Brody said you just got home.”

Cait breathed again and threw the locks. She’d had two more installed yesterday, and though she didn’t remember doing it, she had obviously engaged all three when she’d come in a little while ago. “Hi,” she said.

The breeze plucked at Tabitha’s dark-blond curls. She held a large brown bag and she shoved it toward her. “I brought Chinese.”

Cait took the bag because she knew Tabitha would let go of it one way or the other. The hospital administrator was trying hard to improve on her workaholic tendencies, but she still had a waste-no-time edge to her. “I don’t like Chinese,” Cait protested.

“Everybody likes Chinese,” Tabitha scoffed. “Can I come in?”

Cait also knew from past experience that it would do no good to say no. And she actually liked Tabitha. Her friendly persistence just made her nervous. “Sure.” She stepped back from the door.

Tabitha swept inside. “I didn’t think you needed to be cooking on your first day back to work,” she said by way of explanation.

“I find cooking therapeutic.” But Cait carried the bag into the kitchen and peered into it before she set it down and returned to the living room. “There’s enough in there for five people!”

“Two,” Tabitha corrected. “I’m joining you. I’ve already been to visit Jake. I’ll go back to the hospital after we eat.”

At the mention of Jake White, Cait recalled that the cop had actually proposed to Tabitha. It left Cait with a vague, wistful feeling.

“How’s he feeling?” she asked. Jake had been shot rescuing Sam and her from Hines.

“He’s chipper. Eager to go home. How’s Billy?”

On cue, the cat belly-wormed his way out from beneath Cait’s dark-red Western-style sofa. “Not so chipper,” she said. “I think you cost him one of his lives.” Disputing that, the cat yawned and began cleaning himself as though he hadn’t a care in the world.

“How was I supposed to know he was going to freak out like that and nearly botch the rescue?” Tabitha went and gathered up the cat, crooning to him.

“Cats hate loud noises. Gunshots especially. Hostage scenes are not their favorite things.”

“Poor baby.” Tabitha stroked him, then she put him down again abruptly. “Okay, break out the Mandarin beef.”

Cait wrinkled her nose.

“It’s for me. I brought you almond chicken. That can’t bother your sensibilities too much.”

Cait nodded. She never ate red meat. It just seemed so…barbaric.

Tabitha had already invaded the kitchen. Cait followed her in time to see her open the bag from the liquor store. “Hey, what’s this?”

Cait flushed. “I sort of got a wild hair on my way home from work.”

“You did?”

Cait pulled her spine straight. “I have unplumbed depths.”

“Who told you that?”

“Sam Walters.”

Tabitha’s brows climbed her forehead. “Tell me all about that.”

Cait felt treacherous heat trying to steal over her again. “There’s nothing to tell.”

“Hmm. Well, apparently he got to know you a whole lot better in three days than I have in months.”

“He didn’t get to know me.”

“Then explain this business about depths.” But Tabitha didn’t wait for an answer. She began pulling cartons out of her own bag, then helped herself to the cupboard and got plates. “Where are your wineglasses?”

“Um, I don’t have any.” Cait hurried to another cupboard and found two jelly glasses. Buy a jar of jelly and get a glass you could use forever, to boot. Who could argue with that?

Tabitha tucked her chin as she considered them, then finally shrugged in acceptance. She plucked the cabernet out of its bag. “What are the odds that you actually own a corkscrew?”

“Excellent.” Cait pulled one, still wrapped in plastic and cardboard, from a drawer. Then she shrugged sheepishly. “It just seemed like one of those things everyone should own. It was on sale.”

Tabitha took it and attacked the bottle. Five minutes later, they were seated and dishing up Chinese food. Cait discovered the almond chicken wasn’t half-bad.

“There was one home I was in—I think I was about eight—where the husband worked nights and the woman was always shoveling takeout at us kids,” she explained. “I think that’s where I learned an aversion to Chinese food.”

Tabitha’s fork stalled on its way to her mouth. “Takeout is relatively expensive.”

“That particular family had a lot of state kids.” And they received a stipend from the government for every one of them, Cait thought.

“You never talk much about your childhood,” Tabitha said.

Cait got up for more wine. “I’m sorry.”

“For what?”

“For boring you.” She poured, topping off both glasses without thought.

“You’re not. I’ve always wondered what makes you so straitlaced.”

“I have unplumbed depths!” Cait burst out. Then she flushed.

Tabitha’s brows lifted again. “Sorry. I forgot that part.” She chomped down onto an egg roll. “You’ve been through a lot lately. What happened in that underground room, anyway? You never did tell me.”

Cait felt her skin turn to glass. “Nothing.”

“You spent seventy-two hours in there.”

“Hines was in and out. He didn’t stay, but we could hear him walking around in the house upstairs whenever he was around.”

Tabitha waited. “And?” she prompted when Cait said nothing more.

Cait kept chewing, focusing hard on her food. But Tabitha remained quiet, waiting, not willing to change the subject.

Cait sighed and put her fork down. “He already had bottled water and crackers down there in the basement. I told Jake that. Jake said that was because Hines had planned the whole thing.” Tabitha’s Jake had been the detective assigned to the hostage situation. “So we ate and we tried to figure out ways to get free. But the basement door was locked from the outside and the windows were so tiny not even I could fit through one. We tried banging on them for a while, but they faced the backyard and no one heard us.”

“What did you talk about?”

Everything but how old she was when she was potty-trained, Cait thought. She sipped wine, then suddenly found it hard to swallow. “Mostly about me. I think I was nervous. I must have talked a lot.”

Tabitha nodded. “That makes sense.”

“And he called me a sparrow. A rigid sparrow. I just felt like I had to defend myself against that.” So she’d given him her whole life story.

“You told him about the foster homes?” Tabitha looked surprised.

Cait shrugged. “No one was ever unkind to me in any of them.”

“What else?” Tabitha asked. “What else did you two talk about?”

“I don’t know!” Cait cried. “Missed chances. Lost dreams. Plans for the future. What do two people talk about when they’re stuck in a room together for hours and hours on end?”

“Talk wouldn’t have been high on my list of guesses in the first place,” Tabitha said dryly. “That’s not Sam Walters’s rep with a good-looking woman.”

“Nothing happened!” Cait shouted. Then she went still, frowning. “Good-looking? I’m not good-looking.”

“You’re cute as a button and haughty to boot. Get off it.”

“Haughty?”

Tabitha nodded. “With that don’t-touch-me air you’ve got going on.”

“How can you say that?”

“I just think it would be a real challenge for a Sam Walters-type to see if he could touch you.”

The hurt that raced through her almost stole Cait’s breath. It was very cold and seemed to numb her nerve endings. Was that all she had been? A challenge?

Of course, she thought. It was the only thing that made sense. He’d gone out of his way this morning to make sure she knew it had been a one-time thing. Why, then, had she believed that it’d had something to do with getting to know her?

“Well, he didn’t,” she said tightly. She stood quickly to take her plate to the sink.

“I’ll pass the word, then.”

Cait whipped back to face her. “Why?”

“Because everyone in the hospital is wondering and it will kill the rumors. Come on, Cait. Pretty nurse. Knockout womanizing doctor. One basement room. Three days. What would you think?”

“I wouldn’t think about it at all! It would be none of my business!”

“Unfortunately the rest of the hospital staff doesn’t share your high ideals.” Tabitha stood, as well, and began cleaning up the takeout packages.

Cait hugged herself, distraught. Now she was another Sam Walters statistic!

Tabitha glanced her way and her expression softened. She dropped a hand on Cait’s shoulder in comfort. Cait twitched. She wasn’t used to being touched. Tabitha took her hand away.

“It’ll all blow over as soon as Sam sets his sights on something else in a skirt,” she assured her. “That’s the way gossip mills run. Anyway, I’ve got to go. I told Jake I’d be back in an hour.”

“Of course. Thanks for stopping by.” Cait realized that this time, for the first time, she genuinely meant it.

They were halfway back to the door when Tabitha turned around. “I almost forgot. I’m supposed to pester you about coming to the hospital’s End of Summer Ball next weekend.”

Cait frowned. “Who told you to pester me?”

“Jake. And Jared Cross.”

Her heart gathered itself into a knot and cannon-balled into her toes. “You talked to Dr. Cross?”

Tabitha looked at her strangely. “He’s my director of child psychiatry. I talk to him on a regular basis.”

“About me?” Her sessions with him were supposed to have been confidential! Or had someone noticed her visiting him? Had rumor gotten out some other way? Tabitha was right about one thing. The hospital-employee environment was closeknit, with people spending long, stress-filled hours together. Gossip was rife.

But Tabitha was shaking her head. “I talked to him about all my staff who were involved in that nightmare. I wanted to know if I could help in any respect.”

Cait finally let her air out. That made sense. It was something Tabitha would do.

“And he mentioned that everyone needed to get back on with their lives as expeditiously as possible,” Tabitha continued.

Cait nodded. “But I never do balls or that sort of thing.”

“I think you should do this one,” Tabitha said. “Jake thinks it will be good for you, too. He’s expected to be released from the hospital by then. Besides, everyone is talking about you. You should stop in, even for a little while, to show them that you’re absolutely fine.”