lifted the girl’s thin T-shirt, trying to look for anything unusual in the dim light. She certainly found it.
“Sheriff, she’s pregnant,” she exclaimed.
He leaned inside, his expression clearly shocked. “Pregnant?”
“I’d guess about five or six months along.”
She moved her stethoscope and was relieved to hear a steady fetal heartbeat. She started to palpate the girl’s abdomen when suddenly her patient’s eyes flickered open. Even in the dim light inside the camper shell, Lauren could see panic chase across those battered features. The girl cried out and flailed at Lauren as she tried to scramble up and away from her.
“Easy, sweetheart. Easy,” Lauren murmured. Her skills at Spanish were limited but she tried her best. “I’m not going to hurt you. I’m here to help you and your baby.”
The girl’s breathing was harsh and labored, but her frantic efforts to fight Lauren off seemed to ease and she watched her warily.
“I’m Lauren. I’m a doctor,” she repeated in Spanish, holding up her stethoscope. “What’s your name?”
Through swollen, discolored eyes, the girl looked disoriented and suspicious, and didn’t answer for several seconds.
“Rosa,” she finally said, her voice raspy and strained. “Rosa Vallejo.”
Lauren smiled as calmly as if they were meeting for brunch. It was a skill she’d learned early in medical school—pretend you were calm and in control and your patients will assume you are. “Hello, Rosa Vallejo. I’m sorry you’re hurt but an ambulance is on the way for you, okay? We’re going to get you to the hospital.”
“No! No hospital. Please!”
The fear in the girl’s voice seemed to hitch up a notch and she tried to sit up again. Lauren touched her arm, for comfort and reassurance as much as to hold her in place. “You’ve been hurt. You need help. You need to make sure your baby is all right.”
“No. No. I’m fine. I must go.”
She lunged to climb out of the truck bed but Daniel stood blocking the way, looking huge and imposing, his badge glinting in the dim light. The girl froze, a whimper in her throat and a look of abject terror in her eyes. “No policía. No policía!”
She seemed incoherent with fear, struggling hysterically to break free of Lauren’s hold. Daniel finally reached in to help, which only seemed to upset the girl more.
“Hold her while I find something in my kit to calm her,” Lauren ordered. “She’s going to injure herself more if I don’t.”
A moment later, she found what she was looking for. Daniel held the girl while Lauren injected her with a sedative safe for pregnant women. A moment later, the medicine started to work its calming effect on her panicked patient and she sagged back against the horse blankets just as the wail of the ambulance sounded outside.
Lauren let out a sigh of relief and started to climb out of the truck bed. When Daniel reached to lift her out, she suddenly remembered his injury. She ignored his help and climbed out on her own.
“You’re going to break open all those lovely stitches if you don’t take it easy.”
“I’m fine,” he said firmly, just as the volunteer paramedics hurried over, medical bags slung over their shoulders.
“Hey, Mike, Pete,” Lauren greeted them with a smile.
“You trying to take over our business now, Doc?” Pete asked her with a wink.
“No way. You guys are the experts at triage here. I happened to be stitching up the sheriff at the clinic after the big brawl at Mickey’s bar. When he received this call, I rode along to see if I could help.”
“Busy night for all of us. What have we got?”
Daniel stepped closer to hear her report and Lauren tried not to react to his overwhelming physical presence.
She gave them Rosa’s vitals. “I have a young patient who appears to be approximately twenty weeks pregnant. It was tough to do a full assessment under these conditions, but she looks like she’s suffering multiple contusions and lacerations, probably the result of a beating. She appears to be suffering from exposure. I have no idea how long she’s been in the back of Dale’s pickup. Maybe an hour, maybe more. Whether that contributed to her hysteria, I can’t say, but I do know she’s not very crazy about authority figures right now. Seeing the sheriff set her off, so we may have to use restraints in the ambulance on our way to Salt Lake City.”
“You riding along?” Mike Halling asked.
“If I won’t be in the way.”
“You know we’ve always got room for you, Doc.”
She stood back while he and Pete Zabrisky quickly transferred the girl to the stretcher then lifted it into the ambulance.
“I’m guessing she must have climbed in the back of the truck in Park City, or wherever Dale might have stopped on the way. Though I’m pretty sure the attack didn’t happen here, I’m going to put one of my deputies to work processing the scene,” Daniel told her while they waited in the stinging sleet for the paramedics to finish loading Rosa into the bus.
“All right,” she answered.
“I won’t be far behind you. I’d like to question her once she’s been treated.” He paused. “I can give you a ride back to town when we’re done, if you need it.”
She nodded and climbed in after Mike and Pete. Maybe she had a problem with authority figures, too. That must be why her stomach fluttered and her heartbeat accelerated at the prospect of more time in the company of the unnerving Daniel Galvez.
Chapter 2
Watching Dr. Lauren Maxwell in action was more fascinating to him than the Final Four, the World Series and the Super Bowl combined. As long as she wasn’t working on him and he didn’t have to endure having her hands on him, Daniel wouldn’t mind watching her all day.
As he stepped back to let the ambulance pull past him, with its lights flashing through the drizzle of snow, he could see Lauren through the back windows as she talked to the paramedics in what he imagined was that brisk, efficient voice she used when directing patient care.
In trauma situations, Lauren always seemed completely in control. He never would have guessed back in the day that she would make such a wonderful physician.
He still found it amazing that the prim little girl on the school bus with her pink backpacks and her fake-fur-trimmed coats and her perfectly curled blond ringlets seemed to have no problem wading through blood and guts and could handle herself with such quiet but confident expertise, no matter the situation.
She loved her work. It was obvious every time Daniel had the chance to see her in action. Medicine wasn’t a job with Lauren Renee Maxwell, it was more like a sacred calling.
In the five years since she’d come back to Moose Springs and opened her clinic, he had watched her carefully. Like many others, at first he had expected her to fail. She was
