With the M.D....at the Altar?

by Jessica Andersen

  “Roxie,” he said, his voice low in warning. “Be sure before you start something you’ll regret later.”

  “I’m not starting anything,” she said, and knew it was the truth. “I’m finishing it. Call it closure, call it once more for old time’s sake…Call it whatever you want. I’m going to call it the goodbye kiss I never got.”

  Working methodically when her hands wanted to shake and her pulse wanted to race, not even entirely sure what had gotten into her, she stripped off her gloves. Then she got him by one lab coat lapel in each hand and used that purchase to rise up onto her toes as his eyes went dark and her own blood heated.

  He moved as she did, and they met halfway.

  And kissed goodbye.

  Chapter Six

  About two seconds into the kiss, when it went from lips to tongues, Rox’s rational side started sending out serious warning signals.

  What are you doing? What were you thinking? Stop this now before it’s too late!

  The thing was, it was already too late, because before any more time had passed, the voice of reason lost out to the pounding of her pulse and the race of heated blood through her veins.

  Luke’s taste was achingly familiar, yet brought with it a sharpness she didn’t remember, an edge of sensual energy that speared straight to her core and left her wet and wanting in a heartbeat.

  When she’d first stepped into him, he’d brought his hands reflexively to her hips. Now, as the kiss deepened, he began caressing her—long, slow strokes that started at her nape and cruised down across her hips and back up again. Smooth strokes. Tantalizing caresses.

  Murmuring pleasure, she crowded close, pressing her breasts against him, molding herself against his muscular form. She slid her hands from his lab coat lapels to his shoulders, then around to the back of his neck, where his short hair was soft and sleek.

  One kiss flowed into the next, and then another, each more blatantly sexual than the last until they were plastered together, twined around each other. They were as close as two people could be while clothed and standing, and it still wasn’t close enough for Rox, who started thinking about the bedrooms down the hall—

  And that was so not a good idea, she realized, a dash of cold reality cutting through the sensual haze.

  She didn’t pull away, but she must’ve stiffened in his arms or made some small sound of dismay, because his kiss went from hot, hard and demanding to a soft touch. An easing away.

  They broke apart by unspoken consent and just stood there, leaning against each other. Rox’s pulse hammered in her ears and she was breathing hard, but so was he…and no wonder. Like he’d said, sex had never been the problem between them. It was other stuff that got in the way—like their complete lack of common goals.

  Which was why she’d kissed him to say goodbye.

  Right.

  “Okay,” she said after a moment. “That got a little out of hand.”

  She felt a chuckle vibrate through him. “I’m not complaining.”

  She should’ve been grateful he was willing to let it go. Instead, anger spiked that he hadn’t been as affected by the kiss as she’d been, that he could brush it off so easily and turn it into a joke. She pushed away from him with a glare. “And that would be one of our irreconcilable differences. You don’t take anything but your career seriously.”

  The old Luke would’ve laughed that off. The man he’d become, the one she didn’t know nearly as well as she kept thinking she did, leaned in, his expression darkening. “Let’s get one thing straight here. I took our relationship very seriously. I was never unfaithful, and I never told you something that wasn’t true. You were the one who changed the rules on me and got mad when I wouldn’t go along with the new program.”

  “That ‘program’—” she sketched the word with finger-quotes for emphasis as her anger built to match his “—was exactly what I said I wanted from the beginning. It’s not my fault you thought I was kidding when I said I wanted to be a small-town doctor, have a little house of my own, a husband, a family…all those traditional and permanent—” she emphasized the word, knowing that was the hang-up front and center “—things you can’t stand.”

  He stepped away, holding up both hands as though showing her that he was unarmed, or maybe calling for a time-out. “And there we have it. The last four weeks of our relationship condensed into a sound bite. Thanks so much for the memories.”

  She lifted her chin. “And thanks for the goodbye kiss. Let’s hear it for closure.”

  They stood and glared at each other for a few seconds before he muttered a curse and turned away. He bent down and scooped up the surgical gloves they’d both dumped during the kiss. “Let’s get fresh gloves and masks. Then we can finish rounds.”

  “Of course,” Rox said. They were, first and foremost, doctors there to do a job.

  Luke headed into the storeroom to get new masks. Just as he was coming back out, a new set of footsteps sounded in the hallway. At first Rox was grateful, thinking she could pass off rounds onto one of the other clinicians and get a little breather from the scene she and Luke had just had. But then she heard a drag to the footsteps, a faint unevenness.

  “Luke,” she said softly. “I think we have a problem.”

  Moments later, May came around the corner, ashen-faced and nearly staggering. When she saw Luke, she said, “Hey, boss, I don’t feel so hot.”

  “You don’t look so hot,” he agreed, stepping forward and taking her arm, keeping it casual even as he paled and his voice went rough with concern. “Let’s get you someplace where you can lie down.”

  He met Rox’s eyes over May’s head, and she saw an anguish that matched her own.

  May’s eyes were shot with red, her skin sallow.

  They hadn’t stopped the spread of the disease, after all.

  OVER THE NEXT five minutes, Luke went through the motions, but he was seriously reeling from the one-two punch of shocks to his system. Punch one—kissing Rox—had his blood running hot and his brain crowding tight with warm fuzzy memories he’d long ago told himself to forget. Then had come punch two—May getting sick.

  That brought back memories, too—but they weren’t good ones.

  He helped Rox and Thom set May up in her bedroom, helped them start the palliative treatment immediately, hoping like hell it would be early enough—or just plain enough—to keep her from sinking into the same coma the other patients had dropped into. But even as his body moved through the familiar medical procedures by rote, he was cringing inside.

  When May lay back on her pillow, her dark hair fanned away from her too-pale face, he saw another face. When Thom set the IV in her arm, he saw another’s arm, another set of IV bags drip-drip-dripping clear fluid that might or might not prolong life.

  Rox sent him a look. “Luke, are you feeling okay? You look off.”

  Thom didn’t bother checking his boss. “He doesn’t do so well when people he knows are sick. A stranger dying of hemorrhagic fever? He’s the man. But put a teammate in the bed and he’s a mess. I remember this one time—”

  “That,” Luke interrupted grimly, “is more than enough.”

  “No,” Rox countered. She got a sudden determined look on her face, and he could practically see the pieces starting to come together in her head. “Really, it’s not. But rather than get Thom in trouble by pressing him, I’ll ask you directly. Is that why you checked out on me two years ago? Because I was sick?”

  Part of him wanted to lie and say that yeah, that was exactly what’d happened. Because if she thought that, maybe she’d forgive him, and maybe they could try again with the kiss they’d just shared. Maybe it could go further. Maybe they could go back there, for old times’ sake. But he knew her well enough to know that it wouldn’t be any “old time’s sake” on her part—whether she admitted it or not, she’d be looking for the gold at the end of the rainbow, the white picket fence and two-point-five kids, and all that stuff that was on his mental medic alert bracelet und
er the category of “fatal allergies.”

  And while he might have played a few games in his time, he’d never promised more than he could deliver. Like he’d said to her before, he didn’t lie. He didn’t always tell the whole truth, granted, but what he did say was truthful.

  So he shook his head. “I’d love to pretend it was, Rox. I’d love to say I bailed on you because I looked at you in that bed and panicked, thinking you were going to die and realizing how much you meant to me. But the honest truth is that I knew you were on the mend, I got the e-mail from the CDC, and I figured it was a graceful way to end something that was already on the rocks.”

  The Roxie he’d known before—particularly the volatile person she’d become in the last few weeks before she’d gotten sick—would’ve handed him his butt on a platter for that one. He was expecting to get raked, hoping for it almost, as a way to relieve the tension that’d sprung up hard and hot between them after that so-called goodbye kiss.

  But instead of flaring, the woman she’d grown into merely nodded. “Well, that’s honest. Insulting and tactless, but honest.”

  She finished May’s chart and set it near the bed. Then she glanced at her watch. “My caffeine headache says it’s time for a cup of tea. You guys want anything?”

  Luke declined. Thom nodded. “Coffee’d be good.” When she was gone, he turned and gave Luke a serious “what the hell?” look. “I can’t believe you said that.”

  Shrugging to relieve the tension in his shoulders, Luke turned and looked out the barred window at the overgrown grounds of the monastery, so he didn’t have to look at May, who had fallen asleep while they were talking. “It was the truth. At the end, Rox and I were clawing at each other more than we were getting along.”

  Or rather, he’d been clawing and she’d been too quiet. She’d already made her decision. He’d been the one fighting for something that no longer existed.

  “Yeah, but, dude. That was harsh.”

  “Better than letting her think I’ve evolved or some such garbage.” But even as he said it, a hollow ache gathered in his chest, because there was a small part of him that wished he could say exactly that.

  Which just went to prove that he wasn’t the slightest bit evolved—he’d even lie to himself if it increased his chances of getting laid.

  Feeling a faint burn of shame that he’d reduced things between him and Rox to that basic level, he waved to Thom. “Come on, let’s finish up in here and get Bug. We need to put our heads together and figure out how May got sick when she hasn’t eaten any local fish, and—”

  He broke off as a sudden terrible thought occurred. He was out the door like a shot, shouting, “Roxie, don’t drink anything!”

  He found her in the kitchen with two steaming cups sitting on the counter and her eyes saucer-wide. “You’re right,” she said before he’d even said anything. “The vandalism might’ve been a distraction on top of a diversion. Whoever did the damage might not have been just trying to slow us down. They might’ve been trying to stop us permanently.”

  Thom, who’d come in on Luke’s heels, said, “You two are finishing each other’s sentences. One of you want to explain?”

  Luke turned to him, heart still hammering in reaction to his sudden fear that Rox might’ve ingested something from the monastery kitchen. Which she hadn’t, thank God. He said, “What if, hypothetically, those too-large fish were created on purpose?”

  “Why would someone want to do that?”

  Luke grimaced because Thom was right. They were getting into serious conspiracy theory territory here. “Work with me, okay? Let’s say for whatever reason, those fish were contaminated on purpose. And let’s say whoever did the contaminating doesn’t want it figured out or stopped. If he—or she—thought we were getting too close to figuring things out…” He trailed off and raised an eyebrow.

  Thom nodded. “He—or she—might break in and spike our supplies with the contaminant, figuring on disabling one or two of us, maybe more, and confusing the investigation by making it look like it was an infectious agent rather than a toxin.” But he didn’t sound convinced. “Seems like a long shot, boss. More likely it’s a rapidly mutating virus or something, so we’re seeing multiple versions in the same outbreak, some that’re violent, some that’re nonviolent, some that’re infectious….” He trailed off. Shrugged. “You get the picture.”

  “Yeah,” Luke agreed. “And I can’t argue the logic, either.”

  “But you still want to rule out the contaminant theory, right?” Thom guessed.

  “Yeah,” Luke said again, too aware of Roxie, and how she was still staring at the mugs, as though they might jump at her or something. “Rox? You okay?”

  “I drink tea when I’m in the clinic, Jeff and Wendy drink coffee. And I don’t know if they had any fish. What if…” She shook her head. “No. It doesn’t play. It doesn’t make any sense for it to be something like that. This is a small town, a tight-knit community. Everyone likes everyone else. This isn’t the sort of place where stuff like you’re suggesting happens.”

  He decided not to call her on the “everyone likes everyone else” theory when he knew damn well after only a couple of days that the statement was patently untrue. He’d chatted enough with the cops who’d helped set up the field hospital to know there had been some seriously weird things going on in Raven’s Cliff recently. The mayor’s daughter had been blown off a cliff on her wedding day, for cripe’s sake, and during the search they’d found a different woman, wearing a wedding dress and claiming to be a bride of the sea or some such thing.

  But whether or not he thought her town and its inhabitants were on the creepy side, he got where Roxie was coming from. This was her haven, the place she’d picked to make her life. She didn’t like thinking that there might be a monster hidden among the people she’d tried so hard to fit in amongst.

  In that moment she looked so sad, so lost, that he wanted to go to her, wanted to hold her and tell her everything was going to be okay.

  But he couldn’t promise that, couldn’t promise her anything, so instead he said, “I’ll call on the replacement equipment and get it here ASAP. Once we’ve got it, we’ll test everything in the kitchen for contamination, and rule out the possibility that this was deliberate, however far-fetched that idea might seem to some of us. Then we can get back to work on the patient samples and nail this…whatever it is.”

  She glanced at him, expression hooded. “Tell me you think we’ll get a cure developed in time to save these people.”

  He tipped his head. “We’re going to do our absolute best.”

  But he didn’t promise, because it would be a lie.

  ROX ARMED HERSELF with the .22 and made a couple of trips into town to load up on bottled water and canned provisions. The replacement equipment didn’t arrive until midafternoon, and once it did, it took nearly three hours to set up the machines and get them ready to run the necessary samples.

  Luke programmed one of the machines to specifically look for peptide fragments from the enzyme they’d found in the too-large fish, and put Bug on scanning the supplies that they’d stocked into the monastery kitchen when they’d arrived.

  Captain Swanson hung around and watched them run the first set of samples. His men had located a handful of teens who’d broken curfew, but the kids swore they’d been swimming in the riptides off Beacon Lighthouse and hadn’t been near the monastery. Since riptide diving was forbidden and had earned the kids a stern lecture from Captain Swanson, along with various parental punishments, it seemed like a good bet they hadn’t been the ones to trash the lab.

  Which left the question of who, exactly, had done it.

  In the light of day, Rox went over her former bedroom—now Luke’s—a second time, then a third, looking for confirmation of the secret passage that had to be there. She came up empty. She also failed to find an entrance to the supposed secret passageways in the kitchen, even though there should’ve been an access point there, too. Otherwise
, given that the back door through the kitchen had been shut and locked tight, they should’ve seen the vandals headed through the front when they escaped.

  But the more she looked, the more it seemed like the monastery’s resident ghosts had been responsible for both her nighttime scare and the vandalism in the field lab.

  Frustrated by her inability to find what logic told her had to be there, she headed back to the kitchen. “Any hits?”

  Luke shook his head. “Everything’s clean so far, at least of the enzyme. Since we don’t know what exactly the fish were dosed with in the first place to make them overproduce the enzyme, I can’t say for sure. It’s more a case that we haven’t gotten a positive result, not so much that there’s nothing there.”

  His explanation meant they’d be eating out of cans for the foreseeable future, at least until they identified the initial trigger that was causing the fish to grow so large, overproduce hormones and develop the telltale dark lateral line.

  Rox sighed. “Okay. I’m headed out for bed check if anyone’s looking for me.”

  “Will do,” Luke said, his attention clearly on the samples and his machines.

  Bug shot her a sympathetic look as she passed, making it obvious that Thom had told him about her and Luke’s little scene earlier. Which was just great. She loved being the center of gossip. Not.

  Shrugging her shoulders beneath her doctor’s coat, she headed for the patient area, starting with May.

  The clinician didn’t look any worse, which was encouraging. Unfortunately, she didn’t look any better, either. She was breathing regularly and her vitals were stable, but there was no change in her comatose state. The same was true of the patients in the next three rooms she checked. Even their white counts had stabilized, suggesting that their bodies had reached an equilibrium. Dispirited, Rox entered the fourth room expecting more of the same—nothing good.