he’d been funny and kind and gallant in that room, neither outrageous nor as arrogant as she’d come to believe during the years she’d worked with him. Because she’d been terrified that God would give her no more days after that one, and because there was something huge in life she was going to miss if she didn’t make love with that man right then, right there. Because he was devastatingly good-looking with those sometimes stormy, sometimes laughing eyes and the little cleft in his chin. For once in her life she’d wanted to do something wild and daring and exhilarating. She’d done it because she’d needed him.
“Nurse Matthews?”
Cait snapped back. “I’m sorry. What?”
“Would you like to pay attention here?”
“I was.” Her breath still felt short. But he’d already looked away from her, toward the interns who had gathered behind them.
“Okay, guys, this is what you’re not supposed to do when you’re with a patient—phase out on something personal,” he said to them.
Cait felt her face heat with embarrassment. “I didn’t…”
He shot her a sardonic look, the kind that only he could muster. He went on with his examination of the child.
“Coming?” he asked her as the others began leaving the room.
Cait refused to meet his eyes. “I’ll be right behind you.”
“Make it snappy.”
Out of nowhere, Cait felt anger bubble up in her. She gave him a sharp, little salute before she realized she was going to do it. She was fiercely glad when he looked startled.
They landed in Gilbert’s room next. The boy was back in bed, his color high. “Well,” she said quietly, “he appears none the worse for wear.”
“Questioning me again, Nurse?”
“Who, me? I wouldn’t dream of it, my being your subordinate and all.”
Satisfaction was something hot and sharp under the skin that wasn’t entirely unpleasant, she discovered when he seemed unable to respond. She liked it.
He gave her his shoulder, picked up Gilbert’s chart and addressed the interns again. That was when she saw Jared Cross hovering in the doorway. Cait stepped quickly aside when the psychiatrist motioned to her.
“You wanted to see me?” he asked.
She hadn’t expected him to get her note so quickly, or to act on it so promptly. “Yes.”
“I’ve got about twenty minutes until my first appointment. Do you have time now?”
Cait glanced back at Sam. He seemed oblivious to her now. She cleared her throat loudly, but he didn’t glance her way.
To hell with him, then. “Okay,” Cait said.
She matched Dr. Cross stride for stride down the corridor to his office at the end of the floor. To his credit, she thought he was mincing his steps a bit, allowing her to keep up. He was a good foot taller than her own five foot two. He was also a gentleman, of sorts. When they reached his door, he pushed it open and seemed to suggest she step through first when suddenly he made a move of his own. They hit shoulders in the threshold. Or at least, Cait thought, her shoulder nailed his upper arm.
“Sorry,” she said quickly. Then, in his office, she hesitated. “I, uh, wanted to see you in a professional capacity.” She felt her face flame.
Dr. Cross went to his desk and sat, lacing his fingers together and catching them behind his head. Rumor had it that he had found himself a pretty heiress and was happily besotted these days. Cait thought it showed. He seemed more relaxed than she had ever seen him.
Maybe that was what happened to a person when sex turned out right, she thought.
“I gathered that,” he answered. “Have a seat.”
“I don’t have a lot of time.” But she took the chair across from him. She desperately needed his help, but now that she was here, she faltered. This sort of thing was never supposed to have happened to her. “I don’t know where to start,” she murmured.
Cross brought his hands down. “Want me to do it for you?”
She blinked at him. “How can you? You don’t even know why I want to see you.”
“Try this on for size. You’re having a hell of a time getting back to the woman you were before the rest of Hines’s hostages escaped through the vent in that storage room, before he returned in time to keep you and Sam Walters from doing the same thing.”
“I…yes.”
“Now, suddenly, you’ll be going about your business and—wham!—blazing fury seems to come at you from out of nowhere.”
Cait sat up straight. “You’re good.”
He grinned and she liked him better for it. “I memorize well and I read all the books.”
“What books?”
“On post-traumatic stress disorder.”
She sat up straighter. “I don’t have a disorder.”
“Tell me what’s been happening to you lately.”
With the simple question, she felt something begin to shake inside her. Cait sank back in her chair again. “It’s not just Hines. He was crazy, a horrible person, but he’s gone.”
Cross nodded. “He’s in jail. Which, theoretically, should make you feel safe again. But you don’t.”
Cait shuddered. “People like him don’t happen to people like me, at least not twice in the same lifetime. And he’s incarcerated.”
“He was supposed to have been incarcerated once before.”
It was true, Cait thought weakly. Hines had disrupted the ribbon-cutting ceremony for the new maternity wing, then tried to kidnap the son of Crystal Bennett, the hospital fund-raiser. Already wanted for other crimes, he’d been remanded to the maximum-security prison in Lubbock. Somewhere between Mission Creek and Lubbock he’d escaped to follow the hatred in his heart right back to the hospital. He’d uprooted her life, not to mention those of several other people. But she and Sam had been the only ones held hostage in a room beneath his house. And then—
No, she couldn’t think of that again.
“Caitlyn?” Cross prodded.
She jumped. “I’m sorry. What?”
“You were saying?”
She felt herself flush. “I was about to say that I seem to be doing a lot of that lately—fading in and out. That’s what I meant. Hines is over, behind me. But I’m different.”
“Flashbacks?” he asked. “Do you experience flashbacks to your time in that underground room?”
She
