Veronica Sattler - Wild Honey

A slow, lazy grin stole across his face as he watched her from beneath half-closed lids. She caught his casual scrutiny, and the blush deepened.

Lord, he did love a blusher! You hardly ever saw one these days. Fact was, he couldn’t recall the last time he had. Unless it had been Sarah, and kid sisters didn’t count.

The grin faltered as he recalled how long ago that would have been. He hadn’t seen Sarah in five years, hadn’t seen any of his family. His sister was in her second year of premed at Georgetown now. Hardly a kid anymore.

Maybe he should go there and try to see her. Would she even let him? Would she dare it? Maybe. She’d always been pretty gutsy.

Suddenly the monstrous inadequacy of relying solely on his sources at the Agency to keep informed about his own sister had him wanting to pound something with his fist. His fingers clenched and he ground his teeth.

“If…if the pain’s real bad, I think I could get you something more for it.”

The softly murmured offer of Nurse M. Terhune pulled him back to the moment. She’d stammered a bit; still jittery, then. Yet somehow, maybe because of its softness, he’d found her voice soothing. His grin reemerged.

“What’s the M stand for, Nurse M. Terhune?”

“Hold still, please.” Suddenly all thumbs, Randi tried to sound professional and concentrate on the bandaging.

Travis wasn’t about to let her ignore him. “Melanie, maybe? Margaret? No, scratch that—you don’t look like a Margaret. I’ve got it! How ‘bout Marcie?”

“Mr.—” Randi made a show of glancing at the name on his admittance form “—McLean, I don’t—”

“Travis, honey. Just Travis.”

Randi found herself unwillingly seduced by the liquid softness of his voice. Lord, the man was every bit as compelling as she remembered. Unable to stop herself, she risked a glance at his face.

A mistake. He was observing her with a casual indolence that reminded her of a well-fed lion basking lazily in the sun. The clear blue eyes, heavy-lidded and sensual, roamed her face, coming to rest on her mouth. As they did, his own curved into a slow, easy smile.

“Uh, Travis, the sooner you allow me to finish here—”

“Uh-uh, honey. Not fair. Now that you know my name, I reckon it’s tit for tat for me to know yours.”

The soft Southern accent had a teasing quality, which curled around the edges of her defenses and stole inside. Something began to unravel somewhere deep within, in a place Randi couldn’t name, a place she hadn’t known was there.

She looked quickly away, reaching for a pair of scissors on the tray.

“C’mon now, darlin’,” he cajoled. “Margie? Molly? Hey, how ‘bout Millicent? I know it’s old-fashioned, but I do believe Millicent’s makin’ a comeback.”

He was outrageous. And too persistent by far. Yet Randi felt a tug pulling at the corners of her mouth. She faced him squarely, hands on her hips.

“If I tell you, will you let me finish? We need to get you upstairs.”

“Upstairs? Like hell, lady! I’m walkin’ out of here!”

“In a few days, you mean.”

“In a pig’s eye, I mean!”

Randi remained prudently silent as she reached for her clipboard, eyeing him covertly as she did so. All evidence of the lazy cat was gone. Travis McLean had a no-nonsense look in his eye that said he meant business. She couldn’t imagine anyone daring to cross this man when he looked as he did now.

“Are we having a problem here?” Dr. Ames approached the gurney.

“Damn right there’s a problem! There’s no way in hell I’m stayin’ in this godforsaken place for more than….”

As Travis launched into a recitation of his grievance, Randi headed for the doors where a pair of paramedics were wheeling in the latest emergency. She was only too glad of the opportunity to get away. She caught terms like “scapula” and “clavicle” as McLean marshaled his arguments, and she felt a little sorry for Ames. Members of the medical profession often made the worst patients.

Still, there’d been no mention on the admittance forms of his being a doctor. Randi mused on this as she oversaw the immediate removal of the patient they’d just brought in—a fully dilated woman in premature labor—to the delivery room. There often wasn’t such information of course, not in ER. There frequently wasn’t time to record it.

She wondered if he was a doctor attached to the military in some way. That would account for his original destination tonight. Huh. Just her rotten luck that the fog had enveloped Bethesda, but not Hopkins!

After a brief exchange with the ob-gyn supervisor in the delivery room, Randi hurried back to her own station, wishing she didn’t have to. Not because she was tired from working extra shifts the past two weeks, although she was. Several unexpected absences among her staff, because of an outbreak of summer flu, had left them shorthanded, and she’d filled in. But that was nothing new. They all pitched in at such times; it was part of being professional.

No, Randi knew her reluctance to return had less to do with the ER than who was in the ER—a big blond Virginian with scandalous good looks, as Aunt Tess would have put it. Looks that had been part of Randi’s decision five years before to select him as the biological father of her child.

But only part of her decision, she reminded herself as she headed back the way she’d come. That his family background was solid had been another part. Not that Randi was a social snob, but if you came from a good family, she’d reasoned at the time, you had to come from a good genetic pool. A pool that was more likely to contain solid citizens than ax murderers, right?

And when Travis McLean had listed the occupations of his parents and grandparents on his application form at Dr. Burgess’s clinic, they’d read like a roster of the American Medical Association, for heaven’s sake! No wonder he’d been at Harvard Med.

What’s more, enrollment at such a school meant he had to have the intelligence Randi was looking for, so there was another part. Oh, yes, McLean had fit the bill to a tee.

She paused briefly outside the ER. Not only to drum up courage, but to say a small prayer that he’d already been taken upstairs. It really wasn’t like her at all to cave in this way when something went wrong; that was part of what made her a good ER nurse. But coping with medical emergencies was a far cry from having a hidden part of your past come up and hit you in the face!

Taking a slow deep breath, she again tried to make herself relax by thinking of her son. Adorable, wonderful, bright and loving Matt, who’d come into her life like a shining beacon of pure sunlight four years ago and given it meaning. Purpose. A future where there was safety and hope. And dreams that didn’t turn into nightmare.

Feeling a little like the young mother who’d just gone into the delivery room, Randi took another deep breath. She stepped toward the door just as it swung open in front of her. It was her assistant. Martha Pierson had had years of ER experience and hardly ever looked ruffled, no matter how hectic things got. Right now the look on her face hovered somewhere between exasperation and…amusement?

“Better come quick. That hunk’s refusin’ to cooperate, and the good doctor wants your help. Yours, and nobody else’s,” Pierson emphasized.

Randi didn’t need to ask who the “hunk” was. Yet she did take a second to wonder why Ames would specifically ask for her. More than wonder. Worry, to be exact. Had McLean made the connection she’d been dreading? Was he refusing to cooperate until he got some answers she wasn’t prepared to give? Her knees suddenly felt like jelly.

Pierson had been right about his refusing to cooperate. She could see that much from the single glance she risked as she made her way across the room.