With the MD...at the Altar?. Jessica Andersen

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СКАЧАТЬ didn’t want the others involved. She kept feeling as though she should’ve been able to handle this by herself, in her own clinic.

      “Bug has the first set of blood samples spinning down,” Luke said, appearing in the archway leading to the kitchen wing. “We should have some preliminary results in fifteen minutes or so, and that’ll give us a starting point for figuring this thing out.”

      He’d changed out of the dust-smeared clothes he’d been wearing the last time she’d seen him, into jeans and one of the long-sleeved button-down shirts they’d both favored on assignment. Made of a high-tech nylon composite, the garments looked like cotton, but wicked away sweat and heat, and were nearly indestructible.

      The sight of the shirt—and the fact that she’d long ago donated hers to Goodwill because she would never need them again—sent a little jab beneath Rox’s heart.

      Luke made a wide gesture to encompass the monastery, which was slightly less creepy in the light of day. “What do you think?”

      “I think you made good on your promise to get this done by morning,” she said, and her thoughts of a moment before made her voice sharper than she’d intended, lending accusation to the words.

      “As opposed to other promises I didn’t make good on, you mean?” Boots ringing on the stone floor, he moved to face her, expression resigned and maybe a bit impatient. “Go ahead. Ask me why I left you the way I did.”

      In other words, he was willing to talk about it if she wanted to fight. He might even be willing to say he was sorry for the way he’d left, though not for the actual act of leaving. But she could tell from his expression that it was going to be the same sort of circular argument they’d excelled at during the last few weeks before she got sick, the ones that never ended with a winner or a loser, just the incompatibility of two people who had great sex but wanted different things out of life.

      She’d been looking to slow down and scale back to something more intimate at a time when his career had been poised to take off. Part of her had known the end was coming for them even before he’d left, but she had never expected—and could never forgive—how he’d abandoned her in a field hospital, sick and alone.

      “I don’t need to ask,” she said calmly. “You left because the CDC put out an emergency call. Fine, I get that. But if you’ve got a guilty conscience because you weren’t man enough to tell me goodbye to my face, you’re just going to have to live with it. You earned it.”

      They locked eyes for a long moment. Finally, he nodded. “Fair enough.”

      “Fair enough,” she echoed. In a deliberate effort to shift the subject back to where it belonged she said, “Have you had a chance to check out my patient notes?”

      He nodded, both to her question and, she suspected, to her change of topic. “They’re pretty good, given the circumstances.”

      She didn’t bother to defend her scribblings because she figured “pretty good” was an accurate assessment. By the time she’d figured out she had a major problem on her hands, the patients had been coming in so quickly and their symptoms had been so severe that she’d been hard-pressed to do more than scrawl a few details on each chart.

      “I was thinking I’d talk to the families and get a better idea of what the patients have been exposed to lately,” she said. “We still haven’t seen any evidence that it’s transmitting person-to-person so I’m betting on a toxin.”

      “Of course it’s a toxin,” he said, as if that should’ve been obvious. But his eyes lit with the same adventurer’s interest she’d seen in Thom’s expression the night before, the same kind she used to live for. “Question is, which one, and where is it coming from?”

      When she felt that same adventurer’s excitement stir sluggishly in her blood, she shoved it aside, telling herself that the mystery had mattered in a different lifetime, to a different woman. Not now, and not to the person she’d worked hard to become.

      “I’ll ask around town, get a victim profile and get back to you.” She turned away, suddenly needing to get out of there, to get away from him and his teammates.

      “Hey, Roxie?” he said, calling her back.

      She turned, hoping he couldn’t read her emotions the way he once had. “Yeah?”

      “You still have the twenty-two?”

      She patted the pocket of her light windbreaker. “Right here. I hate to admit it, but I feel safer carrying it, especially after what happened last night with Aztec.”

      “Good. You’ve got my number, right?”

      She grimaced. “Don’t count too heavily on cell phones. The coverage is pretty spotty out here, and there are dead zones like you can’t believe.”

      “Then watch yourself, and be back by dark.” He paused, and something moved in his expression. “You and I are on night shift together.”

      He turned and disappeared into the kitchen wing before she could ask whether that had been his idea or someone else’s. She didn’t call him back, though, because she was pretty sure she didn’t want to know either way.

      WHEN LUKE REACHED the utilitarian kitchen, he was relieved to find the large space deserted, save for a bank of portable auto-samplers doing their thing on the first set of patient blood samples. That gave him a moment alone to lean on the wide farmer’s sink and look out the window, seeing nothing but Rox’s face in his mind’s eye.

      He saw the terror on it when she’d run from the Violent. He saw the defiant expression she’d worn just now as she stood up to him. Even more, he saw the woman he’d known back then, and how her face had been so much more open, her laugh so much easier than it was now.

      Back then, she’d said she wanted to slow down, to do something smaller and more intimate than the relief work they’d both loved. I want to belong somewhere, she’d said, as though belonging to him hadn’t been enough.

      Well, she was a part of Raven’s Cliff now, and the way she’d interacted with the police chief and the volunteers—even the blowhard mayor—suggested that she belonged.

      So why did he get the feeling she still wasn’t happy?

      “She’s living in the middle of an outbreak site, you idiot,” he said aloud.

      These people were her responsibility, which made it personal for her in a way he’d never ever wanted to experience. But because it was personal for her, and dangerous for her, and hell, his damn job, he’d do his best to figure out what was making her people sick, and how to stop it. And then…

      And then nothing. He’d leave, which was exactly what she wanted. She’d made it clear just now that she didn’t need an explanation or an excuse from him, didn’t need an apology. She wanted her town healed and him gone.

      “I can do that.” Ignoring a faint sense of disquiet, he strode to one of the auto-samplers and hit a few buttons harder than necessary, making the machine beep in protest.

      “That’s not going to get it to work any faster,” Bug said from the outer kitchen doorway, which led to a small courtyard. “Science takes the time it takes.”

      “I know.” СКАЧАТЬ