Searching for Cate. Marie Ferrarella

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СКАЧАТЬ against her natural grain to share anything but the most trivial of information. Even Jeremy had had to prod her repeatedly before she had told him what she was really looking for.

      Christian looked at her very skeptically. Granted, Joan Cunningham hadn’t been his patient long, just for the past two years, but she seemed like a fairly open woman. By her second visit, he knew the names of her three children. The Christmas card he’d received from her last December had carried their likenesses. None of them had been this woman. Joan had never mentioned having a fourth child.

      “Are you sure?”

      Damn it, she was going to cry again. What was the matter with her? She’d thought that she’d used up the last of her tears at her mother’s funeral. There shouldn’t have been any moisture left inside her, not after all the tears she’d shed over her mother and over Gabe. Where was all this water coming from?

      Cate sighed, jabbing her index finger at the elevator keypad again. “Right now, I’m not even sure if the sky is blue.”

      The woman before him looked pale and shaken. His main concern in Joan’s room had been getting her away from his patient. Now that he had, he should just let her go on her way. But there was something about the look on her face, especially in her eyes, that kept him from murmuring some trivial phrase and walking away. He saw pain there. It held him fast.

      Christian glanced at his watch. He had a little time before his first patient was due. With his office located on the hospital premises, he didn’t have far to go. He made up his mind.

      “Why don’t you come this way with me?” Without waiting for her to answer, he took hold of her arm, about to lead her over to the nurses’ lounge.

      Cate interpreted his actions in her own way. “Don’t worry, I’m not about to cause any trouble.” Moving her arm out of his hold, she began to dig through her purse. A minute later, she produced her wallet and opened it to her ID. She held it out to him. “I’m a special agent with the FBI.”

      Just like Lydia, he thought, although he refrained from saying so. Small world. “Then this was bureau business?”

      “No, it’s private, like I said.” She looked down at his hand. He’d taken hold of her again. Was he afraid she was going to go running off to Joan’s room? “You’re holding my arm again, Doctor. I told you, I’m not about to cause any trouble.”

      His expression didn’t change. She didn’t like the fact that she couldn’t read it. “Then you’ll come this way.” He began walking.

      There were a hundred different ways to separate herself from him. For the moment, she employed none of them. Curiosity had gotten the better of her. “Which will lead me where?”

      He brought her to a door and indicated the sign. “To the nurses’ lounge.”

      As far as she knew, only nurses were allowed in the nurses’ lounge. She’d had a friend at one of the local hospitals in San Francisco who’d been very territorial about the small room that bore a similar sign.

      “I’m not about to change professions,” she quipped.

      The half smile that came to his lips intrigued her. She wondered what he looked like when he actually allowed his mouth to curve. Some people had smiles that were better left unused, others had the kind that lit up a room. She had a hunch that he leaned toward the latter.

      “They have coffee there,” he told her as he pushed open the door.

      “And you’re prescribing a cup?”

      “That—” he continued to hold the door for her, waiting “—and maybe a slight change of attitude.”

      She looked at him sharply as they crossed the threshold into the lounge. The room was small, no bigger than nine by twelve, and for the moment, empty. A few chairs were scattered around with no apparent pattern in mind.

      The doctor walked over to the small table where a pot of coffee sat on a burner. The pot was half full.

      And she felt half cocked. Where did he get off, judging her?

      “What would you know about my attitude?” she asked. It took effort to keep her anger under wraps.

      After pouring the coffee, Christian turned around to face her. “Not a thing,” he admitted, his expression still giving nothing away. “How do you take it? The coffee,” he prompted when she made no answer.

      Cate pursed her lips. She supposed she had nothing to lose by accepting the cup of coffee. She hadn’t eaten since this morning and that had only been a piece of toast. “Black.”

      Nodding, he handed her the cup. He took coffee the same way, the way he took life. Unadorned. “Anything else I can get you?”

      Taking the cup from him, a slight smile curved her lips. “The truth would be nice.”

      He took half a cup of coffee for himself, then placed a dollar into the empty coffee can beside the pot. “Truth is all relative.”

      Cate rolled her eyes. Philosophy, that was all she needed. “Oh, please. What is that, Zen?”

      His shrug was careless. He lifted the cup to his lips and drank before answering. “Navajo.”

      Cate looked at him sharply. A Native American. Like Lydia’s husband. There was a resemblance, she realized. The same rugged planes and angles making up the face, the same high cheekbones and straight, almost blue-black hair, worn a little long, no doubt in tribute to their heritage. The only thing that threw her was that she would have expected his eyes to be brown or almost black. They weren’t.

      “You have blue eyes.”

      Christian shrugged casually. “Yes, I do.” His mother’s father had been only half Navajo. The other half had been an Italian woman who hailed from the northern region, where Italians were fair-skinned, fair-haired and blue-eyed, unlike their Sicilian brethren to the south.

      The doctor looked comfortable in his own skin, she decided. And why shouldn’t he? Life probably held no surprises for him, threw him no curves out of nowhere. “I take it you know your family history?”

      Christian thought it was rather a personal question, but given the situation, he allowed for it. When they were both younger, his brother had had no use for stories of the Dine, which was the name the Navajo gave themselves. At the time, heritage hadn’t meant anything to him. In one of the few times that he could remember, their mother had grown stern and laid down the law to him. He was to learn and be proud of who and what he was. The lessons had stuck.

      He nodded. “Yes, I do.”

      She laughed softly. He heard no humor in the sound. “That makes you one up on me. I thought I knew mine—until a month ago.”

      As she spoke, he studied her. He had the impression that she ordinarily kept rigid control over her reactions. When people like that finally let go, it was a fearsome thing to witness. He wondered if she had some sort of a release valve.

      “What happened a month ago?” he asked.

      She pulled her shoulders back, as if bracing for a blow. “I tried to donate blood for my mother and the lab technician told СКАЧАТЬ