I did not.”
“You were there, then you just wandered off.”
“I attempted to tell you I was leaving. You wouldn’t acknowledge me.”
“Maybe you didn’t try hard enough!”
“Would you kindly stop shouting? You’re embarrassing me.”
“I ought to write you up for this! To hell with your pride.”
Then she shocked him. She placed both hands on his chest and shoved. “You’re in my way.”
“I’m—” He broke off, dumbfounded, his thoughts fragmenting. “You’re out of your mind!”
She swiveled on one hip to glance back at him. “Could be. If I were you, I’d watch my step. There could be an ax murderer lurking inside me. You wouldn’t want to tick her off.” Then she walked away.
“You know, after everything that happened to us last week, I don’t think that’s very funny,” he called after her.
Sam heard his own words and almost choked. He was the practical joker of the pediatrics floor, the one to whom not much was sacred, unless it affected a patient, the one who took a very sick boy speeding around federal land in a Maserati the day before surgery.
Caitlyn seemed to catch the incongruity of his statement, too. She stopped again. “I know what Hines took from me, Sam,” she said, looking back. “What did he take from you?”
He refused to be sidetracked. “A nurse, for starters. What if I had needed you ten minutes ago?”
“As you pointed out earlier, there are plenty of others on the floor who can do my job. I’m non-essential.”
“Damn it, I never said that.” He’d always had a good rapport with the nursing staff. After all, most of them were women.
“You implied it, then.”
“I was making the point that I had to come back to work. You didn’t!”
“You’re shouting again, Sam.”
He was going to choke her.
Then it hit him. She’d never once called him by his first name until the time he’d buried himself inside her in that room. Even when Hines had been shuffling them along at gunpoint, she’d called him Dr. Walters. Now she’d said Sam twice in the last minute.
Things were getting way out of hand.
“Go back to work,” he said shortly.
“I was trying to until you detained me.” She set off down the corridor again, her tight little hips twitching. Had they ever twitched before? He couldn’t be sure. He’d never quite gotten past her cool stuffiness until she’d whispered, “Show me how” in his ear.
So he had. He had shown her. And now he couldn’t get her out of his mind.
“Doctor?” One of the other nurses approached him, frowning. “Are you all right?”
“Why wouldn’t I be?” Stupid question, Sam thought. But Hines had derailed him a lot less than little Miss Fancy Hips, who’d just turned into a room down the corridor.
Sam brought his focus back to the nurse before him. Her name was Angelina Moffit. She was a brunette of staggeringly appealing proportions—the type he usually went for. He opened his mouth to tease her, then just waved a hand in abject disgust with himself. For the first time in his memory, words failed him. “Oh, to hell with it.”
He left her and started down the hall. This, he thought, was going to end right here and now. He caught up with Jared Cross just as the psychiatrist was ushering a woman and her daughter into his office. “I need a minute with you,” he said peremptorily.
Cross lofted a brow. “Most people make an appointment.”
“I don’t have time for that. This can’t wait. It’s important.”
The psychiatrist watched him for a beat, then nodded. He stuck his head in his office and said a word to the woman, then he returned. “Five minutes.”
“Fine.” Sam turned to a door across the hall and threw it open. He stepped into his office after Cross and closed the door, being careful to turn the lock. “Have a seat.” He said it like an order.
“That’s usually my line.” But Cross sat. “What’s going on?”
Sam went behind his desk and sat, as well. There was no way to handle this, he thought, other than to dive right in. “I’m losing my mind.”
Jared Cross laughed. “My practice is thriving. I ought to start charging more.”
Sam scowled at him, not understanding. He raked his fingers through his hair, agitated.
Cross relaxed, leaning back to rest one ankle on his knee. “Okay. Tell me about your childhood.”
Sam felt his eyes go to slits. “You’re kidding, right?”
“No, not entirely. Cooperate with me.”
“Well, I didn’t wet the bed, that’s for sure.”
“You?” Cross shook his head. “No, I can’t imagine that you did.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You’ve led a gilded life.”
Sam thought about it and eased back in his own chair. “Yeah, right.” He shrugged. “What’s to tell? My parents have been married for almost forty-five years. I had dinner there last Sunday. The only thing they said to each other was ‘Pass the salt,’ in the exact same tones they used when I was six.”
“Ah.” Cross steepled his fingers under his chin. “School?”
“Straight A’s, for the most part.”
Cross grinned. “I’ve been your colleague for some time now and I know you’re not that smart.”
Sam relaxed enough to laugh a little. “I did a hell of a lot better with the female teachers, I can tell you that. Is this supposed to give me some insight as to what’s wrong with me?”
“Yes. Because I’m smarter.”
Sam laughed outright. Then Jared got serious.
“Try this on for size. My guess—knowing you as long as I have—is that you learned early on that what you failed to accomplish with your brain, you could always wing on your charm.”
Sam didn’t like the sound of that, but he nodded cautiously. “That’s me. Charming.”
“Personally, I think you rely too much on the knowledge that your looks and your talents of persuasion can get you out of pretty much any sticky situation.”
“People pay you for this?”
