Wild Honey (2 page)

T
RAVIS
M
C
L
EAN
hated hospitals. Emergency rooms in particular. That he sat in one at the moment was not improving his disposition one iota.

Dammit, he’d told Cord he didn’t need this! A local ambulance, maybe the attentions of some small-town country doctor near the scene, and he’d have been fine. But would that SOB listen? Hell, no!

But then, Jason Cord never listened much to anyone these days. Something was eating at that guy, and Travis suspected if Cord didn’t unload it mighty soon, there’d be hell to pay.

As for Rafe O’Hara, his other so-called buddy of long standing, yeah, okay, maybe O’Hara had owed him one. And he doubted Rafe could have said anything that would have changed Cord’s mind, anyhow.

But, Lord, did he hate hospitals!

Scowling at the tired-looking overworked resident who probed the wound in his shoulder, Travis wanted to bolt and run. The shoulder hurt like a sonofabitch, but physical pain was not the reason. No, nothing that simple. Besides, he was more than acquainted with pain. Hell, any five-year CIA veteran was likely to be, and he’d had a four-year hitch in the navy before that. A hitch that had seen action. He’d been shot during that action, and compared to what he’d endured then, this was nothing. A run-of-the-mill flesh wound. He’d live.

But what wasn’t so simple was another kind of pain the
ER, for some reason, brought to mind The pain of remembering. And something that felt suspiciously like guilt….

Travis, I simply do not understand you!
The tear-filled voice of his mother floated back to him on the currents of memory, aided perhaps by the shot of Demerol they’d given him.
To take a lifetime of plannin’ and just throw it away. It doesn’t make any sense!

But whose plan are we talkin’ about, Mother?
His own voice echoed through the corridors of five long years, angry, strident.
Y’all were so certain I’d become a doctor—a heart surgeon, to be specific. Just like my father. And my grandfather, of course. But did anyone ever ask me? Did anyone, just once, ask if that was what
I
wanted?

But four years at Harvard Medical School, Travis! Four years of straight A’s! Why do all that if you didn’t want it?
His poor mother, sounding so bewildered, helpless, and so very sad. He hadn’t meant to hurt her. He loved her, respected her. But his father, ah, now there—

“Nurse, give me a hand here please.” The voice of the young resident cut across his thoughts. Then a loud crash had Travis glancing at the floor beneath his gurney; a tray of surgical instruments lay scattered there.

“Good grief, Terhune, what’s wrong with you? I’ve never seen you this way!” The resident, whose name tag said Dr. Ames, looked more puzzled than angry.

“I…I’m sorry, Doctor. Just having a…a bad night, I guess.”

Travis’s eyes traveled upward from the tray on the floor. When they came to rest on the flushed face of the woman who’d stammered the apology, he sucked in his breath.

“Sorry,” Ames said to him. “I know it’s painful, but I’m suturing now. It shouldn’t take much longer.”

Pain, hell! Pain had nothing to do with it. But Nurse Terhune’s gorgeous self sure did! What a stunner! Honey blond hair, whiskey-colored eyes and a figure that…

Travis cleared his throat and quickly looked away as
Nurse Terhune’s shapely bottom presented itself when she bent to retrieve the instruments. He was actually getting aroused!
Like some horny adolescent, for Pete’s sake!

He couldn’t resist slanting another glance at the beautiful blonde as she handed the tray to an orderly and asked another nurse to stand in for her while she went to scrub. He took in the long leggy figure striding away from him, and his lips formed a silent whistle.

Ames grinned at him, finally aware of what was going on with his patient. “Some piece, huh?”

“Dynamite.” Travis’s soft drawl was slightly husky, his eyes lazily assessing as they followed the retreating figure.

“Yeah, but don’t get your hopes up, buddy.” Ames gestured in Nurse Terhune’s direction. “That little number comes in at about forty below.”

“You’re kiddin’.”

The resident shrugged. “All I can say is, a lot of us have tried, and no one’s gotten to first base. Of course, our little ice queen may have a ‘significant other’ tucked away somewhere, but nobody’s been able to—Uh-oh…”

Travis winced as Ames returned his attention to the wound a bit too energetically; Nurse Terhune was headed back in their direction.

“Lord, Lord, what a shame,” Travis murmured softly as his eyes approved of what they saw. Dynamite, coming
and
going.

Ames caught this and barely stifled a grin as he told Nurse Terhune to proceed with dressing the wound.

But Travis frowned. Something had begun to niggle at the back of his mind. Through half-shuttered eyes he traced the features of Nurse Terhune’s heart-shaped face as she bent over his shoulder. There was a hazy momentary image of a similar face, but younger maybe…and then it was gone.
Damned Demerol!

“Ouch!” Travis glared at the woman who’d been the object of his most recent—and scandalous—thoughts.

“Oh, I’m so sorry!”

Her embarrassed apology had Travis swallowing the blistering setdown he’d been about to deliver. But she sure had been clumsy in bandaging his shoulder. A glance at her badge had already told him she was the ER’s head nurse. Why, he asked himself, was she acting as nervous as a newly capped rookie? And damned if that wasn’t a blush under that porcelain skin.

A slow, lazy grin stole across his face as he watched her from beneath half-closed lids. She caught his casual scrutiny, and the blush deepened.

Lord, he did love a blusher! You hardly ever saw one these days. Fact was, he couldn’t recall the last time he had. Unless it had been Sarah, and kid sisters didn’t count.

The grin faltered as he recalled how long ago that would have been. He hadn’t seen Sarah in five years, hadn’t seen any of his family. His sister was in her second year of premed at Georgetown now. Hardly a kid anymore.

Maybe he should go there and try to see her. Would she even let him? Would she dare it? Maybe. She’d always been pretty gutsy.

Suddenly the monstrous inadequacy of relying solely on his sources at the Agency to keep informed about his own sister had him wanting to pound something with his fist. His fingers clenched and he ground his teeth.

“If…if the pain’s real bad, I think I could get you something more for it.”

The softly murmured offer of Nurse M. Terhune pulled him back to the moment. She’d stammered a bit; still jittery, then. Yet somehow, maybe because of its softness, he’d found her voice soothing. His grin reemerged.

“What’s the
M
stand for, Nurse M. Terhune?”

“Hold still, please.” Suddenly all thumbs, Randi tried to sound professional and concentrate on the bandaging.

Travis wasn’t about to let her ignore him. “Melanie,
maybe? Margaret? No, scratch that—you don’t look like a Margaret. I’ve got it! How ‘bout Marcie?”

“Mr.—” Randi made a show of glancing at the name on his admittance form “—McLean, I don’t—”

“Travis, honey. Just Travis.”

Randi found herself unwillingly seduced by the liquid softness of his voice. Lord, the man was every bit as compelling as she remembered. Unable to stop herself, she risked a glance at his face.

A mistake. He was observing her with a casual indolence that reminded her of a well-fed lion basking lazily in the sun. The clear blue eyes, heavy-lidded and sensual, roamed her face, coming to rest on her mouth. As they did, his own curved into a slow, easy smile.

“Uh, Travis, the sooner you allow me to finish here—”

“Uh-uh, honey. Not fair. Now that you know my name, I reckon it’s tit for tat for me to know yours.”

The soft Southern accent had a teasing quality, which curled around the edges of her defenses and stole inside. Something began to unravel somewhere deep within, in a place Randi couldn’t name, a place she hadn’t known was there.

She looked quickly away, reaching for a pair of scissors on the tray.

“C’mon now, darlin’,” he cajoled. “Margie? Molly? Hey, how ‘bout Millicent? I know it’s old-fashioned, but I do believe Millicent’s makin’ a comeback.”

He was outrageous. And too persistent by far. Yet Randi felt a tug pulling at the corners of her mouth. She faced him squarely, hands on her hips.

“If I tell you, will you let me finish? 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.