Kerry Connor - Beautiful Stranger

He’d never considered himself easily spooked, but this place was enough to get to him. As a result, he’d likely been placing more importance on his previously unseen watcher than was necessary. He had to smile at his own foolishness.

As he walked closer, Josh couldn’t help but notice that the woman was almost absurdly beautiful. He might have believed she was a statue carved by a great artist. Her face was that flawless. High cheekbones. A straight little nose. A ripe, full mouth. Dark brown hair brushed the tops of her shoulders, a few flyaway strands fluttering in the breeze.

Yet there was an aura of sadness around her as she sat there, alone and seemingly abandoned on the veranda. He wondered why she was here, what she was being treated for.

It was only when he’d almost reached the building that he saw what he’d been unable to from the distance. There was no expression on that beautiful face. Her eyes stared blankly in front of her.

Sympathy twisted his gut. She appeared completely unaware of her surroundings, lost in a world of her own. Evidently she hadn’t been staring at him after all.

He was about to look away when her eyes suddenly shifted and caught his.

A jolt of awareness surged through him, as though a charge of pure electricity had passed between them through their locked gazes. Her eyes widened slightly, seeming surprised to have made contact with his. And for one heart-stopping moment, he saw something burning in her fevered gaze, a raw emotion he knew too well.

Fear.

No. More like pure terror.

Then, just as suddenly as they’d met his, her eyes seemed to lose focus and slowly rolled away.

The moment couldn’t have lasted more than a few seconds, a brief enough time that he almost had to wonder if he’d imagined the whole thing. The pounding of his heart and the tension strumming through him told him he hadn’t. No imaginary moment could have caused such a visceral reaction.

He stood frozen, waiting to see what she would do next, wondering if he should go over and try to talk to her. If she needed help, there might be something he could do.

As he watched, her lips parted slightly.

He held his breath.

A bead of saliva slid out of the corner of her mouth and down her chin. She made no move to wipe it away.

He exhaled sharply. The woman clearly wasn’t conscious of her surroundings. He must have imagined whatever he’d thought he’d seen in her eyes.

Still, he couldn’t leave her sitting there with drool on her face. There didn’t appear to be any nurses or orderlies around. He could at least do that for her.

He took a step toward her.

“Bennett! You made it!”

Josh looked up to see Dr. Aaron Harris striding through the doors of the facility toward him. Josh eased his expression into a practiced smile. “Barely. For a while there I wasn’t sure they were going to let me onto the grounds.”

Aaron matched his grin and extended his hand. “Let me guess. You’re still driving that beat-up old wreck. How much duct tape does it take to hold that thing together these days?”

“Three rolls just about covers it,” he quipped. He wondered idly what Aaron would think if he knew what Josh really drove most of the time. The other man probably wouldn’t even believe it.

Aaron shook his head. “That’s why we have to get you out of that city hospital. You’re never going to make any real money working in the E.R.”

“Believe it or not, some people actually think there are more important things in life than getting rich and spending money.”

He might have imagined it, but for a second it seemed like the warmth in Aaron’s smile cooled slightly. “Same old Josh. Still trying to save the world, huh? Did that trouble in the E.R. have anything to do with that?”

Josh gritted his teeth, but kept his smile intact. The story of an E.R. doc slugging a patient’s husband in front of her had gotten enough play in the media that there probably wasn’t a single person in the Philadelphia area who hadn’t heard about it, especially when the husband in question had run crying to a lawyer.

The usual fury coiled in the pit of his stomach at the thought of that bastard. The man should be in jail, but Josh was the one facing a mess of trouble, on a forced leave of absence while the hospital decided what to do with him.

Rather than say any of that, he simply shrugged. “Oh, you know how it goes. Stressful environment, emotions running high. Things like that are bound to happen every once in a while.”

“Happily, I don’t. Dr. Emmons has done such a terrific job creating a peaceful environment for the patients here that it’s a great working environment for the staff as well. Beats the E.R. hands down.”

Dr. Walter Emmons, Josh knew from his research in preparation for this meeting, was the highly respected psychiatrist who ran Thornwood. “I have to admit, I was surprised when you called. We both know I’m not a psychiatrist.”

“Of course. But most of our patients are long-term residents who require care beyond their mental needs. With your experiences in emergency medicine, I doubt there’s too much we could throw at you that would surprise you. I think you’d be a valued member of our team.” Aaron shook his head. “Listen to me ramble on. Come on. Let me show you around.”

Josh felt the strain of keeping his smile in place, but Aaron didn’t seem to notice. No one ever did. With a polite nod, he followed him into the building.

As they walked, Aaron launched into a recitation of the wonders of Thornwood. Josh listened with half an ear. He already knew he had no intention of taking the job. He’d only come at Beth’s urging. She’d told him he was in no position to turn down any job offers out of hand when he might be in need of a new one fairly soon. Faced with that logic, he hadn’t been able to say no.

The job certainly seemed to suit Aaron. Josh hadn’t seen his old classmate since back in med school, but it didn’t look like he’d changed much. Still effortlessly smooth, still dressed to the nines. Josh wouldn’t be surprised if Aaron’s shirt had cost more than his entire outfit. Aaron had always been a little too slick for Josh’s tastes, but it seemed to work for him. Back in school, they’d been on friendly terms, but never particularly close. The last he’d heard about him were rumblings of some sort of trouble he’d gotten into at the hospital in Chicago where he’d done his residency. Busy with his own life, Josh hadn’t paid much attention at the time. Whatever the trouble might have been, it seemed like Aaron had landed on his feet.

And now he was the one with a job opportunity for an old classmate in trouble of his own. But Josh wasn’t looking for a cushy job where he could get paid well for doing little. He could tell he’d be bored out of his mind working somewhere like this.

Not to mention the place gave him the creeps.

The uneasy feeling had only increased when they’d stepped inside. An unsettling sensation slid across his skin. He suppressed a shudder.

He couldn’t quite explain the feeling, especially when the inside was less forbidding than the exterior. Though the building obviously showed its age, the facilities appeared well maintained. The first floor featured high ceilings and all those windows that let in the sunlight and made the space feel open and airy. The tiled floors beneath their feet gleamed. The formerly state-run hospital had been taken over by a private corporation a decade earlier, with the state now paying it to house patients who had nowhere else to go. From all appearances, the company that now owned Thornwood was doing a bang-up job, as well as pulling in a decent enough profit that they could still pay Aaron a better salary than a city hospital could.