me, please! Not like—”
The curtain swished back, and a very pretty woman who looked like a young Michelle Pfeiffer swept out, her face contorted with tears. She didn’t glance up, didn’t even notice Lukas standing there, staring in stunned disbelief.
Before Lukas could do anything, however, the human chatterbox, Lauren McCaffrey, swept past him as if she’d been hovering nearby, eavesdropping on every word as shamelessly as Lukas had been. She walked up to the bedside of the shocked man and laid a hand on his muscled arm, her kind green eyes sympathetic.
“Now, don’t you worry, Buck. You know why Kendra’s upset. She’ll come out of this in a while and be begging you to forgive her and forget what she just said, and you two will be all giggles and kisses again in no time. I’ve seen it too many times before. She’s got her head on straight most of the time. She’ll come out of it. Come on, I’ve got to take your blood pressure again, especially after that little display.”
Now both Buck and Lukas stared at Lauren. She ignored them and continued with her job. Buck turned dazed eyes toward Lukas.
“You heard that, Doc?”
“Yes, Buck. I’m sorry.”
“But what am I supposed to do? I’m no hero. I’m just a fireman. And now she’s saying she doesn’t want to be married to me? I don’t take risks, not like—”
“Settle down,” Lauren warned. “I can’t get a good reading if you get all worked up, and it’s not going to help your recovery any, either. Come on, Buck, you’re a fireman. You can handle a stressful situation. You know your wife better than that, and you know she’s going to be fine. You two have had your spats before, and it just makes your marriage stronger. She knows better than to let go of a hunk like you.” She checked his arm to take another reading.
“Lauren, do you have to get a reading right now?” Buck asked, jerking his arm away. “This is my marriage we’re talking about.” He looked at Lukas. “What am I supposed to do?”
Lauren, as always, was the one who answered. “Well, Buck, you pray about it, and you wait a while, then you call Kendra on the telephone and tell her how much you love her. Then arrange for her to pick you up when you’re released, and she will have gotten over it. Isn’t that right, Dr. Bower?”
Lukas quirked an eyebrow at her. “Why are you asking me? I’ve never been married. And neither have you. What makes you think—”
“Ever been dumped, Doc?” Buck asked.
“You haven’t been dumped,” Lauren insisted. “You know she’s just scared. She’s still—”
“Yeah, well, I’ll feel better when I’m back home in my own bed, and I don’t feel Kendra’s foot shoving me out the door.”
Mercy walked into a surprisingly calm waiting room. Josie had sent home most of the patients who could reschedule, and there were only a few scattered around in comfortable chairs, reading the well-stocked library of periodicals with resigned expressions. They perked up when they saw her walk through. She waved and greeted them and apologized without breaking stride as she marched toward her office.
Josie saw her first and scrambled over to her side. “Dr. Mercy, before you go into your office you need—”
“I know, I’ll hurry. I’m sorry—”
“No, you don’t understand—”
“Just let me change lab coats. I got some blood on this one, and it’s all—” She threw open the door to her office, then gasped aloud at the sight of her ex-husband, Theodore Zimmerman, sitting in the straight-backed chair in front of her desk.
“Dr. Mercy, I tried to tell you,” Josie said, stumbling in to stand behind her. “He insisted he had to see you today because he’d made a promise, and I didn’t want to leave him sitting out in the waiting room so you’d have witnesses when you killed him.”
Mercy stared at the man with five years’ worth of loathing. “Get out of this office. How dare you come in here like this?” She turned to Josie. “Start showing the patients to the exam rooms. This won’t take long. I’m going to call the police and let them know he’s here.” She picked up the telephone, almost expecting him to jump up and knock the receiver from her grasp and start shouting obscenities at her—his usual conduct.
He didn’t move. “Please don’t, not yet,” he said quietly. “They released me.”
“I’m supposed to believe that?” She stood staring at the man she had hated for so long she couldn’t remember feeling any other way about him. At times she’d dreamed of killing him—actually dreamed it. And they had been good dreams. Mom would be horrified at some of the thoughts that went through her mind. So would Lukas. So would Tedi. “What are you doing here?”
“I came to tell you how sorry I am.” He said the words quickly, as if afraid she would shut him up before he could get them all out.
Mercy had heard that one lots of times before. Her hand tightened on the telephone receiver. What if he was lying about being released? What if he’d escaped?
“And I want to find out what it would take for me to see Tedi again.”
A stab of fear chilled the anger momentarily. One of Mercy’s worst nightmares was that he would be able to come back into their lives and take Tedi away from her again. She would die before that would happen.
“I don’t mean I want to see her alone,” he said quickly. “I wouldn’t ask that. You would be there, and Ivy, and anybody else you wanted. I’d be willing to talk to her through the bars of a jail cell if I could just talk to her.”
“Which reminds me, why aren’t you in jail?” She still could not believe she was standing here talking to him and actually listening to anything he had to say.
Strangely, however, he had said nothing accusatory or threatening, and he hadn’t even tried to twist her words around to use them against her—a favorite of his. She couldn’t smell any alcohol on his breath, and the whites of his eyes were actually clear, giving good definition to the light blue of the irises. His blond hair was short and neat. He wore jeans and a gray plaid flannel shirt—not his usual style. People who met Theo Zimmerman for the first time had commented—occasionally within Mercy’s disgusted hearing—that he was the handsomest man in Knolls. At six feet tall he didn’t exactly tower over other men, but he stood out, and he knew how to do it to his best advantage. He’d used his physical attractiveness like a tool when he worked as a real estate agent—before he was fired for embezzlement.
His eyes held hers steadily. “I did everything they told me to do.” He leaned forward, elbows on knees. “The day I hit Tedi I wanted to die. I wanted the police to stick me back in the darkest and farthest cell and throw away the key.”
Mercy still did, yet she was aware of the fact that Theo had been the one to call the police on himself.
“I can never make it up to you or to Tedi,” he continued. “Or to anybody else who’s suffered because of me.” He frowned, still watching her. “They appointed an attorney to my case, and he convinced me I could make amends a lot better outside of prison than inside. But he told me something surprising, Mercy. Somebody paid my debts. The embezzlement charges were all dropped
