were incestuously small by nature. Boston General had become even more so when Cage married Dr. Ripley Davis, who was best friends with Dale’s ex. Awkward didn’t even begin to cover it.
Dale frowned. He’d wanted to have this conversation at the hospital, wanted it official. “Yeah, I need to talk to you. But I didn’t expect you to track me down in an off-hours titty bar.”
“And I didn’t expect to find you in one, knocking back cheap beer,” Cage countered. “So what’s the problem?”
Dale tilted the bottle to buy a moment. He wasn’t much of a drinker, but the memories crowding his head deserved to be toasted with beer. The cheaper the better. He set the bottle down. “I need time off.”
“No problem.” Cage waved at the waitress and ordered an import. “Between Boston General and HFH, you’ve done the work of two average doctors. You deserve a vacation. Maybe it’ll help you clear your head of…things.”
Dale was tempted to let his boss think he needed distance from the breakup. But Cage was the local administrator for HFH— Hospitals for Humanity—a group that sent doctors into unstable situations. War. Natural disasters. Outbreaks. He needed to know where Dale was going, and why.
At least some of the why. Nobody at Boston General needed to know all of it.
“I’ll need HFH field equipment.” Dale touched his pocket, where Mickey’s message rested near his heart. Distant cousins, the boys had grown up together. Mick was the only one Dale had kept in touch with. The only one who had the power to call him back to that godforsaken place. “There’s an outbreak of shellfish poisoning on a chunk of rock called Lobster Island. The Maine fisheries people shut the area down, but I’d like to investigate.”
Cage’s eyebrows lifted. “Why HFH?”
The subtext read, why bother? The group focused on major disasters and massive outbreaks. Not a few people sick with paralytic shellfish poisoning— PSP—and not when the locals already had the necessary quarantines in place.
But this was different. Resisting the urge to tug at his imported cotton shirt, Dale muttered, “I was born on the island.”
Oddly enough, he wasn’t struck by lightning. He glanced at his beer. It was his third. Maybe fourth. And it was the only way he’d been able to make himself say the words.
Cage raised his eyebrows. “Well, hell. I always thought—”
“Yeah, I know,” Dale interrupted. That’s what everyone at Boston General thought, because that’s what he’d wanted them to think. “I need a week, some field kits and lab support back at BoGen.” He paused. “Please.”
Cage studied him a moment, then nodded. “You can have all the equipment you need. But I don’t let my team members go Lone Ranger, even on a quick island hop. You’re bringing a partner.”
Dale hid the wince, knowing Cage was bound by HFH policy. Nobody went into the field alone. Period. But he didn’t want anyone else at Boston General to know about his past. Not even his usual HFH partner, though he trusted her as much as he trusted anyone.
Unfortunately, Dr. Tansy Whitmore wasn’t an option. Not anymore. He scowled as the cheap beer soured in his stomach. That was the only reason he felt a twinge of pain that they’d gone from “let’s just be friends,” straight to “I hope you choke on your stethoscope and die, you miserable—”
“Slimy toad!”
Yeah, that was it. Dale looked up. The knot in his stomach grew tighter and he felt the familiar sizzle when he saw her striding through the disreputable bar without a sideways glance. Grown out from the short crop she’d given it during their last tropical assignment, her golden hair was caught mid-curl. It stuck out around her head like a nimbus of flame, matching the fire in her blue eyes. Her unpainted lips drew a tense line across her face, and energy crackled around her as she beat a path to Dale’s table.
As always, the sight of Tansy was like a punch to his chest. But now, that first thrust of sexual awareness was tangled with other things. Anger. Disappointment.
Regret, though she’d never know it.
“Oh, hell,” he muttered, rising to his feet more from self-preservation than manners.
Cage stood, as well. “Dr. Whitmore.”
Hospital hierarchy didn’t save Cage from Tansy’s anger. She snapped, “Don’t you ‘Dr. Whitmore’ me, Zachary Cage. You said you didn’t know where he was.” Without waiting for an answer, she turned on Dale and shook a piece of paper at him. “And you! What the hell is this?”
Her scent touched his nostrils, earthy and sensual like the woman herself. The dirty overhead light glinted off diamonds and gold at her wrist, neck and ears. Dale thought of the dull rock in his pocket, the only thing he’d kept from the island he’d once called home, and knew he’d been right to push her away before things got complicated between them. Like diamonds and ugly rocks, he and Tansy were too different to complement each other. Too different for a future, if he’d been looking for such a thing.
He glanced at the paper and forced detachment, though her anger raised an answering flare in his chest. She’d once called him cold, unemotional. Well, let her think that. Then maybe she’d go away and leave him to his beer. “It looks like my resignation,” he observed, lifting one eyebrow. “I thought I left it on my desk, not yours.”
“It’s bull, that’s what it is,” she fired back. “You’re the best outbreak specialist in HFH. How dare you quit?” The temper in her voice was familiar, but the glint of tears unsettled him. Voice lower, she continued, “If it’s because you don’t want to work with me anymore, I’ll ask to be reassigned.”
“Tansy—” he began, then stalled. He’d never known how to handle her emotions.
“Sit down, both of you,” Cage ordered, waving them both to their seats. “Nobody’s quitting or being reassigned. I’ve had enough of this.”
Dale sat cautiously. Damn. He’d been writing his resignation when the message from Mickey arrived. In the flurry of memory that had driven him to the bar, he’d forgotten to hide the draft. Now there was no reason for Cage to loan him equipment or an assistant. Double damn.
Tansy passed the letter to Cage. “He’s leaving. This was on his desk.”
And what the hell was Tansy doing in his office, anyway? Since their breakup, he’d barely seen her.
Well, that wasn’t entirely true. He’d watched her with her patients at Boston General, and he’d slipped into the back of her lectures and cursed himself for needing to see her. His only salvation was that she’d never noticed him.
Cage passed the paper to Dale and frowned. “Dr. Whitmore, I’m surprised at you. This is an invasion of Dr. Metcalf’s privacy.”
“I’m sorry,” she said without a hint of remorse, “but I’m not going to sit by and let him do something as stupid as this. HFH needs him, and—”
“And it’s none of your business,” Dale growled. “You have no right to try to get inside my head anymore.”
She sucked in a breath. The quick hurt
