wasn’t something Wanda was about to repeat around Tommy.
She turned around again and looked at Tommy. He looked pale, even against the fresh bandage that was covering his sutures. “Honey, why didn’t you come to me when this happened?”
“Tried,” he mumbled to the tips of his sneakers as he looked at them. “Couldn’t find you.”
“Well, now you found me,” Wanda declared. “And we’re going to find your stepdad.” Even if she had to haul him out of whatever hole he was residing in, Wanda added silently. About to pick up the boy, she looked at Mac. “Are you through with him, Doctor?”
“For now.” Turning his head, he lowered his voice, “He’s going to need reconstructive surgery on that once the wound heals.”
Wanda nodded as she pressed her lips together. “Getting Allen’s consent isn’t going to be easy. Especially not after I strangle that dog of his with my bare hands.”
“My money’s on you, Wanda,” Mac told her, grinning.
Wanda merely laughed in response. “C’mon, Tommy. Let’s see if there’s any ice cream in the refrigerator for a brave boy.”
She scooped the boy up into her arms, holding him to her ample chest. The boy curled up against her, responding to the maternal warmth he felt emanating from his mother’s friend.
His eyes met Mac’s over Wanda’s shoulder just before he was carried out from the room.
“Bye,” he said solemnly.
“Not bye,” Mac corrected him. “‘So-long.’ I’ll be seeing you again soon. Sure you don’t like being called Nameless better?”
The boy giggled and shook his head slightly. “I’m sure.”
Mac grinned at him. “Okay.”
As Wanda stepped out of the room with his patient, Mac peeled off the yellow paper gown he’d put on and turned to toss it into the wastebasket where he’d thrown away his gloves. He could feel the other nurse’s eyes all but boring into him.
That woman was a knockout, but she could definitely stand to have an attitude adjustment. Too bad he was too tired to do anything about it right now. “Something you want to say to me, Nurse DeLuca?”
She couldn’t tell if he was being sarcastic or distant. In either case, it didn’t matter. She wasn’t here to strike up friendships with the doctors. But she was big enough to admit when she was wrong. And she had been, at least as far as this went.
“You were good with that little boy.”
He turned to face her squarely. “Why, did you expect me to torture him?”
She was already regretting her mellower stance. “No, I just expected you to be a doctor.”
Mac stood studying her for a moment, trying to make sense of what she’d just said. He failed.
“Is that some kind of code? Because I was being a doctor. Stethoscope, sutures, Novocain,” he went down the line of things he’d used in cleaning out, then stitching the wound. “The works.”
“No, I mean you were kind to him.” Most of the doctors she’d worked with were interested in doing their job, applying their knowledge, and then moving on. After four years, she’d begun to believe that was the nature of the beast.
Still lost, Mac could only stare at her. “Just what kind of doctors do you know, Nurse DeLuca? Dr. Frankenstein and his crowd?”
He was making fun of her. She might have known. Served her right for entertaining charitable thoughts about him. “Never mind.”
“No,” he caught her arm as she began to leave the room. “You started this, I’m curious.”
Blowing out a breath, Jolene resigned herself to remaining where she was until the doctor heard what he wanted to hear. “I’m accustomed to doctors who treat the wound, not the patient.”
He was watching her eyes. She looked directly at him. People who fabricated things looked away. Either she was very, very good, or she was telling the truth.
When you hear hoofbeats, he reminded himself, think horse, not zebra.
He thought zebra.
“So that’s why you transferred.”
Jolene had learned that being closemouthed was a great deal safer than sharing bits and pieces of yourself. Because bits and pieces could be reconstructed to be used against you, or tossed away carelessly. She wasn’t sure which was worse.
But she’d just witnessed him being exceptionally gentle with the boy, the way she would have been had MacKenzie acted like a typical doctor in her mind toward the boy.
So she shrugged and gave him an answer of sorts. “Among other reasons.”
She was mellowing, he thought. And he had to admit that he liked it. His initial reaction toward Jolene shuffled forward to take the center stage.
“Maybe you can tell me about those other reasons over coffee later if you’re not busy—”
“I am.” Just because she was being civil to him didn’t mean she wanted to sit at the same table.
She’d answered just a little too quickly for him. “You don’t know when later.”
“Doesn’t matter,” she informed him crisply. “I intend to be busy until the next century.”
He was about to counter that assessment, but his pager went off.
He tilted the small gray/blue device toward him and recognized the phone number as one he’d dialed only last night. Lynda. Somehow, she’d managed to completely slip his mind.
“Damn, I forgot all about that.”
Curious, Jolene looked down at the LCD scene with its numbers that meant nothing to her. The question came without thought. “Forgot about what?”
Mac sighed. He was supposed to have picked the woman up at her place twenty minutes ago. “My date.”
Reaching into his pocket for his cell phone, Mac turned toward Jolene to finish their conversation.
But she was already gone.
Chapter Three
Mac snapped his cell phone shut. It had taken some fancy talking, but he’d gotten himself a reprieve. And then some.
He’d smoothed Lynda’s ruffled feathers, mentioned an expensive restaurant that was in the offing and what might happen afterward. She’d quickly forgiven him for the fact that she’d been waiting, getting steadily more annoyed, for the better part of half an hour. Lynda had informed him tersely at the beginning of the conversation that had eventually swung his way that she didn’t take kindly to being kept waiting by any man.
But then, she’d conceded at the end,
