GUILTY SECRETS

by Virginia Kantra

  "Not according to George Clooney." Joe took the keys and unlocked her door himself.

  He didn't care what she said, she looked like hell. Her face was white as paper, and she had great big circles like ink smudges under her eyes.

  She blinked at him. "Who?"

  Maybe she was still disoriented from that crack on the head.

  Joe held the door open. "George Clooney. Dr. Kildare. The guy in the lab coat who checked out your head and various other body parts."

  Okay, so he was jealous. He was burning with jealousy, and that pissed him off and panicked him at the same time. But it was nothing, nothing, compared to the gut-clenching terror he'd felt when Nell's head hit the floor.

  Her face cleared. "Jim Fletcher. He's one of our volunteer pediatricians." She started to feel her way down the hall, one hand on the wall for balance like a drunk. "Dr. Jim thinks all of his patients need to have their hands held. Which they do, since they're mostly under ten years old. But I'm a big girl. I'm used to taking care of myself."

  "Yeah, I got that," Joe muttered, following her.

  And that was another thing that pissed him off. Didn't she have family she could call? Didn't she have friends who could take a few hours away from their own lives to make sure she was okay?

  His own family made him crazy, but at least Joe had never had to depend on, well, on somebody like him to get him through the night.

  Nell stopped and swayed in the middle of her living room, lacing her fingers together like a child. "I'm sorry you got stuck with me," she said in a small voice. "Really, I'll be fine."

  "Don't be stupid," Joe snapped.

  No, that was wrong. He didn't have any experience with nursing, but he was pretty sure he wasn't supposed to yell at a patient with a concussion. What would his mother do?

  "Do you want some soup?" he asked.

  Nell studied him, her gaze soft and considering, until he was the one who felt dizzy.

  "You make soup?" she asked at last.

  "Hell, no," he said, his horror only half-feigned. "But I can heat it if it comes in a can."

  Her smile bloomed, making his breath catch.

  "I appreciate the offer. But—"

  "Look, I owe you, okay?" he growled. "Let me do this, and we can call it even."

  Her forehead creased. "Owe me for what?"

  For believing you could be a phony. A felon. A thief.

  Nope, he couldn't say that.

  "For being a jackass the other night." He came closer, close enough to see the tiny lines at the corners of her eyes, to smell the clean, subtle scent of her, soap and skin. "Let me make it up to you."

  She looked away, color moving into her face. "Really, I'm fine. All I need is a nap."

  He wanted to lie down with her. He wanted to help her out of her clothes, her crumpled white lab coat and her soft green sweater, and stroke her and comfort her and…

  Joe jerked his mind back from that little fantasy and tried to remember where naps fell on Dr. Kildare's list of warnings and instructions. Rest was good. Loss of consciousness was bad. Sleep was good. Abnormally deep sleep or difficulty waking was bad. Check the patient's responses every hour to ensure there was no bleeding or swelling in or around the brain.

  "A nap's okay." And then some demon made him add, "You want me to tuck you in?"

  She smiled again, but ruefully. "I want you to go home."

  She didn't get it.

  Hell, he didn't get it, either. But he couldn't leave her.

  He was a seasoned foreign correspondent, for God's sake. He'd seen soldiers die in ambush and women blown to pieces while they waited for the bus. But it still tore him up inside that Nell had been assaulted in her own clinic for trying to save some lowlife bastard from the consequences of his own bad choices.

  "Not happening, babe," he said roughly. "Deal with it."

  Nell raised her eyebrows. "Is that your best bedside manner? 'Deal with it'?"

  "You want to see my bedside manner, stick around. You want to take a nap, haul your cute little butt to bed now."

  "I'm touched," Nell said.

  He scowled at her.

  "And grateful."

  She stood on tiptoe to press warm lips to his jaw. He went dumb as a rock and hard as stone.

  "There's beer and soda in the fridge," she said. "Make yourself at home."

  He watched her retreat down the hall with the careful steps of a DUI walking the line beside the highway and had to shove his hands in his pockets so he didn't grab her and haul her back into his arms.

  He needed that beer.

  He needed a meeting.

  She needed him sober and here.

  Taking a deep breath, Joe went to get a something to drink from her nearly empty refrigerator.

  Popping the seal on a can of soda, he hobbled back to the living room. He hadn't seen much of Nell's apartment before. Just the hall, and then he'd been so hot to nail her against the wall he hadn't paid attention to her taste in interior decoration.

  Not that it looked like Nell did much decorating. Her furniture looked like his, the battered belongings of someone who didn't expect to be home very often. But scattered through the room were splotches of color, touches of comfort: a reading lamp by an overstuffed chair, fat candles burned to various lengths, a soft red throw draped over a couch.

  Books crammed low shelves under the windows, paperback romances and medical texts mostly. He bent to scan the titles. Passions. Dreams. Virgins. Daddies.

  Joe grinned. Nurse Dolan had one hell of a fantasy life.

  The shelf below wasn't nearly as much fun. Textbooks, some with yellow "used" stickers still on the spines. A half-dozen guides and dictionaries to diagnoses, interventions and collaborative care. Four different drug handbooks, a stack of nursing journals, some psychology texts and self-help books about addiction.

  He didn't want to see those.

  He wasn't looking for them.

  But there were a lot—weren't there?—compared to the other medical books. Only two on trauma care, for instance, and one on infectious diseases…

  He pushed away from the book shelf so suddenly he staggered, sick at heart and in his gut. Furious with himself for looking. For caring. For suspecting her. Again.

  He hadn't brought Nell home to poke through her possessions like some tabloid reporter sifting through celebrity garbage. He was here to take care of her, damn it.

  There had to be something he could do to validate his presence in her home, in her life. Restless, he roamed back to the kitchen and got another soda from the fridge. Limping down the hall, he tapped softly on her door.

  Nothing.

  That was okay. She was probably asleep. He stood there, the cold glass sweating in his hand. Or she'd gotten up to use the bathroom. She could have passed out crossing the rug. Or fallen down on the cold tiles. Or…

  Quietly, cursing himself for a fool, he opened the door.

  She was asleep, neatly folded into herself under the covers. In the light that filtered around the edges of the shade, he could see her dark eyebrows and pale hair, the curve of her hip, the slope of her shoulder. One hand rested palm up on her pillow, fingers curled in like the petals of a flower. The other clutched her blanket to her chin.

  Her mouth was open.

  Such a minor thing, such a human thing, to make his heart pound and tenderness punch his chest.

  Her face was soft and unprotected. Whatever Nell was hiding, whatever she was guarding, in sleep her face relaxed into innocence.

  She snored faintly.

  And he wanted, more fiercely than he'd wanted anything in his wandering life, to shuck his pants and his pretenses and crawl under that blanket with her. To kiss her soft, half-open mouth. To cup her face, smooth with sleep. To stroke and explore her warm, relaxed body, to feel those neat, nurse's hands touching him.

  Yeah, he wanted that. Bad.

  Grimly, he set the glass and the soda on her nightstand and went back to the living room to watch CNN
.

  Nell woke to the sound of male voices in the other room and the smell of something wonderful cooking in her apartment. Both were so unusual that she lay still for a long moment, convinced she was still dreaming.

  Lovely, hot, delirious dreams of Joe.

  Her room was dim. Her head hurt, and she had to use the bathroom. Not dreaming, then. Just delirious.

  She eased to a sitting position and tested her feet on the floor. Steady enough.

  Reaching for the lamp switch, she spotted a glass with an inch of water and an unopened can of soda waiting by her bed.

  Her breath caught. Joe.

  That was his voice she heard in her living room. She'd fallen—no, she'd been pushed and hit her head, and Joe had brought her home and watched over her as she slept.

  The image stirred her. Disturbed her.

  She shuffled into the bathroom. Well, anybody would be a little freaked to find the man she'd just made love to in her dreams watching TV in her living room. But Nell was even more unsettled by her own reaction.

  She was glad he hadn't gone.

  She liked her independence. Didn't she? She protected her privacy. She'd trained herself to rely only on herself. At least that way when she was disappointed she had only herself to blame. The last thing she needed was to start depending on a man who refused to accept her help in return.

  So why were her eyes in the mirror so bright?

  Nell bit her lip and leaned over the sink, peering closer at her pupils. At least they were the right size. And there was no bruising or discoloration around her eyes or behind her ears to suggest a dangerous subdural hematoma.

  She twisted her neck and explored the back of her skull cautiously with her fingers. Ouch. Okay, she had a nice-sized goose egg there. But she didn't appear to be bleeding. Really, she was doing just fine. There was no reason—no medical reason at all—for Joe to stay.

  Depressed, she pulled on her robe and went to tell him so.

  Mike Reilly was in her living room, wearing his uniform and watching ESPN on her TV.

  Nell stopped dead in the doorway, one hand clutching the neckline of her robe.

  Mike looked up and raised a long-necked bottle of beer in salute. "Hi, Nell. How's the head?"

  Throbbing.

  Confused. Was he here as Joe's brother? Or as the beat cop investigating… What was he investigating?

  Nell tugged on the belt of her robe. "It's— I'm fine, thanks."

  "You don't look fine." Joe appeared in the arch that separated the living room from the kitchen. His sharp blue eyes narrowed in concern. "Are you dizzy? Nauseous?"

  Nell curled her bare toes into the carpet, uncomfortably aware that both men were assessing her, her pale face, her wrecked hair, her ratty green robe…

  She attempted a smile, praying it didn't look as stiff as it felt. "No, I'm hungry, actually."

  "Good." Joe crossed the room and cupped her upper arms. She managed not to jump in surprise. He tugged her closer, so that her breasts leaned into his chest, and brushed a kiss to her forehead. Her heart melted. Just for a second, woozy and weak with pain and longing, she let her eyes drift closed.

  Joe's mouth moved against her hairline. "Mike brought dinner."

  Nell opened her eyes to find Joe's brother watching them with undisguised interest from the couch.

  She felt her space invaded, her privacy intruded on, and cleared her throat. "I wondered what you were doing here."

  "Ma made you some pasta e fagioli." Mike's smile didn't quite reach his eyes. "And I figured as long as I was here, I could take your statement."

  "Later," Joe said.

  "No, it's all right." Nell pulled herself from his arms, trying not to miss his warmth, trying to draw her scattered thoughts together. Trying not to resent the way her home had been taken over while she slept. "What statement?"

  "We're still looking for the guy who attacked you," Mike said. "Joe gave us a description, but it would help us if we had a statement from you."

  Nell moistened her dry lips. "Nobody attacked me. I fell."

  "That son of a bitch knocked you down," Joe said.

  "He pushed me out of the way," Nell corrected. "And I slipped. I should have been more careful. I could see he was upset."

  "Why the hell are you defending him?"

  "Did he have any reason to believe he would be successful in obtaining drugs from your clinic?" Mike asked.

  It was a cop's question.

  But he'd brought her soup, Nell thought rather desperately.

  She blinked. "Excuse me?"

  "Did you know him?" Mike clarified.

  When had Joe's brother taken out his notebook?

  "No, I—"

  "She just got up," Joe interrupted. "She hit her head. She's confused. Can't we do this later?"

  "You're the one who wanted to go after this guy," Mike said.

  "I am not confused," Nell said. But she was starting to get ticked off. "No, I'd never seen this patient before. That's why I asked Melody to contact Dr. Graham's office and get a history. And I'm happy to give you a description to circulate to other doctors and hospitals in the area. Mr. Jones obviously needs help. But—"

  "Told you so," Joe said to his brother.

  "But—" Nell raised her voice "—I won't press charges against him if you do find him."

  The Reilly brothers, the reporter and the cop, leveled near identical scowls in her direction. Nell would have found it funny if her head hadn't hurt so much.

  She could accept the duality of their roles as long as they respected hers. She wasn't just a victim. She was a nurse. And she took the responsibilities of her job every bit as seriously as Mike took his. More.

  "Why not?" demanded Joe. "He pushed you down."

  "Because he felt threatened," Nell insisted.

  "That's bull," Joe said. "He's the one who threatened you. Mike should bust his ass."

  Nell crossed her arms over the front of her shabby green robe. Her head pounded and her ears were ringing, but she was not going down. "And if I set the police on every patient who pushed me or threatened me, how long do you think I'd keep the respect of this community? I need my patients' trust. And I'm not losing it because one guy got aggressive in the waiting room."

  Mike scratched his head with his pen. "You do know this guy is a con, right? A druggie. A doctor shopper."

  "No, I don't know that," Nell said. "It's certainly one explanation for his behavior. Or he could have developed a drug tolerance and truly been in need of a new prescription to help him manage his pain. Without examining him, it's impossible for me to say. Or you, either."

  "Are you telling me you would have prescribed drugs for this guy?"

  "Back off, Mike," Joe said quietly. "I told you she didn't. She has the bump on her head to prove it."

  She should let it go, Nell thought desperately. She was already a suspect for the pharmacy thefts and prescription-drug fraud. Her reputation, her license, maybe even her freedom were on the line.

  Joe was willing to defend her. Mike might be willing to believe her.

  If she had any sense of self-preservation at all, she would let it go.

  Her head pounded.

  Damn it, Dolan, don't you ever give up? I want to… It's not an option. "Yes, I would have written a prescription for some appropriate medication," Nell said carefully. "If a physical examination established that the patient needed them."

  Joe looked at her thoughtfully.

  Mike snorted. "Of course he needed them. He's an addict."

  Nell sighed. "Not necessarily. Pain and the fear of pain can cause a pseudo-addiction—behavior that mimics an actual physical or psychological dependence on drugs because the patient is desperate to avoid or alleviate real suffering."

  "You sure know an awful lot about addicts," Mike said.

  The line she was walking between her professional obligations and her personal life blurred. Nell looked from Mike to Joe, unsure of her footing, afraid she was about to take
a fall.

  Or a leap of faith.

  She tightened her hands on the belt of her robe to hide their trembling. "I should," she said. "I was married to one."

  * * *

  Chapter 10

  « ^ »

  Joe had protected sources before. But never from his own brother.

  "You certainly got rid of him in a hurry," Nell remarked, sitting sideways at the kitchen table. She crossed her legs, and her robe slipped open at the knee.

  Hello. Joe hadn't seen her legs before. She always wore slacks. Against the dark green terry cloth, her skin looked pale and soft. Her knees were round. Bare.

  He slopped soup onto the table and swore. Nell sat up in concern. "Did you burn yourself?" She was too quick to take care of everybody else. It was time somebody took care of her. "No. Sit. I've got it." God help them both.

  He ladled beans and noodles into two bowls, trying not to stare at her smooth, bare knees.

  Knees. He shook his head. Man, that was pathetic.

  "Mmm." Nell inhaled steam, closing her eyes briefly in appreciation. "This smells wonderful. Your mother shouldn't have gone to all this trouble."

  Joe sat opposite her, careful to angle his legs so they weren't touching hers. "Are you kidding? She wanted to bring it herself, but I talked her out of it. I figured you weren't ready yet for Ma in full Irish-mother mode."

  Nell arched her brows. "But you thought I was ready for your brother in full Irish-cop mode?"

  Regret sliced through him.

  "No, I pretty much wasn't thinking at all on that one," he admitted. "I wanted the guy who hurt you caught."

  Nell smiled and ate her soup. With her mouth full, she couldn't talk. Joe wondered if that was deliberate.

  He waited until her bowl was nearly empty before he said, "Tell me about your ex-husband."

  Nell swallowed. "I already gave a statement to your brother."

  Score one for the nurse. Obviously, Nell wasn't handicapped by a little thing like a concussion.

  "I heard your statement," Joe said. "I also heard what you left out."

  "And like a good reporter, you decided now was a good time to get the whole story?"

  But this wasn't about the story for Joe anymore. This was personal.