“Fathers are important.” Letter to Reader Title Page Dedication 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 SEVENTEEN CHAPTER EIGHTEEN CHAPTER NINETEEN CHAPTER TWENTY CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE EPILOGUE Copyright

“Fathers are important.”

Matt spoke simply. “And I think my baby deserves a good one.”

Olivia’s smile softened. “I agree, Mr. Creed. But I’m afraid that with my daughter, there is little either of us can do to change her mind.”

Matt leaned forward on the couch. “Oh, there’s plenty I can do,” he said. “I can take her to court and sue for joint custody”

Olivia answered quickly. “Nasty legal proceedings will solve nothing. Besides, you have no claim to the baby. Danni would have to name you as the father for you to have any legal standing.”

There was silence for a few seconds, then Matt spoke. “Your daughter didn’t tell you?”

Olivia looked confused.

“Mrs. Goodlove, your daughter and I are married.”

“THE PULL OF THE MOON is a tender, memorable story of a remarkable man and a dedicated woman, who, through loving each other, heal the wounds upon their souls. It is a page-turning, feel-good book from beginning to end.”

—Sharon Sala, award-winning author of Reunion

Dear Reader,

I worked as a labor and delivery nurse for many years and allays wanted to write a story about a dedicated, funny, sawy, but lonely obstetrician who yearns for a love of her own. Dr. Danni Goodlove began forming in my mind all those years ago.

But it wasn’t until I met the firefighters/rescuers after the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah building in Oklahoma City (I was privileged to work as a volunteer at the site during the rescue effort) that I found the hero who would be Danni’s match.

I hope my portrayal of Matthew Creed does justice to the tireless and truly heroic men and women who gave their all during that terrible time. To my own son Damon, a television reporter who was one of the first to arrive at the scene, and to everyone who suffered in the wake of that heinous crime, I hope that the references in this book provide only consolation and validation.

Though deeply emotional issues are woven into this story, it is a joyous account Because it shows one woman’s journey as she chooses change and growth, finds true love and receives the family of her dreams.

I enjoy hearing from my readers. You can write to me at

P.O. Box 720224, Norman, Oklahoma 73070.

Darlene Graham

The Pull of the Moon
Darlene Graham

www.millsandboon.co.uk

To Ray and Tonie Lueb.

Thank you for answering God’s call

to become loving parents.

CHAPTER ONE

THE FULL MOON WAS THE trouble, and everybody knew it.

As Dr. Danielle Goodlove shoved her long, thick hair under a disposable cap and began the routine surgical scrub, she thought how ironic it was that all the simpering romantics out there in TV- and movie-land considered the moon a symbol of romance.

Romance. Ha!

In obstetrics everybody knew that all hell broke loose when Old Man Moon turned his fat face on the unsuspecting earth. Why did stuff like this—an emergency C-section with a life in the balance—always seem to happen when the moon was full?

Correction: two lives.

She nudged the knee handle to cut the water off, raised her dripping hands, and headed toward delivery room one.

A woman’s scream from within caused Danni to break into a trot. She knocked the heavy door open with her bottom and yelled: “Fetal heart rate?”

A nurse turned up the volume on a state-of-theart monitor and called back, “Sixties!” as the ominously slow beeps filled the otherwise-silent room.

Another nurse rushed forward to dry Danni’s hands with a sterile towel while a third nurse came at her with a surgical gown mittened over fists. The circulating nurse filled Danni in on the case, her words fast and low. “It’s a bad deal. The whole family was in the fire. Couple of toddlers. Mom’s water ruptured at the scene—”

“When?” Danni interrupted.

The nurse glanced at the large clock on the tiled wall.

“Just before midnight—about thirty minutes ago. We’ve got a prolapsed cord and fetal distress.”

“I hear it,” Danni said. The beeps got slower.

The nurse with the towel finished the drying and dodged aside so the other could thrust the gown onto Danni’s outstretched arms. The circulator continued to talk rapidly as she reached up and pushed Danni’s glasses firmly onto the bridge of her nose.

“Mom ran into the trailer when they realized the toddlers were missing. A fireman pulled her back out, then went in for the kids himself. The dad’s drunk, started the fire with a cigarette. The cops have him. She’s about thirty-four weeks. No prenatal care. You’re flying blind.”

Danni nodded while she jammed her hands into the sterile gloves held open before her. Then she stepped up to the surgery table.

The patient was no longer screaming. She now lay gravely silent with eyes closed, her skin pale and smudged beneath pathetically singed eyebrows and hair. She cracked her eyes open as Danni adjusted the paper drapes. When she saw Danni she tried to talk through the anesthesia mask, then reached sooty fingers from under the drape and grabbed for Danni’s arm. The circulator caught the woman’s hand before she could contaminate Danni’s sterile gown.

“Don’t worry,” Danni said and leaned over to look directly in the patient’s eyes as they grew heavy with the anesthetic. “We’ll get your baby out in time.”

She opened her gloved palm for the scalpel and peered over her mask at the anesthetist. He adjusted the nitrous oxide and nodded.

“Let’s go.” Danni flipped the knife into position and cut.

Dr. Danni Goodlove prided herself on her head-spinning, machinelike speed in emergencies. The C-section team at Tulsa’s Holy Cross Hospital—one of the best in the city—had scrambled to meet her exacting standard: six minutes from decision, to incision, to squalling baby.

In this business, sometimes you had to hurt the patient in order to help them. Sometimes they cried out. Danni might have let that affect her work, but she didn’t. While still in her teens she had learned to ignore her emotions and focus on her goal. She’d acquired that skill the hard way—in a tragedy she didn’t like to think about—but on a night like this she was grateful for it.

Because on a night like this—when the moon was full—Danni couldn’t help thinking of Lisa.

On a night like this, Lisa and her baby had died.

But tonight’s baby was lifted out, free of the strangling cord, squirming under the Ohio warmer a mere ninety seconds after Danni’s first swift, sure cut.

Danni hadn’t even broken a sweat, but the rest of the team released a collectively held breath when they heard the first weak cries from the corner where a pediatric team labored over the tiny patient. Danni tried to ignore the palpable relief all around her. She never allowed herself to get emotional during a delivery, but tonight she was feeling the tiniest twinge of—something—as the infant’s crying picked up steam.

Then the bang of the operating-room door startled them all.

A perky young ward clerk, breathless from her sprint down the hall, held a paper mask to her face, her eyes huge above it. “Dr. Danni!” she huffed. “Dr. Stone’s having a fit down in the E.R. He said to close this case fast and get down there stat. A ton of OB’s have flooded in.”

“The moon,” a nurse behind Danni moaned.

The girl spread a palm over her chest as if to calm herself, then noticed the baby. “That baby made it?”

One of the pediatric nurses called out, “He’s perfect!” above the infant’s wailing.

“You know,” the transfixed young woman said, nodding at the unconscious mother, “that fireman that got injured saving her?”

The team, busy with their tasks, didn’t acknowledge the question.

“Well,” she announced with an air of importance, “Cooper said he looks just like Tom Selleck.”

Danni gave the girl a cutting glance over her mask, then said, “Go tell Stone to cool his jets. I’ll be there in a couple of minutes.”

ONCE SHE GOT DOWN to the E.R., Danni took a second to look in the exam room where two toddler-size bodies lay side by side on two gurneys. The bustling E.R. teams obstructed her view, but she knew it was bad. The teams were too controlled, too quiet. It was the deafening silence of hopelessness. What would she tell the mother?

A commotion behind her caused her to turn.

Some nurses and an orderly had stopped the gurney they’d been pushing and struggled with the huge man on it. He was wearing a bloodstained T-shirt, and a fresh dressing and ice packs swaddled one arm. His turnout pants and fire boots told Danni he must be the fireman the ward clerk had been talking about upstairs. He was fighting to sit up and pushed the burly orderly back with one hand while he jerked the oxygen mask off his face with the other.

That ward clerk was wrong, Danni thought as she rushed forward to help. This guy doesn’t look anything like Tom Selleck, And right now his face was so contorted with anger, his eyes were so wild with delirium, you couldn’t even call him handsome.

“Let me see them!” he yelled as he shoved the nurses’ hands away. “Dammit! I have to see if they’re okay!”

One of his fireman buddies, a black man in full regalia except for the helmet, ran up alongside the gurney and got into the act. “Matt, you need that oxygen,” he said as he forced the mask over the patient’s face and fought to get his mighty shoulders back down on the gurney.

“What’s he had?” Danni yelled across to a nurse, and as soon as she heard the answer added, “Get me some Ativan.” The other nurse had gone off, anticipating the order, and a full syringe was instantly in Danni’s hand.

“You hold him,” Danni ordered the black fireman.

The patient fought like a bull, still ranting about the toddlers, while Danni shot the sedative into a vein.

When the patient finally moaned into semiconsciousness, the black man released his hold and turned to Danni. “It’s not Matt’s fault. This is old stuff—” The big man suddenly seemed choked up. “He worked the bombing. Saving these babies tonight kind of brought it all back.”

The bombing. In Oklahoma they simply called it that—the bombing.

Danni nodded and felt her eyes mist when she turned to look at the man on the gurney as the nurses rolled him away, and saw the top of his dark head as he tossed it miserably from side to side.

The bombing—after all this time, so many still suffered from its aftershocks. Like that poor man.

“Matt’s usually a really nice guy,” the black man said from behind her. “Are you gonna take care of his arm?” he added anxiously.

Danni turned and looked up at him. This one was a handsome man, even though he looked thoroughly exhausted. “No. I’m an obstetrician, but one of the E.R. docs—”

Before she could finish, a harried-looking nurse rushed up and said, “Dr. Goodlove, please,” while she hauled Danni by the sleeve of her lab coat into an open area where the sight of five mounded tummies on five beds made Danni groan.

“All in active labor.” The nurse held out a stack of intake charts. “Stone says they’re all yours.”

“Gee. Could the Old Man be testing me again?” Danni took the charts.

“Again? When did he stop?” The nurse plunked a Doppler device and a bottle of blue gel on top of the charts. “Don’t worry, we finally located Dr. Bryant. Claimed his pager wasn’t working.”

Danni made a sarcastic face. “Oh, goody. Bryant.” Bryant, if anything, was a bigger pain than Stone. As the chief of staff, Kenneth Stone, at least, was supremely confident and above petty one-upsmanship. Bryant was not. Only a hair older than Danni, he was fiercely competitive.

Moments later, when Roger Bryant came blasting through the E.R. doors like a Viking god to the rescue, Danni studiously ignored him and let the triage nurse give him report.

Another hour flew by while Bryant and Danni got the OB patients examined and admitted.

“I’ll go up and cover Labor and Delivery now,” Bryant said and ran a hand through his fine, sandy-blond hair, then pointed at Danni as he backed toward the elevator, beating an obvious retreat from the E.R. chaos. “You’d better take a break, sister. You look terrible.”

“Oh, my gosh!” Danni framed her cheeks with her palms. “Imagine that! I look terrible!” She addressed this remark to Carol Hollis, her best friend and a top-notch scrub nurse, who’d appeared on her left.

“Gee,” Carol deadpanned, then raised her voice as the elevator doors slid closed over Bryant’s sour expression. “Could four deliveries and two C-sections have anything to do with it?”

Carol straightened, tossed her salt-and-pepper curls toward the elevator and muttered, “Prick.” She turned to Danni. “But unfortunately, the prick can’t handle what’s developing upstairs.”

“What’s that?”

“Another C-section.”

“When?”

“Maybe an hour. That’s why I came down to find you.”

Danni held up a palm. “Okay. But first I gotta eat something or I’ll pass out.”

But just as Danni and Carol plopped down in the break area, a nurse poked her head in the door and pleaded, “Dr. Goodlove, before you go back to OB could you possibly see the fireman?”

Danni gulped milk from a carton, then rubbed the back of her neck, not comprehending something this nurse obviously thought she should. “The fireman?”

“Yeah. The guy who pulled the twins out of the trailer. He’s been waiting for over an hour. Somebody needs to check his lungs again and he has a nasty wound that needs stitches.” The nurse shrugged apologetically while she held out a disposable suture tray. “We’re swamped. In fact, we’re so crowded we had to put the poor man in the supply room. Could you?”

“I’ll help,” Carol offered. “Bryant can survive a little while without you.”

Danni sighed. Would this night never end? “Okay.” She stood, tilted the milk carton up and drained it. “Let’s go.”

CHAPTER TWO

THE SUPPLY ROOM WAS cramped, even without the gurney, even without the over-six-feet of massive male snoring under the buzzing fluorescent light.

He was all alone, out cold, taking straight oxygen from a mask attached to a tank. He reeked of smoke and sweat, a few plastic cups littered the floor around him—at least they’d given him some water—and a thin blanket covered him to his chin. The dressing and cold compresses on the injured arm were pink-tinged with blood now, and the IV dripping into his other arm was almost empty.

Shameful, Danni thought. This is how we treat our heroes? She slipped the chart from under a corner of the gurney mattress and read.

Matthew Creed, age thirty-six. In addition to the Ativan, they’d given him a wallop of Demerol in the IV. There were third-degree bums on the same arm that had been gashed—by glass, the triage nurse had written.

As with every firefighter who plunged into a raging fire, the guy’s lungs were the big worry. But so far, everything—electrolytes, blood gases—looked okay. And his color was within normal limits.

Assessing his face at rest, Danni decided that he was handsome. His eyelids, though puffy—she made a note of the edema—were framed by thick dark brows and a line of lush black lashes any cover model would envy. Beneath the mask his square jaw was darkly shadowed with new-grown stubble.

His black hair, probably cut in a short, professional style, was now plastered straight up above a red crease where his helmet band had fit tightly. There was no apparent head trauma. She scribbled another note.

She handed the chart to Carol, peeled back the blanket to check the rest of him. He continued to snore into the oxygen mask.

“Holy cow,” Carol muttered, and Danni shot her a censuring frown.

But Carol persisted. “Man!” she mumbled as she turned to prepare the suture tray. “I feel like I need a hit of that oxygen myself.”

Though Danni disapproved of Carol’s attitude, she could see her point. The patient had been stripped to the waist and he was big. Bronze. Amazingly fit. “Is there a weight recorded on the chart?” Danni asked. He was probably a lot heavier than he looked. She wanted to be sure he’d gotten enough pain medication.

“Two hundred fifteen,” Carol read.

Danni nodded as she scanned his frame, looking for further damage, signs, symptoms.

He had huge muscular arms, massive hands, and a trail of black body hair that swirled neatly down taut abdominals. When she woke him up she’d have to make sure everything under his turnout pants and fire boots was okay.

She gently raised the edge of the dressing on his arm and called his name. “Mr. Creed?”

There was no response.

“Matthew?” As she reached for a pulse on the uninjured arm, a rolled-up, faded-red bandanna, knotted around his wrist, got in the way. She muttered something to Carol about why the EMTs hadn’t cut the thing off before they started the IV, then added, “Gimme your bandage scissors,” as she hooked a finger under the kerchief.

Without warning, the patient’s other hand snapped up and seized Danni’s wrist.

“Leave it alone,” he growled in a deep bass voice that sounded hoarse and dry. The oxygen mask fogged with his breath, but nothing else about him moved. His grip on Danni’s wrist, though, was like an iron band. His fingers felt hot, and Danni made a mental note to recheck his temp and then briefly wondered if it was her fatigue, her hunger, or what, that was making her suddenly weak.

“Mr. Creed,” she said as she peeled his fingers from her flesh. “I need to get this thing off so I can evaluate you properly.” She pulled on the bandanna, but he jerked his arm out of her reach. For an injured man, his reflexes were certainly quick.

He raised his head, opened bright-blue eyes and frowned at her. “I said, it stays where it is.”

Something about his gaze made Danni swallow. “Of course,” she answered softly.

His eyes slid closed, and he laid his head back, groaning in that deep voice that made Danni’s heart beat faster. Then he lowered his chin and looked down his long frame toward the door of the tiny room. “Where am I?”

“You’re in the emergency room at Holy Cross Hospital.”

“Oh, yeah? You a nurse?”

“No. I’m Dr. Dann...Dr. Goodlove. I gave you a sedative earlier.”

“You did?”

“Yes, I did. Right now I’m going to stitch up that laceration you have there.”

He glanced at his arm, then groaned, “Have at it,” in his wonderful voice, and laid his good arm across his eyes.

Carol gently rearranged the IV to accommodate his position.

“Did those kids make it?” he asked.

Danni felt her heart constrict because, even through the mask, she could see his wide, handsome mouth tighten and pull down at the corners, betraying the emotion he was holding back.

She had to swallow before she spoke. “Yes,” she said, although she feared that by now they had not. “And the mother’s upstairs in maternity. She’s fine.”

“She’s pregnant?” He moved the arm and stared, unbelieving, into Danni’s eyes.

“Not anymore. I delivered her preemie by C-section.”

“Damn,” he said quietly and closed his eyes.

“The baby’s okay. Let’s tend to you, now.” Danni forced herself to sound calm, professional. She leaned over him and placed a stethoscope on his chest, moving it periodically as she listened. “Lungs sound clear,” she said to Carol.

She moved the stethoscope to crucial points over his heart and concentrated. The beat was regular, but rapid. Stress maybe.

She glanced into his face. He was watching her like—Well, she didn’t know like what. It was eerie, looking into those steady blue eyes while listening to his strong heartbeat.

She finished, pulled the stethoscope from her ears, and straightened. “Okay. Let’s fix your arm.”

Danni rolled a stool up beside the gurney, and while the patient watched them with drugged-sleepy detachment, Carol treated the bums and Danni checked the gash for foreign bodies, then started carefully stitching it up.

As Danni worked, she waited for his reaction to the painful things she was doing to him. He never once flinched. But every time she glanced into his blue eyes, she wished she hadn’t. They sent a quiver through her, threatening to dissolve her professional armor.

The little supply room began to feel tighter than a tomb. Every time he moved—to raise a knee or fill that massive chest with a deep breath—Danni thought she might drop her hemostat.

It didn’t help matters that Carol was acting strangely. She kept passing supplies in unnecessary anticipation; kept calling Danni “Doctor” in reverent tones; kept muttering in medical jargon as if this were brain surgery.

“You are being stitched up by the best of the best,” Carol reassured the drowsy fireman, and Danni wanted to smack her. It was obvious what Carol was doing; she had noted the absence of a wedding band on his finger. Everybody was always trying to fix Danni up with men—but trying to impress a patient? Good grief.

“That so?” The firefighter turned his head and winked at Danni.

“Oh, yes.” Carol seemed encouraged. “Dr. Goodlove—we all call her Dr. Danni—will stitch you up so fine, that scar will be almost invisible.”

Danni frowned daggers at her friend, but the patient seemed to be enjoying himself. He grinned sleepily behind his oxygen mask. “Darn. I was hoping for a big old scar to show the boys at the station.”

“Well, sorry, you won’t get a scar from this dedicated doctor.” Carol just couldn’t seem to shut it up. “She prides herself on her handiwork.”

Danni put her head down and worked doggedly, praying Carol would be struck mute.

“She’s been at this awhile?” he asked through the mask. “She looks so young.”

Danni could feel him staring at her blushing cheeks and slipping glasses. Don’t mind me, folks, she thought. I’m just stitching up this gaping wound, here.

“About ten years,” Carol assured him. “It’s her whole life.”

“Nurse Hollis!” Danni snapped. “I think the patient needs another drink of water.”

Carol had the good grace to turn red, then she spun on her crepe soles and left the tiny room.

Suddenly the patient seemed, to Danni, too alert. She’d been more comfortable with him drugged.

As she cleaned up the exterior of the closed wound, and applied a sterile dressing, he continued to watch her like a—Well, now she knew what it was like—it was the way an interested man watched a pretty woman, only Danni hadn’t ever thought of herself as pretty.

She finished the bandaging with a thick dressing. She was applying enough cling wrap to seal a mummy when he cleared his throat, reached up, pulled the oxygen mask down, and said, “Thanks for leaving the kerchief alone.”

When she looked into his solemn eyes, Danni realized the kerchief had some special meaning, but he cleared his throat and quickly looked away. “And thanks for stitching me up.”

“No problem.” She continued to tape the dressing. “Just don’t make a habit of this.”

After a heartbeat he said, “If I do, would you be my doctor?”

Danni stopped her taping and looked back up into those blue eyes. This time the interest and flirtation there was unmistakable. And with the oxygen mask gone, she could see his mouth clearly. Beautifully formed lips. Firm. Utterly male. Curving into a lopsided, teasing grin.

Danni finished her taping with tense fingers and burning cheeks.

He, on the other hand, seemed perfectly relaxed. He raised his good arm and propped it under his head, revealing a massive, muscled armpit with the densest growth of black axillary hair Danni had ever seen.

She had a photo-flash memory of another time when she and Carol had been dragged down to the E.R. to help stitch up the aftermath of a big gang fight. One of the teenage victims had B.O. so bad that Carol had clamped wads of alcohol-soaked gauze over his armpits, claiming it was standard procedure.

Suddenly Danni was overcome by the worst attack of inappropriate laughter ever visited on a human being.

She tried to stifle it, and bent her head down below the gurney as if looking for something she’d dropped. Her shoulders shook and she thought she’d choke, but the silliest thoughts kept coming, all incredibly hilarious. She wondered fleetingly if there was a leaking nitrous-oxide tank in here somewhere. Even that horrifying idea couldn’t sober her.

“You okay down there?” She heard his deep voice above her.

She tried to say yes, but that was a horrible mistake that opened the door to a new eruption of giggles. She was forced to sit up in order to breathe, and pushed with weak feet to roll the stool away from the table, away from him and his serious blue eyes, so she could regain her composure.

But she ended up leaning against the supply shelves, snickering and gasping and finally holding her middle and waving her hand, pointing at him, the way people do when they are helpless to explain their stupid behavior.

“What’s so funny?” His face was as solemn as a judge’s.

Nothing! Danni thought. Nothing at all. That’s the problem! But she continued to titter helplessly. Then she wondered—and this thought only made more giggles come—if she looked like some kind of deranged woman, masquerading as a doctor.

He raised himself up on his good elbow, and stared with an expression so alarmed and serious that every time Danni glanced at him to try to explain that she was reacting to exhaustion, she broke up all over again. She laughed so hard, tears rolled down her cheeks.

Carol came in bearing a cup of water, which Danni snatched and gulped. Finally the urge to laugh subsided.

With a frown at Danni, Carol helped the patient sit up. He tested his injured arm, then flexed his amazing muscles as if they were sore. He glanced at Danni and smiled when he caught her watching him over the rim of the cup.

Firemen and cops, Danni thought. All as cocky as the devil.

Carol started helping him into the hospital gown she’d brought for him.

Danni finished drinking the water, let out a huge sigh, then pulled off her paper hat, and lifted her thick mane of hair away from her neck, fanning herself. “I’m really sorry,” she said to the patient. She dug a latex tourniquet out of the pocket of her scrubs and tied her hair into a crude ponytail at her nape. “That was an attack of inappropriate laughter, precipitated by fatigue.” She tossed the cup into a trash container. “We’ll get you some more water.”

“That’s okay. I’m not thirsty. And I understand fatigue,” he said, but his expression was skeptical as his eyes took in the haphazard ponytail.

He probably thinks I’m totally nuts, Danni thought.

Apparently so did Carol, judging from the scowl she gave Danni as she tied the gown strings at the patient’s back.

Danni took another deep breath and stood. “I’m shipping you upstairs for overnight observation, okay?”

She took his mended arm in her hands, examined the fingers gently, checking the circulation one last time. She knew her cheeks were red, but she managed to keep her voice steady. “This looks fine so far. Tell me again, exactly how’d you cut it?”

“Squeezing through the broken patio door.” He raised one eyebrow, then studied his boots. “Kicked it out when I couldn’t follow the attack hose back. The crew thought I was going the other way.”

“I see,” Danni said, although she didn’t, exactly. She assumed he was telling her that something went wrong during the rescue. Her fingers trembled on his large ones for a moment, imagining the inferno, imagining him curling his body around the two babies, imagining such bravery. “And everything under your turnout pants...” Danni hesitated and reframed the question. “Uh, you’re sure your feet and legs are okay?”

“Yeah, everything feels fine.” He smiled at her with gorgeous, perfect white teeth and she noticed that he did, in fact, have deep dimples like Tom Selleck’s. But there was something else familiar about him. Danni couldn’t put her finger on it.

“Well, then—” she snatched up the chart, pushed her glasses up on her nose, clicked her pen “—all we need to do is add some strong antibiotics to your IV. Is your pain medicine still working okay?”

“Yeah. Thanks again for stitching me up, Doctor. Especially considering that you’re exhausted and all, I really appreciate it.” He spoke in a controlled monotone, but the look in his eyes was so sincere, so warm that Danni thought she’d melt.

“No problem.” She resumed writing on the chart.

He turned to Carol. “Nurse, will they be taking me upstairs in a wheelchair?”

“I expect so,” she answered.

“Well, then, would it be too much trouble to wheel me by to see the twins on the way?”

Danni turned her head, studied his handsome profile. He’d endured over twenty stitches, had enough drugs in him to knock out a horse, and had to be tired enough to die, but all the man could think about were those twins. Matthew Creed was an amazing man.

UPSTAIRS IN LABOR AND Delivery, Dr. Stone was pacing like a wiry little fox sniffing for prey.

“Sorry to disturb your nap, Dr. Goodlove,” he said as soon as Danni and Carol stepped off the elevator.

“She wasn’t taking a nap—” Carol, who could make two of Stone, jumped in to defend her boss “—she was stitching up a patient.”

Stone’s nostrils flared, his tufted reddish-gray eyebrows puckered, and his pointy little teeth flashed briefly as if he might bite Carol. But then he turned to Danni, and peered up over his glasses at her. “Dr. Bryant told me you had gone to sleep.”

Danni folded her arms across her chest and turned a composed smile on Stone. “Now, why would I want to sleep through all this fun?”

Stone didn’t even bother to smile at the quip. “We have several more drop-ins in active labor. I’ll take them. Your C-section is waiting in Delivery One.”

Danni didn’t ask—although she’d love to have known—what the mighty Dr. Bryant was doing with his precious time.

“MAN! I HOPE THAT’S the last one,” Carol mumbled through her mask after Danni had delivered another baby safely, verified the sponge count and started the routine stitching.

“Yep,” Danni said while she tied off a stitch. “It’s that damn moon, folks.” She raised her voice. “Brings in the pregnant ladies like a truckload of pumpkins.”

The weary team chuckled in agreement from behind their masks.

But Carol merely inflated hers with a sigh. Danni glanced into her friend’s bloodshot eyes. “After this,” she said in a low voice, “you’re going home.”

“And what about you, Doc? You going home?” Carol reached across for more suture, a flip of her wrist conveying that she’d stay as long as Danni did. After three years of working side by side, Danni and Carol read each other’s movements like Morse code.

Danni said nothing. Only three years in private practice and already it was all getting to her. Carol’s aggressive protectiveness. The full moon. Babies.

Babies.

Babies.

Danni’s hands shook a little as she opened a palm for the subcuticular suture. Carol shot her a sharp, appraising look before she slapped the hemostat down on her glove.

Danni pursed her lips behind her mask. Damn Carol and the way she saw through everything, through everyone. Damn her with her big, brown, understanding eyes. Why were nurses always so ridiculously kind and well-adjusted?

Danni finished the suturing, stripped off her gloves and announced, “I’m taking a snore. Don’t wake me until the next one’s ears are out.”

She heard Carol order someone else to dress the incision, and sensed her friend right on her heels as she hurried to the doctors’ locker room.

The door hadn’t even swung back before Carol banged it open again. Danni was just lowering herself into the recliner where the doctors slept fitfully while they monitored troubled cases in the wee hours.

“What is eating you?” Carol asked calmly as she reached up and took a blanket from the top of the lockers. “I mean, besides the fact that the whole month of August has been chaos, and now the moon is full to boot—” she shook the blanket out “—and it’s three o’clock in the morning and you’ve done four deliveries and three emergency C-sections in the last twelve hours—” she spread the blanket out over Danni “—not to mention stitching up Mr. Universe downstairs.”

Danni reached up, pulled off her surgical cap and tugged the tourniquet from her tangled hair.

“I mean, I’ve never seen you like this. What the hell was that laughing business?”

Danni winced, remembering how she’d acted in front of the firefighter. “Me?” she countered. “What was that stuff you were pulling?”

“Huh?” Carol’s expression was all innocence.

“You know what I mean.” Danni adopted a mimicking tone. “You are being stitched up by the best of the best.”

“Hey. I was only trying to help. The guy was cute. And I think he liked you. Somebody’s gotta help you meet men.” She pulled her own cap off and ran her fingers through her thick, graying curls as she studied Danni’s face. “What on God’s green earth is eating you?”

“Nothing.” Danni twitched around under the blanket for a second, then sighed. “Oh, all right, it’s just that... Oh, I don’t know.” But she did know, and trying to hold it back gave rise to a spurt of sudden, surprising tears. For heavens sake, don’t bawl now, she commanded herself. Not with Stone coming back any second. He’ll assume you can’t handle the pressure.

“You do know,” Carol said flatly. She dragged a plastic chair up beside the recliner. “Out with it.”

“No, I don’t know, exactly. I mean, I’ve got everything I ever wanted. A thriving practice, a gorgeous house, my horse and my dogs...” Then why the tears? she wondered without Carol having to ask.

Carol extended a tissue. Danni dabbed her eyes and blew her nose. “I never cry,” she said. “But tonight, it seems like every little thing brings tears to my eyes. I almost cried when I first saw that fireman in the E.R”

Carol shook her fingers as if they’d been burned. “Me too, honey.”

“No! I mean when I found out he’d been a rescuer at the bombing.”

Carol grew solemn. “He was?”

Danni nodded. “But all kinds of other things have been getting to me, too. I’m just not myself. That inappropriate laughter...” Danni twisted the tissue. “It sounds weird, but I honestly think what’s really bugging me is all this damned...fecundity.”

Carol’s eyebrows shot up. “Fecundity?” she repeated.

“Yes, fecundity,” Danni sniffed. “I’ve got everything I ever dreamed of while I was struggling through med school and that hellish residency. The trouble is, I guess I didn’t dream hard enough. The trouble is... ” Danni’s eyes filled with tears again as she stared at the acoustical tile ceiling. What was the matter with her?

But Carol Hollis was a trusted friend, and when Danni felt Carol’s warm, plump palm close over her forearm, her defenses crumbled.

“Trouble is,” she went on, “I’ve ended up with this manless, childless, loveless life for myself....” Danni threw an arm over her eyes. What she couldn’t express aloud was the terrible fear that she would always be manless, childless, loveless, and the reason why.

“The trouble is,” Carol said softly, “you’re a human being. And a female human being to boot. And when you saw that hunk in the E.R. tonight, maybe he reminded you of what you’re missing.” She gave Danni’s arm a squeeze, and Danni nodded but didn’t lower her other arm. Admitting it was bad enough; she couldn’t look into Carol’s eyes at the same time. And she couldn’t possibly tell her the rest of it, could she?

“And, let’s see, you’ll be thirty-three on your next birthday,” Carol continued.

“Thirty-four,” Danni corrected in a croaky whisper.

“Right. And at thirty-four, it’s time for a reality check. Your biological clock is ticking away. You’ve seen this reaction often enough in patients. Why should you be any different?”

Danni gave a rueful laugh. “I always said I’d never have kids. Not after—”

“Not after what?” Carol prompted when Danni wouldn’t continue.

But Danni couldn’t go into that story now—not with patients out there needing her. “It’s a long story. The point is, lately, my biological clock’s been bonging louder than Big Ben!” She lowered her arm and looked at Carol, frustration with herself momentarily overcoming her pain. “But don’t you think thirty-four’s kind of young for that? I mean, rationally I know—”

“Rationality has very little to do with some things, hon. Maybe it’s not so much biology as other factors. As you said, your practice is booming. You’ve proved yourself here at Holy Cross and now you’re getting ready to take on a couple of partners. Looks like you’ve got it made, career-wise.” Carol emphasized the last words.

Danni pulled the recliner upright. “You’re right. I’ve been striving for so long, I haven’t had time to think about my personal life. And suddenly, now that I’ve succeeded...”

“You want love, and a family, perhaps, along with everything else.” Carol shrugged her shoulders. “Wanting to love and be loved is not exactly a crime.”

Danni felt a tiny bubble of hope rising. Yeah. Love. Why shouldn’t Dr. Danni have a family just like everybody else? Just like all her patients? “Yeah,” she said aloud. “Why shouldn’t I have a baby of my own—”

“And a man, too?” Carol suggested.

“Oh. Oh, yeah. And the man, too,” Danni said vaguely. She had a sudden flashback to the fireman propping his head up on his muscular arm, only this time the image didn’t make her laugh, and neither did the memory of his compelling.blue eyes.

Carol gave her a dubious look. “I don’t understand you twenty-first-century women. When I was your age, babies were the by-product of the man, not the other way around.”

Danni grinned, feeling in control of herself again. “When you were my age, you and George had already created a lot of by-products.”

Carol chuckled. “Blame it on the moon, honey. But I wouldn’t trade my four boys for anything.” Then she patted Danni’s arm. “Listen, speaking of the moon, you’d better catch some sleep. A couple of the patients are already dilated to eight.”

“Right.” Danni was relieved to close her eyes, because she was afraid that if they talked about men and babies anymore, the tears might start again. And she hated tears.

She’d convinced herself long ago that she could not afford to let tears begin. Not while she was at work. And long ago, she’d decided that she could never risk telling anyone about her sister’s death—not if she wanted to remain calm and professional and take care of her patients.

As far back as medical school, Danni had learned not to even say Lisa’s name out loud. That was why she hadn’t told Carol the whole story just now. But then, who had she ever told? No one. She barely understood her feelings herself. That was the real problem.

No. The real problem was that Lisa had died.

And that would never change.

CHAPTER THREE

LATER, IN THE GRAY predawn hours, as she turned off Peoria Avenue onto her own street, Danni’s mood had not improved. The glamorous life of a doctor, she thought ruefully as she struggled to keep her eyes open, grateful that she lived less than a mile from the hospital.

Precisely the reason she’d chosen this upscale, historic neighborhood in Tulsa’s Woodward Park area.

She drove her BMW up the gentle incline of her driveway and wearily clicked the remote control. The garage door slid up with a flawless hum and Danni pulled into her immaculate, uncluttered garage, then punched the button again to seal out the world. Letting herself in through the utility room, she entered a completely dark, silent house.

Her silver weimaraners, Pearl and Smoky, rose like ghosts from their beds and brushed against her legs. “Well, hello,” Danni crooned as she reached down and petted them. “How are my doggies?”

She pressed the intercom button on the security panel. “Jackie?” she called, and waited for her housekeeper to awaken and answer from upstairs. “Jackie?” No answer. Was it Jackie’s night off? She reached over to punch in the security code, then realized the alarm was off.

Dadgum that harebrained girl, she thought. How many times did she have to remind Jackie to turn on the security system when she went out? Danni hit another button and soft safety lights illuminated the stairwell, bathrooms and hallways of the entire 3,700-square-foot house. Last spring, Danni had hired the top builder in Tulsa to renovate this vintage house on a split lot, with impeccable attention to details like copper awnings, custom stonework, and real plaster walls with bullnose moldings. Underneath the gracious antique facade was every amenity of modern construction imaginable, from zoned heat and air to underground sprinklers. The house with everything, Danni sometimes thought, except people to share it with.

She took a sharp right into a central hall where a narrow oak stairway wound upward and a smaller hallway veered back toward the study and master suite. Arched doorways from this central hall led to the kitchen/great room, and the formal dining living areas. The dogs padded off in the direction of the kitchen.

Danni stood in the hallway, feeling like a laboratory mouse choosing between competing drives. The bathroom? The kitchen? The bed? She needed them all at once.

She trudged as far as the small guest bathroom next to her study, then washed her hands and splashed cool water on her face.

As she blotted dry she studied her reflection in the mirror, and didn’t like what she saw: sallow complexion, bloodshot eyes, limp hair. She gave her high cheekbones a pinch. Precious little color appeared, and her skin felt oily and coarse. She looked down at her bluntly trimmed nails and bleached, cracked cuticles. Well, scrubbing for surgery wasn’t exactly a manicure. She backed away from the mirror, pulled off her wrinkled scrubs and dropped them in a heap at her feet.

Hopeless, she thought as she turned sideways and sucked in her tummy. That bulge was the result of too many fast-food meals on the run, those hips from too much horseback riding and not enough jogging, and these—she pushed her D-cup breasts up a notch in the utilitarian support bra—what could she possibly do about these?

Disheartened, she cut through the study to the master suite where she threw on her trusty old pink chenille robe, then, pushing back the guilt by telling herself she deserved some comfort food, she headed for the fridge.

The kitchen/great room, a massive area with atrium doors flanking a huge stone fireplace, would have been dark except that, predictably, Jackie had not drawn the drapes. Moonlight streamed in through a bank of Colonial windows on the south wall, casting an eerie glow over the space. By daylight this was a stunning room with its pale taupe cabinetwork, oak flooring, and muted tapestry fabrics, but tonight it seemed as cold as a cave.

She hit the replay button on her answering machine as she rounded the granite-topped island in the kitchen, then padded to the double-sided refrigerator. She jerked the door open and stood in the blast of artificial light and cold air, surveying a staggering array of food. Jackie could cook—Danni would give her that.

Beep. “Danni, dear!” It was her mother’s voice, sounding annoyingly cheerful at four in the morning. “Are you never to be found in your lovely home? Aunt Hetra and Aunt Dottie and I are going shopping at Utica Square tomorrow and I thought we’d drop by first so they could see how beautifully your house turned out. Would that be okay? By the way, Wesley Fuerbome’s mother called me today, and guess what? Wesley is coming back to Tulsa! Isn’t that nice?”

Danni rolled her eyes. Would her mother never give up? Wesley Fuerborne. Danni hadn’t seen him since college. Their relationship had seemed to please all of Tulsa society—everybody but Danni. What was it about Wesley? Well, for one thing the sex had been terrible. Awkward and juvenile. Had that been her fault or his? Didn’t matter. It certainly hadn’t been good enough to offset Danni’s irrational fear of becoming pregnant every time their relationship had gotten physical, despite the precautions she’d insisted on.

Her mother’s voice was going on brightly. “Such a nice young man. He wants to see you while he’s here, and I was thinking maybe you two could join me for the Tulsa Performing Arts Gala.”

Pearl and Smoky had positioned themselves on their haunches at Danni’s feet, staring expectantly upward. She tossed them each a chunk of cheese and said, “Go lie down!” in a stern voice that the dogs ignored.

“Call me soon, sweetheart. We’ll drop by tomorrow.” Beep.

Danni rolled her eyes again and focused on the food. She passed on the sensible tuna-and-pasta salad, and grabbed a grilled pork chop. She stood at the kitchen island and devoured it without benefit of silverware as she stared out at her moonlit backyard.

That moon.

Silent. Waiting. Calling.

How far the moon was from Earth, yet how intimately close it felt. How compelling. And how she hated the haunting sight of it.

Danni wasn’t even aware of her movements as she wandered around the island and dropped onto the leather couch facing the southern windows. She keeled to her side and lay there, watching the moon float high over the trees.

She was so, so tired.

She wanted to sleep, not visit her old, sad memories; not think about all that she had seen tonight. “Sometimes I hate this job,” she murmured to the moon, and closed her eyes, willing that last scene at the hospital—especially that one—away.

The things a doctor saw—birth and death and everything in between—were frequently heartrending, but sometimes they actually marked your soul. That was the risk.

By three o’clock this morning, Labor and Delivery had slowed down enough for Danni to dash out to Postpartum to check on the burn victim. The patient was stable, Carol had called in the social worker and the chaplain to counsel and console, and there had been little else they could do. But Danni had wanted to make sure the woman’s sedatives were working. As she’d approached the patient’s door she’d heard her, quietly sobbing.

Danni turned to go back to the nurses’ station to get more sedative when she heard the firefighter’s deep voice. “I’ll stay here as long as you need me.”

Danni frowned and crept back to the doorjamb and looked in. He was standing by the mother’s bed, holding her hand, with his back to Danni. He had put his fire pants back on under the hospital gown, and now wore paper hospital shoes.

“I’m so afraid,” Danni heard the mother say.

“They’re doing everything they can. You just have to be strong,” his deep voice answered.

The mother broke into fresh sobs and Danni watched him bend forward and wrap his uninjured arm around her in a protective hug, causing the hospital gown to gape open, exposing his tanned back.

“Th-thank you for saving my babies!” the woman sobbed, and clung to his bare skin.

“I only wish I could have gotten them out sooner, ma’am.” Danni heard a tightness in his voice. Was he crying? She turned to go, thinking she shouldn’t eavesdrop, when something the mother said stopped her.

“Do you pray?” the woman asked.

For some reason Danni wanted to know. Did he?

He straightened and took the mother’s hand again. “Yes, ma’am. I started praying about four years ago. It helps a lot.”

“Would you pray for my babies?”

“Yes, ma’am.” He got down on one knee, and still holding the mother’s hand, began to pray so quietly, so reverently, that Danni had to strain to hear the words.

“Lord, we’re coming to you now to ask you to help this mother and her babies. We ask only that—”

He stopped as if he had to consider what, exactly, to ask in these dire circumstances. Danni leaned forward.

“We ask that you take the babies into your care. We’re turning them over to you, Lord. We trust in you and your will. Please give this mother the strength she needs... And give her peace. Amen.”

Danni backed away from the door and went down the hall to get the sedatives, knowing that she could not match what this fireman had offered through his presence and his prayers.

Now, the memory of that scene caused tears to spring into Danni’s eyes as she lay on her couch.

That poor, poor woman, Danni thought. She’d needed Matthew Creed’s company and support tonight. Danni hoped there were people in the woman’s life who would give her the strength she was going to need. We all need people, Danni thought, suddenly feeling more lonely than she ever had in her life.

She burrowed her cheek against the couch and allowed a single tear to slide onto the soft leather. “Why can’t I find someone?” she whispered to the moon’s mocking face. But the moon, so silent, had no answer.

Carol had guessed right, at least partially. Danni had been running scared for most of her life—running from what had happened to Lisa. Now that Danni had made it as a doctor, there was nowhere else to go, nothing else to distract her from the emptiness of her personal life; from that old, old pain that she thought she’d successfully sealed off so many years ago.

“Oh, sissy, I’m so scared,” she whispered. Now—in her own home—she should be able to cry, if she wanted to; to sob and scream and break things, if she wanted to. But she’d trained herself for so long to hold her emotions in. She squeezed her eyes shut and, before long, sank into a bottomless sleep, where from deep recesses, disturbing dreams surfaced.

Not the usual dreams of Lisa, still alive.

These were feverish dreams. Dreams of a strong man, carrying her through flames, laying her under a cool moon, making fierce love to her, over and over. Dreams in which her longing and her pain and her loneliness at last melted away.

CHAPTER FOUR

THE SMELL OF HAM FRYING and the glaring intrusion of sunlight woke Danni. The pillow under her head and the woven throw tucked around her meant that Jackie was home, up to her usual ministrations.

Danni had originally hired nineteen-year-old Jackie Smith to work as a medical assistant, but had quickly noticed that Jackie had a habit of cleaning and straightening the office without being told. The hefty girl also regularly brought in wonderful homemade goodies for the staff to munch on. When Jackie had ended up needing a place to hide from her abusive, alcoholic man, Danni had asked if she’d like to move in with her in return for housekeeping duties.

Upstairs, a vacuum cleaner started, then abruptly stopped. Then came the sound of heavy footsteps galloping down the stairs, and Jackie’s voice—“Shit!”—followed by the sound of a spatula frantically working to save the ham.

“Trying to do three things at once again?” Danni mumbled from the couch.

“Doc!” Jackie whirled around from her cooking. “You’re awake!”

Danni sat up, looked over the back of the couch, and stretched. “Unfortunately. What time is it?”

“Eight o’clock.”

Danni cut short a yawn. “Shoot! What have I got at the office?”

“Nothin’. It’s Saturday.”

“Saturday?” Had she lost an entire day in the full-moon craziness at the hospital? “Then, where were you last night?”

“My night class, remember?”

“Oh, yeah. How’s that going?” .

“Great! I love accounting. Doc, I just can’t thank you enough for paying my tuition.”

“You earn it.” Danni waved a palm, dismissing her own generosity. What good was money if you couldn’t have fun with it? Then she frowned. “But when I came in at four, you still weren’t home.”

Jackie looked sheepish. “After class I had a hot date. Hope that’s okay. That’s why I’m double-timing it today.”

Jackie, a billowy size fourteen, always had dates coming out of her ears. Danni sighed, rose from the couch, pulled her robe up under her chin and padded into the kitchen. She poured herself a mug of coffee, swallowed a bit of her pride with the first gulp, and said, “Jackie, mind if I ask you a personal question?”

“Not at all—” Jackie was busy cracking eggs “—unless it’s one o’ them gynecological ones.” Jackie cast her employer a knowing glance. “Don’t worry about me. I’m careful.” Her dark eyes twinkled mischievously.

“Oh, it’s not that kind of personal. It’s hmm, well...” Danni jammed her hands into the pockets of her robe as she felt her cheeks grow hot.

Jackie stopped whisking the omelet she’d poured. “Why, Doc, what’s eating you?” She eyed her boss suspiciously.

Damn! The exact same question Carol had asked last night. Was it engraved on her forehead: Something is Eating Me! Danni screwed up her face. “Nothing is eating me,” she protested. “I’m just sick and tired of working constantly, followed by lonely evenings in this big, empty house. How the heck do you do it?”

Jackie looked genuinely confused. “Do what?”

“Get all those dates, for crying out loud!”

“Ah,” Jackie breathed and nodded, making her gigantic hoop earrings wobble. Then she pursed her thick brick-red lips and squinted at Danni. “Naw. You wouldn’t listen even if I told you. You’re above all that stuff!”

“Above all what stuff?”

“You know. Bein’ a man-trap.”

“A man-trap!” Danni’s mouth quirked in a smile. Jackie was such a case.

“Told you.” Jackie aimed her face back toward the stove and emptied the steaming omelet onto a plate, then held it under Danni’s nose.

Danni took the plate and set it down on the granite counter with an irritated clunk. She planted her hands on her hips. “I’m serious. Tell me what you do to attract all those men who are constantly swirling around you. Just give it to me straight. I’m a doctor, after all.”

Jackie hesitated, still holding the omelet pan, and gave Danni a long, frowning assessment.

“You’re a doctor, all right,” she finally answered. “Maybe that’s why you think you’re above the dating game. You know—too good to use a little perfume, a little color, a little pretty.” She shook her shiny earrings for emphasis.

Danni’s mouth popped open to speak, but Jackie was on a roll. “You think a man should look at you and see your brains and your character. Well, listen, honey, a man don’t want to screw Einstein—he’s lookin’ to screw a woman. A little advertising never hurt. A little something that says—” Jackie arched a perfectly plucked eyebrow “—‘I am a female.’ That straight enough for you?” She turned, mercifully, to rinse the omelet pan in the sink.

Danni’s mouth was still ajar. And she knew her cheeks were redder than the devil. But she had to do something. Even if it meant pumping a high-school dropout for information. Because the reality was, Jackie had men delivering roses to this very house.

“Are you telling me I’m unattractive?” Danni looked down at herself.

Jackie turned from spraying the pan and in one squinty-eyed sweep took in the faded pink robe, the disheveled hair drooping from a center part in no discernible style, the skin devoid of makeup. “Now, don’t take this wrong—”

“Go on,” Danni urged, looking into her coffee cup, then she took a long sip.

Now it was Jackie’s turn to plant her hands on her hips. “I been working for you two years, and I’ll tell you something, Doctor. You know a lot about human sexuality, as you call it, but not much about the human male.”

“I...” Danni’s mouth popped open, again to protest, but she clamped it shut. “I’m listening,” she said softly.

“Okay. You’re a smart lady, you tell me.” Jackie turned to the sink and pulled on a pair of household gloves. “Say you’re a man. What’s more attractive? Those combat boots you wear, or my purple spike heels? Those industrial-strength bras and saggy cotton underpants—” she jerked her thumb toward the laundry room where she’d apparently washed a load this morning “—or my pretty little teddies? My Obsession—” she waved her wrist “—or your surgical soap? I ask you? Which?”

Purple spike heels? Teddies? Danni’s mind rebelled. If she had to dress like a tramp to attract a man, forget it. First of all, she was too busty for a stringy, lacy anything. And what doctor in her right mind spent the day in heels? “You know perfectly well that I do not wear perfume because it nauseates some patients,” she replied haughtily.

“That’s fine for work—” Jackie plunged her hands into the sudsy water “—but what about the rest of your life? I have never even seen so much as a bottle o’ toilet water around here. And you with money to burn. Girl, you can afford the best.”

Danni was thoughtful as she pushed her glasses up on her nose. “Okay. I guess it wouldn’t hurt to try a little perfume....”

“Yeah. And speakin’ of money. Why’re you so attached to those geeky glasses? I know you can afford contacts.”

Before Danni could answer that one, Jackie whirled around and lifted Danni’s hair away from one ear with a soapy glove. “You don’t even have your ears pierced. It’s like you’re afraid of acting like a girl.” Jackie stared at her for a moment, then turned back to the sink.

Danni sank down on the barstool. Well. She’d asked for this, hadn’t she? “You really think I should try those manipulative feminine tricks?” she said to Jackie’s broad back.

Without looking up from the dishes, Jackie nodded. “I ain’t talkin’ to these pans, sister. And these things ain’t tricks.”

“But I don’t think I’d be comfortable.... I don’t even know where to start.” Danni threw up her hands. “I don’t have the slightest idea how to... how to be...sexy.”

Jackie shrugged. “You asked me how I get dates. That’s how.”

Danni shook her head. “I’d probably make a fool of myself.”

Jackie looked up from the sink. Over her shoulder she gave Danni a thoughtful, sympathetic frown, then her best bad-girl grin. “I know! What you need is a sexy fairy godmother. And honey—” she cocked her hip, planted one sudsy fist there “—you lookin’ at the sexiest.”

The doorbell chimed. Danni and Jackie glanced at each other, puzzled. No one was expected. Then Danni groaned and ran a hand through her messy hair. “Oh, no. It’s Mother and Aunt Hetra and Aunt Dottie. I forgot they were going to drop by.”

“I’ll go and stall them with some coffee.” Jackie started to strip off her gloves.

“No, you finish your dishes. I’ll let them in.” Danni tightened the belt of her robe and headed down the hall, then called over her shoulder, “Actually, some coffee and rolls would be nice.”

Hetra, Dottie and Olivia fluttered through the door and into Danni’s foyer like a flock of colorful little birds. The three Bartlet sisters had grown up among the privileged of Terwilleger Heights in the shadow of the elegant Philbrook Museum of Art, which had been dedicated when they were children. The hours they had spent exploring the museum with their mother, a docent, had imbued the sisters with impeccable taste. Now all three were wealthy widows in their late sixties, still active and productive in the community, still beautiful and stylish.

Unfortunately, Danni had not inherited the family penchant for personal style, and as always, she felt homely, drab and unkempt as she hugged her mother and her aunts.

“Danni, dear!” Her mother pushed Danni’s wild hair back and kissed her on the cheek. “I hope we didn’t wake you. I’m afraid we’re a bit early.”

“It’s okay, Mom. I was up, but I haven’t pulled myself together yet.” Danni straightened the collar of her robe and smiled at her aunts. “Rough day yesterday, and an even rougher night.”

“Lots of ladies having their babies, dear?” her Aunt Hetra asked kindly.

Danni nodded. “That old full moon again.”

“Well, as I always say, a good doctor certainly earns her money!” Aunt Dottie chimed in. “And you must be one very busy obstetrician! Look at this house!”

Olivia beamed. “Isn’t it gorgeous?” The sisters walked ahead of Danni, fluttering and chattering, into the sunny living room.

Danni was pleased with their reaction to her remodeling job. At least she had inherited one aspect of the Bartlet sense of style—a flair for interior decorating.

The aunts noticed everything. They praised everything. Even Jackie’s cinnamon rolls.

“Did you get my message about going to the gala with Wesley Fuerborne?” Olivia asked while she was stirring cream into her second cup of coffee.

“Uh...” Danni took a sip from her cup. “I don’t know about that deal, Mom.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, I, uh, don’t have a formal dress.”

“Well, who does this early in the season?” Aunt Dottie interjected. “That’s why we’re going over to Miss Jackson’s this morning, to start looking—I have a wonderful idea! Why don’t you come with us, Danni? We can all help you select something stunning.”

Olivia and Hetra cooed their approval of this idea.

“Oh, something blue.”

“Yes, get it done early.”

Danni raised a palm in protest. “I’m—Mom, I’m sorry.”

Just then, Jackie came into the room to collect the empty pastry tray.

“I can’t go,” Danni said and sent Jackie a conspiratorial glance. “I’m already going shopping with Jackie.”

Jackie raised her pencil-thin eyebrows, only a fraction, but otherwise maintained her smiling silence as she loaded empty china dessert plates onto the tray.

“Shopping?” Aunt Hetra asked as if something about the idea didn’t ring true.

“Yes. We go shopping together once in a while. For...essentials.”

“Essentials,” Jackie parroted smoothly, then bustled out of the room.

The ladies made their departure graciously, after Olivia had extracted a promise from Danni to decide about the gala “soon.”

Before Olivia had even backed her Mercedes down Danni’s driveway, Jackie pounced. “You know what, Doc? You weren’t lying. You are going shopping with me.”

DANNI APPRECIATED GOOD psychology when she saw it in action, and Jackie, it turned out, was the all-time master.

She started Danni out with a nonthreatening trip to the shoe department for some comfortable, classic, snipped-toe pumps, then she whisked her off to Better Sportswear to buy a silk pantsuit in a feminine shade of rose. Simple. Elegant.

Danni decided she was actually having fun.

At the perfume counter, Jackie sniffed and swooned like she was in heaven, but Danni developed a sinus headache. An astute saleswoman helped Danni choose a clean, understated scent that she loved, and that set her back $150.

“I will pierce my own ears,” Danni protested when Jackie tugged her arm in the direction of the local ear-piercing emporium. “I am a surgeon, for crying out loud.”

“Deal,” Jackie said and steered her to a jewelry store where she coaxed her into buying a thousand-dollar pair of diamond studs.

“These will look great against your hair.” Jackie held the open velvet jewelry box next to Danni’s jaw while they were downing a quick lunch. Then her smile dissolved into an appraising frown. “Speaking of hair...” She continued.

“Oh, no, you don’t!” Danni clutched the big braid curving over her shoulder. “I’ve been wearing my hair this way all of my life—”

“Exactly. About time for- a change, don’t you think? And I know somebody who could work wonders on you, girl.”

Danni rolled her eyes, imagining that Jackie had some friend of a friend who’d give her a big-hair job that would knock your eyes out, perhaps literally. “No,” she replied in her best boss’s voice. “That is final.”

Jackie stuck out her full, crimson glossed lower lip. “Ah, now,” she said, making a pinch between thumb and forefinger, “not even a tiny little trim?”

JACKIE’S FAVORITE SALON was called Tres, for three—hair, nails, and skin—and Danni had to admit it was pretty chic.

First, Jackie hauled her over to somebody named Loretta, a cousin’s best friend, who gave Danni “the perfect French manicure,” keeping the length compatible with Danni’s professional duties. Not bad, Danni thought.

The facial they gave her while her nails dried wasn’t bad, either, Danni reflected as she lay under the soothing mask.

And she decided she definitely liked the pedicure. Not for the way her toes sparkled with ruby tips when it was over, but for the way her beleaguered calf muscles had completely relaxed under the pedicurist’s massaging hands.

Danni was beginning to wonder why she hadn’t indulged herself this way before, and then it was time for the haircut. “I can’t look!” she squeaked and covered her eyes as a “hair artist,” whose name tag read Naomi, winked at Jackie and raised gold-plated scissors.

The “tiny little trim” turned out to be a heart-stopping transformation of hideous proportions.

Jackie and Naomi kept patting it and exclaiming “Gorgeous!” while Danni looked in the mirror and wondered, What the hell have I done? Her formerly long, wavy hair now mushroomed up from her widow’s peak and cascaded into a thousand unruly layers that pricked at her cheeks and neck like tentacles. She looked like an extra on Star Trek.

“It’s...it’s big hair,” she stammered into the mirror.

“Uh-huh,” Naomi intoned professionally. “Big is back. ’Course, even with the perm, I had to use a lot of volumizer.”

AFTER BATTLING ALL WEEKEND to beat the mess on her head into submission, Danni showed up at her office Monday morning with two ridiculous little clips pulling her new bangs back from her forehead. She had seriously considered wearing a surgical cap for the next six months.

“What happened to your hair?” her staff asked in unison. The morning bustle of the office abruptly ceased, and they were all staring at her as if she’d walked in naked.

“Dr. Danni got a bad haircut,” she snapped. “Now let’s get to work.”

But, as usual, Carol was on to her. Danni saw her eyeing the nails and the earrings. She poked her head into Danni’s office after the last patient had gone. “George and the boys are at a ball game. Let’s go eat. My treat.”

As soon as Danni had taken a few bites of the comforting Mexican food, she confessed. “Jackie thought I needed fixing up. I let her drag me on a makeover spree.”

“So this is Jackie’s handiwork.” Carol brandished a tortilla chip to indicate Danni’s hair.

“Yeah. Permed, highlighted, and—” what had that woman called it? “—volumized.” Danni made a sour face and lifted a tassel of bangs that had escaped the clips. “Cute, huh?”

“Adorable. But the nails really aren’t bad.”

“You should see my pedicure.”

“Pedicure?” Carol stopped eating and gave Danni a skeptical look. “Why all this frou-frou grooming all of a sudden?”

Danni blushed, shoved in a mouthful of chili.

“It’s the man thing, isn’t it?” Carol asked.

“The man thing? Now you sound like Jackie. She wants to turn me into some kind of mantrap. Besides, I told you it’s not just a man, it’s a family I want.”

Carol’s eyes grew soft with understanding. “Oh? Well, I don’t recommend it, but a family can be had without a man.” She reached across the table, squeezed Danni’s forearm and continued more quietly. “Come on. You’re an obstetrician. Several unwanted babies a year slip through your hands.”

Danni bit her lip and considered that. As if she hadn’t a thousand times before. She’d placed a few adoptable babies with single mothers. Those cases had filled her with joy. Why couldn’t she just do the same thing for herself? She took a huge gulp of her iced tea. “Okay. I do want the man. I want a husband and a family. Okay?” She looked down at the napkin in her lap. “I just... I just...” She smoothed the cloth. “The truth is, nobody ever asks me out.” She was silent for a moment, then continued.

“Unfortunately, all the men I meet are soon-to-be fathers. And all the men I already know are either attached or they consider me a good buddy.”

Carol could sympathize. She’d been in Danni’s shoes herself, and her heart ached for the younger woman. All her own male friends from high school and church had known her as the studious overweight girl who would listen to their troubles—usually about other girls.

But then had come that glorious summer when she’d met George. The summer when she’d forgotten about her weight, forgotten about her social life, gone off to be a camp counselor, decided she’d spend the summer hiking with kids, being free and healthy. By the time she’d met George, she was tanned, firm, and vigorous. And because she’d thought she’d never see George again after camp ended, she had let herself relax around him. She’d flirted, been silly, and fun, and feminine.

Even now, she remembered the first time he’d asked her to dance at the camp social. Remembered how it had felt to dance with him, to be close to him, remembered his hand lightly resting on her hip when they’d ordered ice cream in town, remembered their first kiss. And that final stroll beside the lake when he’d proposed. It had all been so thrilling!

She looked Danni over now, with real compassion in her eyes. “Danni, have you ever considered that maybe you’re sending the wrong signals?”

“Uh-oh.” Danni started filling a fajita. “Signals. That sounds like what Jackie said. She said I needed advertising. Perfume and...purple heels, for crying out loud.”

“Purple heels? Oh, for heaven’s sake. What does that child know? I’m talking about healthy feminine signals, coming from real feminine confidence.”

“I’m confident,” Danni defended as she bit off a corner of the fajita and chewed.

Carol stared at her. “I said feminine confidence.”

Danni swallowed and looked miserable. “To tell you the truth, I don’t have the slightest idea what you mean by that. I always assumed I could be myself and get a man. My mother always says there are plenty of fish in the sea.”

“There are, honey. There are. And you should always be yourself, but when you go fishing...” Carol paused. “How do I say this? When you go fishing, you have to take some good bait.”

“Okay,” Danni said despite her misgivings—she hated the sound of the word bait. “What do you have in mind?”

What Carol had in mind almost caused Danni to choke on the mouthful of food she was chewing.

“I was thinking—” Carol smiled a slow, cunning—Danni thought maybe even a little fiendish—smile “—of putting you on a diet.”

“A diet! You, of all people,” Danni sputtered, “suggesting a diet. You’re always saying weight’s not an issue to a happy woman, how your husband loves you no matter what your weight is, how long ago you set aside those false notions about ‘thin’ equals ‘attractive’—”

Carol held up a palm to halt her. “We’re not talking about my weight, here. And the diet isn’t so you can attract a man. It’s to make you feel good about yourself—healthier, happier. That’s real feminine confidence. How about it? Just a little diet?”

BUT WHAT CAROL HAD in mind wasn’t just “a little diet.”

The next day after work she dragged Danni to Super Sports where she convinced her to buy enough exercise equipment to open her own gym.

“You have to commit,” Carol said cheerfully while Danni wrote the astronomical check and arranged to have the stuff installed in the sunny southern bedroom upstairs.

The next day she persuaded Danni that they needed to take a long lunch, and told Jackie exactly what to cook for it while Carol and Danni were upstairs “doing Danni’s workout.”

“That woman’s gonna kill you,” Jackie complained a few days later while she rebelliously scooped homemade chocolate chip cookies onto a platter. “One cup of steamed broccoli—” she mimicked Carol’s throaty voice “—three ounces of broiled flounder, and ten—count ’em—ten green grapes.”

“I think it’s already working,” Danni said, but she nibbled on a cookie anyway.

Carol had a royal fit when she discovered the cookies. She hauled them upstairs to “dispose” of them herself while she bossed Danni through her aerobics.

“You’re tough!” Carol boomed around a mouthful of cookie. “You’re pumped! You’re buff! You’re a lean, mean machine!” Carol took a big bite of cookie and Danni kicked higher, sharper. “You’re sweating! Asking for more! You have the eye of the tiger! Grrrr—”

“Oh, shut the hell up!” Danni shouted, snatching a cookie and cramming it in her mouth.

After that, Carol decided she was setting a bad example as a coach, and Jackie decided if she was going have to cook diet food, she might as well eat it, too.

So, the three of them agreed to stretch and sweat and starve together.

Carol became a regular drill sergeant about the exercises, and Jackie got just plain vicious about the diet. Paper-thin tomato slices. Low-fat cream cheese spread in a transparent film. Sugar in any form banished.

Danni,hated every minute of it.

But after a mere ten days of this torture, the results were definitely starting to show: Danni’s skin was glowing, her green eyes were clear, and her slacks seemed looser. And she did feel healthier, happier.

And the fireman, of all people, was the first to notice.

CHAPTER FIVE

THE HEAD NURSE IN THE emergency room called upstairs herself.

“Have you seen Dr. Goodlove this morning?” she asked the young ward clerk, who hung up the phone, whirled her chair around and repeated the whole juicy conversation for the entire staff.

“That good-lookin’ fireman—you know, the one that looks like Tom Selleck?—he’s down in the E.R. to get his sutures removed, insisting that Dr. Goodlove do it herself. Says—get this—he likes her laugh.”

“Woooo!” the staff all crooned and turned to Danni, who stood at the chest-high desk, writing a note on a chart.

“I never laugh, and you all know it,” she quipped without glancing up from her work.

But as soon as she finished examining a patient in labor, she hurried downstairs, telling herself she was agreeing to do this out of simple curiosity. Was the guy really as gorgeous as she’d remembered?

Oh my, yes. He really was.

He was waiting behind a curtain, sitting up on a gurney, shirtless, with his legs dangling in snug jeans and cowboy boots. Danni decided his chest was even more amazing than she’d remembered—well-defined pectorals tapering down into hard ridges of the intercostals, small dark nipples, that perfect pattern of hair, and so tanned—or was that his natural skin color?

Danni grabbed up the chart and spoke to him without looking up from the pages. “Mr. Creed, I trust everything healed nicely.”

“You are Dr. Goodlove, aren’t you?” he answered.

She glanced up at him and only then did she realize that he was staring at her somewhat incredulously.

“The same woman who stitched me up?” he asked.

“Yes.” Danni frowned.

“You look so...so different.”

“Well—” she smiled “—you were drugged the first time we met.”

“No, really.” He tilted his head, studying her, like a painter assessing a model. “You look really... different.”

Danni felt a small surge of satisfaction. “Just a few pounds lighter.”

She took his arm and examined the nearly-healed burns, the well-mended suture line. As she traced her fingers over his firm, smooth skin she wondered why she was feeling so self-conscious. He was only a man. But when she glanced up into those blue eyes, which were peering at her intently, she knew why. He was not just any man, he was the first man, ever, to actually cause her breathing to become unsteady.

He leaned forward and glanced down at her hips, and Danni felt her cheeks grow warm. “If you say so,” he replied. “But there’s something else. Hey!” He pointed with his free hand. “It’s your hair, isn’t it? It was a lot longer before, and—” he squinted “—it was...different”

“Yeah.” Danni reached up and flipped one of the offending strands back. “It’s different, all right. The haircut-of-the-month featured in Beauty Doo.”

He laughed as she turned to unwrap the suture removal tray. “I take it you don’t like it,” he said.

Danni shrugged, slipped on her gloves. “Thank the Lord I don’t have to look at it.”

“Well, it’s kind of pretty.”

When she cast a disbelieving look over her shoulder, he protested, “Really.” Then he gave her a teasing, dimpled grin. “But personally, I like my women more...natural.”

Danni turned her blushing face back toward the tray and gathered up tweezers, suture-removal scissors, gauze. “Well, this is anything but natural. It takes a gallon of superglue and an Act of Congress to make it behave.”

“So—” he tried to lean around to see her face “—this is not the real you. That’s good. I liked the tourniquet better,” he added, which made Danni smirk, remembering what a mess her hair had been when they’d met in the E.R.

She turned to him and reached up to snip the first suture. “Nope. This is certainly not the real me.”

“That’s good,” he repeated—so quietly, so sincerely, that her hands stilled. Their eyes met.

They seemed suddenly to have run out of banter and fell into an awkward silence. Danni worked on his arm and, with a mixture of embarrassment, building excitement and hope, mulled over the fact that he actually remembered her makeshift ponytail holder.

His eyes traveled slowly from his biceps to her face while she worked. And just as she had on the night. when they’d met, Danni tried to keep her mind firmly on what she was doing. But, with his eyes only inches from hers, watching every move she made, it was an effort. And this time instead of smoke, he smelled like English Leather. Had he slapped on the aftershave because of her?

When she’d finished removing all twenty-four sutures, she probed the area gently with her fingers to test the integrity of her work. He didn’t even grimace.

“You’ve healed quite nicely,” she said.

“Are you married?” he asked.

Danni, caught off guard, even a little shocked by his directness, managed not to show her reaction. “You know,” she joked, “my mother warned me about firemen.” She looked at him with wide-eyed mock seriousness.

“Oh yeah?” he challenged.

“Yeah. Always rushing into hot spots.”

“Are you married?” he repeated. “Involved with someone? Yes or no?”

“N-n-no,” she stammered, trapped by those eyes.

“Then could I call you sometime?”

“Call me? Well...I don’t know....” Danni didn’t know why in the world she was hesitating. “You’d probably just end up having me paged. I’m...I’m an awfully busy woman.”

He hopped off the gurney. “Yeah, I guess you are,” he said as he tugged a navy blue fireman’s T-shirt over his head, then stretched it down over his massive chest. “Thanks for taking my stitches out.”

With a sense of dismay, Danni realized she’d succeeded in putting him off. She wanted to kick herself. “You’re welcome,” she said lamely to his back while he jammed the tail of the T-shirt into the waistband of his jeans.

“Have a good day, Doctor.” He turned to her and nodded. His mouth formed a tight line of disappointment as he picked up his ball cap.

“You, too.” Danni turned her burning face to his chart, and before she could think of some way to recover the situation, he pushed the curtain aside and left the cubicle.

She stared down at his intake info. Why the heck didn’t she give him her phone number like any normal woman would?

She noted his phone number, debating the ethics of copying it from the chart.

“Listen.”

Danni whirled around at the sound of his voice.

He had come back behind the curtain, so quietly she hadn’t heard him.

“You probably are really busy. Tell you what, let’s do it this way.” He held a business card out to her. “Why don’t you call me if you feel like getting together sometime?”

Danni looked down at the card. It had the city seal of Tulsa in one corner and in the center it read: Matthew Creed, Firefighter. The address, fax, and phone number of his station were in the other corners. Firemen carry business cards? “Oh. I—I couldn’t bother you at work,” she stammered.

“No, you couldn’t.” He flipped the card over. “That’s why I wrote this stuff on the back.” His home phone number was written in a neat, bold hand. Below that, of all things, he’d written an e-mail address. Firemen have e-mail?

He smiled when she looked up with a tiny, puzzled frown. “The e-mail’s for the truly shy.” His smile softened. “Is that the problem? Are you ‘truly shy’?”

“No!” Danni protested and took the card from him. Shy was definitely not a word she would use to describe herself, except that right now her cheeks were blazing and she couldn’t come up with a single word to say.

“Well, then, you’re not stuck-up, are you?” He grinned.

“No!” Danni protested again and found herself grinning back at him. This guy really was cute.

“Okay, then.” He took a big breath that stretched the T-shirt across his chest. “Not shy. Not stuck-up. So call me.” He winked and walked away.

No, I am not shy, Danni thought, And I don’t think I’m stuck-up. What I am, she admitted as she watched his broad back and long legs, is scared clean out of my wits.

MATT FOUND THE ELEVATORS, punched the up button, and planted his feet in a wide stance as he waited for one to arrive. Two young female physical therapists were chatting and waiting for an elevator going down. One of them, a pretty, athletic-looking blonde, smiled and said, “Hi,” to Matt.

He responded with a polite “Hi,” then took a couple of long strides to the nearby window and pretended to look out.

Damn. He should have asked Dr. Goodlove about the twins’ condition while he’d had the chance. She probably thought he was completely cold, not to have even mentioned them.

But the woman was so beautiful he couldn’t seem to think straight around her. It had been a long time since he’d been this interested in a woman, and it scared the hell out of him. A doctor. Was he crazy?

Well, at least he’d given her his card and put the ball in her court. This time he was going to be sure. No more messing up his life. He was getting too old for that.

The elevator bell dinged and, as soon as the doors closed and he was alone, hurtling skyward to the pediatric burn unit, his thoughts focused on the twins.

Over the past ten days, while he’d been home on medical leave, he’d thought of little else. Had he saved their lives, he worried, only to leave them to a future of endless pain, surgeries, rehabilitation, scarring, misery? When he’d gone in to see the babies last week, the scene had been haunting.

After he’d changed into scrubs, a tall, wiry nurse had given him a brisk rundown on how to do a surgical scrub. When he’d finished that, she’d helped him don the sterile garb—gown, mask, hat, gloves, paper shoes—and he’d followed her into the pediatric intensive care unit. All this trouble. Matt thought as he hurried to keep up with the nurse whose paper gown billowed out at her sides like wings, because the mother had given her permission for him to be in the room. And what would he say to her? What good could he do?

The room seemed bathed in bright light and a torrent of perpetual whispering white noise—monitors and pumps beeping and clicking, the rhythmic whoosh of two respirators. A nurse was there—busy, busy. He focused on the mother first; he couldn’t look directly at the loosely gauzed little mummies in the two crib-size beds. The mother’s bums looked better than the last time he’d seen her—they had been mostly second degree—but otherwise she looked considerably worse. Exhausted. She got out of her rocking chair and hugged him, their sterile gowns rustling between them. Who was taking care of her other baby now, Matt wondered, the one born a few days ago?

Matt released her and, silently, she took his hand and led him to the beds. It seemed important to her that he look. He’d seen burn victims before—other firefighters, mostly. Victims who had healed eventually. Nothing like this.

The twins were swaddled from head to toe in the gauze—even their eyes were covered—and under that, Matt knew, were the pigskin grafts. They were flat on their backs with their small feet supported on footrests and their tiny arms strapped out to their sides, the pose of the crucified. The kneecap of one baby was exposed. Perfect skin with no damage. That was all Matt could see. Matt focused on that little kneecap, concentrated on it.

Finally he whispered, “How are they doing?” Because, what else could he say?

Instantly, one twin’s heartbeat shot up—the out-of-control beeping was terrifying—and Matt understood why the mother hadn’t spoken. The nurse busied herself adjusting an IV drip.

Suddenly the beds started humming, and Matt startled again, wondering if he’d set something else off, until one side of each mattress tilted up. Then he remembered—automatic pressure beds.

Another nurse came in. She’d obviously been on a cigarette break, and in this sterile room, to Matt the smell seemed as odious as a skunk. He didn’t want anything contaminating the twins environment. She signaled for them to leave. Report time, he supposed.

Out in the waiting room, he had told the mother, before he’d left, to take things one day at a time. He needed to take his own advice, didn’t he?

The elevator doors opened, facing the large chest-high counter that wrapped around the nurses’ station. A man and woman, both wearing blue scrubs and all the other telltale paraphernalia of busy nurses, stood behind it, concentrating on a chart they had opened on the counter.

“I think we should call Dr. Miller and see what he thinks about staggering the dose,” the man was saying.

The woman looked up at Matt and asked, “May we help you?”

“I’m here to check on the Taylor twins,” Matt said quietly. “I wondered if I could look in on them.”

The two nurses exchanged a sad, secretive glance that gave Matt a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach.

“Who are you?” the male nurse asked kindly.

“I’m Matthew Creed, the firefighter who rescued them. I’ve been up here before. Their mother gave her permission for me to see them.”

The female nurse was flipping through something below Matt’s line of vision. “Yes, Mr. Creed—” she looked up “—your name is on the Kardex, but I’m afraid...” The nurses exchanged that look again and just then an older couple who looked like grandparents came out of a nearby room and started walking down the hall toward them.

“Let’s step in here, okay?” the male nurse said, indicating a small cubicle off the nurses’ station.

Matt followed the nurse inside. There was a large window in the wall, apparently soundproof, because when the nurse closed the door Matt could no longer hear the phone beeping or the voices of the grandparents as they stood earnestly talking to the female nurse.

“Have a seat, Mr. Creed,” the nurse said as he lowered himself into an institutional plastic chair.

Matt took the other plastic chair, facing the window, and awkwardly arranged himself—arms folded across his chest, feet planted wide—for what he guessed was going to be a blow.

“Mr. Creed, the Taylor twins died an hour ago, within minutes of each other.”

Matt leaned forward, propped his elbows on his knees, and hung his head. He honestly didn’t even know what he felt most at that moment: relief for the babies or sadness for their mother.

God, sometimes he hated his job.

“The hospital media coordinator has asked us not to speak to anyone about it yet,” the nurse continued. “She wants to control media access to the mother if she can. This case has generated a lot of local publicity, as you know. But I figured you, of all people, deserved to be told. I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay,” Matt said, when it was anything but.

Burn-unit nurses and firefighters, sharing a common enemy, knew how to talk to each other. “The twins couldn’t sustain any kind of fluid or electrolyte levels,” the nurse explained. “They’d been in kidney failure for a week.” Then he clamped his beefy hand on Matt’s broad shoulder. “We all do our best, but sometimes we lose.”

“I know.” Matt had started to think about the babies, how little they’d felt when he’d lifted them out of their smoldering crib, how limp, and tears stung his eyes.

“Listen.” He cleared his throat and stood. “I really appreciate your telling me.” He extended his hand to the nurse and they shook hands. “I won’t tell the other firefighters until your media person has had time to deal with it.”

“I appreciate that,” the nurse said, opening the door.

A ward clerk and a couple of nurses gave Matt sympathetic smiles. Matt knew he looked stricken, knew his nose was as red as a cherry. It always turned red like that when he tried to suppress tears.

As he walked toward the elevators he realized that, just like after the bombing, he had no place to go except a lonely apartment, and no one to share this with. Later there would be Ty, of course, and the other guys. They’d understand the hollow sense of loss, the horrible ambivalence. But now, there was no—his mouth twisted in a derisive smile—“significant other.”

An irrational urge grabbed him as he stepped onto the elevator. He wanted, very badly, to push the button for the fourth noor—the OB ward—and find Danni Goodlove and tell her. She’d listen, he felt sure. There was something about her—something deep. She’d understand. But he could be wrong—hadn’t he been way wrong before? They hardly knew each other, and she hadn’t seemed too keen when he’d mentioned getting together for a date. If he showed up now, only minutes after he’d left the next step to her, with his red nose and these unshed tears threatening, wanting... what? Well, sympathy, obviously.

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