good to keep a patient distracted, especially when she was about to run a needle and suture through his scalp. The best way to do that was to keep him talking about something else.
A quick examination showed her that the bruises were superficial, but the gash at his temple was definitely going to require a few stitches.
“Well, aside from a couple of tender spots that are going to turn into blacks and blues—and purples—before the end of the day,” she warned him, “you do have a gash on your right temple. I’m afraid I’m going to have to take a couple of stitches.” He looked as if he was going to demur, so she quickly added, “But don’t worry, they won’t be noticeable. You’ll be just as handsome as ever once it heals.”
“I don’t need stitches, it’s just a cut.” He shrugged it off. “So, I guess that’s it,” he said, beginning to get off the examination table.
She put her hands on his upper torso to keep him from going any farther. For a little thing, he noted, she possessed an awful lot of strength.
“No, it’s not a cut. That thing on the inside of your wrist is a cut. That—” she pointed to his temple “—is a full-fledged gash that needs help in closing up. That’s where I come in,” she added cheerfully. “You’re not worried about a little needle, are you?”
“No, I’m worried about a big meeting.” He blew out a breath, annoyed now. If he’d stayed in the taxi, he wouldn’t have gotten into this altercation. But then, he reminded himself, the old man would have lost his sack of diamonds. “The one I was going to when this happened.”
“Important?” Tania pulled over the suture tray and, taking a stool on rollers, made herself comfortable beside the gurney. “The meeting,” she added in case he’d lost the thread of the conversation.
Right now, her patient was eyeing the surgical tray like a person who would have preferred to have been miles away from where he was.
“To me.” He watched as she prepared to sew him up. From where he sat, the needle and suture was one and the same entity. He’d never been fond of needles. Jesse sat perfectly still as she numbed the area. “I was supposed to do a presentation. That was why I was cutting across the Diamond District,” he added. Then explained, “Because the traffic wasn’t moving and I needed to be there in a hurry.”
She nodded, her eyes on her work. “Lucky for that man that you did.” When he stopped talking, Tania momentarily raised her eyes to his face. Amusement curved her mouth. “I could write you a note, say you were saving a nice old man from a big bully,” she teased. “It’d be on the hospital letterhead if that helps.”
“No, I already called them to say I’d be late. They weren’t happy about it, but they understood.”
Her eyes were back on the gash just beneath his hairline. He had nice hair, Tania caught herself thinking. Something stirred within her and she banked it down. There’d be no more wild rides, she told herself sternly. They always led nowhere.
“Sound like nice bosses.”
“They are. For the most part,” he qualified in case she thought he had it too easy. Nothing could have been further from the truth. “What they are is fair.”
“So,” she said in a soothing voice, taking the first tiny stitch, “tell me exactly what you did to become a hero.”
Chapter 2
Tania heard the man on the gurney draw in his breath as she pierced the skin just above his temple. He sat as rigid as a soldier in formation.
Not bad, she thought. She’d had big, brawny patients who had passed out the very moment she’d brought needle to skin.
“It’s nothing, really,” Jesse said in response to her question as she slowly drew the needle through. He was aware of a vague pinching sensation and knew he was in for a much bigger headache later, when the topical anesthetic wore off.
Tania smiled to herself. Modesty was always a nice quality. It was also very rare in men who looked as good as Jesse Steele did. There was something about women throwing themselves at their feet that gave handsome men heads that barely fit through regulation-size doorways.
She kept her eyes on her work. “The man in trauma room three seems to think you’re the closest thing he’d seen to a guardian angel. And the man in trauma bay four thinks you’re the devil incarnate, so my guess is that you must have done something.”
He was probably going to have to give a statement and maybe show up in court, as well, if it came to that. No good deed went unpunished, Jesse thought.
Still, he did feel good about having saved the old man’s diamonds. “I tackled him.”
The doctor arched an eyebrow. He found it very sexy. “Excuse me?”
“The guy with the police escort,” he clarified. “I tackled him.”
“Why?” she asked.
His response had been immediate. There hadn’t been even a moment’s hesitation. “Because the old man yelled ‘stop thief,’” he told her and then, before she asked, he added, “and the guy in the suit was the only one running away from him.”
She could see why the old man had sounded so grateful. “That was pretty brave of you,” she acknowledged. “Most people would have looked the other way or pretended not to hear.”
He couldn’t do that, couldn’t look away or count the cracks in the sidewalk when someone needed help. He hadn’t been raised that way, wouldn’t have been able to live with himself if he’d just walked on. “I don’t like thieves.”
“Most of us don’t,” she agreed, humor curving her lips. And then she paused for a second to scrutinize him. There was more to this man than just looks, she decided. “Sounds like it’s personal.” Because her father had been and her new brother-in-law still was involved with the police force, she guessed, “Is someone in your family in law enforcement?”
He had meant to stop with just the first word, but somehow the rest just slipped out. She was extremely easy to talk to. “No. Someone in my family was robbed.”
Something about the way her patient said it made her look at him again, her needle poised for a third tiny stitch. “Who?”
“My parents.”
Tania felt her heart tighten in empathy. “What happened?”
Her patient blew out a breath and was quiet for so long, she thought he’d decided not to answer. Which was his right. She was prying.
But just as she completed the last stitch, he said, “My parents ran a small mom-and-pop-type grocery store in Brooklyn. We lived right above it. One night some thug came in and robbed them. When he tried to steal my mother’s wedding ring, my father pushed him away. The thug shot him point-blank and ran. My mother got to keep her wedding ring, the thug got seventy-three dollars in cash, and my father died.” His voice was stony. He could still remember hearing the shot and wondering what it was. He was home that night, struggling with his math homework and planning on asking his father for help. He never did do his math homework that night.
Tania cut the black thread and felt numb. When he
