“Let me get a dry shirt out of my car, and I’ll be glad to ferry your supplies over.”
While Block wiped himself off with the wet shirt, the man scurried inside. Soon he returned with several boxes full of supplies.
Block opened the back hatch and pulled out a dry air force sweatshirt and pulled it over his head. Then he turned to the man.
Taking the boxes, Block said, “I’m sure Dr. Jackson will appreciate this stuff.”
And he’d appreciate another chance to see Macy.
RUEING THE FACT that she’d sent her nurse home to be with her own family during a break in the action, Macy leaned back in the swivel chair behind the reception counter. She was so tired she could barely see straight. Every time she thought she had seen the end of the stream of injured coming into the clinic, another surge of patients would find its way to her. For the moment, the waiting room was empty and Macy took advantage of the calm. She closed her eyes, propped her feet up on a stool and tried to will herself another ration of energy.
Apparently, sheer will wasn’t enough.
The door creaked open, but Macy was too fatigued to jump up. “I’ll be with you in a minute,” she murmured wearily as she rubbed her tired eyes.
Warm strong hands massaged her shoulders, and as startled as she was to find them there, Macy couldn’t resist the respite from her aches and pains. She arched her back closer to the reviving action of the unknown hands. “I don’t know who you are, but if you’re single, will you marry me?” she murmured as she melted beneath the man’s strong fingers.
“Well, that’s the best offer I’ve had all night.”
Macy jerked away from the wonderful strong hands. “Alex?” she squeaked. “What are you doing here?”
“A guy from the drugstore over near Faron’s Trailer Park sent me with a load of supplies.”
“So you volunteered?” she asked dryly as she tried to compose herself. She poked several strands of runaway hair back behind her ears and smoothed the front of her white lab coat. Alex was here in beautiful, glorious, living color. Too bad he’d covered those magnificent muscles with a sweatshirt. A surge of adrenaline rushed through her—or maybe it was lust—and Macy found herself gaining her second wind.
“No, I was drafted.”
She tried to conceal her confused emotions from Alex as she lowered her feet from the stool and blinked up at him.
Her heart was racing, and Macy heard a roaring in her ears. She hoped it was from exhaustion and not a sexual reaction to Alex Blocker standing there in her clinic. No, that couldn’t be. Macy Jackson didn’t have reactions like that. And had she really asked him to marry her? She almost groaned with embarrassment.
Everybody knew that Macy had more important things to do with her life than fool around with men. There had been that one exception five years ago with Alex. And she didn’t like thinking about it most of the time.
With Alex back in town, she’d have a hard time forgetting.
While she’d been woolgathering, Alex had gone back outside and retrieved the supplies. He reappeared in the doorway. “This stuff is heavy. Where do you want me to put it?”
Macy felt her face grow warm. Here she was having hot flashes about Alex, and he was standing there with his arms full of boxes. “I’m sorry,” she finally managed. “I’m so tired tonight, I can barely think.” It was a better excuse than the real one.
She was going to have to come to terms with their one little lapse from reality five years ago when she’d allowed herself to think they might have started something. No, she had to keep her mind on the task at hand. She’d have plenty of time to revisit her one night with Alex later.
She just wished it hadn’t happened. No, she didn’t. For one very wonderful thing had come out of that. And now that Alex was here, she was going to have to deal with the results of that night. And so was Alex, even if he didn’t know about it. Yet.
She pushed herself up from the chair. “I guess I should see what you’ve got. We’re in a lull right now, but it won’t last long if the last few hours are any indication. I’d better get as much put away as I can before I get another flood of patients.”
“Just show me where.”
Trying to ignore the sparks of attraction practically snapping between them, Macy peered into the top box in Alex’s muscular arms. “Those look like first-aid supplies. I suppose I should leave them out right where I can get to them,” she said, thinking out loud. “Pretty much all my patients tonight have been broken bones and lacerations.” She showed Alex to one of the two examining rooms.
Alex lowered the boxes to the floor near the exam table. “You want me to divvy this stuff up so you’ll have some in each room?”
Why hadn’t she thought of that? Was she really that exhausted, or did Alex’s mere presence keep her from thinking clearly? It had to be a little of both. “That’s a great idea,” she finally said. Alex didn’t comment on her delayed response, but went straight to work.
Grateful that Alex was distracted from her for the moment, Macy turned to one of the other boxes. These, too, could be divided up between the two examining rooms. Trying to ignore Alex’s too-charismatic presence, she concentrated on putting everything away.
“I assume your place is okay,” Alex said, trying to ease the heavy blanket of tension that had settled over them, after they’d worked for a while. “I hear the new part of town where all the town houses and apartments are wasn’t in the tornado’s path.” He assumed that Macy had set up house in one of the new, upscale neighborhoods rather than in an old one.
“Everything’s fine. Some limbs and a few trees down, but the tornado missed us.” Macy had been chagrined to realize that, at first, she’d thought the damage in her neighborhood was terrible before she’d seen what was left of the trailer park.
Alex started to say something, but the clinic door swung open.
“Dr. Jackson, I need your help outside,” a middle-aged man shouted frantically. “My son is hurt. Bad.”
Macy hurried outside to find a woman hovering over a boy, his face white with pain, stretched out in the back of a battered pickup truck. A strong gust of wind whistled through the pines overhead, showering everyone with cold drops of water, and Macy shivered with the unexpected drenching. “We have to get him inside.”
She leaned over the side of the truck and spoke to the boy, not one of her regular patients.
Alex stepped up behind her. “Do you have a backboard?” he asked quietly, his warm breath sending shivers of delight skimming down Macy’s spine.
It surprised her that he seemed to know instinctively what she suspected. The boy could have a back injury, and any wrong move could cause the damage to be more severe. She had to think. “Yes, in the storage area.”
Alex turned to go get it, and Macy climbed into the bed of the truck to get a better look at her patient.
A quick examination showed that the backboard was probably not necessary,
