don’t listen very well.”
“Sometimes I have to listen to the tone of your voice instead of your words. I have to read your expression.”
Megan rolled her eyes. “Gerard, I don’t need to be rescued.”
“Yeah. You do. And what about your patients? You’re treating again, but you told me you feared for the well-being of your patients at the mission because you weren’t sleeping.” He reached forward and touched her cheek before she could stop him. She looked so drawn. Her skin was cold. He wanted to warm it. “You’re still not getting much sleep.”
“What part about my request for time didn’t you understand?”
“Time to do what? Go back to the same kind of job you were doing?”
She met his gaze. “It’s not the same kind of job at all. Everyone has a home and food to eat, and I don’t have to cut babies out of their dead mothers. There’s no comparison.”
He heard the angst in her voice and he wanted to reach out and hold her in his arms and heal all her pain. Tess accused him of trying to play God, but she was wrong. “You need time from the memories, Megan, but you’re not getting it, obviously. Therefore you need someone—”
“And that would be you, of course.”
“Exactly.”
“What would you be able to do for me?”
“Listen. Help. Support.”
She shook her head. “If I talk about it, the nightmares will just get worse.”
“Have they gotten any easier since you arrived here?”
She turned away, and the soft sound of her footsteps echoed across the wooden porch.
“I’ll take that as a no. You wouldn’t take my calls.” He followed her. “Did you even read those messages Kirstie passed along? I know she gave them to you because she told me she did. In fact, she even called me back one time and apologized for you.”
Megan bowed her head, and the long, ginger-colored strands of her hair glowed in the early-morning sunlight.
“That’s what I thought,” he said.
“Please, I’m not ready for this. I can’t—”
“You’re going to have to work through it because your mind isn’t letting it go.”
She turned, and her expression slowly hardened as her stare became a glare. “How I handle my emotional baggage is my own business.”
Okay, he had that coming. Note for next time: a guy didn’t just barge in on a woman before sunrise and expect a warm welcome. Why did he push so hard? Because he was right. At least this time. He knew from talking to Kirstie that Megan was struggling.
“How did you find me?” she asked.
“You left your address book behind in your apartment. Your landlord found it. You weren’t answering your cell so I called every one of your friends until I reached one who didn’t sound surprised when I asked about you.”
She leaned against a support post beside the steps and crossed her arms. “And you felt you had a right to page through my personal property?”
“Sure did. I was worried about you when you didn’t even call Tess.”
“And Kirstie was willing to trust a complete stranger?” Megan asked.
“Not until I chatted with her for a while.”
“Charmed her, you mean.”
He grinned. “I simply convinced her I was trust worthy. You’d paved the way, of course, but she’s also a good judge of character.”
“She wasn’t always.”
“You’re talking about her husband, the weakling who abandoned her after the diagnosis.”
Megan’s eyes widened. “She really did trust you.”
He shrugged. “What can I say? I’m a trustworthy man.”
Megan shoved away from the support post and gazed through the trees toward the barn Gerard had spotted earlier. There was the sadness again, not only in her eyes, but in every inch of her body, the way her shoulders slumped, the way her mouth turned down, the way she drew into herself as if trying to zip herself into a body bag.
“She told me about her blackouts,” Gerard said.
“The doctor who diagnosed her called it sundowner’s syndrome. How many times did you two talk?”
“Twice. I refuse to call it sundowner’s until someone can prove she has chronic Alzheimer’s or dementia.”
“You had extended conversations, no doubt.”
He nodded. “Not counting dozens of emails.”
“You didn’t tell her why I left the mission, did you?”
“I didn’t tell her about Joni. I did give her some explanation as to why you left.”
“Gerard.”
“I told her you’d lost a couple of patients in the past few months but that you didn’t like to talk about it. Did she mention to you that she was afraid she was being poisoned?”
Megan’s expression froze into the image of a porcelain figurine, all but the eyes, which darkened with shock. “She told you that?”
“Aha! And she didn’t tell you.”
As if by habit, Megan smacked him gently on the arm. “Don’t gloat. Poison? She said that word?”
“Those words exactly, and before you say anything about this to Lynley, don’t. She doesn’t know. Kirstie told only me.”
“Why didn’t she say something to me about it?”
“You refused to take her case.”
“Of course I did. She needs a neurologist.”
Gerard shook his head. “You still think that?”
Megan raised an elegantly arched brow. “What would you say if I told you she warned me recently that I could be in danger?”
He studied that carefully held expression. It was the one he’d seen often when Megan and Tess were playing a joke on him. Megan’s emotions were all over the place this morning. “Kirstie said that?”
“I think she was talking about you. So that means you told her you were coming.”
“I said I would be coming soon, but I didn’t make the decision to drive here last night until she told me about the poison theory. I didn’t want you to face that, along with everything else, all alone.” And Kirstie
