and I might be able to do it if you answer my question in a nutshell.”
Cait took in air and shrugged. She felt fragile. “Okay. When I was two, my mother left me with her aunt so she could find a decent job in a larger city. She didn’t come back.”
“What about your father?”
Cait lifted one shoulder again carefully. “Who knows?”
“Where he was?”
“Who he was.”
“Ah. Okay, what happened then?”
“My great-aunt died when I was four and from then until I was eighteen I pretty much bounced from foster home to foster home.” She touched her hands to her cheeks. “I am so terribly embarrassed about the way I’ve been acting lately. Why does any of this matter?”
“I just wanted to nail down the fact that you had a shaky childhood.”
“But it didn’t affect me.”
“Sure it did. Your childhood is directly responsible for the type of adult you’ve become. For every action, there’s a reaction, and that goes for the human psyche, too. The reaction doesn’t necessarily have to be negative. Maybe you never had a problem with your past before—until Branson Hines grabbed you.”
Cait brought her chin up. “I put myself through college, then nursing school. I’m here. I did fine.”
He nodded.
“Those foster parents were kind enough. No one was ever cruel to me!” She shouted it and was instantly mortified. “Oh, heavens.”
“What?”
“That. That’s what I mean! I’m volatile. I’m…I’m out of control.”
Cross grinned. “I like that word. Control. Great nutshell word.”
“Why?” she pleaded.
“Because that was what you’ve had your whole life—or at least from the time you left that last foster home and went to college. And now—” he snapped his fingers “—it’s gone. Hines took from you something you’ve fought hard to never have to relinquish again.”
“Control,” Cait whispered.
Cross nodded. “Rumor has it that you run a pretty tight ship here at work. What about at home?”
She paid her rent months in advance just in case anything untoward should happen and she was suddenly unable to find the money. The apartment was hers, the first place she could really call home, and she would not lose it. “I…yes. I guess.”
“You had no control over things when Hines took you,” Cross went on. He laid his palms flat on the desk. “He proved that all your efforts in that area have been for naught. That could shake a person like you to the core. Anyway, here’s the deal. You did the right thing in coming back to work today. But I’d recommend that you confront the site of your trauma, too, and all the people associated with it.”
“The room where it started?” She didn’t want to go there.
“And Sam Walters. Though you work with him, so I imagine you’ve already dealt with him, right?”
Sam. Cait bit her lip.
“Was that a problem?” Cross asked. “Seeing him again?”
“Of course not. I’ll do whatever I have to do to get back to normal.”
“Good.” He watched her closely. “Caitlyn, is there something else you want to tell me about your abduction?”
She jolted. “Like what?”
“I don’t know. That’s why I’m asking. You tell me. Something else that might have rocked your world during that time?”
She’d made love with Sam. “Absolutely not.”
“People react in some startling ways when they think their time is running out.”
“Not me.”
“They do uncharacteristic things.”
“I never got uncharacteristic until I got home again. That’s when all this started.”
Cross stood. “You’ll tell me sooner or later. I do want you to make another appointment. It would probably work best if you came in on your day off. We’ll have more time together that way.”
Cait pushed to her feet, as well. “Okay.” She was back to being polite and agreeable. For now, she thought a little wildly. Who knew how long it would last?
“I’m sorry this happened to you, to everyone Hines touched.”
Cait nodded. “Thank you. But he’s gone now.”
“With my help, you’ll get the old Caitlyn back. But I seriously doubt if she’ll ever be quite the same person she was before all this happened.”
Cait squeezed her eyes shut. She was so desperately afraid of that. “I’ve got to go.”
She fled Cross’s office without making a second appointment, but they both knew she would be back.
Hines can’t take me away from me! she wanted to holler. And as for Sam…well, just as he had said, it was a one-time thing. Time would pass and what they had shared would fade from her memory. And that was best. It was why she had prayed since they’d been released from that room, that he wouldn’t call her, wouldn’t try to get in touch with her. She’d seen woman after woman hang with bated breath on a man’s every whim and action and spoken word—every one of those things out of their control. She would not let that happen to her.
Cait turned into the nurses’ station again and came nose to nose with Sam’s angry face.
“Where the hell have you been?” he snarled.
Two
The world was clearly going to hell in a handbasket, Sam thought, watching Cait open and close her mouth in shock at his outburst.
One minute everything had been perfectly normal. He’d known himself inside and out. The world around him was just predictable enough to offer comfort without driving him crazy. Then Branson Hines had crashed into his life, showing him that he wasn’t so much the hero, after all. And now that they were free of the man, this woman seemed to stubbornly resist going back to the way she was supposed to be, the way she’d always been before.
“Excuse me,” she said, trying to step around the desk and pass him.
“The hell I will.” He blocked her way. “You owe me an explanation.”
“For what, pray tell?”
“Pray tell?” Suddenly Sam grinned. That was the Caitlyn Matthews he’d always known. Then again, the old Nurse Matthews had never argued with him or contradicted
