Lori Wilde - Racing Against the Clock

Okay. Fine. He would try to cajole her into staying. That way, if she refused, he could let her go with a clear conscience.

“Why are you so adamant against spending the night?” Tyler asked. “What could it hurt?”

“I have an aversion to hospitals.” She rubbed her arms and he saw goose bumps rise on her skin. That’s when he realized her chemical burns were gone.

He shook his head, blinked and did a double take. He examined her arms and legs. Not a burn insight.

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

“Your burns have disappeared.” Now that really was strange. He frowned, shoved a hand through his hair and wracked his brain for a plausible explanation. A mistake on the X ray he could buy. Her spleen clotting itself off, while unlikely, wasn’t impossible. But now this?

Tyler felt as if he’d just fallen into The Twilight Zone.

What kind of chemicals had been in those vials? Curiosity gnawed at him. She was a complicated woman with disappearing symptoms. He told himself he needed for her to stay so he could get to the bottom of her odd healing, but in reality he wanted to find out who she really was.

Gently, Tyler drew the sheet around her shoulders to warm her. She shied at his touch as if afraid he might harm her. Her lip trembled and she turned her head away from him.

“Please, bring me a release form and I’ll exonerate you from all responsibility,” she said. “I just want to leave.”

“You think a piece of paper will keep me from worrying about you?” Tyler asked, disturbed because what he’d said was true. No matter how much a stubborn part of him longed to deny it, he cared about Jane Doe.

And that scared the living hell out of him.

“If you’re insistent on leaving can I at least call someone for you?” he asked.

“No.” She shook her head. “I…I don’t remember.”

He saw through her like glass. Whenever she lied, the tip of her nose reddened.

“How do you intend to get home? Your car was totaled in the accident.”

“I’ll walk.”

“Do you even know where home is?”

She didn’t answer.

Tyler clenched his teeth. “You didn’t have any identification on you. The paramedics searched your car but couldn’t find a purse. Do you have any money?”

“Are you offering a loan?” She quirked one eyebrow at him.

“Yes,” Tyler said, reaching for his wallet. A wad of cash should take care of the problem. He needn’t get anymore involved than that. “Except it’s a gift, not a loan.”

“Do you often offer needy patients money, Doctor?”

“No.” He hadn’t ever given money to a patient, but Yvette had. Many times. He’d often joked she was driving them into the poor house with her lost causes. His late wife had been a social worker with a marshmallow heart who’d been unable to resist any stray who showed up on her doorstep. He heard Yvette whispering in his ear, Help her.

“I’m special, then.” Jane Doe’s tone was sardonic but the look in her eyes was one of appreciative surprise.

His chest swelled with an odd emotion he couldn’t name. Their gazes locked and he knew it was true. He couldn’t say why or how but this woman was special to him and not just because she obviously needed him. Without even trying, she touched something deep inside him. Perhaps it was the sarcasm that hinted at her hidden vulnerability; perhaps it was her nervousness, perhaps it was because she looked a bit like Yvette—blond, petite, fragile.

Or perhaps it was his own loneliness that he saw reflected in those soft blue eyes. Peering through those cerulean depths and on past into her troubled soul was like staring into a looking glass.

“Yes,” he admitted. “You are special.”

She ducked her head, denying him further access to those tantalizing eyes.

“Please,” he said, extending five twenty-dollar bills to her. “Take the cash.”

“I can’t accept your money.”

She glanced up and he caught another glimpse into those too wise yet oddly naive eyes and drew in a breath. What he was about to suggest overstepped all boundaries of the doctor-patient relationship but he could not bear the thought of her wandering the streets hungry and alone.

He remembered the kind man in the desert who had saved his life when he was at his lowest point. Jane Doe was at that threshold now.

Here’s your opportunity to repay that karmic debt, Yvette’s voice niggled. Not only that, but giving this woman sanctuary is a chance to get the old Tyler back. I miss him. Don’t you?

Tyler clenched his jaw. Why her? Why now? She made him feel something again when he believed he’d lost all ability to feel tender emotions. And he did long to be the man he was before Yvette had died. Concerned, loving, compassionate. He’d forgotten how to be all those things.

This is your chance at redemption.

Offering Jane Doe a place to stay was the right thing to do, even though he feared prolonged proximity to her might alter his fate in ways he never imagined. He needed to do this. In memory of Yvette. In memory of the man he used to be.

“All right.” Tyler pocketed the money. “If you refuse to stay in the hospital and you won’t take my cash then there is only one option left.”

“And that is?”

It was now or never. If he hesitated, he would back out. Tyler took a deep breath and committed himself. “You’ll stay at my secluded beach house on Galveston Island. No one will bother you. You can rest, collect your thoughts and stay until you get your memory back. Is it a deal?”

She had no other choice but to say yes. She couldn’t go back home to Austin. It wasn’t safe. Daycon’s men would be watching her house. And she couldn’t talk to the police. They would make a phone call and discover she was the one responsible for torching Daycon Laboratories. Besides, Daycon was buddies with a rogue CIA operative. He would have no trouble locating her if she didn’t accept help. She had no money for a motel. She needed food and a good night’s sleep before trying to obtain another car so she could get to Marcus in New Mexico. Dr. Fresno’s offer was a gift from heaven.

Hannah gazed into Tyler’s sincere brown eyes and felt guilty for lying to him. But she didn’t know how far she could trust him and as long as she kept her name a secret it offered both of them some small measure of security.

“Why would you do that for me?” she asked.

He shrugged. “Maybe because you’re the most interesting case I’ve ever come across.”

She studied him a moment, trying to figure him out.

“Well?” he asked slanting his head and waiting for her response to his proposal.

“All right,” she agreed.

“There’s just one stipulation.”

Hannah groaned. She should have known there would be a catch. “What is it?”

“You allow me to perform a few more tests.”

Hannah hesitated. She wanted out of this place. Now. The longer she stayed, the more precarious her position became.

“I’ve got to know what happened to you,” Tyler insisted. “Why your spleen stopped bleeding. Why your chemical burns disappeared.”

I could tell you what I think might have happened, Hannah thought, but I don’t fully understand it myself.

Virusall could be responsible for her stunningly quick recovery. How, she did not know for sure, but the experiences she’d had with the drug in the lab indicated anything might be possible. It was a miraculously healing drug but it was also very unstable.

Fear rippled through her, but she pushed her anxiety aside. She didn’t have time to piece together what Virusall might have done to her. Not now.

When she’d accused Tyler of misreading the X rays and confusing her with another patient, she had done it to offer him an explanation. A rational possibility his scientific mind could accept. She couldn’t tell him the truth—that she had concocted a wonder drug proven to eradicate all viruses. She had scarcely believed it herself.