THE MAVERICK DOCTOR AND MISS PRIM/ABOUT THAT NIGHT... (12 page)

The sight of her getting changed into her scrubs. The scar on her leg. The almost kiss in the treatment room.

The way he’d felt as soon as his lips had touched hers. The way she’d reacted to his touch. The feel of her skin next to his. The arch of her back. The tilt of her pelvis. The small groan she’d made at the back of her throat.

All of it driving him crazy. All of it making him act on instinct. Something he hadn’t allowed to happen in a long time.

How could he have gotten into this? How could he have ended up in a specialist containment unit for a seemingly extinct disease? All of this was so unreal. This had bad movie written all over it.

Wrong place, wrong time.

The words danced around his brain again. He’d first thought them when he’d raised the alarm about the apparent smallpox cases. The words had been so in tune with how he had been feeling. He couldn’t wait to get out of Chicago General. He couldn’t wait to get away from the whole situation.

But now the words made him feel uncomfortable. He still didn’t want to do any of the infectious disease stuff. But his Hippocratic oath had him firmly by the short and curlies. He had to stay here and help look after these people. He had to work with the team from the DPA. He had a responsibility. To them. To the patients. To the staff. To Callie...

Everything came back to her. No matter where his head drifted off to, she was always the thing he came back to. Like an anchor point.

He could almost see the picture of Helen that still sat on his desk at home. Her smiling face, dark hair and dark eyes. Home? When was the last time he’d gone home? When was the last time it had felt like home?

He sagged against the wall again. Everything was bubbling to the surface, thanks to the way he was feeling towards Callie, and he just couldn’t deal with this—not on top of the DPA issue all over again.

Did she even realize how hard this was for him? To be amongst these people again? To be amongst the people that reminded him at every glance of how much he’d failed his wife?

What kind of a husband couldn’t save his wife? Maybe for a regular guy that could be acceptable. But he was a doctor. And his wife had died from a medical complaint. One that, under normal circumstances, could have been treated and her life saved.

For a few hours with Helen he’d felt as if they had been trapped on a runaway train.

They hadn’t got to experience the joy of a positive pregnancy test. They hadn’t got to celebrate their child’s arrival, planned or not. He felt cheated out of so many experiences—all because they’d been in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Worst of all, he didn’t know who to be angry at most.

Himself? The DPA? Evan Hunter? Helen?

It had been Evan who had sent Helen into the field, not him. Even though she hadn’t been feeling one hundred percent. None of them had had any suspicion she might be pregnant—not even Helen. But their baby had decided to defy the odds of their contraceptive of choice. And by the time they’d known, it had been too late.

A ruptured ectopic pregnancy in the middle of nowhere. There had only been one possible outcome.

He had to get past this. He had to move on. Everything about this situation was wrong.

He couldn’t begin to work out his feelings towards his past and the guilt he felt, in this new situation and his pull towards Callie. He felt pressured. Callie was pressured. It wasn’t the right time or the right place. He had to step back. He had to step away.

And from the hurt look in Callie’s eyes, he’d already done that. Whether he’d planned to or not.

He could hear mumbled voices through the door. They sent a cool breeze dancing over his skin, covering his chest and arms in goose-bumps. He grabbed his scrub top and pulled it over his head.

He had to go out there. He had to act as if nothing had happened. He had to try and help Callie save face, because if word of this ever got back to Evan Hunter...

He had no intention of being around to face the fallout.

He glanced at his watch. Forty-eight hours. That was how long he’d lasted when a beautiful woman had been dangled under his nose.

The pull was just too strong.

But everything about this was wrong. They would be together for the next fourteen days. Fourteen days and nights with Callie Turner.

And he’d just made it all worse.

His hand hesitated on the door handle.

Because now he knew how her skin felt. Now he knew how she reacted to his touch. Before he could only have imagined. And that could have kept him safe. That could have kept him on a reasonably even keel.

But now...

He closed his eyes. And it was Helen’s face he saw. Helen’s eyes. Helen’s smile. The instant image made him jump.

The sear in his chest was instant. Like his heart was being twisted inside his ribcage. He couldn’t do this. He couldn’t do any of this.

Callie was a career girl. He used to be the same.

But now he was a getting-by kind of guy. In two weeks’ time, for the second time in his career, he would walk away from the constraints of the DPA. And nothing would give him greater pleasure.

No. He could do this. He could keep his head down. He could stay out of her way. He could work the opposite shift from her. He could make sure they were never alone together. He could make sure that opportunity didn’t knock again.

Because that would keep him safe.

Because he wasn’t entirely sure how he would react.

He straightened his shoulders and walked out into the corridor.

It was empty. Callie and Dan were gone.

CHAPTER NINE

E
VAN
 
WAS
 
IMPATIENT
. The computer graphics filled the wide screen on the wall, mapping the potential spread across the world, along with the corresponding timescale. It was hours and hours of hard work and dedication. Every eye in the place was fixed on the simulation. The color-coded icons were blinking at him, the red ones demanding his full attention.

He turned round and folded his arms across his chest. Violet was wearing red today too. Almost as if she was marking a claim on the piece of work she’d just created. A fitted, knee-length red dress with a black belt capturing her waist. It was an unusual color for her to wear and he was surprised by how much it suited her. Her blonde hair sat on her shoulders and she peered through matching red-rimmed glasses. It was almost as if she was trying to divert his attention...

Then it struck him—she was.

His mind drifted back to a few months ago and a blurry night with drinks after work. She’d been wearing red then too. And he’d definitely been distracted. He felt the fire burn in his belly that she might have been thinking about that while getting dressed that morning and had deliberately chosen her outfit accordingly. His own thoughts made him feel distinctly uncomfortable and, consequently, irritable.

“Where’s the stuff on Sawyer?” he snapped.

“What?” Delicate lines creased her forehead. She looked at him as if he was talking a foreign language.

“You know what,” he accused. This was all becoming more and more obvious. “I asked you to do a background check on Sawyer. Find out where he’s been and what he’s been doing. I asked you more than two days ago. Where is it?”

She waved her hand in at him irritation. “Earth to Evan. I’ve been kind of busy on the save-the-planet-from-smallpox stuff.”

He pulled his shoulders back in shock. Cheeky. Insolent. Not the way that Violet Connelly ever spoke to anyone—least of all him, her boss. She was really pushing him. And it didn’t help that every time she came into his field of vision his eyes fixed on her lips.

Lips of which he’d already had experience.

He could see some ears pricking up around them, People craning their necks above their partitions to see how he was going to react.

Did anyone here know what had happened between them?

He had to make sure there were no suspicions. He couldn’t let anyone think he would give Violet preferential treatment.

He placed a hand on her desk and leaned forward, drawing his head level with hers. Up close and personal she was a tiny little thing. His hands could probably span her waist. He could see her nibbling her bottom lip as if she was nervous. And she probably was with his big frame towering over her.

He pulled back a little and kept his voice calm. It wasn’t his job to entertain the crowds—they had enough work to be getting on with. “Dr. Connelly, I gave you a specific task to do a number of days ago. I expect you to have completed it.” He caught the glimmer in her eye. It definitely wasn’t fear. It was much more like rebellion!

“I’ve been busy.” The words were firm, even if he could see the slight tremble in her hand as she picked up a pen.

“You’re telling me that in the last two days you’ve found out nothing about Matt Sawyer? Nothing?” His voice was steadily rising now, despite his best intentions.

Was he imagining it or had she just pouted her lips at him? This woman was going to drive him crazy.

She shrugged her shoulders. “Oh, I’ve looked. But there’s nothing to find. I’ve no idea what Matt Sawyer’s been doing or where he’s been.” She raised one eyebrow at him and tilted her chin. “Why don’t you ask him?”

She was baiting him. In front of a room full of colleagues. The hairs were standing on end at the back of his neck. It was all he could do not to growl at her.

“You’ve got two hours, Violet. Two hours to find out exactly what I requested on Matt Sawyer. If you don’t deliver, I’m taking it to the director.”

He turned on his heel and walked out of the room. The pen still dangling from Violet’s fingers.

* * *

“Still nothing?”

The DPA guy shook his head as Sawyer leaned against the wall. It had been three days and they still had no word on the classification of the disease. They were still stuck in the no-man’s land of a “brick-shaped orthopox”, which told them something but pretty much told them nothing at the same time.

Sawyer had been doing his best impression of the invisible man. And it made him feel lousy.

When Callie worked days, he worked nights. When Callie was in the apartment, he was out, finding any excuse to be somewhere else. There had been a few awkward moments, a few “almost” bumps in the corridor, resulting in both of them jumping and staring at walls and floors instead of the person right before their eyes. A huge amount of avoidance tactics on his part.

He was beginning to find it almost comedic. The number of times he’d heard her voice behind a door he had been about to open, only to swerve and end up in a place he really didn’t want to be, having conversations with people he barely knew.

On the other hand, yesterday he’d found himself in the children’s playroom, leading the Portuguese soccer team on a quest for worldwide domination against the children in the US soccer team. It had been game controllers at dawn. But he’d had to let them win, even though he’d suspected they were playing dirty.

There were five kids, aside from Ben and Jack, in the containment facility, of varying ages and nationalities. None seem to have had any side-effects from the vaccine. And the minor ailments that had brought them into the E.R. in the first place had all been resolved. It was amazing what the threat of an infectious disease could do.

But spending time with the children had been fun. They were treating everything like a vacation. They could watch want they wanted on cable, play a mountain of console games and pretty much eat whatever they liked. He’d made a mental note that the children’s playroom was now going to be his number-one place to go to avoid Callie.

Today had been torture. The trouble with a containment facility was that no matter how hard you tried to find somewhere else to sleep there really wasn’t anywhere else to go so he had to stick to the apartment he’d been allocated.

The aroma of coffee had drifted under his door around lunchtime. He was supposed to be sleeping, but he’d only dozed on and off for a few hours. The temptation to get out of bed with his nose leading him directly to the coffee pot had been huge, but then he’d heard her voice. Callie was obviously in the kitchen, grabbing a bite to eat. And the last thing he wanted to do in his sleep-deprived state was run into her.

She was already destroying the few hours’ sleep he was actually getting by invading his dreams. Sometimes happy, sometimes angry, but always in state of undress. Funny, that. It was taking him back to his teenage years.

And that probably wasn’t a place he wanted to go. Violet had enough blackmail material on his misspent youth to last a lifetime.

The trouble with avoiding Callie was being out of the loop of information. She was the focal point around here—all paths led to Callie and if he wasn’t communicating with her, he didn’t always know exactly what was going on.

He had been sure that the DPA would have had a more definitive diagnosis by now. Frank Palmer would be working flat out. It didn’t matter that he knew it could take up to seven days. He wanted to know
now
.

One of the nurses came and touched his shoulder. “Can you take a look at Mrs. Keating, Ben and Jack’s mum? She’s not feeling too good.”

His stomach plummeted. It was the one thing they had all been waiting for—someone else to show signs of infection. He picked up Jill Keating’s notes and started walking across the corridor. The thick bundle was packed full of assessments and observation notes. For a woman with no significant disease history it was surprising how quickly notes filled up in an isolation facility.

“What’s she complaining of?” he asked the nurse.

There was another person that was having trouble looking at him.

But for an entirely different reason. The nurse’s eyes would be full of unspoken worries and unanswered questions. Things that nobody wanted to say out loud right now.

Everyone was dreading someone showing signs of infection. It would give them all the confirmation of the infectious disease without the laboratory diagnosis.

“She has a low-grade temperature and a headache. Her pulse is fine and her blood pressure only slightly raised. But she’s vomited twice.”

Mrs. Keating was lying in bed in the darkened room. It had taken her more than forty-eight hours to finally leave the room that her children were in and have some rest. The woman was probably exhausted and that could explain the headache and the slight rise in blood pressure. But the temperature and vomiting?

He pulled on the protective clothing, regulation mask and gloves and pushed open the door. “Hi, Jill. It’s Dr. Sawyer. Want to tell me how you’re doing?”

She averted her eyes straight away as the light from the corridor spilled into the room. It sent an instant chill down his spine. “Wake Callie,” he whispered over his shoulder to the nurse.

He spent the next twenty minutes examining Jill. She was definitely exhausted. And despite being surrounded by food and drink she was showing clinical signs of dehydration. The black circles under her eyes were huge and she vomited into a sick bowl again during his examination.

Callie was standing at the window in the corridor, looking anxiously through the glass. He’d signaled to her to wait outside.

She moved to the door as he came back outside and waited impatiently while he discarded his protective clothing.

“Well? What do you think?”

He started scribbling some notes on Jill’s prescription chart. “I’m sorry that I woke you, Callie.”

“Why? Is she okay?”

He nodded. “I can’t say for certain but I suspect she is in the throes of her first-ever migraine. The only thing that doesn’t really fit is the low-grade pyrexia. But everything else makes me think it’s a migraine. And after the stress she’s been under I wouldn’t be surprised. I’m going to give her an injection then sit here and wait until her symptoms subside.”

“And will they?”

He shrugged his shoulders. “I certainly hope so. This is a wait-and-see option. We need to give it a little time. An hour or so.”

“Call me if there’s any change.”

He nodded. Disappointed. He’d half expected her to wait with him. This could be crucial in determining the nature of this disease. But it obviously wasn’t to be. She couldn’t get away from him fast enough.

And he couldn’t really blame her.

Or maybe she was just showing faith in his competence as a doctor?

Whatever it was, he was just going to have to get over it. But his stomach was gnawing at the memory of how much he’d missed those eyes in the last few days.

His nose picked up the smell of toasted bagels. It was time to follow his stomach. This could be a long wait.

* * *

An hour later Jill was in a deep sleep. The migraine relief seemed to have worked well and Sawyer was breathing a sigh of relief. He’d checked on the boys—both Jack and Ben were stable and showing no obvious signs of improvement or deterioration. It was four a.m. That horrible point of the night when nausea abounded and sleep seemed so far away.

He looked around. One of the nurses touched his shoulder. “Go and have some coffee, Sawyer, you look like crap.”

“Thanks for that.”

She smiled at him. “Oh, you’re welcome. I’ll page you if I need you—but I doubt it.”

He headed down the darkened corridor. There was definitely a pot of coffee on the go somewhere. The smell seemed to be drifting towards him and making him follow it like the children had followed the pied piper. And he could hear some background noise.

He reached one of larger communal kitchens. The coffee pot was just on the boil. Just the way he liked it. Straight, black and hot.

He poured a cup and headed towards the noise. The kids must have left the TV on in the cinema room. It was something sappy. He slumped into one of the seats. If he just sat down for five minutes and drank this coffee, he would be fine. The caffeine would hit his system and keep him awake for the last few hours.

Five minutes
.

“What are you doing here?”

He jumped. The voice cut through the darkness and he spilled hot coffee all down the front of his scrub trousers. “Hey!” He rubbed frantically at the stain, lifting the wet trousers from his groin area—some things just shouldn’t get burned.

Callie appeared at his side and peered at the spreading stain. “You klutz.” She started to snigger. That crazy middle-of-the-night kind of laugh that night shift staff got and couldn’t stop.

Sawyer sighed and set down his half-filled coffee cup. “I came down here for a coffee to help me stay awake and wondered what the noise was. What are you doing here?”

“I couldn’t get back to sleep.”

“So you came down here, rather than sit up with me next to the patients?” It sounded almost accusing and he didn’t mean it to come out that way but in the middle of the night social niceties disappeared.

“I guess I didn’t want to sit next to you, Sawyer.”

Yip. It worked both ways. Night shift certainly did away with the social niceties.

He didn’t want to get into this. Not here. Not now. He glanced at the big screen. “You told me you were an action girl, not a chick-flick girl. What happened?”

Their eyes turned in unison at the screen as the hero’s eyes followed the heroine, staring at her unashamedly.

Even in the dark Callie’s cheeks looked a little flushed. Maybe it was the intimacy of the scene. Not intimate in that sense. But intimate in the fact it was the first time the audience could see how smitten the hero was with the girl of his dreams.

And he could relate.

Here, in the middle of a darkened room, in the midst of an outbreak, Sawyer could totally relate.

He could see Callie’s long eyelashes, the blue of her eyes dimmed by the light. But the flickering screen highlighted her cheekbones, showing the beautiful structure and lines of her face. He couldn’t take his eyes off her.