Her eyes drifted to half-mast and her chin tipped up as she waited…
And waited.
Disgruntled impatience made her look up into his eyes. Where she was met with the kind of amusement that would have made her smack him if she wasn’t so hot and bothered.
“What are you waiting for?”
“If you wanted a good-night kiss, all you had to do was ask,” he said.
“What?” Hot embarrassment flooded her face. She tried to break free, but he tightened his grip and, let’s face it, she wasn’t really putting her heart into it anyway. “Funny. You missed your chance, Randolph.”
“Jayne,” he said reproachfully, and she felt the apples of his cheeks plump with a smile as he ran his nose along her jaw line, inhaling her. “You sure you want to cut off your nose to spite your face?”
“I’m sure you’d better let go of me unless you want to lose an arm.”
He turned her loose, laughing as she smoothed her hair with a shaky hand and sank into her seat. Her fumbling attempts to start the engine were met with more laughter, although it was hugely satisfying to slam the door in his face.
But by the time she drove off, tires screeching, she was grinning too.
Mostly because she couldn’t wait until tomorrow.
32
“What’re you standing around for? We’re closed. Go home like everyone else.”
Startled, Kerry peeled his gaze away from the clinic’s glass front doors, checked his watch again—still only one twenty-eight, goddammit—and glanced around at Dr. Katz, who was watching him with the quirked brow look that never boded well for Kerry.
“I’m not standing around.” Kerry finished typing up the patient note he’d been working on at the nurses’ station and logged out. Then he went through the door into the empty waiting area and straightened a couple of messy stacks of magazines. “I’m straightening up and getting ready to go to lunch.”
Katz followed him with his hands on his hips, frowning. “Since when do you futz with the magazines? What the hell’s gotten into you?”
“Nothing’s gotten into me.”
Kerry tried to sound casual and impatient, but could only manage the same sincerity level with which he’d once told his grandmother, “Nothing happened to the last root beer.”
“Don’t let me keep you,” Kerry added.
“Well, that’s just great.” Katz jerked his head at a car as it pulled into the lot and parked. Jayne’s car. “Here’s another patient—”
“She’s not a patient,” Kerry said, too quickly.
Katz eyeballed him long and hard enough for Kerry to get hot around the collar.
“Oho,” Katz said with undisguised interest.
“Shit,” Kerry muttered.
By this time, Jayne was steps from the door, so Katz swept his arm wide. “Be my guest.”
“Like I said,” Kerry said darkly, “don’t let me keep you.”
“Are you kidding me?” Katz did nothing to hide his glee. “I wouldn’t miss this for the world.”
With a harsh sigh and another curse (why, God?), Kerry unlocked the door and held it open for Jayne, who swept in on a burst of cold air and the sunshine she brought with her wherever she went. Her cheeks and the tip of her nose were pink from the chill, her eyes bright and her smiling lips eminently lickable. For the millionth time, he questioned his strategic decision not to kiss her last night, and whether he should throw himself on the nearest exam table so Katz could take a good look at his head.
But no. He’d done the right thing.
He wanted Jayne begging him to touch her before it was all over. Creaming for him to make love to her. He no longer had any doubts about whether pursuing a relationship was a foolish idea or not. That being the case, he sure as hell didn’t want her entertaining any doubts.
“Hey.” His voice involuntarily softened when he spoke to her; nothing he could do about that. “Come in.”
“Well, look at you in your white lab coat and stethoscope,” she said, laughing. Filling his soul. “You really are a doctor, aren’t you?”
“I really am a doctor.” There it was, finally, after all the shame, guilt and embarrassment he’d endured in front of Jayne: one tiny moment of pride. He tried not to let it puff him up like some exotic jungle bird dancing for a mate.
“How are you?”
“I’m great,” he said, for her ears only. “Well, except for the old guy.”
“The who?”
“You’ll see.”
“A mystery. I love mysteries— Oh, hello.”
“Hello, young lady.” Katz edged forward, beaming, and stuck out a hand. “I’m Dr. Katz. Welcome.”
“So nice to be here. I’m Jayne Morrison.”
They shook.
“And you are…?” Katz raised his brows encouragingly.
Jayne shot Kerry a look. “And I am…an assistant U.S. attorney?”
“Ah. Lovely. Well, not lovely, not so much. Doctors and lawyers don’t always get along. As a rule. But since Kerry’s made an exception for you, it’s fine.”
“I’m so glad,” Jayne said, laughing.
“Well, now that everybody’s all introduced,” Kerry said, seizing Jayne’s hand and tugging her through the door from reception to the hallway, “we’ll see you later—”
Katz, of course, followed them past the nurses’ station. If he had ever yet taken a hint, history had not recorded the momentous occasion.
“What I meant was,” he said loudly, “who are you to our Kerry?”
Kerry had planned to tell Katz to get lost, but things were getting interesting, so what the hell. He turned to Jayne, all ears.
“We’re friends,” she said, her bright smile firmly in place.
“For now,” Kerry added, giving her a look.
“That sounds ominous,” said Katz.
“I agree.” Her eyes shimmered with amusement. “Are you planning to get rid of me?”
“I’m planning to, ah, enhance our friendship, as you know.”
“Friends with benefits?” Katz looked stricken. “Jayne doesn’t strike me as that type of girl, Kerry.”
“I’m not that type of girl, Kerry,” Jayne said, playing it up as she clutched imaginary pearls at her throat.
“I’m well aware of what type of woman you are.” Kerry tugged her into his office, where she looked around with avid interest, before turning to Katz. “You. Scram.”
“My Marta and I started out as friends,” Katz told Jayne with a dewy smile. “Met at the Coney Island pool when we were kids. Now look at us. Married forty years.”
“Forty years? Oh my goodness.” Jayne glanced around from her perusal of Kerry’s framed diplomas and license. “That’s wonderful.”
Katz beamed at her. “And how did you two kids meet?”
“Ah…” Jayne looked to Kerry.
Kerry sighed. “Not that it’s any of your business, pops—”
“Of course it’s my business!” cried Katz.
“—but Jayne was the prosecutor on my case. We met when the feds were deciding whether to throw my ass in jail or not.”
Ringing silence from Katz.
“I…see,” he finally said, his gaze drifting down to the floor.
Jayne shot Kerry a reproachful look for his lack of tact.
Kerry gave her a what do you want from me? shrug.
“So, listen.” He slung an arm around Katz’s shoulders and steered him toward the door. “Don’t let us keep you—”
Katz perked up again and turned to Jayne. “So you know all about Kerry’s youthful foolishness. And you’re giving him a chance anyway. Even though that could make your life tricky.”
“I’m not quite sure what I’m doing, to be honest,” Jayne said with a wry smile as she avoided Kerry’s eye.
“But you see something in him,” Katz said.
Jayne hesitated before looking to Kerry, that telltale blush on her cheeks.
“I see something in him,” she adm
itted quietly.
Kerry thought about how he’d been losing bits and pieces of himself to Jayne for a while now. She’d already captured his respect, admiration, interest and lust. This time, he was pretty sure, she snuck in and grabbed most of his heart.
The thing was, she wasn’t even trying, and probably had no idea she had that skill.
She just did it.
And he probably couldn’t stop her if he tried.
“I saw something in him, too,” Katz told her. “From when he was five years old and his grandmother, rest her soul, brought him in for the first time. Little rascal told me he wanted to be a doctor. And now he’s a doctor.”
Katz hit him with an unabashed look of pride that made Kerry a little hot around the ears.
“Don’t get misty,” Kerry warned.
“Oh, there were a lot of terrible choices along the way,” Katz told Jayne, who looked riveted. “We told him he was going down the wrong path, but he was hardheaded. Didn’t listen to his grandmother or to Marta and me. And we were like parents to him, weren’t we, Kerry?”
Kerry nodded with a lump in his throat, not daring to check Jayne’s reaction to this info dump.
“I’m not going to lie, Jayne.” Katz cleared his throat. “He broke our hearts, this one.”
Jayne nodded with infinite understanding.
“When he came back three months ago and asked me for a job, I wasn’t sure. I was angry. I didn’t forgive. But I saw something in him. And I gave him a chance.”
Kerry saw where this was going, and decided to head it off at the pass. “Lucky for me you did, pops. We’ll see you later—”
“How’s that working out, Dr. Katz?” Jayne asked.
Katz brightened like a proud papa watching his toddler’s first steps. “Best thing I ever did, Jayne.” He slung one arm around Kerry’s shoulders, grabbed his chin with the other hand and leaned in to kiss his cheek.
“C’mon, man.” Kerry attempted to break free even as his heart swelled and tried to bust through his chest wall. “I told you not to get misty.”
“This is a changed man. And I don’t say that lightly, Jayne,” Katz said. “He works himself to death here. Comes early. Stays late. We can see three times as many patients now. He stayed one weekend to paint and get the place spruced up for the first time in twenty years. He’s helped us update the records system, and he’s like Eisenhower leading the staff. They’d follow him anywhere.”
“That’s a bit much,” Kerry said uncomfortably.
“Pipe down,” Katz snapped. “I’m telling Jayne what a catch you are. You should be grateful.”
Kerry risked a glance at Jayne, whose expression was unfathomable. What it boded for him, Kerry couldn’t begin to guess. “She’s going to think I paid you off.”
“I can’t be bought, Jayne.” Katz wagged a finger at her. “That’s my point. But in the last few months, Kerry’s made a believer out of me. And if he has his eye on you, you’re a lucky girl. If you can see past his history and give him a chance, even though it can’t be easy for you? That makes you a smart girl, too.”
Jayne’s face gave nothing away. And she was back to avoiding eye contact with Kerry, a detail that made knots form in his stomach. “You know what, Dr. Katz? I think Kerry’s the lucky one to have someone like you—”
The sudden sound of screeching tires cut her off.
“What the—?” said Dr. Katz.
Alarmed, they all looked out the window behind Kerry’s desk in time to see an ancient black sedan of some sort race into the parking lot and lurch to a stop in front of the clinic’s back door. The driver’s-side door flew open and out tumbled a wild-eyed gangster wannabe wearing baggy pants and a hoodie pulled low over his head.
A second of stunned paralysis grabbed Kerry in a chokehold. All he could think of were all the times that a Kareem-generated emergency had led to chaos…danger…fear…and then he remembered that he was a snitch, and there were probably a few people still out there looking for their chance to be a hero by putting a bullet or two between his eyes.
He wanted to run.
But then something hit him.
Jayne was there.
Protect Jayne.
“Get back,” he said, stepping between her and the window. “Go back to the waiting room—”
“No,” she said.
His fear level quadrupled. How was he supposed to protect her if she argued with him?
“I said go back to the waiting room,” he roared.
“It’s a kid, Kerry,” she said.
“It sure is,” said Katz.
“Help me!” the kid yelled as he raced around to the passenger side. “Somebody help me!”
That was when something else hit Kerry.
He was a fucking doctor. He helped people who needed help. He didn’t run and hide. Ever.
So he took off for the heavy fire door with Katz and Jayne on his heels. By the time they surged through it, the kid had carried and dragged his companion to the base of the steps.
It was a girl, Kerry realized, everything in him rearing back and screaming out a no! because he’d seen this drill plenty of times before.
She was around eighteen.
Pretty, with a pink sweater and long blue nails with designs on them.
She was also barely conscious, clammy and cyanotic. Her lips were turning blue and her coloring, probably in the cafe au lait range on a good day, was ashen.
Since she wasn’t bleeding, it wasn’t a GSW or KW. That meant there was only one question to ask as he intercepted the frantic kid before he tried to drag the girl up the concrete steps and inflict God knew what additional damage on her:
“What’s she on?” Kerry scooped the girl up—Jesus, she’d been at the drugs for a while, because she couldn’t weigh more than ninety pounds—and caught a terrible whiff of vomit and piss. “Hey, genius! What’s she on?”
But her boyfriend, whose glassy eyes and constricted pupils announced that he was on the same shit, backed toward the idling car and shook his head.
“Don’t take off!” Kerry swung the girl around—her head lolled over his arm and her muscles were so slack he might have been carrying a rolled-up blanket—and kept an eye on her knight in shining armor, who dove back behind the wheel, where he was likely to drive into the nearest passing car and kill a mom and her kids on their way to Target. “Help us out, man! What’s she on?”
“W-80.” The kid slammed the door, revved the engine and took off, careening back into the street and around the corner.
“Jesus Christ,” Kerry muttered, reeling. W-80? How was that possible?
Blinking quickly, he tried to stay in emergency medicine mode.
“Get her inside, Kerry.” Katz held the door open for him.
“Anyone get those plates?” Kerry demanded. “QDT-something—”
“I’m on it.” Jayne was grim-faced and pale but calm as she held the phone to her ear. Thank God for Jayne. She was not going to be the one to let him down when he needed her. He knew it. “Yeah, hello, I’m at the free clinic. We’ve got an overdose and we also have a stoned driver who took off…”
Kerry tuned Jayne out, laid the girl on the floor and was in the process of checking her pulse when her shallow breathing eased into an unmistakable death rattle. A cross between snoring and choking, it was enough to chill his spine every time he heard it, even after all these years.
But this girl had a lot of living to do, and she was not going to die today.
No sir. Not on his watch. Not because of him.
“Get those EMTs here now,” he snarled at Jayne, who was still on the phone, as he began chest compressions. The girl’s eyes rolled back in her head as she sputtered, vomiting again. Kerry cursed and rolled her before she choked to death. “And where’s the naloxone, Katz?”
“I got it,” Katz said grimly, handing over a nasal atomizer.
“Come on.” Kerry gave her the save shot up each nostril, then resumed his chest compressions.
“Come on.”
33
“I want you to behave tonight,” Henry Gustavson said as parked in front of the red brick apartment building and cut the engine. “You know what I expect from you. No cute tricks.”
Kramer yapped and licked his lips from the passenger seat.
“No, you’re not getting any cookies now. Don’t even try it.”
Disgruntled mutter from Kramer.
“Don’t give me that.” Henry picked up the leash and grabbed the bouquet from the back seat. “She’ll be here any second, so we need to— No, you can’t eat the flowers. Bad boy.”
Shoving Kramer’s damp black nose away from the sunflowers, Henry double-checked his pockets—yep, he had everything—and swung the door open.
They got out, bracing against a sudden fall wind that was as damp as it was cold, and waited beneath a street lamp. The night was quiet, with no signs of neighbors or traffic. Evidently even the pros and drug dealers were taking the night off.
The dog whined, sat back on his haunches and huddled against Henry’s leg for warmth.
Henry rolled his eyes.
“You’ve got a fur coat like a mink. You have no danger of frostbite.” Henry checked his watch. “It’s six fifty-eight. She should be here any second. I’m betting this one likes her habits.”
Sure enough, a junker of a sedan that was forty percent rust and sixty percent Buick rolled down the street just then and turned into the parking lot with a blaze of headlights. The thing was the perfect complement to the piece-of-shit building, which was sixty percent decrepit and forty percent scary. The engine died and a woman emerged with a purse and a plastic bag full of some sort of carry-out dinner nestled in the crook of her arm.
“Showtime,” Henry whispered to the dog. “You remember what I told you.”
Tugging on Kramer’s leash, he led him across the parking lot and caught up with the woman at the front door of the building.
“Good evening,” he called as he came up behind her. “Can you believe this wind? And to think I was in Miami this morning.”
Given the way she was bundled, with a wool hat, a scarf wrapped six or eight times around her neck and only her eyes and nose visible, there was zero chance she felt any of the chill. But she paused while unlocking the door and nodded anyway.
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