Veronica Sattler - Wild Honey

McLean was still sitting up on the gurney. He was wearing an expression that reminded her inexorably of Matt. His pose said he wasn’t budging.

Nearby stood an orderly with a wheelchair. Hospital regulations said wheelchairs must be used to transport even ambulatory patients from one ward to another. Unless they were so incapacitated they had to be taken by gurney.

Travis’s pose said he was taking neither. Well, that was what he thought!

“What’s the problem now, Doctor?” Randi placed her hands on her hips and managed to glare at their patient, figuring the best defense was a good offense. “Don’t tell me this one’s still giving us a hard time.”

Ames’s face bore none of the amusement she’d glimpsed in Pierson’s. The resident looked at Pierson now as she came up behind Randi. “You tell her, Nurse!” And then Ames rushed off toward a stretcher they were just bringing in.

Pierson complied. “Seems Mr. McLean’s not willin’ to cooperate until you give him some information, Nurse Terhune.”

Randi’s apprehension must have shown on her face. McLean unfolded his arms and traded the stubbornly locked jaw for a reassuring smile. “Hey, beautiful, nothin’ to get all hot ‘n’ bothered about.”

He reached out to give her nose a playful flick with his finger. At the unexpected touch, Randi jumped.

“Whoa, now, honey, settle down.” The smile widened, became the lazy grin she remembered all too well. “All I’m askin’, before I agree to let these turkeys trot me off upstairs like a good little patient, is what the M stands for, remember, sugar? Seems these, uh—” he glanced at Pierson “—co-professionals of yours aren’t allowed to tell me. Said you were the only one who could.”

Randi glared at him, more annoyed with the man for the scare he’d given her than his outrageous demand. The scare, which she couldn’t even admit to. Not to mention that unexpected touch. It had sent an unfamiliar current shooting straight to her toes.

“You’re pretty used to getting your way, aren’t you, Mr. McLean?”

The teasing light that entered his eyes had her wishing she could recall her words. “When I go after somethin’ I really want—” his eyes roamed lazily over her face—”yeah, I reckon you could say that.”

Randi drew herself up to make the most of her five feet, seven inches. Despite her height, she knew that if Travis McLean stood up, he’d dwarf her. She fixed him with her most formidable look. Her I’m-the-one-in-charge-here glare. “Mr. Mc—”

“Ah-ah,” he warned, wagging his finger teasingly at her. Behind her, Pierson snorted.

“I beg your pardon?” Randi was doing her best to retain a professional demeanor, but it was getting harder by the minute.

The grin was wider than ever. “It’s Travis, remember?”

He had to know how his grin did devastating things to any woman foolish enough to be in the vicinity.

A muffled sound had her glancing behind her. Martha Pierson was grinning, too. Foolishly, Randi thought. Solid no-monkey-business Pierson, who was happily married with five kids.

Damn the man! The sooner she got out of the ER, the better.

She faced him squarely, gave a curt nod. “Very well, Travis—”

“Hey, Randi!” A small boy with a baseball cap worn backward waved at her from the doorway to the waiting room. The rest of his attire consisted of a pair of cotton pajamas decorated with Berenstain Bears and severely battered high-tops, unlaced and minus socks.

“Robbie Spencer, what are you doing here in the middle of the night?” Robbie was the son of her next-door neighbor, and Matt’s best friend.

Robbie’s smile split his freckled face. “Mom’s havin’ our new baby, an’ Daddy couldn’t get holda Grandma in a hurry, so I got to come!”

Just then, a slender, pleasant-faced man put a hand on Robbie’s shoulder and bent to whisper something in his ear. Bob Spencer, Robbie’s father. After the brief exchange Bob glanced up. He saw Randi and waved.

Randi gave him a thumbs-up. Then father and son withdrew and the door closed behind them.

“Randi, huh?” Travis McLean’s drawl drew her attention back to him. He eyed her speculatively, but a teasing light still lingered in his eyes.

“Now, I do know Demerol does frightenin’ things to a body’s wits,” he continued, “but I believe I’m still lucid enough to recall that ‘Randi’ begins with an R. ‘Course, the boy could be dealin’ with a minor speech defect, I suppose, meanin’ to say ‘Mandy,’ when he really—”

“It’s Miranda! You lunkhead! Miranda, and Randi for short! Now are you satisfied?”

The blue eyes remained speculative as the grin she was beginning to detest reappeared. “Satisfied? My, my, sugar, you do ask the most interestin’ questions.”

Randi went beet red.

The grin broadened, and she took a step backward as he slid off the gurney and towered over her.

Lord, how tall was he? Six-four? Six-five? Too tall for her own comfort, she decided as he leaned over to whisper in her ear, “the thing is, darlin’, are you ready for the answers?”

Randi felt perspiration dampen her uniform. He was toying with her, she was sure of it. Toying like a cat with a mouse. But why? Had he recognized her, after all? Was he using this ridiculous banter to draw her out in some way?

Steady, she reminded herself as her knees again began to feel as if they wouldn’t support her. He doesn’t know anything, remember? Even if he does recognize you, he can’t suspect a thing beyond that.

She stiffened her spine, pointed authoritatively at the wheelchair waiting beside the patient orderly. “In!” she commanded. “Now.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Travis gave her a cocky salute and sauntered over to it. A stain of fresh blood had penetrated the gauze of his dressing; it would have to be removed and the sutures checked. Demerol or no, it had to be hurting him a great deal, yet he moved and acted as if he were socializing in somebody’s living room. She’d seen a lot of patients attempt to act unaffected by their pain, to appear brave in the face of it, but this was different. He’d put himself beyond it. Functioned as if it didn’t exist.

What sort of a man was he to be able to ignore pain that way?

The orderly began to wheel him away; when Travis turned and winked at her, Randi decided that maybe she didn’t want to know.

TRAVIS SAT in his hospital bed, grinding his teeth. He was ready to climb the walls. These jokers were set on keeping him here “at least till the end of the week,” he’d been told this morning. By Dr. Wallace Reston, the physician in charge, when he’d made his Monday-morning rounds.

Reston knew his father. He’d gone to med school with the great Trent McLean and still played golf with him once a month. This had allowed him to invoke a familiarity with Travis he wasn’t entitled to, and ask too damned many personal questions.

Not that Travis had answered them. The people he counted among those entitled to ask those questions, let alone receive answers, could be tallied on the fingers of one hand. The rest could go to hell.

It had been a long time since he’d felt the need to justify his actions to anyone but himself. The chosen few who’d gotten any explanations at all had received them out of love. Not curiosity, not obligation and definitely not the misconstrued familiarity that came of playing golf with his estranged father!

Oh, Reston had been discreetly courteous about it all. Very polite, as a matter of fact. Old school, Southern-style. Probably thought he was being smoothly oblique, too….