Beverly Bird - Doctor Seduction

Cait shivered and glanced at the hard plastic-and-metal chairs tangled together like some kind of absurd jungle gym in one corner. Then her eyes were drawn to the door, and the memories came rushing back….

“Let’s go, let’s go!” Hines shouted, waving his gun.

Cait took a step that way, then balked. The thought of leaving the room with him had cold sweat beading along her spine, between her breasts, under her arms. Then Dr. Walters was behind her and she couldn’t back up anymore, couldn’t get away.

“Do it. Just go ahead,” he whispered. “I’m right behind you. We need to placate him until I have time to think our way out of this. I won’t let anything happen to you.”

She’d believed him, Cait realized, had trusted him blindly. Probably because, for the first time in her life, she hadn’t been able to think her own way out of what was happening to her. Hines had forced them down the hall to a maintenance room and into a laundry chute there.

Now she went to the vent and placed her palm against the cool metal. Then she eased down to sit on the floor, pulling her knees up to her chest. She wasn’t sure what was supposed to happen here. Was she supposed to feel miraculously better for confronting this place? Well, she didn’t. She covered her face with her hands and closed her eyes.

Then she heard the door open.

For a single moment her heart seized. She was afraid to look to see who it was. She was suddenly, insanely sure that Hines was back to try again. He’d escaped. It was going to start all over again—except this time she was alone.

She kept her face covered, afraid to breathe. Then she recognized the tread of rubber-soled shoes on the linoleum. Hospital shoes. She pulled her hands away and opened her eyes. What she saw was very nearly worse than her imaginings.

Sam.

He didn’t notice her in the shadows. He made a guttural sound of anger in his throat and walked over to the air-conditioning vent, punching his fist into it hard. The metal rang. Cait let out a yelp. He jerked around and spotted her. “What are you doing here?” he demanded.

She’d die before she admitted she’d seen Jared Cross and he’d recommended it. “I could ask you the same question.”

“I asked you first.”

They both seemed to realize how juvenile that sounded. Sam looked away, and for a moment she thought he looked almost embarrassed. Then he went to the pile of boxes and began moving the ones on top. “I was looking for something.”

Cait astounded herself by snorting. “And then the vent did something to offend you?”

He stopped moving and looked at her as though she had changed color. “Damn it, would you stop doing that?”

“What?”

“Being sarcastic. It doesn’t suit you.”

“I don’t know about that. I never really tried it on before.”

“Well, you have now, and I don’t like it. So knock it off.”

“Correct me if I’m wrong, but I only report to you between the hours of eight and four. And that’s on a bad day. If I want to be sarcastic on my own time, that’s my choice.”

His eyes—they were the color of chocolate in the dim light, she thought—almost bugged. “You just did it again!”

Suddenly the fight went out of her. Cait slumped back against the wall and looked away. “Please. Just leave me alone.”

He was silent for a long time. “You’re not doing okay with any of this, are you?” he asked finally.

His voice was kind. She brought her chin up quickly and looked at him once more. “I’m doing great. You?”

“Terrific. Good. No problem.”

“Which explains perfectly why we’re both here.”

“I was looking for something,” he said again.

“Then get it and go. Don’t let me keep you.”

He sat on the floor across from her, instead. “You know what part I liked the most?”

She knew, somehow, that he was talking about the ideas for escape they’d bounced back and forth during their first few hours in their underground prison. What did it mean, that she was suddenly able to read his mind? “Which?”

“When you were going to hide in the ceiling pipes and drop down on him after I called him into the basement.”

Cait sniffed. That one had been her idea. “You wouldn’t have fit up there.”

“You’re too small to have done any damage to him. He would have thought a flea had landed on his back.”

She felt anger kick in her again. “So you said at the time. But I believe you called me a sparrow.”

“Flea, sparrow, same thing.”

“Tell that to the itchy sparrow.”

He stared at her again, then he laughed and shook his head. “You really have gone off your rocker.”

Cait stiffened. “I’m not the one going around beating up ducts.”

He ignored that. “I would liked to have seen it, though—you falling through the air like Wonder Woman.”

Suddenly she felt hot again. Her skin felt excruciatingly warm, all her senses heightened. “I believe she was a bit more substantial than I am.”

“‘I believe,”’ he mimicked. “That’s good. You’re sounding like you again.”

“I was an English major before I decided to go into nursing,” she said tightly.

“Why’d you change?”

“Nursing pays moderately better than teaching. Then again, teaching doesn’t demand interaction with arrogant God’s-gift-to-women doctors.”

He looked genuinely affronted. “I’m not arrogant.”

“You’re arrogant.”

“How am I arrogant?”

Cait pushed to her feet. She crossed to the door, but she wasn’t leaving. She stopped there and rested one shoulder against the frame, a wide, cocky grin on her face. “‘Looking for someone?”’ she mimicked him.

He watched her, mystified.

She left the door and turned around to face it. She put a simpering look on her face and tossed back an imaginary mane of hair. “‘As a matter of fact, I am. You,”’ she said in a falsetto.

When she turned around this time, she saw the light dawn in his eyes.

“Kimberlie Leon?” he asked. “You were too far away to hear what I said to her.”

“Obviously, not far enough.” Cait leaned back against the wall.

“Regardless. That wasn’t arrogance.”

“Okay. Cockiness, then.”

“I was flirting.”

“Well, if the way you slammed your office door was any indication, your technique needs work.” She came back at him quickly, because she hated the hot shaft of something unseen and inexplicable that hit her in the gut, something bizarrely like jealousy. “She was all over Kenny Estrada the moment you were gone,” she added.

“The intern?” Sam scowled. “She was?”

“She was.”

“I guess that took you down a peg.” He shot at her.

It had, actually. “Why would it?”

“You were flirting with him.”

She crossed her arms. “I don’t flirt.”

“Maybe not two weeks ago, but you were sure as hell doing it today.”

“No, I wasn’t.”

He got to his feet and proceeded to pick his steps across the room. He looked coyly out of the corner of his eye and gave a high-pitched little giggle as he tucked invisible hair behind his ear. “That’s flirting.”

Cait opened her mouth in outrage. Then a laugh came up from her belly. She clapped a hand over her mouth in an unsuccessful effort to stifle it, and then a sobering thought hit her. This was just the way he had been in that underground room. Whenever she’d started to come undone, he’d made her laugh until her panic had subsided.

Cait dropped her hand and turned around again to reach for the door handle. “I’m leaving.”

“By the way, you’re not less substantial than Wonder Woman,” he said suddenly, stopping her. “Not in all areas.”