Nell’s heart thumped.

She turned. And there was Joe, his thumbs in his belt loops and a gleam in his eye, lean and tough and hot. She was so glad to see him, it made her cross.

“What are you doing here?”

“I came to see you,” he said, just the way she’d hoped he would four days ago when he’d brought Laila to the clinic to have her baby.

Four days ago. Four days. Without a phone call.

She lifted her chin. “Why? You finished your story.”

Joe nodded, still with that unsettling glint in his eyes. “That’s why.”

“I don’t understand,” Nell said.

“You mean you don’t remember.” He took a step closer, taking up more space and more oxygen than a man had a right to. “I told you that first night. Once I file the story, I don’t have any rules against taking you to bed.”

Dear Reader,

Welcome to another month of excitement and romance. Start your reading by letting Ruth Langan be your guide to DEVIL’S COVE in Cover-Up, the first title in her new miniseries set in a small town where secrets, scandal and seduction go hand in hand. The next three books will be coming out back to back, so be sure to catch every one of them.

Virginia Kantra tells a tale of Guilty Secrets as opposites Joe Reilly, a cynical reporter, and Nell Dolan, a softhearted do-gooder, can’t help but attract each other—with wonderfully romantic results. Jenna Mills will send Shock Waves through you as psychic Brenna Scott tries to convince federal prosecutor Ethan Carrington that he’s in danger. If she can’t get him to listen to her, his life—and her heart—will be lost.

Finish the month with a trip to the lands down under, Australia and New Zealand, as three of your favorite writers mix romance and suspense in equal—and irresistible—portions. Melissa James features another of her tough (and wonderful!) Nighthawk heroes in Dangerous Illusion, while Frances Housden’s heroine has to face down the Shadows of the Past in order to find her happily-ever-after. Finally, get set for high-seas adventure as Sienna Rivers meets Her Passionate Protector in Laurey Bright’s latest.

Don’t miss a single one—and be sure to come back next month for more of the best and most exciting romantic reading around, right here in Silhouette Intimate Moments.

Yours,

Leslie J. Wainger

Executive Editor

Guilty Secrets
Virginia Kantra

www.millsandboon.co.uk

VIRGINIA KANTRA

credits her enthusiasm for strong heroes and courageous heroines to a childhood spent devouring fairy tales. A three-time Romance Writers of America RITA® Award finalist, she has won numerous writing awards, including the Golden Heart, Maggie Award, Holt Medallion and Romantic Times W.I.S.H. Hero Award.

Virginia is married to her college sweetheart, a musician disguised as the owner of a coffeehouse. They live in Raleigh, North Carolina, with three teenagers, two cats, a dog and various blue-tailed lizards that live under the siding of their home. Her favorite thing to make for dinner? Reservations.

She loves to hear from readers. You can reach her at VirginiaKantra@aol.com or c/o Silhouette Books, 233 Broadway Suite 1001 New York, NY 10279.

To the ones who are living with grace and courage one day at a time.

Special thanks to my sister Pam for letting me pick her brain;

to Pam Baustian, Melissa McClone and Judith Stanton;

and, always, to Michael.

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 1

“Man here asking for you, Nell,” Billie announced as she hustled past the nurses’ station.

Eleanor Dolan didn’t need a man. She needed six more hours in her day and a forty-percent increase in her operating budget. Or three extra-strength Tylenol and a new pair of orthopedic shoes.

Not that she had a shot at getting any of those things anytime soon. She was used to not getting what she wanted, but she’d learned to make do with what she had. She wasn’t settling, exactly. She was…surviving.

Nell sighed and made another note on her patient’s medical chart. “Is he a regular?”

The other nurse shook her close-cropped head. This week Billie’s hair was an improbable shade of red that glowed against her dark skin. “Nope. But you’ve got to see this one, Nell. Seriously.”

Monday mornings at the free clinic were like Saturday nights in the E.R.—a Saturday night when the moon was full and the Chicago Bulls were losing. “You’ve got to see this one” could mean anything. AIDS. Asthma. A cut that needed stitching.

“Right,” Nell said briskly. “Give him the forms and get him into an examining room. I’ll be right there.”

She pushed open the door to Exam Eight a few minutes later prepared to find the patient turning blue or bleeding. She wasn’t prepared for…

Oh, my.

Nell realized her jaw had dropped and closed her mouth with an audible snap. Billie was right. If you were female and breathing, you had to see this one. Seriously.

He wasn’t handsome. Dr. James Fletcher, the volunteer pediatrician, was handsome, his features balanced, his eyes kind, his teeth white and straight.

The man in Exam Eight had sharp, hooded eyes and a smile like a shark. His face was lined, lived in, with enough stubble on his jaw to suit a movie star. Or some homeless drifter. Judging from the quality of his upscale safari jacket, Nell voted for movie star. Although considering the jacket’s age, maybe she’d better go with drifter. He looked tough. Streetwise. Dangerous.

Nell distrusted him on sight.

She clutched his chart and forced a smile. “I’m Eleanor Dolan, the nurse-practitioner,” she said crisply. “Sorry to keep you waiting, Mr., ah—” She glanced at the sheet clipped to the front of the folder. It was blank, damn it. Somebody should have helped him if he was having trouble filling out the forms.

“Joe,” the man supplied. He was still smiling, but his eyes were watchful.

All right, he spoke English. But maybe he was worried about the law or Immigration. Maybe he was embarrassed about his financial situation. Maybe he couldn’t read.

She uncapped her pen, determined to help him. That was what she did. Help people.

“Last name?” she prompted.

“Reilly.”

She wrote it down. “Do you have insurance, Mr. Reilly?”

He slouched against the examining-room table, his hands shoved in his jacket pockets. “As long as I keep my job, I do.”

She mustered her patience and lifted her pen. “I don’t know if you’re aware of our policy, Mr. Reilly, but the Ark Street Clinic provides medical assistance to people who are uninsured. Your having a job certainly doesn’t disqualify you from seeking care. Many of our patients work two or more part-time jobs and earn too much to qualify for Medicaid. But if your employer provides insurance—”

“I work for the Examiner,” he said.

The Chicago Examiner was the city’s largest and second-oldest daily newspaper. Nell had been calling and e-mailing both the Metro department and the features editor for months, trying to provoke the kind of publicity that would attract donations to her clinic.

Oh my God.

“You’re Joe Reilly,” she said.

“Yeah.”

“The journalist.”

“Guilty.”

“You’re here to write about the clinic.”

Joe kept his hands in his pockets. “That was the idea.”

His editor’s idea. Not Joe’s.

Actually, his editor’s idea was for Joe to profile the woman standing in front of him, Eleanor Dolan, the driving force and guiding light of the North Side’s Ark Street Free Clinic. The so-called Angel of Ark Street.

Joe thought the idea was hokey and the name probably undeserved. The past year had left him with a jaded view of women and a jaundiced view of the medical profession.

But he could see how the name might have stuck. Eleanor Dolan looked enough like an angel, the kind that showed up in Russian icons flanking the Madonna—pale, blond and severely beautiful. She was even dressed in white, a lab coat, instead of a printed smock like the other nurses wore.

A vain angel? Joe wondered. Not that it mattered. The Dolan woman could dress like the queen of England in white gloves and a blue hat and it wouldn’t make her newsworthy.

Although it might be interesting to see what was under that lab coat.

Even if Eleanor Dolan was the angel his boss made her out to be, Joe was no saint. And he was getting mighty tired of self-denial. So he let himself look, appreciating the slope and curve of Dolan’s sweater between the open panels of her coat. Very nice.

Of course she caught him staring.

She frowned. “I wasn’t expecting you until tomorrow.”

He shrugged, enjoying the flash of annoyance in her eyes. “I had some time free today.”

“I don’t. Monday is our busiest day.”

“I noticed.”

“Some of our patients wait outside for two hours before the clinic even opens.” She must have realized scolding wasn’t likely to generate the kind of publicity she wanted, because she softened her tone. “Please come back tomorrow. We’ll be fully staffed then, and I can give you a tour.”

Joe knew all about official tours. He’d been escorted by experts in Haiti, Kosovo and Baghdad. The skin prickled on the back of his neck.

Which was ridiculous. Eleanor Dolan didn’t have anything to hide. She was just anxious to make a good impression.

“That’ll be great,” Joe said. “In the meantime, any objections if I stick around? Make some general observations, maybe ask a few questions?”

Dolan opened her mouth. Closed it, and tried again. “Not at all. I’ll have to ask you to stay in the waiting area, though. To protect our patients’ privacy.”

Okay, maybe she wanted to make a good impression.

And maybe she was a little bit of a control freak.

“Sure, no problem,” Joe said.

And it wasn’t, he thought as she led him back to the lounge. He wasn’t Ed Bradley from 60 Minutes. Hell, he wasn’t even Joe Reilly, wonder-boy foreign correspondent anymore. He was just Joe Reilly, staff writer, and unless Nurse Dolan was dealing drugs from the clinic waiting room, she had nothing to fear from him.

Nell regarded the clinic pharmacist in disbelief. “What do you mean, you think we might be missing units from the narcotics closet?”

She heard her voice rising and struggled to contain it. She didn’t want to scare the patients.

But Ed Johnson, the pharmacist, flinched. He looked almost ill, slack and pale, his forehead beaded with sweat.

Nell sympathized. She felt sick herself. “How many units?” she asked. “And which drugs are missing?”

Ed rubbed his shiny face with one hand. “I don’t know, exactly.”

This was bad. Any theft or significant loss of controlled substances had to be reported to the nearest DEA office as well as to the police. But if she didn’t even know what was missing…

“When did you take inventory?”

Ed’s gaze slid from her. “I was keeping a tally,” he mumbled.

“Ed.”

At her tone, Lucy Morales, one of the RNs, looked over.

Nell took a deep breath and tried again. “You’re supposed to take inventory twice a day.”

“I know,” Ed said miserably. “But we were busy.”

Nell’s patience stretched like a rubber tourniquet about to snap. She loved her job. She did. But she was sick of covering for other people’s mistakes, tired of making herself responsible for everyone and everything.

Only of course she couldn’t yell at poor Ed. He was past retirement age. And he needed this job, needed the poor salary that was all she could afford to pay him.

“All right,” Nell said. “I want you to take inventory now and then again before you go home tonight. Let’s make sure we have a problem before we start worrying about how we’re going to solve it.”

She stomped down the hall, feeling the ghosts of her past breathing behind her. The last thing she needed was to make waves with the DEA. Especially with sharp-eyed, smiling reporter, Joe Reilly, cruising around like a shark scenting for blood.

Nell leaned over the counter that separated the office area from the medical aisle. “Hi, Melody. Has Mr. Vacek come in today?” Stanley Vacek was one of her regulars, an elderly man with a thick eastern European accent and a perpetual scowl who suffered from high blood pressure.

Melody King looked up from the computer screen and blinked, her lavender eyelids startling in her pale face. The office manager had long, mousy brown hair and an abused expression. “He was here a while ago. But I think he left.”

“He can’t leave,” Nell said. “He’s hypertensive.”

“That don’t stop him from walking out the door,” Billie observed on her way to take the vitals of the patient in Exam Two.

Nell frowned. “But he needed a refill on his medication.”

Melody stuck out her lower lip. “I didn’t ask him to leave.”

“No, of course not,” Nell said, automatically reassuring.

“I think he got upset the other guy was asking questions,” the office manager said.

Nell’s stomach sank. “What other guy?”

But she knew.

“That Mr. Reilly,” Melody said, confirming Nell’s fears. “I think Mr. Vacek thought he was from INS or something.”

“He’s not,” Nell said.

“I didn’t say I thought he was an immigration officer.” Melody lowered her voice. “I think he’s a cop.”

Lucy Morales pulled a chart from the stack on the counter. “Are we talking about the guy in the jacket? Because I think he’s hot.”

Irritation ran under Nell’s skin. Why? Because she agreed with Lucy? She pushed the thought away.

“Hot or not, he doesn’t have the right to disturb our patients.” She marched into the waiting room, relieved to have someone she could yell at without feeling guilty.

Patients filled the lines of chairs. A shrieking toddler flung himself backward off his mother’s lap. An elderly woman sat, her lined face passive, her hand clutching her husband’s thin arm.

Reilly was folded onto one of the uncomfortable chairs, one long leg stuck out in front of him. He was smiling and talking over the head of a little girl in purple barrettes to her mother, who was smiling and talking back.

Okay, so she couldn’t yell.

He’d still scared off grumpy Stanley Vacek. He scared Nell. Until the problem—potential problem—with her drug inventory was resolved, she didn’t want him in her clinic. For her patients’ well-being, for her own peace of mind, he had to go.

Nell cleared her throat. Reilly looked up.

“I’m sorry. I have to ask you to come back tomorrow.”

Reilly straightened slowly. He wasn’t a big man, only a few inches taller than Nell’s own five feet eight inches, but his physical impact was undeniable. His eyes, a dark, deep blue, were filled with weary humor. Cops’ eyes, Nell thought. Priests’ eyes. The kind of eyes that invited confidences and promised absolution.

Only she wasn’t confessing anything, and she no longer looked for forgiveness from the church. From anyone.

“What’s the problem?” Reilly asked.

Nell jerked her head toward the door. Reilly followed her across the room. She felt his gaze on her back like a hand.

She turned to face him, torn between apology and irritation. “You have to leave. You’re making my patients nervous.”

Reilly glanced back at the child’s mother, watching with undisguised curiosity from the row of chairs. “I was just making conversation.”

Was she being unfair to him? “You were asking questions.”

“So?”

“So, they think you’re a cop.”

“Not me,” he said. “My brother.”

Nell nearly groaned.

She liked cops. Most cops. Most of the time, nurses and cops were on the same side of the fence, separated from the public who depended on and distrusted them. They shared the same exhaustion, the same frustration, the same brand of black humor. But at this moment, with Ed Johnson frantically counting units of Vicodin, Meperidine and Oxycodone in the back room, Nell regarded the police with the same deep misgiving she felt toward…well, toward the press.

She moistened her lips. “Your brother is a police officer?”

Reilly nodded.

“Here in Chicago?”

He cocked his head. “Yeah. But we don’t talk much, if that’s what’s worrying you.”

She stiffened. “I’m not worried.”

“Scared, then.”

“I’m not scared.”

“Prove it.”

“What?”

Reilly shoved his hands in his jacket pockets. “Prove it,” he repeated, his gaze steady on her face. “Have dinner with me tonight.”

Hello. That came totally out of left field. He’d flirted with that child’s mother more than he had with her.

“Why?” Nell asked suspiciously.

He raised both eyebrows. “You need a reason to have dinner?”

“I need a reason to have dinner with you. I don’t know you.”

“You can get to know me over dinner.”

She shook her head, at least as flattered as she was intimidated by his invitation. “Thanks, but—”

“I write a much better story when I’m familiar with my subject.”

“I am not your subject.”

His eyes laughed at her. “So, we’ll talk about your clinic. I’ll even bring my notebook.”

He stood there, smiling and sure and annoying as hell. She had to get rid of him without tipping him off or pissing him off.

“Fine,” she said abruptly. “I’m out of here at seven.”

“Long day,” he observed.

“Yes.” And then, because she needed to have the last word, she said, “And now it will be a long night.”

His smile spread slowly, making the heat bloom in her cheeks.

“We can hope,” Reilly said.

She was late.

Nell’s bag slapped against her hip as she turned to tug the clinic door closed. Her purse was stuffed with printouts of all the prescription medicines donated by pharmaceutical companies and their reps, all the drugs purchased and all the painkillers dispensed by the pharmacy in the past three months. Tonight she’d crunch the numbers and reassure herself that there were no slipups, no mistakes in the clinic’s accounting of controlled substances.

She couldn’t afford a mistake.

Not another one.

Reilly was waiting on the sidewalk in front of the clinic, one shoulder propped against the dirty brick. He straightened when he saw her.

“What’s wrong?” he asked, his eyes narrowing in concern. Or suspicion.

Nell stitched a smile on her face that would have done justice to a corpse at a wake. “Why would you think something’s wrong?”

“That’s a reporter’s trick,” he observed.

She tested the door handle to make sure it was locked. “What?”

“Answering a question with another question.” Reilly smiled winningly. “Cops do it, too.”

“Nothing’s wrong,” Nell said. Her bag weighed on her shoulder, heavy as conscience.

“You’re late.”

“We had a little excitement at the end of the day.” She’d spent the past half hour closeted with Ed, painstakingly checking and rechecking his inventory numbers.

Reilly strolled toward her. “What kind of excitement?”

She shrugged. “Our ultrasound machine is on the fritz.” That much, at least, was true. “One of our patients has a possible fibroid, and I had to convince her to go to the E.R.”

“Is that bad?”

“It is if she decides not to make the trip. Most of our patients aren’t poor enough to qualify for Medicaid, but that doesn’t mean they can afford a visit to the emergency room.” She looked at him pointedly. “We really need new diagnostic equipment.”

Reilly stuck his hands in his pockets. “Is this a date or a fund-raising drive?”

“You invited me to dinner to talk about the clinic.”

“I invited you to dinner,” he agreed. “Do you want a ride or would you rather follow me in your car?”

“I don’t have a car,” Nell said.

Reilly started walking along the sidewalk. Sauntering, really. “We’ll take mine, then.”

He was too agreeable. Slippery, Nell thought ominously. And way too confident, the kind of man who equated sharing an after-dinner cup of coffee with after-dinner sex.

She stopped under a street light. “I don’t get into cars with strange men.”

Reilly stopped, too. “That’s going to make getting to the restaurant difficult.”

Nell offered him a crooked smile. She didn’t want to alienate him. She just wanted to keep things on her terms. On her turf.

“Not if we walk,” she said.

He rocked back on his heels, surveying the street, three- and four-story apartments over storefronts protected by iron bars and sliding grills: a used bookstore, a TV repair shop, a thrift store with a baby swing in the window. On the corner, the Greek market had closed for the night, the fruits and vegetables carted inside, the wooden shutters pulled down to the counters.

“You know someplace to eat around here?”

“I know a lot of places,” she said. “Do you have a problem with walking?”

He looked at her, his eyes blank, his mouth a tight line. And then he flashed another of his easy smiles.

“Not if we walk slowly. I’m basically a lazy bastard.”

Nell sniffed. She’d been on her feet all day. “I’ll try not to jog.”

“Then lead the way.”

She was very conscious of the grate of his shoes against the concrete, the whisper of her rubber soles. The gutter was littered with last fall’s leaves and last week’s trash. Bare trees raised black branches to the light. A car prowled by, its stereo thumping. A woman called. A television spilled canned laughter through an open window. By a Dumpster between two buildings was a furtive movement, quickly stilled; something, human or animal, foraging in the dark.

Nell shivered and pulled her cloak tighter.

“What’s with the Red Riding Hood getup?” Reilly asked.

“What? Oh.” She glanced down at her long red wool and then over at his safari jacket. “Fashion advice from the crocodile hunter?”

“Hey, my jacket’s practical. Lots of pockets.”

“My cape is practical, too.”

“No pockets,” he pointed out.

“It’s warm.”

“So’s a down parka.”

“Warm and recognizable,” she amended.

“Is that important to you? Being recognized?”

She didn’t want him to think she was after publicity for herself. Nothing could be further from the truth.

“It can be,” she answered carefully. “Sometimes if I’m working late, or I have to go out at night, the cape is useful. Like a uniform.”

“Because you might be asked to help somebody.”

Nell hesitated. “Yes.”

“Or because it keeps you from getting shot at?” he asked, and she stumbled on a crack in the sidewalk.

“Easy,” Reilly said, his hand coming up to cup her elbow through the red wool.

“Not usually,” Nell muttered.

When she looked over, he was smiling.

Nell tightened her grip on her bag. The printouts inside weighed on her shoulder. She had to be careful what she said around this guy. The sleepy smile was deceptive. The agreeable pose was a lie. The disinterested air was an act.

Whatever she thought of Joe Reilly personally, he was obviously good at his job.

And that made him dangerous.

Chapter 2

The bartender at Flynn’s knew Nell by name. He waved her to a booth at the back and drew her a Harps without asking.

Sliding into the booth, Nell watched Reilly lever himself awkwardly onto the dark vinyl bench opposite. His legs bumped the center pedestal. His mouth tightened.

Concern stirred. Purely professional concern. “Are you all right?”

“Fine.” He glanced around. “Nice place.”

So he didn’t want to talk about himself. That made a change from most of the men she knew.

His sharp reporter’s gaze took in everything. Flynn’s was a neighborhood establishment, with a long polished bar, a wide-planked floor and a wall lined with bottles. Foil shamrocks and limp crepe-paper streamers hung from the TV, week-old relics of St. Patrick’s Day. Fiddles and drums played through the speakers. The air was wreathed in cigarette smoke, sharp with the scents of hops and malt, rich with frying potatoes and grilled onions.

Nell’s mouth watered. She’d skipped lunch again today. She inhaled, closing her eyes in pure appreciation.

Her pint clinked on the table.

“What’ll you have?” the waitress asked Reilly.

“Club soda,” he said. “Thanks.”

Nell opened her eyes. He wasn’t drinking.

Which meant, of course, that he was working.

Which meant that she better pay close attention, or he was going to gobble her up like a side of home fries.

“I’m sure you have questions,” she said.

“A couple.”

“I left the statistics in my office.” Except for the ones in her purse. Stuffed with papers, it burned against her thigh. “But I can give you general information on the demographics of our patient base.”

A muscle moved at the corner of Reilly’s mouth. “Actually, I was going to ask if you wanted to order now or later.”

“Oh.” That kind of question. Flustered, she scanned the menu. “Fish and chips, please.”

Reilly handed both menus to the waitress. “I’ll take the steak. Medium rare.”

Red meat, Nell thought as the waitress’s white blouse disappeared into the darkness at the back of the bar. At least he didn’t eat it raw.

“So, what are you doing at the Ark Street Clinic?” Reilly asked.

Penance, Nell thought.

“I see patients,” she said. “I also recruit doctors, hire staff, schedule the nurses, write grant proposals and—”

“This isn’t a job interview, Dolan. I didn’t ask for your résumé. I want to know what you’re doing there.”

Nell set down her pint. There was no way in the world she was confessing the demons that drove her to shark-mouth Reilly, the reporter. But she could certainly talk about the importance of her work.

“Call me Nell,” she said. There. That sounded friendly and forthcoming. “The Ark Street clinic provides top-notch care for a segment of the city that would otherwise go untreated. We have a growing immigrant population in our area. More and more employees—especially in low-paying and part-time jobs—aren’t getting insurance through their employers. And with the recent budget cuts—”

“Yeah,” said Reilly. “I read the flyer. Very nice. What did you do before?”

“I was a trauma nurse.”

“Where?”

“Does it matter?”

“I don’t know. Why did you leave? It can’t have been the money.”

Nell was stung. Not just by his assumption, but by his attitude. “How would you know?”

His gaze flicked over her. “No car. Cheap watch. Old shoes.”

Even though he couldn’t possibly see them under the table, Nell curled her feet beneath the bench. He saw too much.

And actually, her job paid pretty well. But she had debts. Some of them were monetary. And the rest…She picked up her pint and took a long swig.

“Can’t you accept that some people are motivated by a simple desire to help?” she asked.

He considered that, his long fingers laced on the table in front of him. He had a surgeon’s hands, tapered, the nails neatly trimmed. “Nope,” he said.

Forget the hands. Nell frowned. “That’s a very cynical position to take.”

“Realistic,” Reilly corrected. He moved his drink aside for the waitress, who set their plates on the table. “Most people are motivated by self-interest, fear or greed,” he continued after she left. “And the ones who tell you differently cause most of the world’s problems.”

Nell stopped with her fork halfway to her mouth, arrested by the discrepancy between his flippant tone and the bitter look in his eyes.

“Spoken like a frustrated idealist,” she said.

“Not an idealist. Just frustrated.” He flashed her a Big Bad Wolf grin loaded with innuendo.

Nell felt a buzz. Not a beer buzz, either. This was more like sexual static. Cheap thrills. His attitude was completely unacceptable. Too pointed. Too personal. Too sexual. But his persistence was flattering.

She straightened against the high-backed vinyl seat. She had too much at stake to let herself be diverted by the promise or the threat of sex. Even if it had been twenty-two months, five days and…but who was counting?

She made an effort to drag the conversation back to a clinical, professional level.

“You have to admit that there are caring, committed people in the world who do make a difference,” she said. “Our volunteers—”

“Don’t you believe it,” Reilly said. “More harm is done by zealots, by people with a cause, people with good intentions, people who frigging care, than all the bad guys in the world.”

She sat back. “Wow. Are you speaking from personal experience here?”

Reilly met her eyes without apology. “Yes.”

Nell dragged a French fry through the ketchup on her plate. She didn’t want to know, she reminded herself. She didn’t want to know him. But the caretaker in her recognized and responded to the flat echo of his pain.

“Who hurt you?” she asked softly.

Reilly raised his eyebrows. “Are you trying to turn this interview around on me?”

Her heartbeat quickened. “I thought the purpose of this dinner was to get to know one another better.”

He watched her. “If that’s what it takes.”

There was that buzz again, that jolt, that thrill. These were deep waters. And she was about to wade in over her head.

Unless—oh, God, that would be embarrassing—unless she totally misunderstood him.

“For you to get a story,” she clarified.

“For me to get you into bed.”

Nell caught her breath. Okay, she hadn’t misunderstood.

“Gee,” she said dryly. “I’m overwhelmed.”

“No, I don’t think so,” he said, studying her with those hooded, knowing eyes. “You’re annoyed. But maybe you’re interested, too. Are you interested?”

Interested, offended, tempted, threatened… She wrapped her hands around her cold mug to keep them steady. “Are you always this blunt?”

He smiled, baring straight, white teeth. “It’s one of the principles of good journalism. ‘Don’t waste words.’”

She struggled to swim against the pull of his sexuality, the warm, lazy current in her own blood.

“Doesn’t your paper have some kind of restriction against journalists having sex with their subjects?” she asked.

“Probably. If you were underage, or if I put pressure on you to sleep with me so I didn’t trash your clinic in my column, that would be a breach of conduct.”

Was he serious?

“Are you actually suggesting I have sex with you to get good publicity for the clinic?”

“No.” His eyes were bright and very blue. “Would you?”

Would she? Her mind whirled. She’d slept with men for worse reasons. Not recently, but—

“Of course not,” she snapped.

Reilly smiled. Satisfied with her answer? Or pleased that he’d finally gotten under her skin?

“Then it’s not an issue,” he said. “Once I file the story, I don’t have any rules against taking you to bed.”

Nell sucked in her breath and almost choked on her beer. She should definitely switch to water.

“I do,” she said when she could speak. “Have rules, I mean.”

His gaze dropped to her hands on the tabletop. “You’re not married,” he said.

“No.”

“But you used to be,” Reilly guessed. “To a doctor?”

Nell glared at him. “So?”

The reporter leaned back consideringly. “So you put the jerk through medical school. Right? And then he…what? Wasted your youth? Cut up your credit cards? Broke your heart?”

Worse. Much worse. Her ex-husband, Richard, had ruined her career, violated her trust and smeared her integrity. None of which she was about to explain to a been-there, done-that, wrote-about-it reporter.

“Something like that,” Nell said coolly.

“Figures,” Reilly said.

She lifted her chin. “Why? Do I strike you as some kind of human doormat?”

“Nope. But your ex was a doctor. I don’t like doctors.”

Nell smiled ruefully. “I don’t like them myself sometimes.”

“You have a problem with the doctors at your clinic?” Reilly’s tone was easy. His eyes were sharp.

Oh, no. Nell’s stomach lurched. This is what happened when you let yourself be drawn along on the tide of sexual attraction. Some lean and hungry reporter swam up and bit off your head.

She was not letting herself be pulled into a discussion of problems at the clinic. Not with her purse beside her, stuffed with the evidence of possible drug diversion. She resisted the urge to pat it, to make sure her lists and printouts stayed safely tucked out of sight.

“Our volunteer physicians are dedicated to our patients’ care,” she said.

Reilly grinned, making it personal again, undercutting her best professional facade. “Is that the company line?”

“It’s the truth,” she said stiffly.

“Maybe. Or maybe all you doctors stick together.”

They did. Oh, they did. Nell remembered being called into the chief of staff’s office after he had discovered Richard’s drug addiction. The hospital administrator had been desperate to propose a way to protect his senior anesthesiologist.

And Nell, shaken, guilty, had agreed to…had agreed.

She looked up from her half-eaten French fries to find Reilly still watching her. “I’m not a doctor,” she said.

“You dress like one.”

Here was her chance to turn the conversation, to steer it back to her work and the clinic.

“I wear the lab coat because patients like it,” Nell said. “Nurse practitioners can provide the kind of basic primary care—diagnosing illnesses, treating injuries, prescribing medications—that used to be available only from a physician. But most people are more reassured by a white coat than they are by an explanation of my qualifications.”

“So why not go to medical school yourself? Get the credentials to go with the coat?”

“I have credentials,” Nell said, more sharply than she intended. “I like being a nurse. And medical school costs money.”

“Which you would know, since you put your husband through, right?”

Nell didn’t say anything. She couldn’t.

“Did you two have kids?”

Enough was enough.

Nell pushed her plate away and leaned her elbows on the table. “You said this wasn’t a job interview.”

“It’s not.”

“Really? Because all these personal questions sure sound like you’re interviewing someone for a girlfriend position. And I’m not interested in applying.”

Reilly sat back and signaled for the check. “Do you mind telling me why?”

“You can’t accept I’m simply not attracted to you?”

Unexpectedly, he reached across the table and caught her hand in his. His fingers wrapped around her wrist. His gaze sought hers. Nell forced herself not to pull away, not to show any reaction at all. But he had to see the color that crept into her face. He had to feel her pulse thrum under his touch. His thumb stroked the soft inner skin of her wrist.

He released her abruptly and smiled. “Nope. I won’t accept that.”

Jerk.

“Fine,” Nell said crossly. “There are still those ethical considerations we talked about. You are writing about my clinic. It would be awkward, at the very least, if we became personally involved. But the biggest reason is that my work demands all my energy. I simply don’t have time for a relationship.”

Not now, when her bag was bulging with data that could destroy her and her clinic.

And not with him. The last person she needed screwing up her it’s-all-under-control life was a hardboiled reporter who saw far too much and asked way too many questions.

“That’s reasonable,” Reilly said.

Some of the tension leached from Nell’s shoulders. She even smiled. “I’m glad you agree.”

“I didn’t say I agree,” he corrected. He dropped a bunch of bills on the waitress’s tray. “I said it was reasonable.”

The predatory glint in his eye made her nervous.

The March moon was a clear, cold disk in the sky, its white light lost in the orange glare of the street lamps. Frost glittered on the concrete and tinseled the windshields of the cars lining the curb. Nell’s breath escaped in puffs as they walked.

And walked.

Joe set his jaw. His ankle had started throbbing before they even reached the restaurant. Ice and elevation, the doctors said. Yeah, right. Like Nell wouldn’t have noticed if he’d stuck his foot in her lap during dinner.

He slung an arm around her shoulders for support. She was slight and strong and smelled faintly of disinfectant. Her hair tickled his cheek.

“Warm enough?” he murmured.

“I’m fine,” she said crisply, not turning her head. “Put your hands in your pockets if you’re cold.”

Despite the pain in his ankle, Joe bit back a grin. “Yes, Nurse Dolan.”

She shot him a sharp look and kept walking.

Hell. Sweat broke out on his upper lip. He had to slow down.

Joe made a show of digging in his pockets. “Mind if I smoke?”

Nell slowed her steps to match his. “Not if you don’t mind my reciting statistics linking smoking to lung cancer, heart disease and emphysema.”

“Go right ahead.” He stopped. Thank God. Balancing his weight on his left leg, Joe shook out a cigarette. His third today. He cupped the end and lit it, dragging the blessed smoke into his lungs. Heaven.

Nell narrowed her eyes at him. “You really should quit.”

Joe exhaled slowly, savoring the rush of nicotine. “I’m cutting out one vice at a time, thanks.”

“Really?” She arched one eyebrow. “What have you given up today?”

She was teasing. Maybe even flirting. He couldn’t tell. But her question howled through his soul like the wind through a ruin.

Joe shivered, shaken by the memories of the past twelve months. His mother’s worried eyes. His brothers’ bafflement. His boss’s frustration.

What had he given up?

Too damn much.

He shook out the match and stumped along, forgetting for a moment to disguise his limp. “I was going to go without sex tonight,” he said. “But if you want to change my mind, sweetheart, I—”

Instinct stopped him. Instinct or some habit of observation honed in war zones across Eastern Europe and the Middle East.

Three young toughs loitered in the block ahead of them, beside the line of empty cars. Joe was too far away to make out their gang colors, but he recognized the aggressive confidence in their moves, the casual menace of their posture. Trouble carried itself the same, in Chicago or in Gaza.

Their symbols were anchored on the right: caps tilted, a pocket inside out, a buckle worn to the side. That meant their gang, whatever it was, was affiliated with the Folks nation. Joe tried to recall what his brother Mike had told him about the Folks, back in the days when the Reilly brothers talked easily about everything. More spread out than their rival nation, the People, gangs in the Folks were quick to defend their territory lines.

Automatically, Joe looked for an open business, a bodega, anyplace with lights. Witnesses.

Nothing.

Hell.

He put a hand on Nell’s arm, mentally calculating the distance back to Flynn’s. He’d never make it. Could she? He registered the exact moment the boys spotted them, saw the nudge and the shove, felt the stirring of their interest like something nasty poked with a stick.

He and Nell should cross the street. Now.

Too late.

The toughs uncoiled from their stoop and sauntered toward them. Two walked abreast, blocking the sidewalk. One slid between the parked cars to the deserted street, cutting off escape in that direction.

Joe felt the anger cruise through his veins. Anger and fear. The taste of it was sour in his mouth. He wasn’t carrying a lot of money. He didn’t care much about his life. But the woman with him…

He crushed his cigarette underfoot, damning his unsteady balance, and put Nell firmly behind him.

The gang members prowled closer, making no attempt to be silent or subtle. Light gleamed from their chains, their belt buckles, their eyes. Joe shifted his weight to take their attack.

And then Nell’s clear voice piped behind him, “Benny? How’s your mother? Are her bunions still bothering her?”

The two boys in front of Joe stopped, confused. Nell stepped forward, smiling, and took Joe’s arm.

“Benny’s mother works in retail sales,” she explained. “So she’s on her feet all day. She was in a lot of pain when she first came to the clinic.”

She smiled again at the taller of the two toughs blocking the sidewalk, holding Joe’s arm tight against her breast so he couldn’t swing, couldn’t move without hurting her. He could feel her heart pounding against his arm.

“How is she?” she asked again, her tone relaxed and solicitous. “Are those new shoes helping?”

The young man looked down at the sidewalk and over at his friends. “Yeah,” he said finally. “She’s doing okay.”

“Good,” Nell said. “You tell her to come see me if she has any more problems. She can come after work. We’re open until seven Mondays and Thursdays.”

The gangbanger shuffled his feet. “Yeah. Okay.”

“You’ll tell her?” Nell pressed.

The tough standing next to him, the one with the tattoo on his cheek, snickered.

Benny silenced him with a glare. “Yeah. I’ll tell her.”

Nell nodded. “All right. Good night, then.”

She started forward, still hugging Joe’s arm so that he had no choice but to fall into step beside her. Pain lanced his ankle every time his foot hit the pavement. He could feel the faint tremor of Nell’s body as she pressed against his arm.

But her steps never faltered. In the orange glare of the streetlights, her red cape gleamed like a military cloak, like an archangel’s wings.

No one followed them.

Joe shook his head. It was almost enough to make a man believe in miracles again.

Chapter 3

Melody King turned twenty-four today, and the nurses were throwing her a party on their lunch break. The office manager had had few opportunities to celebrate in her young life, and few people to celebrate with. A runaway at seventeen, an addict at eighteen, pregnant and in rehab at twenty, Melody had come to Nell straight from community college.

Nell had known she was taking a risk in hiring the inexperienced single mother. But, fresh from her own humiliation at the hospital, Nell had been determined to provide the younger woman with a second chance. And today, watching Melody’s thin face light in the glow of a single candle, Nell prayed her gamble had paid off.

As Melody cut her cake, Nell kept an eye out the window for the police. After checking and rechecking the lists last night, she’d called them herself this morning. But what would her discovery mean to the nurses crowding around Melody’s desk? What would her decision cost her?

“Cake?” offered Billie.

Nell’s stomach lurched uneasily. “No, thanks.”

“Nice flowers,” Lucy Morales said, nodding at the daisy bouquet by Melody’s computer. “Who are they from?”

Melody blushed. “Dr. Jim.”

James Fletcher, volunteer pediatrician, acknowledged stud muffin and all-around good guy. His offering raised eyebrows and knowing grins around the nurses’ circle.

“It’s not like that,” Melody insisted with quiet dignity. “He’s just being nice.”

“Bet that’s your favorite present, though,” teased Lucy.

Nell came to the office manager’s rescue. “No, her favorite present is from her other admirer. Show them, Melody.”

Proudly, Melody showed off the birthday card her three-year-old daughter had made at day care.

“Pretty,” Billie approved. “Trevor’s nine, and I swear that boy still can’t be trusted with scissors.”

Billie’s nephew Trevor had sickle-cell disease. His mother couldn’t afford health insurance, and Billie brought the boy to the clinic for treatment.

While the nurses oohed and aahed over the card, Nell asked quietly, “How’s Trevor doing?”

Billie smile was strained. “He’s managing. That’s all we can hope for, right? We all manage.”

A black-and-white police car pulled to the curb by the fire hydrant. Nell’s pulse kicked up.

One of the nurses glanced out at the flashing lights. “Wow. This is turning into quite a party.”

“I’ve got it,” Nell said.

“If they’re cute, offer them some cake,” Lucy called.

Nell hurried to open the front door as two officers—solid, uniformed, with matching gaits and hair-cuts—climbed out of the car and approached.

“How’s it going, Nell.” The first cop wiped his brow with his forearm before resettling his checkerboard hat. “Heard you had a little problem.”

“Hi, Tom.” She smiled. One of the beat cops, Tom Dietz had worked with Nell on a domestic-violence awareness program last year. She liked him.

“Nell Dolan,” she said, offering her hand to the younger man looming beside him. She didn’t remember meeting him before, but his rugged good looks were vaguely familiar. A definite cake candidate. “And you are…?”

The second officer’s grip was warm and firm, his smile friendly. “Mike Reilly. Nice to meet you.”

Her mouth dried. He couldn’t be.

They think you’re a cop, she’d said to Joe Reilly yesterday.

Not me. My brother.

Nell’s heart banged against her ribs. She could deal with this, she told herself. She could deal with anything.

“Nice to meet you, too,” she said faintly as she led them away from Melody’s birthday party and back to her office cubicle, crammed in behind a wall of filing cabinets. “I think I know your brother.”

“Yeah?” The young cop looked delighted. “Will or Joe?”

Her last hope wheezed and died like a patient taken off the respirator.

“Joe,” Nell said. “The reporter?”

Mike Reilly beamed. “That’s Joe. He was with the Seventh Marines when they entered Baghdad. Did you read his—”

Tom Dietz rolled his eyes. “When you’re done with the stories from the front, Reilly, do you mind if we take a preliminary statement?”

The young man flushed. Nell smiled at him.

Joe Reilly’s brother. Oh, dear.

The last thing she wanted compromising her PR efforts was an investigation into drug theft. The last thing she needed complicating an investigation was lousy PR. The police and the press, working together, could piece together a picture of her past that could destroy everything she’d worked to create.

Tom leaned against an overflowing file cabinet and pulled out his notebook. “Why don’t you tell us what’s missing?”

Nell took a deep breath. “Drugs. I wrote out a list.” She fumbled in her pocket and offered it. The page trembled. “Schedule Three and Four painkillers, mostly. Narcotics. Darvon, Vicodin, a lot of Tylenol with codeine… I wrote them all down.”

Mike Reilly took the paper and studied it, his face suddenly hard and not so young.

“Any Schedule Twos?” Tom asked.

Methadone, he meant. Morphine. Oxycodone, rapidly becoming the most abused drug on the planet. An eighty mg tablet had a street value of up to eighty dollars.

“We don’t keep any methadone in stock.” It was a relief to be able to offer some good news. She hadn’t done anything wrong, Nell reminded herself. “And we keep such small quantities of Oxycodone that any theft would have been noticed immediately.”

Tom wrote that down. “When did you notice the other stuff was missing?”

“Ed Johnson—our pharmacist—suspected a discrepancy in the inventory last night. I checked the supply records and called you this morning.”

“Okay. We’ll need to talk to him. Who else has access to the pharmacy?”

Nell wiped her hands surreptitiously on her lab coat. This was where things got sticky. “Ed and I are the only ones with keys. Sometimes, when Ed is gone and I’m tied up with a procedure, one of the nurses will come in to get medication for a patient.”

“You loan them your keys,” Mike Reilly clarified, his voice expressionless. He sounded like his brother.

Nell winced. It was hard to explain how habit and convenience created trust among members of a medical team. Harder to admit, even to herself, that such trust could have been betrayed. “Yes. But they don’t have access to the narcotics cabinet.”

Tom rubbed his forehead. “They’ve got the keys.”

“The cabinet has a punch lock,” Nell explained. “It can only be opened with a three-digit code.”

“And who knows the code?” Tom asked.

Fear, bitter as bile, rose in Nell’s throat. She swallowed hard.

“Ed,” she said steadily. “And me.”

Mike Reilly shifted his seat on the edge of her desk. “Could be a tailgater,” he said to Tom.

Nell looked at them hopefully. “What’s that?”

“Somebody walks by, looks over your shoulder while you’re punching in the code,” Mike explained. “It’s easy enough to pick up.”

“You got a security camera on the inside?” Tom asked.

“No,” Nell admitted. In the acute-care room, an older woman was moaning, disoriented and in pain. Nell heard Billie’s attempts to comfort her, to make her lie still for an exam.

“A larger pharmacy with a walk-in narcotics vault would have a camera monitoring the inside. But we just have the cabinet. And the camera is positioned to record people approaching the pharmacy window from the outside.”

“Okay.” Tom closed his notebook. “We’ll take a look. In the meantime, you might want to change the code sequence on that punch lock.”

A crash sounded from across the hall. Billie yelled for help with the restraints. Mike Reilly looked uncomfortable.

“We don’t want to keep you,” Tom said. “I’ll give you a call in a couple of days, do a follow-up.”

Nell blinked at him. Surprised. Deflated. “That’s it?”

“We’ll file a report,” Tom assured her. “Let the assignment sergeant know in case your theft fits a pattern in the area. He might send out a detective. But the amounts you’re missing… We’ll check, but it’s not an index crime. Looks to me like you’ve got a problem with personal use.”

Nell went cold.

“Not you, personally,” Mike Reilly said. “Just, you know, somebody with access. You didn’t notice if the doors or locks were tampered with?”

“No,” Nell said faintly. Her heart pounded. Her mind raced. Somebody with access. Ed, whom she’d promised a job? Melody, whom she’d promised a second chance? A volunteer doctor? A nurse? “Nothing like that.”

“Well, we’ll look into it,” Tom said. “Want to show me that security camera? Even with the bad angle, you might have something on tape.”

He sounded doubtful but kind, like a surgeon explaining a patient’s chances of surviving a risky operation.

Nell led the way toward the pharmacy feeling numb. Someone she worked with, someone she trusted, someone she’d helped was stealing drugs from the clinic pharmacy. For personal use, Tom had said.

She turned the corner. Joe Reilly stood in the work aisle, leaning over the counter to talk to Melody King.

And things teetered from bad and slid to worse.

“Joe?” Mike Reilly sounded pleased, but puzzled. “What are you doing here?”

Joe pivoted stiffly on one leg.

Nell took a deep breath. She was not going to panic. Yet.

She forced herself to compare the two men, as if she could assess the threat to her clinic on the basis of their family resemblance. They didn’t look alike. Mike Reilly was bigger, blonder, broader than his brother. Beside him, Joe looked lean and tough and scruffier than ever. But something—the shape of their heads, the angle of their jaws, the set of their shoulders—marked them as brothers. And something else, a weariness, a watchfulness, marked Joe as the older one.

“Hello, Mike,” he said quietly.

“He said he had an appointment,” Melody piped up.

Both men ignored her.

“You listening for my car number on your police scanner again?” the cop asked.

If it was a joke it fell flat.

Joe shook his head. “I didn’t know you were here. What’s going on?”

Tom Dietz pushed up his hat brim with his thumb. “Nothing you need to worry about. Police blotter stuff.”

“Yeah, you stick to the big stories,” Mike said. “Are you here to see Nell?”

Nell started. She’d told Mike Reilly she knew his brother. But that was all. Had the young officer somehow picked up on the tension between them? Or was he just used to his big brother hitting on every woman that breathed?

I thought the purpose of this dinner was to get to know one another better.

If that’s what it takes.

Joe’s face was impassive. “I’m here on a story.”

Tom looked from Joe to Nell. “What kind of story?”

Nell stepped forward. The less the two Reilly brothers compared notes, the better. And yet something about Joe’s careful lack of expression tugged at her heart. “I contacted the Examiner to ask if they would send a reporter to profile the clinic. With all the recent budget cuts, we could use the publicity.”

Mike’s eyes widened. “You’re doing a—”

“Feature piece,” Joe supplied grimly. “For the Life section. Yeah.”

“Oh.” Mike shifted his weight, clearly uncomfortable.

Because he’d assumed Joe was having a personal relationship with his subject? Nell wondered. Or for some other reason?

“Well, that’s great,” Mike said finally, heartily. “You’re lucky,” he told Nell. “Joe’s a great writer. He won an AP award for his series on the looting of Baghdad, you know.”

She hadn’t known.

“Nell isn’t interested in my résumé,” Joe said.

But Mike continued as if his brother hadn’t spoken. “After he got hurt, he laced up his boot and kept right on reporting.”

Nell felt a flutter of concern. “You were injured?”

“It wasn’t a war wound,” Joe said. “I fell.”

“Some looters pushed him down a hospital stairwell,” Mike explained. Nell sucked in a distressed breath. “That didn’t stop Joe, though.”

Joe thrust his hands into his pockets. “Yes, it did. It just took me a while to wise up to it.”

“He was in the hospital for a couple of weeks when he got back,” Mike confided. “Getting his ankle patched up.”

A couple of weeks? For a broken ankle?

Nell glanced at Joe. He was clearly not enjoying this turn of the conversation.

“Sounds serious,” she said.

“Tedious,” Joe corrected. “I’m fine now.”

“You will be when you get that other surgery,” his brother said.

“I’m fine,” Joe said again, flatly.

A long, loaded look passed between the two men.

Mike snorted. “Yeah. Fine. That’s why you’re in Chicago writing PR copy for a cut-rate health clinic instead of overseas covering the action.”

Nell stiffened at the good-natured insult.

Joe’s face didn’t reveal any reaction at all.

“O-kay,” Tom said. “We’re about done here. I’ll just have a few words with Ed in the pharmacy and let you folks get back to—”

Writing PR copy for a cut-rate health clinic.

“—your business,” Tom finished. “Mike?”

“Gotcha.” He said goodbye to his brother, winked at Nell and sauntered after his partner.

“Are you all right?” Nell asked.

Joe’s mouth twisted. “Weren’t you listening? I’m fine.”

That wasn’t what his brother had implied, but Nell figured this was a poor time to point that out.

“What happened?” she asked.

“My baby brother just shot his mouth off.”

“I didn’t mean here. I meant over there.”

Joe rocked back and stared down his nose at her. “I thought I was here so you could give me a story.”

Nell’s heart beat faster. “I will. You go first.”

“Everything I have to say I wrote for the paper.”

She put her hands on her hips. “Are you really going to make me dig up back issues from a year ago?”

But instead of grinning, Joe shook his head. “Why should you care?”

She was surprised enough to tell the truth. “Because you were hurt, I guess. Because it’s my job to observe and to care, and I didn’t even notice.”

He smiled then, and the sight of all those even, white teeth against his movie-star stubble weakened her knees. “I knew there was a reason I liked you.”

She blinked. “What?”

“I get tired of being treated like the walking wounded all the time.” He looked directly into her eyes. “I don’t want you to see me as one of your patients, Nell.”

Her breath clogged. The moment stretched between them, fine and strong as suturing thread.

Until he snapped it by saying, “Unless you’d have sex with me out of pity. I’m okay with that.”

Disappointment made her cross. “Are there any circumstances in which you are not okay with sex?”

He considered, then shrugged. “Nope. Can’t think of any.”

Nell drew herself up. His crudeness could be a deliberate attempt to set some distance between them.

Or he could be a jerk. And she was an idiot for imagining that he was something else, that he felt any corresponding connection with her.

“I’ll give you that clinic tour now,” she said.

That was a close call, Joe thought as he tagged behind Nell to the acute-care room. Her shapeless white lab coat swayed with her walk.

Sex was one thing. Sex was good. Sex dulled the pain for a while.

But the exchange in the hall had forced him to face that Nell Dolan was not a woman he could simply have sex with. She was perceptive and funny and caring as hell.

She wouldn’t accept a relationship that was all about sex. She wouldn’t let a relationship be all about her. She would want—God help them both—to know about him. And eventually, all the get-to-know-you stuff that usually kicked off a relationship would lead her to figure out that he was hanging on to a job he hated by the edge of his fingernails. And she would demand to know why.

The thought made him shudder.

Better for them both, safer for them both, if he churned out his story and dragged his sorry ass out of here.

“Why do you need all this equipment?” he asked, interrupting her. “Wouldn’t your patients who need these kinds of tests be better off going to the hospital in the first place?”

Instead of taking offense, Nell considered his question seriously. “Some of them. But our goal is to identify and treat illnesses before a patient requires a trip to the emergency room. Many of them are afraid to go to the hospital. And most of them can’t afford it. Our clinic is actually cost-effective for the community. For every dollar in donations, we can return seven dollars in health care. I have statistics showing…”

Her face was animated. Her eyes were bright with conviction. And every word wiped out his hopes of taking her to bed.

Nell was a do-gooder, a fearless meddler, a tireless fixer-upper. What had she said? It’s my job to observe and to care. If they got involved, she would want to help him. She would demand to know why he wouldn’t help himself.

And he wasn’t going there. Not with his doctors. Not with his family. And not with a woman he wanted to take to bed.

Are there any circumstances in which you are not okay with sex?

Yes. When it threatened to become more than sex and jeopardized the barriers he’d set around his soul to survive.

Nell was still talking about clinic costs with the endearing earnestness of Mother Teresa and the convincing delivery of a used-car salesman. “It’s all about preventive care. A routine patient visit can cost a hundred and fifty dollars at a private doctor’s office. Using volunteer doctors, we can provide the same services for one-fifth the cost. And that includes a lab test,” she added triumphantly. “If you extrapolate—”

“Hey, Nell.” The big black nurse stuck her head in the door. Her hair, shaved short and dyed red, glowed like the fuzz on a tennis ball. “Let me have your keys a second.”

Nell’s hand moved easily to her pocket. And then she stopped. “Where’s Ed?”

“At lunch. You’ve been so busy you lost track of time.” The nurse flicked a glance in Joe’s direction. “Billie Parker,” she introduced herself.

Joe was skeptical. Did she really need keys? Or was she angling for a mention in the paper? “Joe Reilly,” he offered blandly.

She looked him over. “Yeah, I know.” She turned back to Nell. “Anyway, I need some cortisone samples for the kid in Exam Six. He has a rash in places you don’t want to think about.”

Nell moved toward the door. “I’ll get them for you.”

“That’s okay. I’ll just—”

“I really should get them myself,” Nell said.

In the field, Joe had developed an ear for a story and an instinct for survival. And something in her tone caught his attention as surely as the sound of a pistol being cocked.

Billie Parker shrugged. “Whatever. When you find the time. Exam Six.” She started to walk out.

“I’ll come with you,” Nell said. She turned to Joe, her clear blue eyes questioning. A conscientious frown pleated her forehead. He had to stop himself from smoothing it with his thumb. “I have to get back to my patients. Did I give you what you need?”

Not by a long shot, sweetheart, he thought.

But he couldn’t ask for what he needed. Not from anyone, and not from her.

He forced a grin. “Are you offering to play doctor, Dolan?”

Her head snapped back as if he’d slapped her. “Not unless you’re volunteering to turn your head and cough,” she said icily and stalked out.

Chapter 4

It was amazing what kind of crap a writer could produce when he was up against a deadline and had absolutely no feeling for his subject.

Joe scowled at the half page of text displayed on his computer screen. The cursor blinked impatiently at the bottom. Write. Now. Right now. Write.

He swore and reached for a cigarette. Every morning he counted them out, three cigarettes, his day’s allowance, and placed them carefully in a box in his breast pocket.

The box was empty. The cigarettes were gone.

Joe checked the ashtray on his desk to make sure. Yep, sometime between typing his byline and that last, remarkably bad paragraph citing statistics on America’s uninsured, he’d smoked his last cigarette. Exhausted his supply. Reached the end of his resources and his rope.

Maybe he should give up and turn in the piece his editor expected. Some slop with Nell Dolan as an angel of mercy dispensing hope and drugs to the city’s grateful poor. Nurse Practitioner Barbie, with long blond hair and a removable white lab coat.

She would hate that. Joe almost smiled.

But thinking about Nell, undressing Nell, only made him more frustrated in a different way. Physically frustrated. Sexually frustrated.

He reached again for his cigarettes. Hell. Crushing the empty box in his hand, he lofted it across the living room toward the wastebasket.

He missed. Loser.

In his front hall, the doorbell rasped like the final buzzer at a Bulls’ game.

Joe hobbled across the bare hardwood floor to the door and peered through the security glass at the side. Two men, one in uniform, occupied his front stoop.

Joe yanked open the door. “What the hell are you doing here?”

His middle brother Will walked in without asking. “Ma was worried when you bailed on dinner.”

Mike followed, thrusting a round Tupperware container into Joe’s hands. “She sent us with leftovers. Got any beer?”

His family. He loved them, admired them, let them down… And right now, he wanted them to go away.

“No.”

No alcohol. It was something else he was learning to deny himself.

Mike snorted. “God, now I’m worried about you, too. What about coffee?”

“Instant. And you’ll have to make it yourself.”

“Okay. In the pantry, right?” Without waiting for an answer, Mike snatched back the covered dish and carried it through to the kitchen. A cupboard door banged. A drawer slammed.

With a curse, Joe limped after him.

“You’re not walking too good,” Will observed behind him. “You hurt your ankle again?”

Joe gritted his teeth. He supposed it was too much to hope Will wouldn’t notice. “Nope. Just overdid it the past couple days.”

“Is that why you blew off dinner?”

“No. I told Ma. I have a deadline.”

“You still have to eat,” Will said.

Joe regarded his brother with loathing. “You sound exactly like Ma, you know that?”

Will grinned at him, five feet ten inches of compact, confident Chicago firefighter. “Say that when you’re on both feet, paperboy, and I’ll take you down.”

It was the kind of threat he used to make before the accident. Even with his brother’s qualifier—when you’re on both feet—the taunt improved Joe’s mood.

The microwave pinged from the kitchen.

“Dinner’s ready,” Mike called.

The scent of Mary Reilly’s lamb and onions permeated the hall. The house was small, with one bedroom on the ground floor and a couple of others upstairs that Joe had barely seen. Eight months ago, when he bought the place, the layout had been the house’s key selling point. He still couldn’t negotiate the stairs easily.

Stumping into the kitchen, Joe dug a spoon from the drawer. Will filled a kettle with water. Mike rescued the plastic container of stew from the microwave and slid it across the table.

Joe lowered himself cautiously onto a chair, cupping the Tupperware in one hand. The smell reminded him of decades of Sunday dinners eaten off his mother’s lace tablecloth in his parents’ dining room. The solid weight of the container in his hand was warm and comforting.

“Thanks,” he said gruffly.

Will lifted one shoulder in a shrug. No big deal.

“Mom made us come,” said Mike. “She and Pop are worried you’re not getting out enough.”

“Oh, like you do,” Joe retorted. “You still live in their basement.”

“I like saving money.”

“You like Ma doing your laundry,” Joe said.

“Yeah, well, a year ago she was emptying your bedpan and bringing your meals on a tray,” Mike said. “So I don’t want to hear it.”

An awkward silence fell.

Mike meant well, Joe reminded himself desperately. He always meant well.

But neither of his brothers understood how Joe’s crash-and-burn return from Iraq had crippled him. He prayed they never did. To lie at the mercy of his doctors, to wake crying in pain, to rely on pills to function and his family for the most basic human needs had been a devastating comedown.

He was the oldest, the leader, the one who did well in school. The foreign correspondent, the world adventurer.

Now he was back to eating his mother’s leftovers and fretting over writing a feature on a hole-in-the-wall clinic.

Will’s chair scraped back. He grabbed the whistling kettle and poured boiling water into two mugs.

“Want some?” he asked Joe, lifting the kettle.

He wanted a drink. He wanted his life back.

He cleared his throat. “Sure. Thanks.”

Will snagged another mug from the cupboard and added instant crystals.

“Don’t worry about Mom,” he said, stirring the coffee. “I told her you weren’t getting out because you were finally settling down.”

Joe pushed his half-eaten stew away. “And she believed that?”

“She didn’t,” Mike said, helping himself to one of the mugs and bringing another over to Joe. “But then I told her you were seeing somebody.”

Joe didn’t “see” women. He had sex with them, to fill the time and dull the pain.

“Yeah?” he asked, almost amused. “Who did you tell her I was—”

Oh, no.

Mike wouldn’t. He couldn’t.

He had. He was trying not to wriggle like a puppy who’d missed the paper, but it was clear he knew he’d made a mess.

“Nell Dolan,” Joe said flatly, answering his own question.

“She was the only one I could think of,” Mike said.

“A blond nurse with an Irish surname,” Will put in, a gleam in his eyes. “She’s perfect. Mom was thrilled.”

Nell was perfect, Joe acknowledged. That was her problem. Or rather, it was his.

She would fit too well into his family and into his parents’ expectations for their disabled son. She had the idealism and commitment they admired and he had lost. On top of that, she was Irish. Catholic. A caretaker.

She could take care of him.

The thought was as bitter as his brother’s coffee and much harder to swallow.

Joe forced himself to take a sip and turned the conversation. “What were you doing there today, anyway? At the clinic.”

“Your girlfriend called us in,” Mike said. “Somebody’s lifting narcotics from the clinic pharmacy.”

Joe felt the tickle of interest like a spider on the back of his neck. “Is it serious?”

“Not yet.” Mike waggled his eyebrows. “It wouldn’t hurt you to keep an eye on things, though.”

It could, Joe thought. He didn’t want to get involved with Nell or with her clinic. He was going to turn in his fifteen-hundred words and be done with them both.

But as he sat waiting for his brothers to finish their coffee and leave, he couldn’t stop thinking this could be the hook, the angle his story needed.

The hell with it.

Frustration bubbled and seethed inside him. Despite the time he’d lost with his brothers’ visit, despite his aching ankle and looming deadline, he needed to get out of the house tonight.

He needed a meeting.

The banging woke her.

Nell’s head jerked up. She blinked, disoriented, at the scattered pages of the grant proposal spotlit by her desk lamp. She had to finish it tonight. She had to—

Bang. Bang. Bang. Like a garbage can bouncing down a fire escape.

—open the door.

Nell hauled herself to her feet. Her eyes were gritty. Her mouth was fuzzy. Her brain wasn’t working at all. If she had any kind of sense, she’d be home at this time of night. If she had any kind of life…

Someone was at the clinic door, pounding hard enough to threaten the glass. Her heart tripped. Trying to get her attention? Or trying to get in?

The panic button was up front, under the registration desk. It hadn’t been used in… Nell couldn’t remember the last time it had been used.

She hurried down the hall, switching on lights along the way. The Ark Street Free Clinic wasn’t the county E.R. Her practice specialized in preventive medicine and family care. Not belligerent drunks or whacked-out junkies or gangbangers who had to be strapped to their gurneys to stop them from finishing in the hospital what they’d started on the streets.

Bang. Bang.

Pulse racing, Nell flipped the entrance lights. A pale face leaped at her from the darkness beyond the glass. Her heart rocketed to her throat.

Joe Reilly?

Dazed, Nell stood with her hand still on the switch plate and her feet rooted to the linoleum. What was he doing here?

He rattled the door in its frame.

Shaken from her surprise, Nell jumped forward to slide back the bolts.

“What is it?” she asked. “What do you want?”

And it better be good, her tone announced. She was tired. And she still hadn’t forgiven him for his “play doctor” crack.

“Not me,” he said immediately. “Her.”

He turned and reached down to the bundle of rags huddled in the shadow of the building. The bundle gasped and struck his arms away.

Not rags. A woman. A girl, really, her dark eyes huge in her thin face, her hair covered by a plain scarf, her body draped in shawls.

Nell took a step forward. “Help me get her inside.”

“I can’t,” Joe said tersely.

She spared him a brief, assessing glance. “Your ankle?”

“No. She’s Muslim. Unless her life is in danger, it’s not permitted for me to touch her.”

His sensitivity surprised Nell. But she was already bending down, offering her arm to the young woman. “How did you get her here?” she asked over her shoulder.

Joe looked grim. “I convinced her her life was in danger.” The girl cried out. And Nell saw what the shadows and the shawls had hidden until now.

“She’s pregnant,” she said stupidly, staring at the girl’s rigid, distended abdomen.

Great diagnosis, Dolan.

“Not for long,” said Joe. “She’s in labor.”

Holy Mary, Mother of God.

Adrenaline rushed through Nell, jolting her fully awake. She wasn’t set up for a birth. She hadn’t helped deliver a baby since her OB rotation in nursing school.

“Right. All right.” Nell supported the girl to her feet with a strong arm around her shoulders. “Come on, sweetie, let’s get you inside. I can have an ambulance here in ten minutes.”

“Not good enough,” Joe said. “She could have the baby here in five.”

Had she really thought this dolt was sensitive?

“Let’s try to be a little more reassuring, okay? She can hear you.” Nell turned back to the girl, who had the sweet, exotic prettiness of a Princess Jasmine doll. “What’s your name, honey?”

Joe stretched his arm past them to open the door. He smelled like warm male and coffee. Nell would have killed for a cup.

“Her name is Laila Massoud. And she doesn’t speak English.”

Oh. Oh, dear.

Nell held Laila as another contraction wracked her swollen body. How many minutes since the last one? “Then how do you know her name?”

“I picked up a little Farsi in Afghanistan.”

Nell didn’t have time to be impressed. She steered the girl down the hall toward the acute-care room. The poor kid was shaking so hard she could barely stand. How had she managed to walk here?

“Ask her how far along she is.”

Joe gave her a disbelieving look. “I’d say pretty far along.”

“Not the labor,” Nell snapped. “The pregnancy. How advanced is her pregnancy?”

Joe said something to the girl, pausing once as if searching for words.

Laila’s brown eyes were wide and unfocused as her body contended with the momentous task of birth. But she answered him readily, even holding up her fingers to make sure he understood.

“She thinks thirty-eight weeks,” Joe translated. “She’s not sure.”

Thirty-eight weeks. That meant her baby was full term, its lungs developed enough to cope outside the womb. Assuming the girl could count.

Nell eased Laila up a step so she could perch on the end of the exam table.

“Raise the head,” Nell ordered Joe. “Does she have a doctor?”

He hurried to comply. He was limping, Nell noted with the clarity of crisis, clumsier than she’d ever seen him. But he did as she asked, fumbling with the table’s controls to adjust its angle.

With one arm around the girl, Nell yanked on the side rail of the bed. Joe saw what she was doing and raised the rail on the other side.

“No doctor,” he said. “Her husband is a business student at Illinois Circle campus. They don’t have insurance.”

Nell was lowering the girl onto her side when her abdomen—her whole body—went rigid. Her nails dug into Nell’s supporting arm.

Two minutes, Nell noted with a glance at her watch. She expelled a worried breath. “Where is her husband?”

“He works nights stocking shelves at the Jewel around the corner. Laila was on her way to find him when—”

“Call him,” Nell ordered. As soon as the contraction ended, she dashed to the sink to scrub. “There’s a phone book under the front desk. And call an ambulance. I have to do an exam.”

Joe escaped as she pulled on latex gloves.

With murmurs and gestures, Nell coaxed the laboring woman onto her back with her knees bent and spread apart. Blood and fluid soaked her skirt. Nell lifted the wet material out of the way as Laila moaned and writhed. Her vaginal opening bulged.

Nell caught her breath. Okay, baby was on the way. Head first, which was good. And fast. Not so good.

She flipped the skirt back down as Joe hobbled into the room.

“I called 911,” he announced. “They’re sending an ambulance. And I left a message with the father’s supervisor.”

Laila wailed, an indistinguishable stream of words.

“It’s all right, sweetie.” Nell stroked her leg, calculating the distance to the supply cart. She needed blankets. Towels. A suction bulb. Cord and scissors.

Joe’s face was white. “I have to leave.”

Nell glared at him. “Forget it. I need you here to talk her through this.”

“You don’t get it. I can’t stay. I’m male. She’s Muslim. I can’t see her like this.”

“So don’t look,” Nell snapped. “I have things to do down here. Get up there and talk to her.”

He did as she commanded, bending over the head of the bed, his voice low and questioning. The young mother-to-be was crying, shaking her head. Joe tried again, his deep voice patient and almost unspeakably gentle.

Nell blinked. Who would have guessed shark-mouth Reilly the reporter could sound like that?

Joe looked up. “Can you put up some kind of drape?”

Relief flooded Nell. “Absolutely. In the drawer there.” She indicated the supply cart. “Get them all. We’re going to need them to absorb—” She caught an armload. “Good. Thanks.”

She covered Laila with a blanket and draped her from the waist down with a paper sheet, tenting it over her bent knees. Folding a towel, Nell bunched it under the young woman’s right hip.

Laila’s back arched. The baby’s matted head reappeared briefly at her opening. Laila grunted, twisting with strain.

Nell placed her hands above and below the vaginal opening, applying gentle pressure to keep the baby from coming too fast.

“With the next contraction, tell her to take a nice deep breath and hold it.”

Joe relayed her instructions, holding his own breath to demonstrate.

Laila nodded, her gaze never leaving his face. She spoke in urgent Farsi.

“She wants to push,” Joe told Nell. His eyes were panicked, his voice perfectly calm.

“She can push during the contractions,” Nell said. “Exhale and push for a count of ten. Then another breath, exhale and push, for another count of ten. As long as the contraction lasts. Got it?”

“Breathe, push, exhale, count,” Joe repeated. “Got it.”

But they didn’t. The next contraction was bad. Before Joe finished his explanation, it hit Laila like a train, leaving them all gasping and shaken.

There wasn’t time to recover before another contraction struck. But Joe kept talking, and doe-eyed Laila exhaled and pushed like a champ.

“Almost there,” Nell reported reassuringly. “Almost. She’s doing great. Tell her just a few more…Ah.”

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