Wild Honey. Veronica Sattler

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СКАЧАТЬ We need to get you upstairs.”

      “Upstairs? Like hell, lady! I’m walkin’ out of here!”

      “In a few days, you mean.”

      “In a pig’s eye, I mean!”

      Randi remained prudently silent as she reached for her clipboard, eyeing him covertly as she did so. All evidence of the lazy cat was gone. Travis McLean had a no-nonsense look in his eye that said he meant business. She couldn’t imagine anyone daring to cross this man when he looked as he did now.

      “Are we having a problem here?” Dr. Ames approached the gurney.

      “Damn right there’s a problem! There’s no way in hell I’m stayin’ in this godforsaken place for more than….”

      As Travis launched into a recitation of his grievance, Randi headed for the doors where a pair of paramedics were wheeling in the latest emergency. She was only too glad of the opportunity to get away. She caught terms like “scapula” and “clavicle” as McLean marshaled his arguments, and she felt a little sorry for Ames. Members of the medical profession often made the worst patients.

      Still, there’d been no mention on the admittance forms of his being a doctor. Randi mused on this as she oversaw the immediate removal of the patient they’d just brought in—a fully dilated woman in premature labor—to the delivery room. There often wasn’t such information of course, not in ER. There frequently wasn’t time to record it.

      She wondered if he was a doctor attached to the military in some way. That would account for his original destination tonight. Huh. Just her rotten luck that the fog had enveloped Bethesda, but not Hopkins!

      After a brief exchange with the ob-gyn supervisor in the delivery room, Randi hurried back to her own station, wishing she didn’t have to. Not because she was tired from working extra shifts the past two weeks, although she was. Several unexpected absences among her staff, because of an outbreak of summer flu, had left them shorthanded, and she’d filled in. But that was nothing new. They all pitched in at such times; it was part of being professional.

      No, Randi knew her reluctance to return had less to do with the ER than who was in the ER—a big blond Virginian with scandalous good looks, as Aunt Tess would have put it. Looks that had been part of Randi’s decision five years before to select him as the biological father of her child.

      But only part of her decision, she reminded herself as she headed back the way she’d come. That his family background was solid had been another part. Not that Randi was a social snob, but if you came from a good family, she’d reasoned at the time, you had to come from a good genetic pool. A pool that was more likely to contain solid citizens than ax murderers, right?

      And when Travis McLean had listed the occupations of his parents and grandparents on his application form at Dr. Burgess’s clinic, they’d read like a roster of the American Medical Association, for heaven’s sake! No wonder he’d been at Harvard Med.

      What’s more, enrollment at such a school meant he had to have the intelligence Randi was looking for, so there was another part. Oh, yes, McLean had fit the bill to a tee.

      She paused briefly outside the ER. Not only to drum up courage, but to say a small prayer that he’d already been taken upstairs. It really wasn’t like her at all to cave in this way when something went wrong; that was part of what made her a good ER nurse. But coping with medical emergencies was a far cry from having a hidden part of your past come up and hit you in the face!

      Taking a slow deep breath, she again tried to make herself relax by thinking of her son. Adorable, wonderful, bright and loving Matt, who’d come into her life like a shining beacon of pure sunlight four years ago and given it meaning. Purpose. A future where there was safety and hope. And dreams that didn’t turn into nightmare.

      Feeling a little like the young mother who’d just gone into the delivery room, Randi took another deep breath. She stepped toward the door just as it swung open in front of her. It was her assistant. Martha Pierson had had years of ER experience and hardly ever looked ruffled, no matter how hectic things got. Right now the look on her face hovered somewhere between exasperation and…amusement?

      “Better come quick. That hunk’s refusin’ to cooperate, and the good doctor wants your help. Yours, and nobody else’s,” Pierson emphasized.

      Randi didn’t need to ask who the “hunk” was. Yet she did take a second to wonder why Ames would specifically ask for her. More than wonder. Worry, to be exact. Had McLean made the connection she’d been dreading? Was he refusing to cooperate until he got some answers she wasn’t prepared to give? Her knees suddenly felt like jelly.

      Pierson had been right about his refusing to cooperate. She could see that much from the single glance she risked as she made her way across the room.

      McLean was still sitting up on the gurney. He was wearing an expression that reminded her inexorably of Matt. His pose said he wasn’t budging.

      Nearby stood an orderly with a wheelchair. Hospital regulations said wheelchairs must be used to transport even ambulatory patients from one ward to another. Unless they were so incapacitated they had to be taken by gurney.

      Travis’s pose said he was taking neither. Well, that was what he thought!

      “What’s the problem now, Doctor?” Randi placed her hands on her hips and managed to glare at their patient, figuring the best defense was a good offense. “Don’t tell me this one’s still giving us a hard time.”

      Ames’s face bore none of the amusement she’d glimpsed in Pierson’s. The resident looked at Pierson now as she came up behind Randi. “You tell her, Nurse!” And then Ames rushed off toward a stretcher they were just bringing in.

      Pierson complied. “Seems Mr. McLean’s not willin’ to cooperate until you give him some information, Nurse Terhune.”

      Randi’s apprehension must have shown on her face. McLean unfolded his arms and traded the stubbornly locked jaw for a reassuring smile. “Hey, beautiful, nothin’ to get all hot ‘n’ bothered about.”

      He reached out to give her nose a playful flick with his finger. At the unexpected touch, Randi jumped.

      “Whoa, now, honey, settle down.” The smile widened, became the lazy grin she remembered all too well. “All I’m askin’, before I agree to let these turkeys trot me off upstairs like a good little patient, is what the M stands for, remember, sugar? Seems these, uh—” he glanced at Pierson “—co-professionals of yours aren’t allowed to tell me. Said you were the only one who could.”

      Randi glared at him, more annoyed with the man for the scare he’d given her than his outrageous demand. The scare, which she couldn’t even admit to. Not to mention that unexpected touch. It had sent an unfamiliar current shooting straight to her toes.

      “You’re pretty used to getting your way, aren’t you, Mr. McLean?”

      The teasing light that entered his eyes had her wishing she could recall her words. “When I go after somethin’ I really want—” his eyes roamed lazily over her face—”yeah, I reckon you could say that.”

      Randi drew herself up to make the most of her five feet, seven inches. Despite her height, she knew that if Travis McLean stood up, he’d dwarf her. She fixed him with her most formidable СКАЧАТЬ