So that was the great Dr. Harrison “Mac” MacKenzie,

the hospital hunk who was known far and wide throughout the county for his bedside manner. Jolene smiled to herself as she turned away. She could spot his type a mile away. He was a player.

In the next moment, the rear section of the emergency room was filled with another emergency.

“Kind of like when the Native Americans attacked the covered wagons in the old Westerns, isn’t it?” Dr. Mac said.

As the comment came from behind her, a shiver danced down Jolene’s neck and shoulders. Was he standing right on top of her? Jolene gave him a disparaging look before attending to a patient.

“Have I offended you somehow?” Mac asked.

“I don’t think this is the time to hit on me, Doctor,” Jolene told him crisply as she hurried away.

Mac was speechless. He’d been put in his place royally. Put in his place within a tiny, obscure box and had the lid slammed down on him. Tight.

His interest was seriously piqued….

Mac’s Bedside Manner
Marie Ferrarella

www.millsandboon.co.uk

To Patience Smith,

Welcome aboard

MARIE FERRARELLA

earned a master’s degree in Shakespearean comedy, and, perhaps as a result, her writing is distinguished by humor and natural dialogue. This RITA® Award-winning author’s goal is to entertain and to make people laugh and feel good. She has written over one hundred books for Silhouette, some under the name Marie Nicole. Her romances are beloved by fans worldwide and have been translated into Spanish, Italian, German, Russian, Polish, Japanese and Korean.

What’s Happening to

Bachelor #1:

Lukas Graywolf + Lydia Wakefield = Together Forever

IN GRAYWOLF’S HANDS (SIM #1155)

Bachelor #2:

Dr. Reese Bendenetti + London Merriweather = True Love

M.D. MOST WANTED (SIM #1167)

Bachelor #3:

Dr. Harrison MacKenzie + Nurse Jolene DeLuca = Matrimonial Bliss

MAC’S BEDSIDE MANNER (SSE #1492)

Bachelor #4:

Dr. Terrance McCall + Dr. Alix Duncan =???

The fall of Dr. McCall will occur in Silhouette Intimate Moments, December 2002

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter One

There was no doubt about it, Harrison MacKenzie thought. He was one very lucky man.

Mac walked down the corridor past Blair Memorial’s MRI lab. He nodded at a hospital administrator he recognized by sight, though not by name. He knew he was one of the fortunate ones. He liked what he did for a living and he was good at it. Very good.

His skill wasn’t an overstated, overblown egotistical assessment of his capabilities; it was simply a given, a fact. He made sure of it. There was no excuse for seeking middle ground or being content with half measures. Mac didn’t believe in riding on yesterday’s accolades, of which there were more than a few. Yesterday’s accolades wouldn’t help today’s patient, or tomorrow’s.

And that was his business, his passion: Helping today’s patient.

He stopped a moment at the vending machine, feeding it quarters in order to feed his own sweet tooth. A small dark chocolate bar did a high dive from its position on the rack, surrendering itself to the inevitable. Mac retrieved it and peeled back the wrapper with relish. He’d never gotten over his love of chocolate.

The people who came to him carried baggage—hidden or in plain sight—that when unpacked ultimately contained some sort of crisis of self-esteem. Large or small, the content was always the same. Quite literally, they needed his help to face the world, needed him to rid them of some superficial flaw that had managed to get the better of them and interfered with their daily lives.

Never mind that they might be people of worth beneath their skins, they needed this badge, this emblem, this shield that he could give them through the skillful manipulation of his scalpel. All this in order to feel better about themselves.

So to the very apex of his ability, Mac gave it to them and let the magic of change do the rest. For his talent, he collected a very sizable fee.

The children were another matter.

The children he operated on came to him broken, scarred, either from birth or through some kind of horrific accident. Those were the cases that both broke his heart and buoyed his spirit. Because he could help. In some fashion, some manner, he could help. He made sure of that.

And he gave a piece of himself to everyone. Because he remembered Carrie.

Remembered his effervescent older sister and how after the car accident, the very light within her eyes had disappeared, like a candle being blown out by the wind. It had happened the night after the prom. The windshield had shattered, sending glass flying everywhere. Large shards had slashed one side of her face like a rapier, disfiguring her.

Traumatized, Carrie withdrew from the world and, most hurtfully, from him. She chose instead to exist behind her scars like a wounded animal imprisoned by circumstances, unable to free herself of the shackles fate had imposed and she had reinforced. Shame changed her from the outgoing, loving young woman she was to someone he didn’t begin to know. Eventually, when there was enough money to pay the fees, it was the unrelenting efforts of a plastic surgeon that had set Carrie free and returned her to the world of the living.

It was the kind of a difference he wanted to make. The kind of difference, Mac liked to think, that he did make. It didn’t matter if the families of the children could pay. He was paid in currency far dearer than paper or coin could ever be. His payment was the genuine smile of a child when he or she first looked in the mirror and truly liked what they saw.

Crumpling the wrapper, Mac tossed it into a wastebasket as he turned the corner. Reflexes had him coming to a skidding halt, narrowly avoiding an unintentional christening of his newly purchased shoes.

Jorge Ruiz plunged his mop into the bucket, dragging the latter back into a safety zone. The smile he flashed was neither sheepish nor apologetic, bordering instead on the amused.

“Sorry, Dr. Mac, you on duty today?” the ebony skinned orderly asked mechanically, knowing the answer before it was given. Jorge knew everything there was to know about the operation of one of Southern California’s most respected hospitals.

Mac nodded, then looked at his watch. “For another five minutes, Jorge, and then I’m off.”

It was Wednesday, known far and wide to a host of doctors as their unofficial day off. Mac’s observance of the day entailed keeping his office closed, but he still put in an E.R. shift, one of two he did on a weekly basis. He did more when a space needed covering.

Wednesdays was also the day when he liked to schedule most of his more difficult operations.

However, today had turned out to be incredibly light. His last patient had been seen to three hours ago, heavily bruised but now in possession of a new, far more delicate nose. The E.R. was quieter than a stadium two hours after a championship game had been lost, and Mac was looking forward to taking out Lynda Rogers, a curvaceous pharmaceutical representative for the Tyler & Rice Drug Company. He’d run into her at the beginning of the week when they’d shared a stuck elevator for the space of twenty-five minutes.

The ordeal had been far from unpleasant. Lynda, it had turned out, had a fear of small places and had literally clung to him for the duration of the elevator’s immobility. By the time it was running again, he’d gotten all her vital statistics, half her family history and knew he had an exciting evening ahead of him once they got together.

Which by his watch was in a little over four hours.

“Heads up, people,” Wanda Hanlon, the formidable-looking head nurse, called out as she replaced the receiver in its cradle and came around from behind the centrally located desk. At six-one, Wanda had a commanding presence the moment she entered a scene. Her booming voice did nothing to negate that impression. “We’ve got a crowd coming in.” She frowned, shaking her salt-and-pepper head.

“Some party-goers tried to see how many of them could fit on a balcony. The fools got up to twenty-three before the whole thing just collapsed under their weight.”

“Damn.” Jorge whistled and leaned on his mop, amused. “What makes people so stupid?”

“In this case, probably more than their share of cheap wine.”

The comment, stated in a soft voice that made Mac think of a silk scarf being lightly slipped along bare skin, came from behind him.

Turning, he saw a petite nurse with short, straight blond hair and flashing green eyes. She looked as if she had to place rocks in her pockets to keep from being blown away whenever the annual Santa Ana winds swept in from the California desert. At six-four, he could have easily walked right into her and not noticed unless he was deliberately looking down.

Mac’s mouth curved in appreciation. The woman didn’t smile in response.

First time that had happened, he thought.

“Not a very charitable attitude,” he observed.

The nurse spared him a half shrug. “No, but probably an accurate one.”

Aware that Jorge was taking this all in as if it were a spectator sport played out for his benefit, Mac opened his mouth to say something else, but the woman was already walking away as if he hadn’t even been there.

That surprised him even more. Her attention appeared riveted to the rear doors that would spring open any second, ushering in gurneys bearing wounded cargo.

Bemused, Mac shifted his gaze to Jorge. “And who was that little bright ray of sunshine?”

Jorge had been at Blair ever since it first opened its doors nearly thirty years ago. Unofficially he was known as the go-to man, an eternal source of information. He was also the man who could mysteriously come up with things that Administration maintained couldn’t be obtained for a variety of reasons and certainly not without a mountain of paperwork. Reasons never stopped Jorge, and paperwork was something that never obstructed his path. Mac had come to regard the man as nothing short of a national treasure.

“Pretty little thing,” Jorge agreed. Two even rows of gleaming white teeth reinforcing the pleasure he received from observing the woman. “Her name’s Jolene DeLuca. Fresh from San Francisco General. Divorced. Has a two-year-old daughter named Amanda. Lives near her mother, Erika. Erika’s a widow.”

Amused, Mac asked. “What’s her shoe size?”

Jorge kept a straight face. “Dunno, but I’m working on it.”

Mac shook his head in pure delight. “Tell me, Jorge, is there anything that goes on in this place that you don’t know?”

Jorge didn’t even pretend to think the question over. “Nope.” Eyes the color of midnight met Mac’s. “You wouldn’t be asking me if you thought I didn’t know.”

“You’re right, I wouldn’t. Thanks for the Cliff’s Notes.” Mac turned away, about to head in the direction of the rear doors.

“Oh, Dr. Mac, one more thing,” Jorge called after him. Mac looked at him over his shoulder, one brow raised in silent query. “Nurse DeLuca doesn’t much care for doctors.”

“Then she’s in the wrong profession.” Although that would explain the frosty shoulder, Mac decided. It was a condition, he was confident, that would change in the very near future. He’d never met a frosty shoulder he couldn’t warm up. Grinning, Mac gave the older man a two-finger salute. “Thanks, I’ll keep that in mind.”

Jorge went back to cleaning up the mess that had been left by a nine-year-old. The latter had discovered a neglected Easter basket filled with six-month-old, slightly melted chocolate and had decided to consume the entire contents in one sitting rather than share it with his older sister.

Mac noted that the nurse with the frosty attitude had sought out Wanda’s company. Probably thought she was “safe” there, he mused as he approached her.

By all rights, he knew he was free to go home and if he moved quickly, he could make good his escape before any of the ambulances arrived with the inebriated party-goers. But the world of medicine wasn’t something he chose to escape. He hadn’t worked damn hard to become a doctor just to shirk off the mantle at will. Being a doctor didn’t end the moment his shift was over or when he exited through the hospital’s electronic doors.

As far as he was concerned, being a doctor was like his being of Scottish descent. It was a twenty-four-hour deal. He was a Scotsman waking and sleeping. The same could be said of his being a physician. That meant helping whenever he could.

The rear doors flew open.

He was on.

So that was him, Jolene thought, walking away from the two men and toward the hospital’s rear doors. That was great Dr. Harrison MacKenzie, known far and wide throughout the county for his bedside manner. Both in and out of the hospital, to hear Rebecca Wynters tell it. And tell it and tell it.

Jolene smiled to herself. Rebecca was the reason she’d gotten this position at Blair in the first place, so she couldn’t be too hard on the woman. And besides, Rebecca was her friend, her very good friend. They went all the way back to third grade together.

Although at times, when Jolene thought of the romantic entanglements her friend got into, it seemed as if Rebecca hadn’t acquired any more brains since they played on the swings together in the schoolyard. She still fell for looks and forgot to factor in anything else—like character.

But then, she supposed on the plus side, Rebecca didn’t have a bad marriage behind her. Just a string of relationships that didn’t work out. Like the one with Dr. Wonderful. Although to hear Rebecca tell it—and she did—the tall plastic surgeon still owned that title. Rebecca had gone out with Harrison MacKenzie several times and had nothing but breathless words to say about him, even after they stopped seeing each other. Her eyes seemed to glow whenever she mentioned his name.

Jolene shook her head. Some people never learned.

However, that group didn’t, fortunately, include her. As far as she was concerned, Dr. Harrison MacKenzie was a player. She could spot one a mile away now.

Too bad her eyesight hadn’t been that good before she’d gotten involved with Matt and put him through school, she thought.

But then, she wouldn’t have had Amanda. Her little girl was worth any humiliation Jolene had had to endure. Like finding her husband breaking in his new couch after office hours with his squeaky voiced, mammary gland endowed receptionist.

Straw that broke the camel’s back, Jolene thought ruefully. At least her experience with Matt had taught her well. And if it hadn’t, her three years at San Francisco General would have. Doctors thought themselves a breed apart from the rest of humanity. The rules of society didn’t apply to them except when they wanted them to. They certainly believed themselves to be two cuts above the nurses they dealt with. And she was first and foremost a nurse, the way her mother had been before her and her grandmother before that.

It was what she was, Jolene thought as she watched the doors and waited for them to spring open, and what she would always be.

If she didn’t have Amanda to provide and care for, Jolene would have opted to go work in a third world country where her dedication and knowledge would have been truly appreciated and there wouldn’t have been a host of overbearing doctors to deal with. Just perhaps one within a thousand-mile radius.

Her grandmother had been such a dedicated woman in her youth, selflessly giving herself up to the hard life found in underdeveloped regions in Africa. She’d been a Red Cross nurse when her grandfather had met her.

Jolene smiled to herself. Her grandfather had been the one doctor that was the exception to her rule.

Just then, the rear doors burst open.

The next moment, the rear section of the emergency room was filled with the sight, sounds and smell of what had been a near fatal disaster.

“Kind of like when the Native Americans attacked the covered wagons in the old Westerns, isn’t it?”

The comment came from directly behind her. A shiver danced down her neck and shoulder blades in response to the whiff of warm breath that accompanied his words.

What was he, standing right on top of her?

Turning almost all the way around, Jolene saw that Rebecca’s knight in tarnished armor had somehow gotten directly behind her without her noticing. Served her right for letting her thoughts wander.

Jolene turned back toward the incoming gurneys a split second after giving the man a disparaging look.

“Except that we’re supposed to help them, not shoot at them,” she retorted icily.

Nurses and doctors were pairing themselves off, bracketing gurneys and the attendants that came in with them. Mac paused just long enough to look quizzically at the nurse with the killer body. “Have I offended you somehow?”

“I don’t think now’s the time to hit on me, Doctor,” she told him crisply. She was already hurrying away from him. “We have work to do.”

For a moment Mac was speechless. He’d been put in his place royally. Put in his place within a tiny, obscure box and had the lid slammed down on him. Tight.

His interest was seriously piqued.

But interest was going to have to wait. Though gifted at multitasking from an early age, Mac gave the emergency situation his entire focus. He fell into place beside the fourth gurney as it came through the doors and began shooting questions at the young female paramedic closest to him.

For the next hour, it felt as if someone had unleashed a dam. An endless stream of injured party-goers kept coming and coming. Each time it seemed as if that had been the last of them, another ambulance arrived, bearing another casualty.

“What are we, the only hospital in the area?” one of the doctors who had been called down groused.

Overhearing as she hurried to another bed, Wanda answered, “We’re the only ones whose trauma area is equipped to handle this kind of volume. Dr. Mac, they need you in Trauma Room Three,” she called out.

Mac looked at the nurse practitioner working with him on a twenty-year-old woman who seemed to have every part of her body pierced with something. The piercing in her thigh hadn’t been of her choice. He and Martha had worked for over ten minutes, making sure the wound the vocal party-goer had sustained wouldn’t begin to gush again. It appeared to be stable.

“Go ahead,” Martha urged. “I can handle this. It’s all over but the shouting.”

Considering that the young woman they were working on was hurling four-letter words at them regarding the man who’d thrown the party, Mac thought it rather an apt description of the situation.

“I’m all yours,” he told Wanda, hurrying behind her.

“Be still my heart,” the woman quipped, covering her ample chest with a rubber gloved hand. She brought Mac to a man, who looked as if he’d been on the bottom of the pile in the pyramid after the balcony’s collapse.

This, Mac quickly assessed, was going to take more than simple suturing and cleaning.

Someone brushed against his elbow in the tight space around the gurney and as he automatically looked, his eyes met the new nurse’s.

“How are you holding up?” he asked.

She seemed to take the question as an affront to her abilities. “Fine.”

Mac felt as if he’d just been fired on at point-blank range.

He looked at Wanda, who shrugged in response to his silent question. She didn’t seem to know what was wrong with the new nurse, either.

For the following three and a half hours, Mac found himself hip deep in sutures, X rays, blood and chaos. There was no time to think, only to react and pray that responses—correct responses—were ingrained. Several times during the frenetic dance from patient to patient, Mac had looked up to see the new nurse close by, ministering to the wounded.

Twice they found themselves working over the same injured victim.

She worked well, he noted. And quickly, as if she’d been in these situations countless times before. He’d known new nurses to buckle under pressure. But then, he remembered, Jorge had said she was a transfer from San Francisco General. That made her somewhat seasoned.

He couldn’t help wondering why she’d transferred. She was obviously good at her job, The brittle voice she’d directed at him was nowhere in evidence when she spoke to a terrified woman, who was afraid she was going to lose her leg. Jolene stood, holding the woman’s hand as he worked feverishly to stabilize the woman in order to rush her into surgery.

“Okay,” Mac announced the moment Wanda told him there was an O.R. free, “she’s ready to go up.”

Frightened brown eyes shifted toward him. “Am I going to lose it?” the woman cried, hysteria barely contained in her voice.

“Not a chance,” he told her, smiling. “You’ll be dancing in three months.”

His words earned him another cool look from Jolene as she helped push the gurney out into the hall and toward the elevator. Now what had he said?

He had no time to ponder on it. Someone else was calling for him. Stripping off the yellow paper gown, he slipped into the one that Martha Hayes was holding out for him.

“Let’s roll,” he said to the young nurse.

Eventually, just as Mac’s back was beginning to ache in fierce protest—reminding him of the strain he’d received over a dozen years ago on the football field—the chaos receded as abruptly as it had begun.

He glanced over toward the rear doors, holding his breath, unwilling to release his hold on the adrenaline that was keeping him going.

The doors remained closed.

“That’s the last of them, Dr. Mac,” Wanda told him wearily.

Mac rotated his neck, trying to reduce the tension that had knotted itself there. “Gee, just when we were beginning to have fun,” he muttered.

With relief, he shed the last of an endless series of yellow paper gowns he’d hastily put on these last few hours and then glanced at his watch. The balcony collapse had eaten away his time.

So much for a leisurely pace, he thought. If he was particularly quick about it, he had just enough time to go home, shower and change before he had to leave again.

As he turned to throw away the last gown, Jolene passed him on her way to the other end of the E.R. She spared him a look that could have served as the standard for temperatures used in cryogenic refrigeration.

Mac looked at Wanda. “Are there icicles on me?”

Wanda laughed, pouring herself a mug of coffee that had to be thicker than plasma by now. “She doesn’t care for doctors.”

He watched the way Jolene’s trim figure moved as she walked. Somewhere, there had to be a mold in God’s supply closet marked Perfect. “So I’ve heard.”

Wanda noted the way he looked after the other woman. She knew that look. It had interest written all over it. “But she’s a damn good nurse.”

“Looks it,” he agreed. He wasn’t thinking about the woman tending to his fevered brow. Not in that context, anyway.

Wanda chuckled and shook her head. “You’re wasting your time, Dr. Mac. That’s one lady who isn’t interested in you playing doctor.”

He grinned. “Yet,” he corrected.

Wanda counted herself among the number who formed Harrison MacKenzie’s fan club. Not because of his male appeal or the sexy way he could look at a woman—Wanda had been happily married to the same man now for thirty-two years—but because Dr. Mac was good people. The best. And excellent at what he did. She’d seen him walk that extra mile or so on more than one occasion. For that reason, she didn’t want to see his ego bruised.

“Dr. Mac, I wouldn’t want to see you fall flat on your—” Tilting her head, her eyes washed over his slim hips and taut posterior. She grinned broadly as she concluded. “Face.”

He patted her arm, still watching Jolene as she disappeared behind a curtained area. “Not to worry, Wanda. I have no intentions of doing that.”

“To stay on the safe side, I won’t watch.” Wanda laughed, turning back to her work.

Mac, on the other hand, had never played it safe. Not on this playing field at any rate. He didn’t intend to start now.

Chapter Two

Mac had almost missed him.

In a hurry to get back into his civilian attire so he could get home in time for his date, Mac had walked right by the supply closet and almost missed the sound entirely.

It wasn’t as if there was no other noise within the area. Even an E.R. at rest still hummed with the regular sounds of human activity.

But this sound was different.

This was whimpering—like a small, wounded animal that was afraid of being found.

Mac stopped, listening for a direction, a source to the sound and abruptly realized that he had walked right by it without knowing it.

Backtracking, he paused before the supply door, listening more closely.

Debating.

If he was wrong, if the sound he heard wasn’t the kind caused by fear but instead a little squeal of pleasure escaping, then he would be intruding on territory he himself had traversed more than once. Within each hospital there were little out of the way pockets to which members of the staff occasionally escaped whenever they found themselves being drawn together by feelings that couldn’t be put on hold.

He listened intently. No noise. Maybe he’d been mistaken after all.

Mac was all set to chalk the whole thing up to his imagination when the sound came again, this time even more muffled than before. Even more distressed.

Not his imagination, he thought. He just hoped he wasn’t about to walk in on something he shouldn’t.

Holding his breath, Mac slowly eased the door open and took a quick look inside the unlit, almost airless enclosure.

At first glance, there appeared to be no one there. Only shelves of neatly stacked bed linens and blankets crowding against one another.

And then he saw him. A little boy of no more than about five. If he was six, it was a particularly small six.

The boy was huddled on the floor in the far corner of the closet, his head buried in a towel, the towel firmly pressed against his knees.

Well, that would explain the muffled sound, Mac thought. But not what the boy was doing there in the first place.

Mac glanced again at his watch. Minutes were melting away and so was his safety margin. At this rate, there wasn’t going to be time for a shower. Probably the only thing he could manage would be to change his shirt. If he left now.

The debate whether to leave or to linger a few more minutes was over with in less than a heartbeat. There were more important things right now than getting a clean shirt.

“Hey partner,” Mac said softly, edging his way into the small area, “trying out our towels to see if they’re soft?”

The small, dark head jerked up, then down again, as if the boy had remembered something and pressed his face against the towel again. He said nothing. Mac could have sworn the boy was trying to disappear into the very weave.

Feeling the wall, Mac found the light and flipped it on, then closed the door behind him. He took a couple of more steps toward the boy, approaching him the way he might a frightened, wounded animal he didn’t want to scare away.

“Oh, I get it. You’re the strong, silent type.” Standing in front of him now, Mac crouched down before the boy, who seemed to physically shrink away even further. “You know, you’re going to suffocate if you burrow any further into that towel.” Mac addressed his words to the top of the boy’s dark head. “I’m Dr. Mac. They let me play here sometimes. What’s your name?”

There was no response.

Mac took it in stride. Shyness was not something new to him.

“Nameless, huh? Okay, Nameless, I know there’s got to be someone looking for you so why don’t we blow this Popsicle stand and get out where they’ve got a better chance of seeing you?”

Still holding the towel to part of his face, the boy raised his head, allowing one dark eye to warily look up at Mac.

There was a bloodstain slowly coming through the corner of the towel closest to the boy’s face. The boy was hurt. Had he come in with the balcony victims and had somehow been missed?

Mac didn’t think that very likely. The youngest person treated from the party had been a nineteen-year-old. This one didn’t look old enough to spell “balcony,” much less be on one while a bunch of so-called adults did their best to emulate a frat house prank.

Mac deliberately kept his voice calm, cheery, knowing that anything less would send the boy withdrawing even further into himself. A traumatized patient was just that much harder to deal with.

He thought about his nephew and pretended he was talking to Kirby. His sister’s youngest had always been more than a handful.

“Ah, I see an eye. Is there another one on the other side?”

Gently Mac began to coax the towel away from the boy’s face. The bandage that was barely resting against the little boy’s cheek had been applied by an amateur, very possibly the boy himself, and was about to come off any second. There was blood, both dried and fresh all along the small face.

Whatever had happened, Mac judged, had happened fairly recently.

When he reached for the bandage, the boy pulled back, his eyes wide, frightened. Mac waited a beat.

“C’mon, Nameless, let me see. I’m a better doctor than I look.” His eyes met the boy’s and his tone softened even more. It was soft, comforting. Questions filled his head, but they could wait for a little while. “I won’t hurt you, I promise.”

The boy whimpered again in fearful anticipation. He was shaking, Mac realized, but he didn’t shrink away this time and allowed himself to be examined.

It wasn’t pretty. There was a four-inch jagged laceration running along his left cheek. It had just missed his eye.

Mac felt like someone had stuck a red-hot poker in his stomach.

“You’re not part of the people who just came in, are you?” he murmured. It was a rhetorical question. The boy stared at him with wide eyes. “No, I guess not.” An urge to hug the boy swept over Mac, but he knew that would only frighten him even more. No sudden moves, no matter how altruistic. “Did someone do this to you?” The boy’s silence answered Mac’s question for him. Had it been an accident, he was certain that the boy, frightened or not, would have volunteered the information. “Okay, come with me. We’re going to make you good as new.”

Mac didn’t bother adding that the promise couldn’t be fulfilled immediately, that it would take some time and more than one operation to make things right, but those were details a frightened little boy didn’t need to hear right now. What he needed most was comfort.

He could do that much.

Very gently, he picked the boy up in his arms. Turning, Mac left the confines of the supply closet and walked out into the corridor.

The first person he saw was Nurse Icicle. It figured. But he didn’t have time to look around for someone else, someone he actually worked well with. The boy needed to have this tended to now, before an infection set in. If it hadn’t started to already.

Reaching out, Mac caught her by the shoulder before the woman could continue hurrying away to another trauma room.

“Jolene, right?”

She recognized the voice immediately. Shrugging him off, she squeezed out a terse “Nurse DeLuca,” between her teeth as she turned around.

And stopped dead.

Her eyes widened as she looked at the frightened little boy in Mac’s arms. Her mother’s heart twisted a little within her chest. A child in distress always got to her. “What happened to him?”

“Not sure,” Mac replied glibly, then looked down at the small being he was holding against him, his voice comforting as he added, “but we’re going to undo it, right, Nameless?”

Jolene stared at the world-class Romeo in front of her, torn between her readiness to dislike him and what she saw. “You don’t even know his name?”

She looked around to see if there was a worried parent hovering around somewhere close by, but there were only the same players she’d been seeing for more than the last three hours.

No one looked as if they’d lost anything but time and some skin.

He really, really didn’t care for her tone or the cool way she regarded him. As if he’d gotten his degree from the back of a comic book. But now wasn’t the time to put her in her place or to even find out just what her problem actually was.

“I know he’s bleeding and needs help. Anything else we can look into later.” He nodded past the regular rows of beds within the E.R. kept for standard cases and toward the trauma rooms. “Are there any beds available down here?”

Jolene thought for a second. “They just took two more up for surgery a few minutes ago. I think Trauma Room Two is free.” The victims had been doubled up by twos and threes, gurneys wheeled into the rooms serving as beds rather than just used for transport.

“Room two it is,” he announced cheerfully to the boy who was now wrapped around him like a small gibbon monkey around a tree, holding on for dear life. Looking over the boy’s head, Mac lowered his voice. “I’d like your help, Nurse DeLuca—unless of course you have some icebergs you need to create.”

Jolene pressed her lips together, stifling the retort that had sprang up in response. “This way.” She turned on her crepe heel and quickly led the way to the room that Jorge had only now freshly sanitized.

Once inside, she closed the door behind Mac, then hurried over to the bed as the boy was placed there. He began to whimper again.

Rather than step back the way she fully expected him to, she saw Mac take the boy’s hand in his.

“It’s going to be all right, Nameless, I promise.” Mac carefully made the boy as comfortable as possible. “You know, you’re about my nephew’s age. His name is Kirby.” He kept talking to the boy as if they were old friends, hoping to put him at ease. “Kind of a funny name for a kid, but I suspect he’ll grow into it. What do you think, Nameless? Think he will?”

The boy took a deep breath, then let it slowly out again. His small chest quavered slightly. “Tommy.”

Breakthrough, Mac thought.

He looked at the boy innocently. “You think he should be called Tommy?” Mac pretended to think the choice over. “Yeah, that’s a pretty cool name. Maybe I’ll ask him if he wants to change his name to Tommy.”

“No,” the boy contradicted softly. “My name.”

Mac maintained a serious expression as he asked, “You want to change your name to Tommy?”

For the first time, there was a hint of a smile on the small boy’s face as he looked up at him. “No, my name is Tommy.”

“Ah.” Nodding sagely at the revelation, Mac solemnly took the boy’s hand in his and shook it. “Glad to meet you, Tommy.” He inclined his head toward the boy. “I’ve got to admit that Tommy sounds a lot better than Nameless.” Still smiling, though this time it was purely for the boy’s benefit and not easy, Mac looked into the boy’s eyes. “Who did this to you, Tommy?”

She’d been grudgingly giving him points for his behavior toward the boy, but the insensitive, not to mention possibly incorrect nature of the question had Jolene taking offense for the boy’s absent parents. “You can’t just assume—”

The woman was really beginning to get on his nerves. Not even sparing her a glance, Mac held his hand up to silence her. His entire attention was focused on the boy. He needed to bridge this gap that existed between Tommy and the rest of the world.

“You can trust me, Tommy,” Mac assured him softly. “I’ll make sure it doesn’t happen to you again.”

A shaky sigh came from the boy’s lips and then he pressed them together before raising his eyes to Mac’s. His lower lip trembled, as if he was struggling against the urge to cry.

It was clear that he didn’t want to say anything, was afraid of saying something, whether because he thought he would be punished, or that something more dire would happen to him. To Mac, it didn’t matter. What mattered was that the boy was afraid and that he had been harmed. And that he never should be again.

Tommy seemed to search his face before lowering his eyes again.

“Hugo,” the boy said so quietly that for a moment, it seemed to Mac that he’d imagined it. And then Tommy raised his head again, his eyes bright with unshed tears. “Am I gonna look like a monster?”

Finally something he could control in this awful scenario. There was no hesitation in his voice whatsoever. “No, absolutely not, Tommy. You’re going to be the same good-looking guy you always were.

“Nurse DeLuca,” he uttered Jolene’s title deliberately, his smile never wavering for Tommy’s benefit, “do you think you can put your disdain for me on hold long enough to bring me a suturing tray?”

Without waiting for her affirmative reply, Mac went on to enumerate the rest of the supplies he was going to need in order to begin the first phase of Tommy’s recovery.

He’d almost had her.

Watching Harrison MacKenzie interacting with the boy, she’d almost been touched by his behavior.

But then when he looked at her, every single warning signal in her body went on the alert. This was the arena she was accustomed to. Being treated like little more than a semiliterate lackey by a doctor.

Jolene stiffened her back automatically.

“Yes, Doctor,” was all she said in response as she turned on her heel. She went to retrieve the items he was going to need.

“Good as new,” Mac promised Tommy again as Jolene walked out, knowing that a child’s retention ability numbered in the seconds when it came to fear.

His sister Carrie had gone on to marry a successful stockbroker and along the way had provided him with two nephews and a niece. Mac had instantly evolved into a doting uncle. The trio had given him a broad learning spectrum from which he’d picked up a great deal more insight into dealing with kids than he’d gotten from either his child psychology courses and even his short rotation in pediatrics.

Tommy wrapped his small fingers around Mac’s hand and nodded, his eyes if not trusting, at least a little hopeful.

For now, it was the best Mac could ask for.

Wanda stuck her head in just as he was finishing up his work. She’d observed Jolene entering the room with a suture tray earlier. It was Wanda’s custom to stay on top of the new personnel—be they doctors or nurses—when they joined her E.R. team until she was sure that were they were well integrated into the whole.

“Everything okay in here?” she asked cheerfully. And then her milk-chocolate complexion seemed to blanch when she saw the patient. “Tommy?”

Mac stripped off his gloves, tossing them into the trash. He flashed a wide smile at the boy. “You know this trooper?”

“Sure I know him. This is Tommy Edwards.” There was an infinite amount of compassion in her eyes as she looked at the boy. “His mother, Jane, was a nurse here. One of my best.”

That would explain why the boy had turned up here, Mac thought. He moved away from the boy and closer to Wanda. “Was?”

Wanda lowered her voice. That was a whole other story. “I’ll tell you later.”

“Mom died,” the boy said with the on-target honesty of a child.

Wanda came closer to the bed. She threaded her hand through the boy’s silky dark hair. Her heart ached just to look at him. “What happened, Tommy?”

“He sustained a laceration,” Mac said simply for the boy’s sake, avoiding technical terms that he knew would only frighten him. “He said Hugo did it.” Turning his back to the boy so he couldn’t hear, Mac took Wanda aside. “That his father?”

Wanda shook her head. It was a sad story all around. “He doesn’t have a father, he’s got a stepfather. His father left before the boy was born. Stepfather’s name is Paul Allen.” She’d heard that the man wasn’t happy being saddled with Tommy’s welfare now that the boy’s mother was dead. Wanda stopped to think. “I think Jane mentioned a dog named Hugo. A Doberman. Said she didn’t like having the dog around, but that Paul was adamant about keeping it.”

The man’s exact words had been that he’d sooner get rid of the boy than the dog, but that wasn’t something Wanda was about to repeat around Tommy.

She turned around again and looked at Tommy. He looked pale, even against the fresh bandage that was covering his sutures. “Honey, why didn’t you come to me when this happened?”

“Tried,” he mumbled to the tips of his sneakers as he looked at them. “Couldn’t find you.”

“Well, now you found me,” Wanda declared. “And we’re going to find your stepdad.” Even if she had to haul him out of whatever hole he was residing in, Wanda added silently. About to pick up the boy, she looked at Mac. “Are you through with him, Doctor?”

“For now.” Turning his head, he lowered his voice, “He’s going to need reconstructive surgery on that once the wound heals.”

Wanda nodded as she pressed her lips together. “Getting Allen’s consent isn’t going to be easy. Especially not after I strangle that dog of his with my bare hands.”

“My money’s on you, Wanda,” Mac told her, grinning.

Wanda merely laughed in response. “C’mon, Tommy. Let’s see if there’s any ice cream in the refrigerator for a brave boy.”

She scooped the boy up into her arms, holding him to her ample chest. The boy curled up against her, responding to the maternal warmth he felt emanating from his mother’s friend.

His eyes met Mac’s over Wanda’s shoulder just before he was carried out from the room.

“Bye,” he said solemnly.

“Not bye,” Mac corrected him. “‘So-long.’ I’ll be seeing you again soon. Sure you don’t like being called Nameless better?”

The boy giggled and shook his head slightly. “I’m sure.”

Mac grinned at him. “Okay.”

As Wanda stepped out of the room with his patient, Mac peeled off the yellow paper gown he’d put on and turned to toss it into the wastebasket where he’d thrown away his gloves. He could feel the other nurse’s eyes all but boring into him.

That woman was a knockout, but she could definitely stand to have an attitude adjustment. Too bad he was too tired to do anything about it right now. “Something you want to say to me, Nurse DeLuca?”

She couldn’t tell if he was being sarcastic or distant. In either case, it didn’t matter. She wasn’t here to strike up friendships with the doctors. But she was big enough to admit when she was wrong. And she had been, at least as far as this went.

“You were good with that little boy.”

He turned to face her squarely. “Why, did you expect me to torture him?”

She was already regretting her mellower stance. “No, I just expected you to be a doctor.”

Mac stood studying her for a moment, trying to make sense of what she’d just said. He failed.

“Is that some kind of code? Because I was being a doctor. Stethoscope, sutures, Novocain,” he went down the line of things he’d used in cleaning out, then stitching the wound. “The works.”

“No, I mean you were kind to him.” Most of the doctors she’d worked with were interested in doing their job, applying their knowledge, and then moving on. After four years, she’d begun to believe that was the nature of the beast.

Still lost, Mac could only stare at her. “Just what kind of doctors do you know, Nurse DeLuca? Dr. Frankenstein and his crowd?”

He was making fun of her. She might have known. Served her right for entertaining charitable thoughts about him. “Never mind.”

“No,” he caught her arm as she began to leave the room. “You started this, I’m curious.”

Blowing out a breath, Jolene resigned herself to remaining where she was until the doctor heard what he wanted to hear. “I’m accustomed to doctors who treat the wound, not the patient.”

He was watching her eyes. She looked directly at him. People who fabricated things looked away. Either she was very, very good, or she was telling the truth.

When you hear hoofbeats, he reminded himself, think horse, not zebra.

He thought zebra.

“So that’s why you transferred.”

Jolene had learned that being closemouthed was a great deal safer than sharing bits and pieces of yourself. Because bits and pieces could be reconstructed to be used against you, or tossed away carelessly. She wasn’t sure which was worse.

But she’d just witnessed him being exceptionally gentle with the boy, the way she would have been had MacKenzie acted like a typical doctor in her mind toward the boy.

So she shrugged and gave him an answer of sorts. “Among other reasons.”

She was mellowing, he thought. And he had to admit that he liked it. His initial reaction toward Jolene shuffled forward to take the center stage.

“Maybe you can tell me about those other reasons over coffee later if you’re not busy—”

“I am.” Just because she was being civil to him didn’t mean she wanted to sit at the same table.

She’d answered just a little too quickly for him. “You don’t know when later.”

“Doesn’t matter,” she informed him crisply. “I intend to be busy until the next century.”

He was about to counter that assessment, but his pager went off.

He tilted the small gray/blue device toward him and recognized the phone number as one he’d dialed only last night. Lynda. Somehow, she’d managed to completely slip his mind.

“Damn, I forgot all about that.”

Curious, Jolene looked down at the LCD scene with its numbers that meant nothing to her. The question came without thought. “Forgot about what?”

Mac sighed. He was supposed to have picked the woman up at her place twenty minutes ago. “My date.”

Reaching into his pocket for his cell phone, Mac turned toward Jolene to finish their conversation.

But she was already gone.

Chapter Three

Mac snapped his cell phone shut. It had taken some fancy talking, but he’d gotten himself a reprieve. And then some.

He’d smoothed Lynda’s ruffled feathers, mentioned an expensive restaurant that was in the offing and what might happen afterward. She’d quickly forgiven him for the fact that she’d been waiting, getting steadily more annoyed, for the better part of half an hour. Lynda had informed him tersely at the beginning of the conversation that had eventually swung his way that she didn’t take kindly to being kept waiting by any man.

But then, she’d conceded at the end, she knew that he wasn’t just any man.

She’d already softened considerably when he told her about the collapsing balcony and the people who had fallen along with it. By the time he’d ended the call, Lynda would have been willing to forgive him anything and bear his children straightaway.

Mac smiled to himself, anticipating the evening ahead. He didn’t take for granted that he was a man with more lives than a cat and twice as many grace periods.

Lynda had promised to be waiting for him with a cool bottle of wine chilling on the ice and a hot body warming on the bed.

Once more with feeling, Mac thought as he made his way to the staff lounge. This time, nothing was going to stop him from making it out of his lab coat and out of the hospital.

Nothing but the sound of raised voices.

He heard the conversation as he made his way down the corridor.

A gruff voice was strained with impatience as Mac heard the man retort, “Look, I don’t need any of your lip, lady. You took care of him, great. Send the insurance company the bill. Wasn’t me who told him to stick his face in front of Hugo’s muzzle. I can’t be watching the kid 24/7, I’ve got my own life, my own problems to keep me busy. Damn kid’s old enough to know better.”

Turning the corner, less than fifteen feet shy of the rear electronic doors and freedom, Mac saw a tall, fairly muscular man with a weather-hewn face talking to Wanda. Or more properly, at Wanda. He was obviously giving the head nurse a hard time.

She looked as if she was having trouble hanging onto her temper, Mac noted, which was unusual, given that Wanda was one of the most easygoing people he knew. The man’s clothes had the appearance of being hastily donned, and he had one large hand clamped tightly down on Tommy’s small wrist.

The man gave Mac the impression that he would think nothing of yanking Tommy up by his arm like a rag doll that had fallen on disfavor.

Not your problem, Mac, just keep walking. Door’s ready to open for you.

Mac didn’t listen to his own advice.

Instead he stopped in front of Wanda and the boisterous stranger, pausing first to smile down at Tommy. The boy looked up at him with huge, frightened eyes, a beaten puppy looking for a single show of kindness.

“Problem, Wanda?” Mac asked in a deceptively easygoing voice.

The look in Wanda’s eyes was nothing short of grateful relief. “This is Tommy’s stepfather, Paul Allen.” Mac could tell she wanted to say something more, but she only added, “He came here looking for him.”

Obviously not in the mood for any further introductions or delays, the other man frowned so deeply, it looked as if the expression went clear down to his bones and was permanently etched there.

“Had a hell of a time finding him,” Allen complained. He glared down at the boy tethered to his hand. “Kid keeps running away.”

Mac continued to keep his tone friendly, but there was no mistaking his meaning. “In my experience, kids don’t run away when they’re not unhappy.”

The remark earned Mac an annoyed glare. “‘In my experience”’ he echoed, “pain in the butt ones do.” The man’s eyes narrowed as he scrutinized him. “What are you, the roving shrink around here?”

“No,” Mac replied evenly for Tommy’s sake, “I’m the doctor who fixed his face.”

Tommy’s stepfather blew out a short breath. “Yeah, well thanks,” he spat the words out as if they cost him, then gave Tommy a short yank to wake him up. “Let’s go, kid.”

“Just a minute,” Mac called after him, then took a couple of quick steps to catch up. “We’re not finished yet.”

The other man didn’t appreciate being detained any longer, especially not over someone he considered an impediment in his life. “Maybe you’re not, but I am, Doc. I’ve got dinner waiting for me and the dog needs to be fed—”

That wasn’t all that the dog needed, Mac thought. But he knew that getting into it over the animal wasn’t going to accomplish anything. His main concern was the boy’s welfare and this was going to need kid gloves. “Your son needs more operations—”

Allen spared a malevolent look in Tommy’s direction. As far as he was concerned, the boy had been nothing but trouble from day one. “Oh he does, does he? What kind of operations?”

Mac didn’t want to get into any long explanations in front of Tommy. Besides, he had a feeling that most of it would be wasted on the man in front of him. He put it as simply as he could.

Or tried to.

“The scar is going to have to be—”

Allen stopped him right there. He didn’t have money to throw away on vanity surgery. “Scars are good for a kid. Builds character. Maybe nobody’ll mess with him when they see it.” And then he laughed harshly as he threw Tommy a disparaging look. “Kid’s a wimp, he needs something—”

Before he could say another word, the man found himself being strong-armed over to the side and pressed against the wall. Taken by surprise, Allen let go of Tommy’s wrist.

Mac was holding him put with a strategically placed elbow to his chest.

“Hey, what the hell—?”

Mac kept his voice low, even and almost moderately friendly sounding to the untrained ear. But Wanda and Jorge, who had come out to see what the noise was about, knew better.

“Now listen to me carefully, Mr. Allen. A little boy’s self-esteem is a fragile thing. From what I hear, Tommy’s already lost his mother and he very nearly lost his face today thanks to your dog. He’s terrified of that animal. In my book, that means you owe him a little more consideration than he’s been getting. Now he’s going to need reconstructive surgery on that cheek once the stitches heal. I want you to bring him by my office for a consultation in two weeks. You can come here, or to the office I have in the building across the street.”

Taking a business card out of his jacket, Mac thrust it into Allen’s shirt pocket.

Furious, knowing he was probably outmatched, Allen still fumed. “And if I don’t come—”

Mac had expected the challenge. “Trust me, Mr. Allen, you don’t want me to come looking for you. And in case you’re thinking you can take me, you can’t. I’ve got a black belt in Tae Kwon Do.” He patted Allen’s shirt pocket with the card in it. “Do we understand one another?”

The breath Allen exhaled was hot and pungent. “I can have you sued—”

Very calmly, Mac turned toward the head nurse. “Wanda, don’t forget to call the animal control department so they can check out Mr. Allen’s dog for distemper. And while you’re at it, get in touch with social services. They said they wanted to be called if there was possible child abuse and negligence suspected.”

Jerking away, Allen moved over to the side and straightened his shirt. “All right.”

“All right what?” Mac asked amiably.

Allen fired each word out as if it was a bullet. “All right we understand each other.”

The smile on Mac’s face was cold as he regarded the other man. “Good.” And then he squatted down to Tommy’s level and took the boy’s hand in his. Mac pressed another card into the boy’s palm, closing his fingers over it. “And you can call me anytime you want to talk—night or day. Got that?”

Tommy solemnly nodded his head. There was a slight glimmer of hope in his eyes. And more than a little affection.

Taking Tommy’s hand, the boy’s stepfather glared at Mac. “Can we go now?”

Mac spread his hands wide. “Never said you couldn’t.” Muttering something angrily under his breath, Allen turned away. “Two weeks,” Mac called after him in a voice that sounded as if his greatest concern in the world was what to have for dinner that night.

Wanda pressed her lips together, shaking her head. “Never did know what Jane saw in that man.”

Mac had never met the late nurse, but he took a philosophical guess at her reason for marrying a man who was clearly not one of the kinder citizens of the world. “Maybe she saw something in him that we can’t.”

Wanda could only shrug, resigned to ignorance. “Maybe. You know, if you hadn’t come along, I would have decked that man.”

“Now that I would have paid to see.” Mac laughed. “Good night, Wanda,” he said cheerfully.

He got exactly two feet farther in his escape when someone called out to him.

“Oh, Dr. Mac, could you—?”

Mac didn’t even turn around. Instead he stepped up his pace.

“Nope, no way.” He raised his hands as if to ward off anything else that might be coming his way. “I’m out of here. Now.”

He hurried out through the rear doors before someone else managed to waylay him. The place, he decided, was harder to shed than a wad of gum stuck in a little girl’s hair.

Just on the other side of the doors, Jolene watched him make his way out of the immediate parking area toward the larger one reserved for doctors. She thought of the last comment he’d made to her when his pager went off.

“Well, he certainly is in a hurry to get to his date,” she said to Wanda.

One more hour to go, Wanda thought, rounding the main desk and claiming her chair. Not that she got that much opportunity to sit at this job. In her mind’s eye, she replayed Mac pushing Tommy’s stepfather against the wall. She could have cheered. No doubt about it, Mac was her hero. After the father of her children, of course she added with a mental smile.

She flipped open a chart. “Man deserves to play hard after the day he put in.”

From everything Rebecca had said to her, playing hard was never a problem for the good doctor. “Nothing he didn’t sign on for by going to medical school,” Jolene commented.

Wanda looked up. Dr. Mac didn’t need her to defend him, but she felt a need to say something, especially after he had come to Tommy’s aid that way. She had a very soft spot in her heart for the boy. “As far as I know, they don’t give a course on how to handle self-centered bastards.”

Jolene thought of her own ex. And a few physicians she’d had run-ins with along the way. “They should start,” she agreed, “by setting up a series of classes in nursing school.”

Wanda said nothing, just laughed. These two, she thought, were on a collision course. It was just a matter of time.

And if she was lucky, she was going to have herself a ticket on the fifty-yard line. It was something to look forward to.

Mac frowned.

Ordinarily he could compartmentalize his thoughts and place them out of the way, sequestering them to the far recesses of his mind where they couldn’t bother him. It was the foundation for his ability to be able to both work hard and play hard, each of which he found important to maintaining a healthy outlook on life and a good balance in his life.

But even as he found himself in the company of a voluptuous woman whose morals appeared to be as easily shed as a pair of sunglasses, Mac was preoccupied. His thoughts were continually being kidnapped by a small boy with huge eyes and a drop-dead gorgeous nurse with an attitude problem.

Several times in the evening, Lynda had to tap him on the shoulder to get his attention.

The evening had ended the way neither one of them would have imagined. He kissed the woman good-night and left her at her door even after she’d invited him in for a nightcap and whatever else might follow. Twice.

Frustrated, Lynda shouted after him. “I liked you better in the elevator.” The pronouncement was followed by a thunderous slamming of her front door that rocked the night air.

He made a mental note to send her flowers and a short apology. She deserved more than half a date.

And he, Mac thought, getting back into his car, deserved to know what it was about Jolene DeLuca that crawled under his skin and remained there, like an unfortunate brush with poison oak.

Mac slipped out of his lab coat and hung it in his locker. A week had gone by without his having run into the feisty San Francisco transplant. Eight days to be exact.

He figured it was just as well. There was no sense, as his mother had once said, in borrowing trouble.

Except that Margaret MacKenzie had been talking about the institution of marriage at the time. She maintained that the state of matrimony was not worth the trouble it generated.

Remembering now, he shook his head. It was one of the few times he ever recalled his parents being in agreement.

More than once, he’d wondered how and why the two of them had ever gotten together in the first place. Granted they’d been a handsome couple back then, still were when they’d finally decided to give the sham they referred to as a marriage a mercy killing. But he had always thought that marriage had to be based on something far more substantial than liking the looks of the face you woke up next to in the morning.

His relationship with either of his parents wasn’t such that he could ask one or the other for any insight. The only person in his family he’d ever been close to when he was growing up was Carrie.

The same held now. But even Carrie’s happy marriage didn’t change his mind about the institution in general. Marriage wasn’t for him, not even remotely.

At an early age, Mac had come to the conclusion that there was a reason it bore the label of Institution. Institutions were places meant to restrain you, to keep you away from life in general. Prisons were institutions designed to separate the inmates from the rest of life. Marriage did the same. It imprisoned you, kept you from being happy while it sucked out your very soul, leaving behind an empty, useless shell.

Maudlin thoughts, Mac mused.

He walked down the corridor toward the rear of the hospital. He wasn’t prone to maudlin thoughts. In general, he was blessed with an upbeat nature.

Had to be the weather, he decided. After three years of dry, almost droughtlike winters, Southern California was finally experiencing a November that was more typical for the region. It had been monsooning off and on all month. Out of the last thirty days, eighteen had been inclement. And according to the weatherman, it didn’t look as if there was a letup in sight.

Certainly not today. Rain had been coming in like a gate crasher each time the rear doors opened all through his shift.

Stopping before the doors, Mac stood for a moment as they opened before him, just watching the sheets of rain coming down. The parking lot closest to the building looked as if it was going to be submerged any minute.

The gutters had to be clogged again, he thought.

The problem with living in an environment that typically saw rain only a few months a year, if that, was that people grew lax about things like sewer systems and gutters.

He’d heard that traffic accidents on the freeways were up, as well. People tended to want to escape the rain and drove with less caution than usual.

“Trying to cool down the rest of the hospital, Dr. Mac?” Jorge asked him.

When Mac looked at him, raising an inquiring brow at his meaning, the man nodded at the black rubber mat beneath his feet.

“You do know you gotta step off that if you want the doors to close again.”

Max laughed at the well-intentioned jibe. “Just bracing myself for the run to my car, Jorge.”

Jorge peered outside. At the far end of the lot, a car drove by sending a three-foot-high splash flying in their direction.

“Gonna get wet, braced or not,” Jorge told him philosophically.

Looking over Jorge’s shoulder, Mac saw Jolene hurrying in their direction. Preoccupied, she didn’t appear to see him. He’d made inquiries and knew that her shift was over for the evening, as well. Timing couldn’t have been better. She was carrying an umbrella in her hand.

“Truer words were never spoken.” He raised his voice slightly, getting her attention. “But if I wait for a lovely lady to come by with an umbrella, I won’t get wet at all.”

Picking up the cue, Jorge turned around and nodded a greeting just as Jolene joined them.

Jolene’s glance swept suspiciously from one man to the other. The last time two men had looked at her like that, they’d been hoping to borrow her Organic Chemistry notes in college. “What?”

Despite the rather cool interaction he’d endured earlier, Mac smiled at her. “Going home?”

Her response was guarded. She’d heard about what had happened with Tommy’s father the other day, everyone at the hospital had. And she had to admit she’d been impressed. But that still didn’t change her opinion about doctors in general and MacKenzie in particular.

“And if I am?”

Mac looked at the tan umbrella she was carrying. It matched her raincoat. “I thought you might want to do the neighborly thing and share your umbrella so I can get to my car without getting soaked.”

Though he wanted to watch, Jorge tactfully withdrew. He liked Dr. Mac, but his money was on Nurse DeLuca. As a rule, men didn’t like to be seen losing and he could relate to that.

“See you,” he said cheerfully, leaving.

“Bye,” Jolene murmured, but her attention was on the man who had designs on her umbrella—mainly, she knew, as a means to an end. Today her umbrella, tomorrow her clothes. “Number one, we don’t live in the hospital, so we’re not neighbors,” she pointed out. “And number two, it was raining this morning, how did you keep from getting wet then?”

“I didn’t.”

His smile was definitely too engaging, too disarming, she thought, annoyed. She had to keep reminding herself that she wasn’t easily taken in this way.

With effort, she shrugged disinterestedly. “Guess you’ll just have to get wet again.”

Mac shifted so that he was in front of her, blocking her way. The wind was coming from the opposite direction and no longer finding its way in through the opened doors. “Aren’t you up for a good deed, Nurse Frosty?”

The look she gave him could have frozen a bonfire. “I already gave at the office.”

Moving around him, she opened her umbrella and took a step out. She could feel him looking at her with eyes that were soft and soulful. Annoyed with herself, she relented and turned around.

“Oh, all right, c’mon,” she bit off. When he was quick to join her, she discovered that there wasn’t as much room beneath her oversize umbrella as she’d thought. He was standing much too close. “Where’s your car?”

He pointed off into the distance, beyond the security guard’s post. “In the other lot.”

Jolene sighed. It figured. “Mine’s right over here.” She indicated a small, red Honda.

Peppy and reliable, he thought, looking at the vehicle. He wondered if the same could be said for its owner.

“Good.” He slipped his arm through hers. “Then you can drive me.”

Jolene stiffened immediately, shrugging him off. “It’s not going to work, you know.”

His look was a mixture of raindrops and innocence. “What’s not going to work?”

“You trying to charm your way into anything,” she informed him. “I’ve had my shots against people like you.”

He was tempted to ask her just what she meant by that, but then let it go. “Everyone should always keep their inoculations up-to-date. But all I’m trying to charm my way into is your car.”

Step one, she thought. “Why didn’t you bring an umbrella?” she asked again.

He liked looking into her eyes. They were so green, they reminded him of fields of clover. He could easily get lost in them. “Didn’t think I was going to need it.”

She stared at him incredulously. “It was raining this morning.”

When she wrinkled her brow like that, a small vertical line formed just above her eyes. He had the urge to smooth it out with the tip of his finger. He kept his hands at his side. “What can I tell you? I’m an optimistic kind of guy.”

They had reached her car. She gave him a disdainful look. “That wouldn’t be my word for it.”

“Are you always this easy to talk to?”

She hit her security beeper. All four locks popped open. “This is my car, you getting in or not?”

“Since you put it so nicely—” He saw the look she gave him, like she was going to jump in and leave him standing there. “I’m in, I’m in.” He laughed as he quickly pulled the door open. Getting in, he put on the seat belt and settled back for the short ride to his own car. “So, what happened in your life after you were voted Miss Congeniality?”

She put her key into the ignition. “I scalped my first doctor.”

“Ouch.”

“Exactly.” Starting the car, she pulled out of the parking spot.

Chapter Four

Jolene brought her vehicle to a sudden halt before Mac’s car. If the stop had been any more abrupt, Mac had a feeling his head might have snapped off at the neck.

“I take it you were a race car driver in your former life.” Even though she made no reply, he wasn’t in a hurry to get out. Her car was shuddering and bucking like a mustang anxious to be let out of the rodeo chute. “You might think about having that vibration checked out.”

“Thanks, I’ll take it under advisement,” she retorted crisply, already regretting her good deed. If there was any kind of traffic on the freeway—and she knew it was too messy for there not to be—she was going to wind up being late.

“Well, thanks for the ride, we’ve got to do this again sometime.” With his fingers wrapped around the handle, he made no effort to open the door.

“Do you mind?” Exasperated, Jolene nodded toward the door he hadn’t opened yet. “I’m in a hurry.”

Mac cocked his head, curious. “Hot date?” What kind of a man warmed Nurse Icicle’s toes and melted her resistance? he wondered.

Her eyes narrowed. “You’re not allowed to ask questions like that.”

“Sorry.” There was nothing left to do but get out, which he did. By the time he turned around and leaned in, he was soaked. “Thanks again.”

“Don’t mention it,” she snapped, leaning over and pulling the door out of his hand. Once it was shut, she lost no time in driving away.

“Lovely woman,” Mac murmured under his breath. Fishing out his key, he unlocked his car door.

He’d no sooner gotten in and strapped on the seat belt than his cell phone rang. Trying to extract it from his rear pocket without removing the seat belt was an exercise in futility. As he unbuckled again and reached for the phone, he hoped it wasn’t an emergency of some sort. He was looking forward to getting to bed early tonight and catching up on a month’s worth of lost sleep.

He placed the phone next to his ear. “MacKenzie.”

“Dr. Mac?”

The uncertain, childish voice on the other end of the receiver sounded as if it was just an inch away from dissolving into sobs. He took a guess. “Tommy?”

“Uh-huh.”

Immediately alert, Mac sat up. “What’s wrong? Where are you?” Visions of a Doberman foaming at the mouth popped into his head. Was the boy cornered? He’d gotten to a telephone, which meant he had to be relatively safe. For the moment at any rate. He thought of the boy’s stepfather. Mac’s heart went cold. “You sound like you’re upset.”

A sniffing noise met his observation. “I’m home, Dr. Mac.” The boy lowered his voice so no one else could hear. “My dad says the surgery’s gonna cost too much, that I can’t have it.” There was silence for a moment. “Am I gonna be a freak forever?”

Mac could feel his heart constricting and struggled with the overwhelming desire to punch Allen’s face in for playing games with the boy’s head. But that wouldn’t help Tommy any.

“No, and you’re not a freak now. You just have a scar, that’s all,” he said firmly. “And don’t worry about the cost, Tommy. Something can be arranged.”

Blair Memorial was first and foremost a nonprofit facility that prided itself on giving back to the community. That was one of the primary reasons Mac had joined the staff in the first place. He could have never been associated with a hospital whose first allegiance was to its board. Mac was confident that he could talk to Blair’s chief administration officer and make arrangements for Tommy’s surgery.

The boy didn’t need this extra weight to carry around with him, he thought angrily. What the hell was wrong with Allen?

“Just tell your stepdad to make sure to bring you in for your appointment and we’ll iron out everything then.” It irked him to add, “Tell him not to worry about paying,” not because he cared about the money, but because he knew that he was saying exactly what Tommy’s stepfather wanted to hear. It definitely wasn’t his intent to make the man happy, but there was no way around it if Mac wanted to help the boy.

He could almost hear the boy struggling with his thoughts. “My stepdad says people don’t do nice things for other people without a reason.”

Mac didn’t doubt that the dark philosophy was something Allen was trying to force upon the boy. “I’ve got a reason, Tommy. I want to see you smile. Big-time. That’s my fee, Tommy, a great big, wide grin. Think you can muster a big grin for me?”

This time, there was no hesitation. He’d gotten through to the boy. “Uh-huh.”

“Okay.” Mac didn’t believe in putting off unpleasantries. He might as well get this over with now. “Tell you what, let me talk to your dad now.”

“Can’t,” Tommy told him solemnly. “He went out.”

“Are you by yourself?” If Tommy was alone, he was going to go over and wait until the boy’s stepfather returned—to have him hauled in for child negligence the way he should have last week.

“No, Mrs. Peabody’s here. She’s the lady down the block,” Tommy explained, then added, “My stepdad pays her to watch me when he goes out.”

Well, at least the man had some decency, Mac thought. Either that, or, more likely, he was worried about running afoul of the law.

There was no sense in trying to get a hold of him tonight. He had no way of knowing when the man would return home. “Do you know what time your stepdad usually gets home from work?”

The answer was prompt. Tommy had already struck him as an intelligent little boy. “Five.”

“Great, tell him I’ll be calling him tomorrow after five. We’ll working things out about your surgery. I promise.”

This time, the small voice on the other end sounded eager and hopeful. “Okay.”

Mac spent several more minutes on the phone with the boy, reinforcing that hopefulness. By the time Mac said goodbye, Tommy seemed relatively calm.

Hell of a thing for a little boy to be going through by himself, Mac thought as he flipped the phone shut and tucked it back into his pocket.

“Once more with feeling,” he murmured under his breath as he buckled up again.

This time, there were no further interruptions as he started his car. Moving carefully, he pulled his vehicle out of the near-flooded parking lot.

No danger of a drought this year. Now the county was on the alert for mud slides. Mac shook his head. Always something. Still, he wouldn’t want to live any other place.

Coming down the steep hill that led from the hospital onto the main road, Mac saw something pulled over to the side. At first, all he could make out were the flashing taillights. Coming closer, he recognized the make as one that was similar to Jolene’s.

And then he saw someone getting out. The umbrella that preceded her instantly became fair game for the wind that had picked up. The umbrella was turned inside out and then back again before the driver had a chance to fully emerge out of the vehicle.

Jolene.

Stopping his car beside hers, Mac pressed the button that rolled down his front passenger window and leaned over the seat to look out. “Jolene?”

Under any other conditions, she probably would have simply ignored him, or sent him on his way, opting to wait by the side of the road until someone else came along. After all, it wasn’t as if this was a deserted part of town. But the wind had already shown her who was boss by rendering her umbrella useless. She was getting soaked. Besides, she was already late.

Thinking that somewhere along the line, she must have crossed some invisible line she wasn’t aware of, offending a deity with a strange sense of humor, Jolene sighed and made her way over to the car. She pushed her wet hair out of her face.

“What?” she snapped.

The woman certainly wasn’t friendlier wet than she was dry, Mac thought. He gestured toward the car. “What’s wrong?”

“My car decided to take a nap—what does it look like?” Jolene could feel her temper becoming precariously frayed.

He addressed her in terms he’d heard his sister use when any of her kids were particularly acting up. “It looks like someone needs a time-out.”

Jolene’s eyes widened, and she opened her mouth to utter a retort that bordered on scathing. But then she shut it again. She despised being criticized—especially when she knew the criticism was warranted. She didn’t need anyone to point out that she was being waspish, but she’d had a rough day tacked on top of a rough night. She was close to running on empty.

“You’re right. I’m sorry.” In her present mood, it cost her to admit this.

Mac cocked his head, as if honing in on a strange surprise. “Wow, did you hear that?”

“Hear what?” All she heard was the howl of the wind as another gust came in, plastering her skirt against her legs.

“I swear that’s the sound of frost forming in hell.” Mac grinned broadly at her from the confines of his warm vehicle. “Boy, talk about a long reach—”

Her eyes blazed as if someone had set a fire within her. Mac could feel himself getting singed…and intrigued.

She didn’t know why she was wasting her time talking to him. “Look, my baby’s sick, my car’s sick and I think I’m getting sick. I don’t need this.”

Leaning over as far as he could, Mac twisted the latch on the passenger door and pushed it open. “No, you don’t. Get in.”

She looked back at her offending vehicle. It had been giving her trouble in one way or another since the day she’d bought it, but she wasn’t in a position to buy a new one right now. “I can’t just leave my car.”

“Nobody’s telling you to.” He looked at her meaningfully. “You do have enough sense to get in out of the rain, don’t you?”

More than anything, she wanted to give this hotshot surgeon a piece of her mind. But since discretion was the better part of valor, she held her tongue. If she was being fair, Jolene figured she had that one coming. But only that one. “Yes.”

Mac looked at her expectantly. She wasn’t moving. “Well?”

Blowing out a breath, Jolene opened the door farther and got in. And began dripping all over her side of the vehicle.

“Boy, you are wet, aren’t you?” Pressing the control panel on his armrest, Mac rolled up the window on her side quickly. He reached behind him and got the towel he’d forgotten to take out of the back seat the last time he’d been to the gym. He offered it to her. “It’s really coming down, isn’t it?”

Jolene used the towel to rub the water from her hair and then her face. Stopping abruptly, she sniffed the towel and gave him a curious look.

“I used it at the gym.” He saw her drop the towel as if it was contaminated. “Don’t worry, I just had it draped around my neck when I finished my workout. This doesn’t mean our sweat glands are bonding or anything.”

Still, she folded the towel, finished, then sighed. “I think I shrank an inch just standing there.”

Belated, he turned off the engine. The windows were beginning to fog up, creating an impression that they were sealed off from the rest of the world. He forced his mind back on the topic at hand before he let it drift with that image.

“Do you know what’s wrong with your car?”

Yes, she knew what was wrong with it. It was a lemon. It happened even with the most reliable of makes. Just her luck.

“Same thing that’s been wrong with it the last three times. The distributor cap malfunctioned.”

She didn’t look like a woman who would know a distributor cap from a baseball cap. The woman was one surprise after another.

Mac looked at her with renewed respect. “I’m impressed, Nurse DeLuca. All I know how to do is jump-start.” The startled, wary look that came into her eyes had him biting his tongue not to laugh. He figured that wouldn’t go over very well right now. “A car,” he added. “Jump-start a car.”

The smile on his lips was nothing short of sensual, she thought, and it was telegraphing strange electrical impulses all through her. God, she really was coming down with Amanda’s fever, wasn’t she? Jolene squelched the urge to feel her forehead.

“Since you probably don’t carry a spare distributor cap in your purse,” he began jokingly, although if she’d pulled one out, at this point he wouldn’t have been all that surprised, “have you called a tow truck?”

Jolene shook her head. Several drops went flying, one hitting him in the eye. “My battery’s dead.”

Taking out a handkerchief, Mac dabbed his eye. He gave her the once-over with his good one and commented, “Not from where I’m sitting.”

Jolene realized she was clenching her teeth. “My cell phone battery. I forgot to charge it last night.” She’d started to, but then Amanda had started crying again and she’d left the charger connected to the cell phone, but unplugged.

“Ah.” Nodding his head, he unbuckled his seat belt and leaned forward, digging into his back pocket. He noticed that Jolene was watching his every move as if she expected him to either jump on her bones, or turn into a vampire—possibly both. “Relax, there’s no need to be so tense. I’m just getting my cell phone out.”

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