to if she’d waited—even a twelve-year-old couldn’t help but cave when McKeag came cooing.
Shooting the kid a surreptitious smile, she made her way toward the door, greeting him in passing. “Dr. McKeag.”
“Dr. Conley,” he returned, and she chanced a glance to find his pale blue eyes fixed on her. Just for a second. Just long enough to awaken the bitey critters in her belly. Some people had butterflies, Angel had things with teeth. And they roused so infrequently she’d have sworn they’d died off long ago, except for McKeag.
“Dr. Wolfe, I’m going to eat. Dr. Angel is going to get me peppermint cocoa and snickerdoodles.”
Kid made it sound as if that was the food she’d agreed to eat...
“Dr. Angel?” he repeated.
And the bitey belly critters escaped her middle and went instead to biting and sending goosebumps down her arms. The soft hair stood on end, like an ineffective porcupine.
He really needed to never say her first name again. Ever.
“She’s my Angel,” Jenna said, and that was enough to bring Angel’s smile back just as she ducked out of the room and into the safe, antiseptic solace of an empty corridor, where she could breathe.
Body betrayals were something she’d not miss about New York City, or about Sutcliffe. She rather preferred being cadaver-like from the neck down. It was safe. No primordial body signals to contend with meant she could devote her whole body to the list of actual, important problems she managed. Like finding a dietitian and sweet-talking her into a late lunch for Jenna.
And sorting out how to sweet-talk the dietitian before she got down there because, as well as she could read people, she lacked any skills in sweet talk.
* * *
The heavy door swung closed behind Conley, the force of the swing shoving the air and producing a wave of her scent that hit Wolfe dead on. Fruity, and something else. Not a perfume, he didn’t think. Or maybe it was. There was something soft about it. Sweet. Made him think of the first breath of spring on the breeze after a long, cold winter.
A perfumer would make a killing with that scent.
Her bare skin probably smelled even better. Everywhere. Something he’d have to be satisfied imagining—Wolfe had only a few rules, and not dating a coworker sat at the top. After a childhood drowning in the scandals of his parents, he hadn’t followed his older brother across the Atlantic just to invite more drama once he got settled. Not into his life, and especially not at work. Conley was a nonstarter. No matter how fantastic she smelled. No matter how delightfully freckled her skin.
“Dr. Wolfe?”
Jenna’s voice broke through the wrong direction his thoughts had taken, reminding him where he was and what he was supposed to be about. With a patient, preparing to cajole her into eating. He should be joking. Not focused on the sexy-sweet wake left behind the departing southern belle with her long Es and gentle cadence.
“I think I’ve got bad breath,” he said, snapping back into the appropriate mindset as he turned back to face the young girl.
She grinned at him, her cheeks still dimpling no matter how badly her body was failing her. No matter what he’d been told, her spirit still sparkled through the veil of the sickness draped over her. “Why do you think that?”
“She left very quickly, your Angel, didn’t she? And right after I got here.” He lifted one brow, his best Sherlock Holmes impression.
Someone had charted a mountain, but whatever had been wrong with the girl had been a molehill. She seemed in her normal Jenna–high spirits.
He didn’t mention that Conley always left quickly when he was around—that would mean he noticed. Or cared. Maybe she did that when anyone was around. He enjoyed light-hearted chatter with everyone, but, during the year since she’d arrived, he could count on one hand the number of times he’d seen Conley around anyone outside patient consultations and their irregularly scheduled department meetings for Pediatrics, which shouldn’t matter to him either.
“She’s in a hurry because she’s going to the tree lighting tonight.”
“Ah, Christmas. Gets earlier every year, doesn’t it?” Earlier and more obnoxious, but Wolfe knew better than to try and explain his feelings on the holiday to a child, especially one who needed to look forward to the magic he’d heard it held but couldn’t quite remember feeling. Inadequate small-talk about the holiday was the best he could do.
She argued, though with less energy. “No, it takes forever to get here.”
The tree was just the official, publicly agreed as acceptable kick-off to the Lousy Season. Stores had begun pushing Christmas about the same time they began pushing Halloween. Which was when he stopped going to stores and wouldn’t really resume until February. The explosion of tinsel and fairy lights that covered the city? Harder to avoid.
It was on his lips to tell her that time moved faster the older you got, but it sounded like a promise he’d love to make but couldn’t. “Are you waiting for Santa?”
“No.” She rolled her eyes at him and then looked at him far too closely. “Why don’t you like the tree?”
He must’ve made a face...
“It’s just a big tree,” he answered, adding, “and it’s cold out there.”
Just as he was about to ask her about the lunch he’d heard she’d refused, and the breakfast she’d also refused, she started squirming in the bed, trying to shift up higher so that the bend of the mattress fit the bend of her body, and all the color drained from her face.
He knew that look. Pain. Kids could forget they’d had their bodies cut open and that they weren’t yet able to move freely.
“Easy...” he said, stepping in to gingerly help her into a more comfortable lean. “Don’t want to pull a staple. I did a good job there, but I’d like to revisit it about as much as I’d like to go see that big silly tree.”
She settled, and he watched her for a few seconds as her breathing evened out and she lost some of that worrisome pallor. “All right now?”
“I love the lighting and the tree.” She sailed right past his question and got back to what she wanted to talk about. But the fact that she was talking at all answered his question. “We go every year.”
When her little mouth twisted at the end of the statement, he knew it wasn’t physical pain.
Conley had been there before him, and had done something to brighten Jenna’s spirits, but he’d somehow just made her sad again.
Emotions. He wasn’t good at emotions. He could generally identify them, or when there had been an emotional shift, but he wasn’t good at responding. At least, he wasn’t good with all the emotions that weren’t amusement. He was good at that one. But even he failed to amuse when things ran too deep, too real.
Without his usual joking to fall back on, and knowing he’d not made the situation any better, it took him several seconds to come up with something resembling the proper response. “Family tradition?”
She
