Changing Times (3 page)

“Slaughter? Doctor, please.” The tall man held out a hand
placatingly. “We mean you no harm. As Banquo said, ‘And oftentimes, to win us our
harm, the instruments of darkness tell us truths’, but we are not the
instruments of darkness.”

She glared at him. “Quoting
Macbeth
is not
particularly good at calming me down.”

“How’s this then, ‘We are such stuff as dreams are made on,
rounded with a little sleep’. I’ll show you to a bedroom. I thought you might
like to sleep a bit and then check on Tony before we take you home.” His slight
smile looked out of place on his face.

Carly stared.

“I mean that, Doctor. We will not hurt you. You have my
word.”

The other man jumped a bit. Carly guessed that this tall man
must not give his word very often. She nodded. Sleep did sound good.

“I’m up past my bedtime and all you can do is kill me in my
sleep.”

A low growl came from the short man, but was cut off by the
other. “Peace, little brother. She doesn’t know that my word is my life. But
now,” he frowned at her, “now you do. Don’t question it again or I won’t speak
for Nolan’s response.”

“I’m…” She paused. She didn’t want to apologize, even though
she knew she should. “I’m ready to find that bed now. Thank you.”

The one he called Nolan visibly settled, so she guessed that
he accepted that as an apology. The tall man didn’t wait. She had to hurry to
catch up to him. Carly tried to pay attention to the turns he took, but this
home twisted and turned like a Bourbon Street hooker on the exam table. She
gave up just as her escort stopped in front of a door with a crystal doorknob.

“Here you are, Doctor. If you need anything, the phone is
internal and will ring one of us. Please don’t hesitate to use it. There are
towels in the bathroom.”

“Wait. I know the other two’s names. What’s yours?” She
craned her neck to look up at him.

“Micah.” He offered nothing else.

Carly nodded. The old-fashioned name suited him. There was a
real aloof quality to the man in front of her.

“How tall are you, anyway?”
Damn
,
girl
.
When are you going to stop saying the first thing that comes to mind
?
You know it is going to get you in trouble someday
!

He looked a bit startled before a ghost of a smile flitted
across his face. “I’m six-six,” he said in that same soft voice. Then he
pivoted on his heel and left her standing in the doorway.

The room Carly found herself in had the one item necessary
right now—a bed. She would investigate the bathroom later. The door clicked
shut behind her. She instinctively checked to see if he had locked it. To her
embarrassment, it opened easily, which had her looking down the hall at Micah,
who had turned to face her. She hoped her smile didn’t look as embarrassed as
she felt.

Slipping her shoes off, she crossed over to the bed.
Residency had taught her to take naps whenever the opportunity presented itself
and this was no different. Carly lay down and in minutes was asleep. Her
dreams, not surprisingly, had men with guns and wolves running through them.
Just over an hour later, she woke.

At first, Carly didn’t know where she was. She took in the
lace curtains and abundance of pillows. This was definitely not her bedroom. It
hit her then. Nolan, Micah and Tony, one or all of them lived here. She’d done
surgery. Now she needed to do rounds—at least on one patient. Carly cracked the
door open. No one stared at her from the other end of the long hallway, but
lights, like old-fashioned gaslights, lined the hallway, giving off a dim glow.
Her neck throbbed from the tension still hanging on. She really needed a
massage.

After verifying that no one would leap out at her in the
next two minutes, Carly started down the hall the way she’d last seen Micah
heading. Maybe she would get lucky and one of them would find her before she
was lost forever in this house. And hopefully they would show her where Tony—she
corrected herself—where her patient was.

Carly briefly considered making a break for freedom. She
seemed to be the only living soul on the floor. She remembered the remarkable
way the incision she’d made on Tony had started to heal. Her professional
curiosity won out over her immediate desire for escape and, in fact, she no
longer really felt threatened by the circumstances surrounding her kidnapping.

Besides, she wanted one more look at that bullet wound and
the hunky patient. She paused, trying to get her bearings. A quiet voice
emanated from the room she stood outside of.

“Come in, Doctor.”

Carly opened the door. The room was dark. There might have
been a figure in the bed. Then he moved.

“How did you know I was there?” She walked farther into the
darkened room. She could see his outline now with the faint light from the
hallway.

Tony reached up and turned a lamp on, then looked at her. “You
won’t like my answer.”

“Try me.” The lamp threw shadows across his face, giving him
a sharp angular look that added to the exotic allure of his eyes. Carly took a
deep breath. The physical attraction seared her abdomen.

“I could smell you.” He shrugged slightly and sat up.

“You could smell me? Look! I didn’t have a chance to tidy up
after work, what with being kidnapped and all. And just what do I smell like?”
She crossed her arms over her chest as she studied him. Having this gorgeous
man tell her she stank made her want to storm out of the room. She stood her
ground instead.

“No, not smell in a bad way. You smell like chicken and
coffee. And underneath that, you smell female. I’m not trying to offend you.”
He sighed as she stiffened slightly. “Mostly, you smell like almonds.”

“Almonds. I smell like almonds?” Suddenly his obvious masculine
discomfort amused her.

“It must be your shampoo or maybe your soap.” His half-grin
reminded her that she needed to keep her professional distance more than ever.

She shook her head as she walked closer to the bed. “Lie
back, please.”

He complied and she pulled the sheet down to reveal the
stitches she’d put in his abdomen a short time earlier. They had the look of
stitches that had been in for days and she shook her head again as she muttered
to herself about healing and muscle tone. If she hadn’t put the sinew in
herself mere hours ago, she would have thought they were ready to come out.

Carly palpated his abdomen, ignoring the pleasure it gave
her to have his taut muscles give under her fingers. At his swift intake of
breath, she looked at him.

“Pain?”

“No. You tickled.” His eyes had that eerie glow again. It
had to be the lighting in the room. No one’s eyes did that unless it was a
special effect on a sci-fi show.

“Sorry, I’ll try not to do that. Although…” She cocked her
head at him. “Some of my patients tell me that’s the best part.”

She let his chuckle smooth against her skin as she checked
for signs of infection or fever. She noted that no sign of his earlier trauma
was evident other than a slight pinkish puckering at the entrance wound. She
backed up slightly, shaking her head.

“I am honestly amazed.” She stared at him for a minute, then
shook her head again. “I’d really like to talk to you sometime about your
healing powers.”

“Any time, Doc.” Tony stretched. She watched his shoulders
move up to meet his head as he rolled his neck. That lovely black hair fell
forward. He reached up to move it out of his face, wincing slightly.

“What’s wrong?” Her immediate reaction carried her forward
to his side.

“Can you take this dressing off my back? It itches.” He sat
up and Carly moved around beside him. Tony pulled his shirt up in the back and
Carly bent over to check the dressing.

“I’ll be …” The imprecation fell off her lips. “There is no
possible…”

“Doctor? Didn’t they teach you to at least finish your sentences?”

She didn’t respond to his teasing as she smoothed her hand
over the dressing. It almost felt as though there were nothing below the cotton
pad. Being careful not to pull too quickly, she removed the tape holding it in
place.

She gasped, which had him jerking his head around to stare
at her. When she touched him, the immediate pooling of lust surging through her
system startled her.
What on earth is going on
? She forced herself into
a more clinical mode.

“It’s completely healed. Completely. There’s just a white
line where I made the incision. This is amazing. It’s incredible.”

She raised her head and found her face just inches from his.
Carly suddenly took a deep breath and stepped back. Her stomach felt warm,
almost hot. She fought the urge to trace her fingers along his jaw. His
slightly more rapid breathing clued her in on his own reaction to their
closeness. She unconsciously ran her tongue around her lips.

His eyes tracked the movement, though he never moved his
head. Tony’s eyes changed from green-gold to a more golden color. His gaze
seemed too intimate. In that moment, she knew he could burn her to ashes. Her
feet carried her two steps back.

“Definitely almonds.” His voice was low, almost purring, but
the smile that accompanied it made her think of a predator stalking prey.

Carly took a deep breath at the feral smile. She cleared her
throat. “Well. Um, as I said, I would like to discuss your healing and
recuperative powers with you.”
Get a grip
,
Carly
.
He
’
s
not going to eat you
.

She didn’t know what was wrong with her to be reacting to a
patient like this. Granted, this man was one sexy package, but doctor-patient
relationships had to be maintained, not to mention how fast he healed. She had
to find out about that. She had never had such a strong sexual attraction to a
patient, but now that she thought about it, she realized that was exactly what
she was feeling.

“And as I said, any time. You should feel free to come by my
shop and we’ll talk all you want.” He turned his head away from her, but she noticed
that his eyes still tracked her movement.

“What shop?” Carly focused on the most mundane part of his
statement.

“Changing Times. It’s just outside the Quarter.” His voice
now lacked any emotion. She realized that she must have misunderstood his tone
earlier. Tony reached into the bedside table and pulled out a wallet. He held a
business card out to her.

Carly knew he watched as she took it carefully. She resisted
touching his skin and another of those slightly feral grins flashed across his
dark features. On the other hand, maybe she had understood him quite well.
Schooling her face into a warm, but dispassionate doctor, she glanced at the
card.

“Oh. I see. ‘Changing Times—An Antique Emporium.’” She
glanced at the card again. “‘Antonio Pantera, Proprietor.’ Is that what you do
for a living, Mr. Pantera? You own an antiques shop.”

“It’s Tony. Mostly.”

“Mostly? What do they call you if not Tony?”

His answering smirk told her he knew she chose to
deliberately redirect.

“I own the shop and I do a few other things.” He gave a
particularly European shrug.

Immediately, Carly’s curiosity was piqued. What might those “other
things” be? She frowned. She did not need to be curious about this man. Still,
what would it hurt to learn a few things about someone with such an amazing
healing rate?

“How did you get hurt?” She could hear her forensics
professor reminding them to always start as far back as possible.

“Someone shot me.”

Okay
.
So he wasn
’
t going to be an easy
interview
.“I got that when I pulled the bullet out of your back.
Who shot you and why? And why would they use silver?”

“I was helping a friend with his business.” He clipped his
words off one by one as though there were a deficit in his vocabulary budget.

“Would that friend be Nolan or Micah?”

His lips stretched in the semblance of a smile. She could
tell her questions were irritating him. “Yes, I was helping Micah.”

All his terseness did was to intrigue her more. “And what
does Micah do?”

“Among other things, he’s a bounty hunter.”

“Bounty hunter?” Micah had seemed so gentle in spite of his
actions that evening that she couldn’t see him in the role Tony described.
Maybe she had judged them as sane too quickly.
Poisoned by silver
?
A
bounty hunter
?
None of this added up to normal
.

Tony nodded with a smile. “It’s not such an uncommon job and
it isn’t like that reality show. They just pick the really high-profile cases
to show. Usually it’s a safe job. Bondsman calls Micah, Micah picks up the bad
boy or girl, Micah gets paid. This particular one just happened to get a little
rough. We knew going in that it might be, so Micah asked me to join him.”

“A little rough…? You were shot and poisoned.” Carly pressed
her line of questioning. Something lurked on the edges of his voice as though
he left deliberate holes in his answers. They sounded complete, but her
scientific mind couldn’t find the natural sequence. Cause and effect had to be
in there somewhere.

“Yeah, but you should see the other guy.” Tony’s grin this
time was definitely feral.

She sucked in a breath and tried one more time. “But why
silver?”

“You don’t want to know the answer to that.” The flash of
his teeth sent a distinct chill through her system, immediately stopping any
sensual interest that had flared between them earlier. She decided the better
part of valor would be retreat.

“Well.” Carly cleared her throat again. “I was just on my
way to look for the kitchen. Can I get you anything?” At his negative shake of
the head, Carly turned to leave the room.

“Doc?” Tony’s voice stopped her and she turned to face him
again. “Thank you.”