“You,” he said in surprise when he looked at her.

“Me,” she confirmed. At least her breath was returning, she thought. Thank God for the small stuff. “Officer Calloway, I’d recognize that scowl anywhere,” she added, infusing a deliberate note of cheerfulness into her voice. And then she looked at the wound. “Let me guess. Someone decided that they weren’t thrilled with your attitude?”

Alyx pulled on her umpteenth pair of rubber gloves, gingerly removed the hastily applied blood-soaked towel and then swiftly examined the wound. “Looks like you’re carrying around a little bit of metal. The good news is, it looks like we can get it out without messing up an O.R.”

He didn’t want to waste any more time than he absolutely had to. He wanted to get back to the job. Five minutes ago. Nodding at his arm, he said, “Do your worst.”

She had a feeling that he only respected confidence. So she displayed it. “Have no fear, Officer. Even my ‘worst’ is damn good.”

Dear Reader,

I ran out of sisters to use in the last book dealing with the Pulaski girls. But there was this craving to revisit them and their parents that I eventually found impossible to ignore. By now, even if you are a part-time reader of my work, you must know that I have this problem letting go. The families I create become part of me and I love to revisit and watch as more layers are added.

So, here we are, becoming acquainted with the family of Josef Pulaski’s late younger brother, his wife and their four daughters. Did I mention they’re also doctors? First up is Aleksandra, who tries to come to the aid of an abused wife and winds up finding the man of her dreams instead.

I hope you like this newest chapter of The Doctors Pulaski saga. As ever, I thank you for reading my books and from the bottom of my heart, I wish you someone to love who loves you back.

Love,

Marie Ferrarella

In His Protective Custody
Marie Ferrarella

www.millsandboon.co.uk

MARIE FERRARELLA

This USA TODAY bestselling and RITA® Award-winning author has written two hundred books for Silhouette and Harlequin Books, some under the name of Marie Nicole. Her romances are beloved by fans worldwide. Visit her website at www.marieferrarella.com.

To Nik, whom I loved and was proud of

from the first moment I laid eyes on him

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 1

Despite graduating from medical school in the top five percent of her class, which required endless hours of studying and hands-on experience, Dr. Aleksandra Pulaski didn’t think that the human body could sink to this level of exhaustion and still function.

Yet hers had and it still worked.

In her mind, her consciousness amounted to a modern-day miracle of minor proportions. Now, finally at the end of her endless day, she managed to put one foot in front of the other and drag herself from the underground parking structure to the elevator of the building she’d just moved into this month. The trip from the elevator to the front door of her apartment seemed twice as long as it should have been. Almost at journey’s end—every foot counted—she managed to get her key into the lock and get inside the incredibly spacious three-bedroom apartment without collapsing.

That was when the last of her energy evaporated. Even the fumes on which she’d been running were gone. Just like that, her knees gave out.

Fortunately, she was passing the sofa in the living room when they buckled. Angling, she landed on top of a cushion, utterly unable to move.

She took it as an omen. Mama was very big on omens and, although normally she’d pretended it was all just old-country nonsense whenever her mother, Paulina Pulaski, brought up the subject, a very tiny part of her was her mother’s daughter and believed in omens.

Right now, she would have believed in the existence of unicorns and pixies if it meant that she could just lie here for a few moments. Just long enough to gather her strength for the long trek from the living room to the second bedroom. That was the one she had claimed as her own once she stopped protesting that she couldn’t accept such a generous offer. The people making the offer were her cousins. They were the ones who actually lived here.

Or had lived here before all five had gotten married. The protest was composed of one part honor and two parts guilt, both sections fueled by the fact that no one would allow her to pay even a small portion of the lease on this perfectly located fifth-floor apartment.

Her cousins, doctors all, had said that she was doing them a favor, watching over the apartment when they weren’t around. Her fortuitous arrival in New York City had been the deciding factor that had them all agreeing to continue the lease on the apartment. At least, they would have somewhere to crash when they found themselves too tired to make the drive home to Queens or to the Island.

Alyx quickly discovered that they, Sasha, Natalya, Kady, Tania and Marja, were all one nicer than the other. They divided the cost of the lease among themselves, leaving her to reap the benefits of their generosity. All they required was that she live in the apartment and occasionally dust if she had the time.

She wished she and her three sisters had gotten to know her cousins better, like when they were all growing up. They would have, she was fairly confident, if Papa had lived.

But after that awful day when Papa was taken from them, Mama had pretended that Uncle Josef and his family didn’t exist. She absolutely refused to allow any one of them to even get in contact with this branch of the family—the only family they had outside of one another and their aunt Zofia. Mama had never explained why, but Alyx was certain that it had to do with Papa’s death. Mama had changed abruptly right after Papa had died in that freak accident. Someone—the police had never been able to find out who—had accidentally pushed Papa, a transit cop, onto the tracks as he waited for the train.

Horrified and heartbroken, Mama held everyone, including the City of New York and Uncle Josef who had initially sponsored Papa’s passage to America, accountable for his death. Five days after the funeral, Mama had uprooted all of them and moved to Chicago, where her sister, Aunt Zofia, lived.

She’d said it was because she needed help in raising four girls without a husband to support her. It had been an excuse to turn her back on her husband’s family. Her decision was final, and for close to twenty years, she refused to discuss it or even have that side of the family’s names mentioned. In return, her mother devoted herself to the four of them. When Aunt Zofia passed away from leukemia, she left her money to the four of them and Mama.

That was when she discovered that her secretive aunt held the title of a popular patent that had yielded a fortune, all of which was banked. Subsequently, a substantial amount of money, even in these dire times, was accrued. It turned out to be enough money to send all of them through college and whatever postgraduate school they chose to attend. They all picked medical school.

Or rather, it was picked for them. Mama would not hear of any of them being anything else. Fortunately, they all felt the calling. Or at least three of them did. It had taken Krystyna a bit longer to come around.

And still there had been no attempt on Mama’s part to seal the rift that she had created.

When Alyx told her mother that she’d been accepted by Patience Memorial Hospital to complete her residency, the older woman finally, grudgingly, came around enough to get in touch with Uncle Josef and Aunt Magda.

Luckily, when it came to grudges, her aunt and uncle were as different from her mother as night was day. One phone call later she had family here. Family that embraced her and made the scary transition from Illinois to New York so much easier. The ordeal she had envisioned for herself, living with five other roommates in some small, rundown apartment with hot and cold running roaches, was no longer a viable threat.

She’d been awestruck the first time she’d walked into the apartment her five cousins had lived in during their medical training. Her cousins had all laughed at her expression of wonder, but it wasn’t at her expense. There was a joyfulness to it that she quickly came to expect from these women whose blood was the same as hers. These women who were all on their way to becoming highly respected physicians in their chosen fields.

As quickly as she came to love them, she was still more than a little in awe. They were all admirable women.

Maybe that was why Mama had been so adamant about all four of them becoming doctors. Growing up, there had been no other course to follow, no other careers even to consider. Mama wouldn’t allow it. Her girls, she’d said time and again, were going to become doctors no matter what the cost. Thanks to Aunt Zofia, there was no amassed debt to face.

But even if Aunt Zofia had been a pauper, the course of their lives had been laid out. Mama had spoken.

Though she loved the woman dearly—they all did—Alyx knew, as did her sisters, that Mama had an obsessive, highly competitive side to her. And that competitiveness always involved the daughters of Papa’s older brother.

Her cousins, bless them, were nothing like she’d expected—and turned out to be everything that she needed. Instantly friendly, instantly warm, their combined support made her first day at Patience Memorial not utterly terrible. The latter condition was purely the results of the mentor she’d been assigned. Her first rotation was in the ER with a martinet who shouted rather than talked, put down rather than lifted up.

Rumor had it the woman wanted to get the very best out of her and the other residents assigned the ER rotation. That was the rumor. However, Alyx secretly felt that Dr. Gloria Furst enjoyed putting people down and trampling on their self-esteem.

Alyx refused to let the doctor demoralize her, but it was still an exhausting, draining experience. Four weeks into the rotation and Alyx caught herself praying that the chief of staff or someone else in power would come by unannounced to witness the woman’s M.O.

But prayer or no prayer, that was not about to happen. Dr. Furst had a network going for her comprised of residents who would do anything not to wash out of the program. Consequently, to cull her favor they clued her in when they heard anything and Dr. Furst always knew when someone of stature within the hospital’s hierarchy would be stopping by.

It was at that point that the woman went from being the maniacal Mr. Hyde to the kindly Dr. Jekyll. She became sweet enough to send any diabetic in a ten-mile radius into a coma.

This too shall pass, Alyx told herself as she stretched out on the sofa.

Two shifts. She’d endured two full, back-to-back shifts. How in heaven’s name did they think she could be at the top of her game in this life-or-death arena by the end of the second shift when her brain felt numb and the rest of her was on automatic pilot? She was lucky she hadn’t killed anyone, she thought with a huge, soul-felt sigh that seemed to all but deplete her.

She was running on empty.

Alyx realized that her eyes were closed.

Two minutes, she promised herself. Two minutes and then she’d get up. That’s all she needed, just two little…

Her eyes flew open a second before she found solace in sleep.

She strained to listen. Maybe she’d imagined it. Maybe it was just part of the haze that was descending on her brain—

Get back here, you damn bitch! Don’t turn your back on me when I’m talking to you! You hear me?

No, definitely not part of her dream, Alyx thought, swinging her legs off the sofa and sitting up. Her brain didn’t create scenarios like that, even when it had the freedom of sleep.

The yelling came from her next-door neighbors. Or rather, from her next-door neighbor. A married couple lived there and what she was hearing was only the man’s voice. Hearing it as clearly as if he were in standing in the room with her.

God forbid, Alyx thought with a shiver. Although he was tall and good-looking in a showy kind of way, Harry McBride gave her the creeps.

Harry was shouting at his wife, Abby. Again. As far as she could find out from talking to the doorman, Harry and his wife were new to the building. They had moved in just as Marja had moved out to live with her fiancé—now her husband.

Silence.

Alyx listened for a moment, clinging to the momentary spate of quiet and hoping that it would continue, signaling an end to the abrupt outburst.

Maybe it had just been some kind of heated difference of—

The crash Alyx heard two seconds later followed by a volley of cursing and yelling ushered in a death knell to her sliver of hope. The heart-wrenching, high-pitched yelp of distress was almost too much to bear. She couldn’t quite make out what Abby was saying, but the cadence told her that the woman was pleading.

Alyx felt herself growing angry.

Ordinarily, she didn’t meddle in other people’s lives. Had the noise been generated by an untimely party, she would have put cotton in her ears and gone to her bedroom. She had nothing against people having fun, even the noisy kind.

But this didn’t sound like fun. This was a woman in distress.

She’d be distressed, too, living with this Neanderthal. She remembered her first encounter with Harry McBride. It was on the elevator, shortly after she’d moved in. He’d actually hit on her. His wife, Abby, a meek, mousey little thing who seemed almost afraid to raise her all but lifeless eyes from the floor, had been right there, a witness to the encounter. Abby had pretended not to hear.

But she’d heard all right. Alyx would have sworn to it. The woman’s face was flushed with embarrassment—all except for one cheekbone which, despite the heavy layer of foundation appeared bluish. As if there was a bruise beneath the coating of makeup, healing.

The yelling continued, the volume swelling.

Alyx shook her head as she walked out into the hallway. The apartment on the other side of the McBrides was vacant so she was the only one privy to this “Punching Judy” show.

Alyx knocked on the door once, then again, harder this time to be heard above Harry’s voice. She raised her own as she called out, “Abby, is everything all right in there?”

Instead of Abby, it was her husband who answered the question, punctuating his words with what sounded like a snarl.

“Everything’s just fine. Now why don’t you mind your own damn business?”

She was a doctor. Alyx thought, struggling to rein in her anger. As far as she was concerned, humanity was her business. And this surly neighbor had just crossed the line with her.

But angry as she was, Alyx had no desire to become the man’s next punching bag. So instead of demanding entrance to their apartment, she went into her own, closed the door and waited.

She didn’t have long to wait.

The shouting and noise started up within less than five minutes. Round two was even worse and more vitriolic. Whatever had incurred the man’s wrath the first time around was still there. And growing.

Alyx dialed 911.

“Hey, Calloway,” Sgt. Stubbs called out. “You just caught one.”

Officer Zane Calloway—all six foot two of him—kept on walking toward the front door. He knew he couldn’t pretend not to hear, but it was worth a shot. Sarge just shouted louder.

“I’m off duty,” Zane called back to the desk sergeant.

“Not for another seven minutes,” the desk sergeant countered, pointing to the large clock that hung on the wall behind him. “C’mon back, Calloway. I don’t want to have to put you on report for failing to obey a higher-ranking authority.”

Zane didn’t bother suppressing a sigh as he turned around. The white-haired sergeant had earned the right to pull rank. For the most part, Stubbs was a decent, fair man. But Zane was tired and he just wanted to go home and get something to eat.

Or maybe to drink to wash away the taste of the day. He’d had a kid die on him today, a fifteen-year-old who had everything to live for and no reason to die except that he’d been in the wrong place at the wrong time when an inebriated driver had lost control of his vehicle. Zane was in no mood to be accommodating.

“Have a heart, Sarge. I pulled a double shift because Martinez’s wife had her baby three days early. Technically, I was off duty hours ago.”

The sergeant looked at him over the rim of his reading glasses. It was that “no-nonsense” look he gave the rookies. It hadn’t intimidated Zane then, and it didn’t now.

“I don’t deal in ‘technically,’ Calloway. I deal in phone calls. In good citizens who call in because they need us.”

Returning to the desk, Zane rolled his eyes. “Spare me the violins, please.”

Stubbs chuckled under his breath. Zane had never known anyone who actually chuckled before, but the sergeant did.

“Don’t know what you’re missing, Calloway.” Stubbs tore off the page on which he’d written both the complaint and the name and address of the person calling in making the compliant and held it out to him. “Here. This is on your way home. A domestic violence case. Neighbor called it in. A Dr. Pul-lass-key,” he added, drawing out the name to get it right.

Zane took the piece of paper with the information on it and frowned as he scanned it. Alleged domestic violence cases rubbed him the wrong way, but not for the reason most people would have expected.

“Another neighbor with her ear pressed against the door, trying to hear what’s going on,” he commented under his breath.

The sergeant heard him. Wide, squat shoulders rose and fell beneath the navy blue shirt in a careless, dismissive gesture. “We get a call, we’re obligated to check it out, no matter who it’s from.”

Zane tucked the piece of paper into his pocket. He glanced at the desk sergeant’s craggy face. His work on the streets and four divorces had made Jacob Stubbs look older than his years.

“Easy for you to say,” Zane told him, “sitting behind that desk.”

Stubbs looked down his Roman nose at him. “That’s ’cause I’m the desk sergeant and you’re just a lowly officer.”

“Not after I pass my exam,” Zane reminded him. It had been Stubbs who’d given him the heads up—and the books—about the exams, saying he was too damn smart to spend his days patrolling a beat. After a while, Zane had decided he had nothing to lose by studying. If he didn’t feel ready, no one was holding a gun to his head to take the exam.

Never hurt to keep his options open.

“Yeah, the exam,” Stubbs echoed with a laugh, knowing nothing goaded the young policeman on more than being dismissed. “I’ll believe it when I see it. Until then—” He let his voice trail off as he motioned Zane out the front entrance, his meaning clear.

“Right.” Turning on his heel, Zane headed for the door one more time. “Waste of time, you know. Probably just another false alarm.”

“Then it won’t take long,” the sergeant called after him.

Taking out the paper again once he was outside the precinct, Zane glanced at the address. The sergeant was right. It was on his way home and wasn’t all that far away, about a mile from Patience Memorial, as he recalled.

Of course, a mile in Manhattan wasn’t equal to a mile anywhere else, except maybe in Los Angeles, where the traffic was equally as maddening at any given time, night or day.

Zane headed for the parking structure where he’d left his car.

He’d probably make better time walking, even at this time of night, he reasoned darkly. But he had no intentions of doubling back to the precinct to get his car once he took down the neighbor’s report and talked to the couple who were supposedly fighting. No, once he checked this out, he was going to “check out” himself for at least the next eight hours and recharge some very badly depleted batteries.

He’d left his vehicle on the third level. Once he located it, he got in and drove down the serpentine path to the street level. He was impatient to have this behind him.

The traffic gods were kind to him this evening. Vehicles flowed at an even pace and he got to the address the sergeant had handed him in less than half an hour. He parked his car directly before the entrance, much to the apparent displeasure of the doorman, who attempted to point him in the direction of the building’s underground parking.

“Won’t be here long enough to need underground parking,” Zane informed him in his no-nonsense, baritone voice. Deep and resonant, it didn’t leave any room for argument from anyone except the most foolish and reckless. Neither of which A.J. Green, the doorman, was. He stepped back as Zane entered the building. “Elevator’s on your right, Officer,” A.J. called after him.

“I kind of figured that out,” Zane commented as he pushed the up button with his thumb.

A minute and a half later he was knocking on the door of apartment 5E. The hall, he noted as he’d walked up to the door, was as silent as a tomb. There was no sound of an argument, heated or otherwise.

Just as he’d expected.

“Who is it?” a soft voice on the other side of the door wanted to know.

“Officer Calloway,” he announced. “NYPD.” He stepped back two steps so that the woman could verify the information for herself if she looked through the door’s peephole. “We received a call from someone reporting some kind of domestic disturbance going on in this building.” Try as he might, he couldn’t quite manage to keep the annoyance out of his voice. “Was that you?”

Alyx opened the door, expecting to see, given the man’s tone, a slightly down at the mouth, scowling police officer. Most likely somewhat paunchy. Definitely not friendly.

What she saw, instead, could have best been described as the answer to every woman under the age of a hundred’s fantasy dream man. At the very least, the man for whom the phrase “tall, dark and gorgeous” had been coined.

Because he was.

He was also scowling fit to kill.

Chapter 2

Something about the officer’s tone put Alyx on the defensive. She studied his face attentively as she answered his question. “I made the call, yes.”

He gestured impatiently around the well-lit hallway with its alabaster walls. “So where is this alleged disturbance?” he asked.

“It was—” she emphasized the word because there was nothing but silence in the hallway now “—coming from the apartment next door. 5F,” she added in case his sense of direction took him to the apartment on the other side of hers.

He turned his head toward 5F and remained quiet for a moment, straining to listen. Nothing but silence met his ear.

“Sure it wasn’t just the television you heard?” he suggested. “Some of the programs on the cable channels can get pretty loud and violent.” Obviously, he thought this was the source of the commotion. But Alyx knew what she’d heard and she intended to stand by it, even if Mr. Drop-Dead-Gorgeous-Policeman was smirking at her.

“It was the man next door,” she told him firmly, then added for good measure, “and he was shouting at his wife.”

All right, maybe she had heard raised voices, Zane allowed. But that didn’t automatically mean that there had to be violence or abuse involved. “Some guys get a little hot under the collar and they don’t realize how loud they sound when they shout.”

Why was this policeman so adamant about her being wrong about what she’d heard? Was he a friend of Harry’s and trying to protect the man?

“There was also banging,” Alyx insisted.

“Maybe he slammed a few drawers or cabinet doors to knock off some steam.”

“His wife had bruises.”

The statement caught him up short. “You saw bruises?” Zane demanded.

Moment of truth, Alyx thought. She could either lie and hopefully get him to go next door to confront the bully, or she could tell the skeptical-looking officer the truth and pray he’d still do the decent thing and question the man next door.

Opening her mouth, Alyx was about to go with the first choice, but then she stopped. If this policeman caught her in a lie, he’d dismiss her 911 call and everything else she said or would say as merely being a case of an overactive imagination.

So she went with the truth. “Yes. She tried to cover them up with makeup, but black and blue is a hard combination to camouflage if you’re looking at a person close up.”

“If the domestic violence was in progress when you made the call at—” Zane paused to look at the paper he’d been given to confirm the time “—twelve-fifteen, when would the alleged battered wife have had the time to try to cover the bruises up with makeup?” he asked suspiciously.

She’d hoped not to have to admit to this part. “I saw the last set of bruises. Or what I assume were the last set.”

Just as he’d thought. His deep-blue eyes pinned her, leaving no wiggle space whatsoever. “And exactly when was this?”

Her reluctance increased—but she really had no choice. She doled out the information between gritted teeth. “Two weeks ago. In the elevator. He was with her. And she looked very afraid,” she stressed. The officer appeared utterly unconvinced. Frustrated, Alyx added, “He came on to me. His wife was standing right there.” Didn’t he see what a reprehensible reptile Harry was?

“This got under your skin,” he theorized. “So are you trying to get back at him now by accusing him of being guilty of domestic abuse?”

How the hell had he gotten that out of what she’d just said?

Her eyes flashed. “I am not trying to get back at anyone,” she informed him indignantly, struggling to hold on to her frayed temper. “I am trying to prevent someone from getting hurt—or worse. I’m a doctor,” she informed him. “I know the signs that go with abuse. I also have excellent hearing. He was threatening her—and slapping her around, from the sound of it.” She drew herself up, wishing she was taller than her five-foot-four stature. “Now if you don’t want to go next door and talk to him, send over someone who will.”

The woman was feisty, he’d give her that, Zane thought. Whether or not that was a good quality in this particular case he hadn’t made up his mind yet.

“I will talk to him,” Zane replied, his voice distant.

It was essentially a matter of crossing his “t’s” and dotting his “i’s.” Otherwise, he would have told her to do whatever she felt she had to do and just walked away.

It wasn’t indifference on his part that was the deciding factor in the way he viewed this case. Neither was it that he condoned battery of any kind, whether it was against a wife or a husband. But he had seen the extent of damage a false accusation could create, the kind of havoc it could bring about.

He’d lived through it.

In an effort to get sole custody of her children when she divorced his father, Annie Calloway had filed charges of domestic abuse against her husband. False charges of domestic abuse. His father, a man he’d idolized from the first moment he drew breath, had been devastated that the woman he loved would have accused him of such a terrible thing.

At first, Jack Calloway fought the charges tooth and nail, but the court sympathized with her and ruled in his mother’s favor. Eventually, despondent and drinking heavily, his father wound up losing everything, including his job on the police force. His friends tried to shield him, but Jack was a lost cause. Unable to face what he had become and, more importantly, unable to cope with the emptiness of life without his family, Zane’s father killed himself using his service revolver.

His mother was the first to be informed of what had happened. Realizing that she had been instrumental in his death, Annie was never the same. Neither were Zane and his younger brothers. All three of them had a love-hate relationship with their mother that went unchanged until the day she died—a little more than a year ago.

Because of that, because of what his mother had caused to happen and then never attempted to rescind, Zane had trouble trusting women—all women—and was particularly distrustful of reports of domestic abuse. It was far too easy to wield an accusation as a weapon and gain favor with a sympathetic presiding judge.

As he turned to knock on the next door, Zane became aware that the petite blonde had left the shelter of her apartment and was not just out in the hall, but standing right next to him. So close that he could actually smell her perfume. It slipped in and out of his consciousness like a seductive whisper.

That was all he needed, a distracting sidekick. “Afraid you’re going to miss some of the show?” he asked her.

She should have brought a sweater with her to prevent getting frostbite. The officer’s tone was that cold. What was his problem?

“I accused him, I should be able to face him,” she answered, attempting to approximate the same tone that Calloway had used.

She didn’t quite achieve it. Friendliness was more her byword. Cold hostility didn’t begin to enter the bargain. She thought of Harry beating his wife, secure in the feeling that no one would challenge him and the coldness came, belatedly.

“Why don’t you just wait in your apartment?” Zane suggested crisply. “If there’s anything to tell, I’ll fill you in when it’s over.”

When it was over, he’d leave, she thought, fairly confident that she’d pegged the officer’s mode of operation. He was the type to only keep the promises he deemed worthy of being kept.

She made no effort to budge. “Doing it my way saves you an extra step,” she answered with a bright, broad, forced smile on her lips.

Just then, the door to 5F opened in response to Zane’s knock. A slightly rumpled Harry McBride stood in the doorway wearing only pajama bottoms. He looked from the officer to her, an affable, slightly puzzled expression on his face. She’d never seen anyone appear so bemused and seemingly innocent before.

The man’d had practice, Alyx realized. Which made him diabolical.

“Hello.” Harry nodded at Alyx, then looked back to the policeman. “Is there something I can help you with, Officer—?”

“Calloway,” Zane told him, filling in the blank. “There’s been a report of a domestic disturbance taking place in your apartment.”

Harry seemed properly chagrined. “My fault,” he admitted freely. “I’ve got a tendency to get a little carried away when I get excited about something I’m talking about. I don’t realize how loud I can get sometimes.” He deliberately looked at her and said with a sheepish, apologetic smile, “If I disturbed you, I am really sorry. I’ll try not to let it happen again,” he promised solemnly.

Alyx didn’t believe him. Not for a moment. Didn’t believe a word of Harry’s charmingly recited explanation or his promise to her. He was just going through the motions to get rid of the policeman. She’d bet her life on it.

“Would you mind if we spoke to your wife?” Zane requested.

Harry hesitated, seemingly concerned. “Abby’s had rather a hard day and she just now managed to drop off to sleep, but if you feel that it’s necessary to talk to her, I can wake her up for you.” With that, Harry turned on his heel, ready to go off to the bedroom and wake up his wife to accommodate the police.

Zane stopped the man before he went to his bedroom.

“No, that’s all right. Let your wife sleep. Just remember to try to rein in your ‘enthusiasm’ next time,” he cautioned the man. His business over, he saw no reason to put the other man out any further. “Have a good night, Mr. McBride. What’s left of it,” he added with a side glance toward Alyx.

With that, he turned away from the apartment.

“Good night,” Harry echoed behind him, shutting the door.

“And that’s it?” Alyx demanded, hissing the words at Calloway as the police officer began to walk away.

He stopped and deliberately pinned her with a less than charitable eye. “Unless you can think of something else.”

It was clear by his tone that he didn’t expect to be on the receiving end of any further input from her. His job here was done. He had a cold beer waiting for him in the refrigerator and he wanted to get to it.

“Unless I can think of something else?” Alyx echoed, staring at him in disbelief. “Yes, I can think of something else. How about talking to his wife? How about looking at his wife? One bruise one time means that she’s being clumsy. More bruises means that she’s someone’s idea of a punching bag. Women like that need to be helped, to be guided. Because after a while, they start to think that they deserve it.”

“Letting your imagination run away with you a little, aren’t you?” Zane asked.

Still out in the hallway, he cocked his head to listen. “Well, it looks to me like the battling factions have decided to call it a night.”

“They weren’t battling factions,” Alyx corrected tersely. “Battling factions would indicate that there were two sides. From the sound of it, Harry was the only one getting in his licks. All his wife was doing was whimpering pathetically like some wounded, frightened animal.”

Another woman “crying wolf.” She was wasting his time and he was tired. “Uh huh. Well, I don’t hear anything now. Look at it this way, maybe you scared him into acting responsibly.”

By the sarcasm in his voice, she knew the policeman didn’t believe that—and neither did she. Harry McBride was a bully who would continue being a bully as long as he felt that no one would challenge him and he could get away with it.

About to leave, Zane hesitated for a moment. It was always good to cover your tail. His father had taught him that while he was still on the force, still part of his life. There were times when he couldn’t help wondering how much more he would have been able to learn from his father had his father not cut his life so short.

Digging into his shirt pocket, Zane took out his business card. Handing it to the feisty, obviously dissatisfied blonde, he said purely for form sake, “If they start up again, call me.”

Did that mean he finally believed her, or was he just humoring her in an effort to make a quick getaway with a clear conscience?

In either case, she intended on taking him up on what he’d just proposed.

Closing her fingers over the business card, Alyx raised her eyes to his. “I’ll do that,” she promised, her voice even.

Zane barely managed to suppress a world-weary sigh. “I’m sure that you will, Miss Pulaski.”

“Doctor,” Alyx corrected the cocky police officer. He raised a quizzical brow, so she elaborated, “It’s Dr. Pulaski.”

Zane inclined his head. “Sorry. Dr. Pulaski,” he deliberately stretched out the name. “Good night now.” And with that, he was on his way.

“Good night,” Alyx echoed, calling after his retreating back. She walked into her apartment, trying her best to put the whole incident behind her.

She could more easily just stop breathing.

He didn’t believe her, she thought, chewing on her lower lip as she closed her door. Officer Calloway didn’t believe her. As an afterthought, she threw the dead bolt in place.

Why didn’t he believe her?

What could she possibly have to gain by accusing Harry McBride of something he hadn’t done? Only someone psychotic would do that.

With a shrug, Alyx tried to put the whole incident behind her again. She only had a few precious hours left before she had to turn up at the ER bright-eyed and bushy-tailed—and under the Dragon Lady’s thumb.

God knew she needed her rest for that to happen. And rehashing the events of the past half hour over and over again simply would not give her that rest.

Alyx was halfway across the living room, on her way to the bedroom and her bed, when she heard the doorbell ring. She froze.

Had the officer forgotten something?

Or, better yet, had he changed his mind about why she’d made the call?

Hurrying back to the front door, Alyx threw it open before looking through the peephole, something she never did under ordinary circumstances. But anger and exhaustion had made her sloppy. And the need for validation had done the same.

Surprise throbbed through her veins.

She wasn’t looking at the cynical officer with the sinful mouth. She was looking up at Harry McBride.

Gone like the pastel chalk marks of a brightly decorated sidewalk beneath the onslaught of a sudden, unexpected summer shower was the friendly, all-accommodating expression Harry had worn for the officer’s benefit.

In its place was a cold, calculating look that could easily make a woman’s blood all but contract within its veins.

The look in his eyes was positively malevolent. “Listen, I’m only going to say this once, hear? If you don’t back off and mind your own damn business, I am going to make sure that you regret the day you ever moved into the building and started meddling in my life. Hell, I’m going to make you wish you were never born. Do I make myself clear?” he growled.

Mama, Alyx knew, would have insisted that she say she understood and then meekly withdraw out of the hulking ape’s way. But she wasn’t about to do as Mama said; she was about to do as Mama did. And that involved not allowing herself to be intimidated by a Neanderthal oaf. Ever.

She issued a threat of her own.

“If I see you lay another hand on Abby, you will be the one with regrets, Mr. McBride. I will report you so fast, your head will spin. And not just to some indifferent police officer. I have three cousins who are married to NYPD police detectives and they, I assure you, are no pushovers. You won’t be able to snow them or lie your way out of the situation.”

With each word Alyx uttered, she could see that Harry struggled more and more to keep from lashing out at her. The only thing, she felt certain, that kept him from hitting her was the fact that he didn’t know whether or not she was telling him the truth about her relatives.

True cowards never tested boundaries—at least not when they could be easily identified. They fought dirty, with their identities hidden by masks or shadows. She would have to be extra careful for a while. And she would really need to watch her back.

“Go to hell!” McBride growled at her. The next moment, he stomped back into his apartment and slammed the door so hard her own door shuttered in response.

Now there was someone definitely in need of anger management classes, Alyx mused, testing the integrity of her locks and the one chain that Marja’s husband-to-be had put up for her at the insistence of all of her cousins. At the time she’d thought it was just so much overkill. After all, the building came with a doorman who didn’t allow just anyone to saunter to the elevators. But now, she was glad that her cousins had overruled her protest and installed the chain.

Alyx glanced at her watch. Oh God. She now had only six more hours until her shift. She hurried off to the bedroom and prayed for a few hours of sleep.

Chapter 3

Unlike his partner, Zane Calloway, Officer Ryan Lukkas liked to talk. When he was nervous, he had a tendency to talk more. And faster. He was talking fast now. Very fast. And driving the exact same way.

“Dunno what this city’s coming to, when two cops can’t even walk into a convenience store in the middle of the day to get a couple of hot dogs and two cans of soda without some kind of a gun battle erupting,” he complained loudly.

Officer Lukkas had raised his voice to compete with the blare of the siren that was piercing the usual ongoing din of the city. The siren was theirs and it was blaring for a very good reason. They needed to get to their destination. Fast.

Needed to, but so far it didn’t look as if that was going to become a reality. Didn’t people respond to sirens and flashing lights anymore? he silently demanded, cursing a blue streak in his head. Up to this point he’d managed to keep the words from erupting on his lips.

“Maybe it had something to do with you saying ‘NYPD, drop your weapons,’” Zane suggested, his voice somewhat labored.

The careless shrug only involved one shoulder. “Yeah, maybe.” He spared Zane a look, worried despite himself. “What else was I supposed to do?”

“Nothing else,” Zane did his best to assure the man, though it got harder for him to focus. The pain was worsening. “You did the right thing.”

C’mon, c’mon. Move! In addition to the siren, he blared his horn. Traffic slowed down even more. “You’re only saying that so I don’t feel guilty.”

“I’m saying it,” Zane replied in his dead, no-nonsense voice, “because it’s true. You want to feel guilty about it, hell, that’s up to you. Me, I’d say feeling guilty is a waste of time—and stupid—in this case anyway.”

Ryan gave Zane another look and swallowed a curse, allowing the words “Oh damn” to break through. “How do you feel?” he pressed anxiously.

Zane’s answer came out in a weakened growl. “Like I’ve been shot.”

“Maybe I can drive on the sidewalk,” he suggested as he looked at the area on either side of the street.

Today was particularly humid and miserable. Why couldn’t these people stay at their jobs or in their homes? It seemed as if every one of the eight million New York City inhabitants were out today, mostly milling around in the vicinity of the vehicle.

Lukkas blew out an impatient breath and slanted yet another look at Zane’s arm. Of course, Zane knew it didn’t look good. The towel that had been wrapped around it was heavy with blood.

“I want to be able to get to the hospital before you bleed to death,” Ryan declared nervously.

“Anyone ever tell you that you’re pretty lousy in the stay-calm department?” Zane asked him. “And I don’t need to go to the hospital,” he insisted, not for the first time. “Just stop at the closest pharmacy and get some bandages and gauze and peroxide.” He looked down at his injured arm. “I can take care of this myself.”

“Sorry, tough guy, you’re outvoted. We both know that you’d be better off seeing a doctor.”

“How the hell can I be outvoted?” Zane demanded sharply. “There’s just the two of us.”

“I’ve got two good arms to your one. That gives me two votes. Now shut up and save your strength.”

“If I save my strength for anything,” Zane warned him, “it’ll be to strangle you.”

“Fine,” Ryan bit off, snaking the car around an ice cream truck that had its annoying theme song on. “First we get you patched up, then we’ll discuss you strangling me. Fair enough?”

Zane inclined his head in agreement. There wasn’t exactly much he could do, since Ryan was the one behind the wheel. Zane usually let his partner drive because traffic snarls and logjam conditions didn’t seem to faze Ryan the way they did him.

“Fair enough,” Zane echoed, repeating the phrase grudgingly.

Ryan definitely looked concerned, Zane thought. The man kept glancing at him as if his partner expected him to go up in smoke at any second. There was fear in Lukkas’s eyes.

“I’m okay, Ryan,” he assured the other officer. “I’d be more okay without a bullet in my arm, but I’m okay,” he repeated. “Really,” he underscored when his partner of a little more than a year made no answer. “There’s no need to drive on the sidewalk. Look.” He nodded toward the front windshield. “The cars are beginning to clear a path for us.”

“About time,” Ryan declared, mumbling under his breath. “We’re the police—they should be clearing a path for us.”

“The ‘protect and serve’ is in our part of the deal, not theirs,” Zane reminded him. “They don’t even have to be accommodating if they don’t want to be—unless we arrest them.”

Ordinarily, his partner wasn’t this forgiving of the public. “You just want to argue,” Ryan accused, flooring the vehicle, going all of fifteen yards before he had to slow down again.

Zane slowly let out a labored breath. Was it his imagination, or was it getting harder to breathe?

“No, I just want to stop bleeding. You could have stayed on the scene and brought the gunman in,” Zane reminded him. There was no need for the man to do an imitation of a mother hen. “McKenzie could have taken me to the hospital. Hell, I could have taken me to the hospital.”

“Number one, it was your shot that stopped the thief, so technically you should have been the one to take him in, not me. Two, McKenzie can’t find his way out of a paper bag. It’d take him four hours to get to the ‘nearest’ hospital.” He glanced toward his partner. “And you would have probably bullied him out of taking you there altogether. Aha, aha.” One hand off the wheel, he pointed at Zane’s face. “You’re smiling.”

“I’m grimacing, Lukkas,” Zane corrected him. “You just drove over another damn pothole.” This one had felt as if it was big enough to swallow the whole squad car—with room to spare. The jarring motion accentuated the pain in his arm.

“Sorry. Not my fault the city’s falling apart faster than the mayor can come up with the money to fix it.” The siren was on and the lights were flashing. Craning his neck, Ryan stuck his head out the window and shouted, “Get out of the way, damn it! Can’t you hear the damn siren?” he shouted.

His words were all but swallowed up by the noise of the crowds as they made their way through the throngs of humanity that occupied the streets at any given moment of the day.

Zane stared straight ahead, trying to distract himself from the fire in his arm. The streets of the city were always crowded, but it seemed as if they were even more so at this particular time of the day. It was lunchtime.

He looked down at his arm, staring approximately where the bullet had gone in. He would have felt better if there was also an exit wound, but there wasn’t. The bullet was still inside his arm, and despite the hastily secured “bandage” created out of the convenience store clerk’s towel inventory, the wound was oozing blood. A lot of it.

And he was getting progressively more light-headed. Despite his efforts to concentrate, Zane could feel his grasp on his surroundings slipping away from him.

He didn’t like not being in control, and he wasn’t, not here.

Initially, Ryan had wanted to call for an ambulance, but waiting for one would have taken even longer, so he’d opted to allow his partner to drive him to the nearest hospital. In this case that was Patience Memorial.

He hoped that the name wasn’t an indication of what he was going to need to have while he sat around, waiting to be seen.

“Hallelujah, we’re here!” Ryan declared in much the same way that the Israelites must have sounded when, after forty years of aimless wandering, they finally reached the Promised Land.

Directly before the hospital’s main entrance, a security guard directed traffic. Barely out of his teens, the guard stopped making exaggerated hand gestures as Ryan all but stopped right on top of him.

The security guard did his best to sound official. “Emergency vehicle parking is to your left, Officer.” The cheerful grin that punctuated his statement spoiled the effect.

“I’ve got a wounded officer here,” Ryan announced gruffly, pulling the car into the first available space. “I’m bringing him in and then I’ll be out to re-park.”

Jumping out of the black and white, Ryan hurried around to the other side just as Zane opened his door. Zane felt as if the effort to do that simple thing had temporarily drained him. He struggled not to let his fatigue show. “I don’t need you to hover around me, Lukkas.”

“But you might need me to lean on,” the shorter officer pointed out as Zane rose unsteadily to his feet, one hand braced against the hood of the vehicle.

The loss of blood had made him even more dizzy than he’d anticipated. A lot more. Zane scowled as he tried to support himself for a moment, leaning against the side of the vehicle. He didn’t like displaying weakness of any kind. It was disconcerting enough to be weak, much less to show it. But apparently this wound left him no choice.

“Yeah, maybe,” Zane finally said grudgingly.

Ryan raised his eyes to Zane’s. There wasn’t even a hint of a smile this time around. “Don’t worry, I won’t mention this later,” Ryan promised.

Zane eyed him skeptically. Doubt was always his first emotion, but then he relented. “You’re okay, Lukkas,” he said quietly, staring straight ahead.

Ryan smiled, exceedingly pleased. “Coming from you, that’s like getting a five-star rating.” With Zane’s arm stretched across his stout shoulders and holding tightly on to the man’s wrist while supporting his waist with his other hand, Ryan turned toward the security guard. “Which way’s your ER?”

“You can get there right through here,” the man said. His hand was already on the telephone receiver. “I can call for a wheelchair for you if—”

“You do and it’s the last call you’ll ever make,” Zane growled. The security guard immediately stepped away from the wall unit.

“Can’t take you anywhere,” Ryan muttered, shaking his head.

“Nobody told you to,” Zane reminded him with more than a little effort.

“Having a partner die on me would’ve looked bad on my record,” Ryan informed him, a note of finality in his voice.

The ER was dead ahead, its entrance guarded by three registration booths, providing the first line of defense. A fast track was available for New York’s finest, and the woman at the first desk immediately waved them into the interior of the facility. At the same time, she was on the intercom, alerting any available staff members that a wounded police officer was coming in and needed immediate attention.

In the middle of an outpatient procedure, Dr. Gloria Furst looked up in response to the announcement she’d just heard. She glanced around the area for the closest attending physician.

Her brown eyes narrowed as she found one.

“Pulaski,” she called out. “Looks like you’re up. See if you can help the man in blue without messing up this time.”

Alyx’s smile was one she’d practiced nightly in the mirror because glaring would only get her into more hot water. “I wasn’t aware of messing up last time, doctor.”

“I’m sure you weren’t,” the doctor commented crisply, her voice frosty. “But you’ll learn, Pulaski. You’ll learn—maybe.”

Alyx drew in a deep breath, told herself that she could and would survive this nightmare and went to find her patient.

Her patient, she was told, was in trauma bed number seven. She made her way over to that section, which turned out to be closer to the front than the back.

Drawing back the curtain, Alyx didn’t look at her newest patient until she was all but on top of him. And then she stopped dead.

Unwilling to lie down as the attending nurse had requested when she took his vitals, Zane was sitting up on the side of the bed. He came across as the very personification of impatience.

“You,” he said in surprise when he saw her.

“Me,” she confirmed. At least her breath was returning, she thought. Thank God for the small stuff. “Officer Calloway, I’d recognize that scowl anywhere,” she added, infusing a deliberate note of cheerfulness into her voice. And then she looked at the wound. “Let me guess. Someone decide that they weren’t thrilled with your attitude?”

“It was a convenience store robbery in progress. We stopped it,” Ryan told her proudly, puffing up his barrel chest just a little. And then he smiled brightly. “Ryan Lukkas.” Putting out his hand, he introduced himself. “I’m his partner.”

“My condolences,” Alyx replied, her face dead serious. After pulling on her umpteenth pair of rubber gloves, she gingerly removed the hastily applied, blood-soaked towel and then swiftly examined the wound. “Looks like you’re carrying around some metal. The good news is, we can get it out without messing up an OR.” She raised her eyes to his. “That is, if you’re game. If not, I’ll book an OR and we’ll put you under.”

He didn’t want to waste any more time. Nodding at his arm, he said, “Do your worst.”

She had a feeling that he only respected confidence. So she displayed it. “Have no fear, Officer. Even my ‘worst’ is damn good.”

Stepping back, she called to a nearby nurse and requested a surgical extraction tray with a full complement of instruments, plus a local anesthetic and a needle and thread. The nurse returned quickly, bringing the tray and syringe with her. Setting everything down before Alyx, the older woman went to fetch the needle and thread.

Zane watched as she picked up the syringe. Although able to take a bullet—this wasn’t his first—he’d never been very fond of needles. He blew out a breath, bracing himself. “You don’t have to hang around,” he told Ryan. “Go back to the precinct.”

“You kidding?” Ryan cried. He had every intention of remaining to the bitter end. “I’m not about to leave you.”

Zane didn’t particularly want his partner hovering about, watching him trying not to wince. “Isn’t he supposed to wait outside?” Zane asked Alyx.

“Not if he doesn’t want to,” she answered. She saw right through the man. “You afraid that you might show a little emotion, Officer Calloway?” she guessed.

He seemed to withdraw even further into himself right before her eyes. “Get on with it,” he ordered.

The man would never run the risk of being voted Mr. Congeniality by his peers.

“Yes, sir,” she retorted crisply as if she were a soldier and he the high-ranking commanding officer. “This won’t take too long,” she assured him. “We’ll be done before you know it.”

Alyx unwrapped the tray and left it positioned on a small, adjustable hospital table. Reaching for a small, rectangular packet, she tore it open and removed the antiseptic wipe from inside. Unfolding it, she liberally applied the wipe to his wound, making sure she got the entire area and beyond. The officer stiffened as if he’d been shot again. The antiseptic packed quite a sting.

Heaven forgive her, she felt a fleeting surge of satisfaction.

“Hurt?” she asked.

“No.”

Alyx was fairly certain that Officer Calloway would deny feeling any pain even if he had a bayonet sticking into him. Her father had been that kind of a man, refusing to acknowledge pain because real men didn’t complain.

Gritting his teeth, trying to think of other things, Zane allowed his eyes to slide over her scrubs. “So I guess you really are a doctor.”

She widened her tolerant smile. The man was not the smoothest talker. Finished, she tossed the wipe into a wastebasket. “Yup. Got my diploma from the back of a comic book and everything.”

“Sorry. Didn’t mean to insult you.”

“You didn’t.” She spread out the instruments on the tray, wanting to make sure she had everything she needed before she got started. “But you did rub me the wrong way the other night.”

“You rubbed her?” Ryan blurted out, his eyes wide. He’d been silently listening all this time, trying not to get on Zane’s nerves. The bullet in his partner’s arm had been meant for him. If Zane hadn’t pushed him aside, he’d be the one on the hospital bed now—or a slab in the morgue. “And you didn’t say anything? Damn it, Zane, you’ve really gotta learn how to share and tell me things. I’m your partner.”

Zane fixed him with a cold look. “That can be changed.”

Alyx glanced at Calloway’s partner, who came across a great deal more affable than the man she was about to work on. “So I take it that he’s this surly with everyone?” she asked the officer.

Ryan nodded and allowed a sigh to escape. “For the most part.”

“Again, my condolences,” she said. Reaching for the syringe, she held it up and pressed the plunger just enough to release the tiniest drop of solution to make sure that there wasn’t an air bubble going into his arm. “This’ll numb your arm so that you won’t feel anything while I’m working,” she explained.

“Too late,” he bit off, his arm still stung from the antiseptic she’d applied.

For some reason, he could almost feel her smile across his lips as it slid over hers. “Then I guess in this situation we can say better late than never,” she countered.

Alyx paused just before she gave him the injection, pretending that she was trying to recall the steps to the procedure.

“Now, how much of this do I give you?” she murmured under her breath.

“You don’t know?” Zane exclaimed, suddenly alert.

The next second, Alyx jabbed the needle just above his wound.

“It just came back to me,” she informed him cheerfully, then did it again, this time injecting him just below the wound.

Zane gritted his teeth and stared straight ahead. He could feel moisture gathering in his eyes. Damn it, now she would think he was crying.

In all honesty, Zane couldn’t remember the last time he had cried. Maybe never. He hadn’t even cried at his father’s funeral.

The day his heart officially broke.

Chapter 4

The ER doctor was right, Zane thought. His arm had gone numb. Completely and utterly numb. He was vaguely aware of having an appendage, but that was it. He was nervous.

“This is just temporary, right?” Zane asked the woman working over him. “The feeling in my arm, it’s going to come back, right?”

Alyx raised her eyes to his for a split second and was surprised to detect a glimmer of anxiety in the deep blue orbs. He didn’t strike her as the type to be anxious about anything.

“All too soon,” she assured him, resuming what she was doing. “You’re going to need a prescription for painkillers. I’ll write it up for you once I get this bullet out and get you all sewn up.”

“Dunno about his needing painkillers,” Ryan interjected. He stood leaning against the back wall, his arms crossed before his chest, an all but silent witness to the procedure. “Calloway bends steel in his bare hands.”

This was not the time to try to talk him up, Zane thought. “Shut up, Lukkas,” he muttered.

Her eyes, he noticed, were laughing as she raised them to his. He also noticed that they were a brilliant shade of blue. The kind of blue that stayed with you after you walked away.

“No bending steel for at least a week,” she instructed.

He knew she was kidding, but there was a note of restriction in her voice. Restrictions always made him chafe. “But I’ll still be cleared to go back to work, right?”

“That all depends.” She stopped for a moment to look at him. “Does ‘work’ mean sitting behind a desk?”

“Only if they duct taped him to a chair,” Ryan volunteered with a laugh. “And even then it would be touch and go.”

Zane really didn’t need Ryan’s “helpful” comments. Nor did he want a witness to his having the bullet dug out of the fleshy part of his shoulder.

“Why don’t you get back to the precinct, Lukkas?” Zane suggested again, this time more forcefully. “The captain’s probably looking for you.”

It was getting late and Ryan knew he’d feel better making his own report to the captain. McKenzie was an annoying glory hound and he liked nothing better than taking credit for something positive—even if it didn’t belong to him.

Still, there was a loose end to consider. “What are you going to use for transportation?” Ryan asked Zane.

Transportation was the last thing on his mind right now. “When the time comes, I’ll improvise,” Zane answered. “Maybe I’ll even give you a call,” he added, knowing that was what the other man was hoping to hear. For some reason, to Lukkas that would mean that they were bonding.

But rather than take off, Ryan hesitated. He slanted a look in the doctor’s direction to see if she gave her blessings to his departure.

Zane caught the small, almost imperceptible nod she gave his partner. And felt the more positive attitude that Lukkas assumed.

“Okay, then,” Ryan declared. “I’m off. But you call me the second the doctor’s done patching you up and they let you leave here, understand?” Ryan instructed.

Zane said nothing. Instead, his partner gave him a penetrating look. Ryan realized that he had overstepped his boundaries. He’d dictated rather than merely put the suggestion out there. Zane didn’t appreciate being dictated to.

Changing his tone, Ryan asked brightly, “Okay?”

It cost him nothing to be agreeable, even if he didn’t mean it. “Okay,” Zane replied.

Ryan blew out a breath, suddenly looking as if he was at loose ends. “Okay then,” he murmured, flashed an unsteady grin at the sexy surgeon and ambled out of the small area.

The man had muscles like a rock, Alyx thought, slowly probing around the wound for the bullet that had caused it.

“You like intimidating him?” she asked mildly.

“I’m not intimidating him,” Zane contradicted. “Just not letting him act as if he’s in charge.”

Again he saw that smile, the one he found unnervingly seductive. There was also amusement. “Because you are.”

Was she mocking him? Or just trying to bait him? He couldn’t tell.

“I have seniority,” Zane said, neither agreeing or disagreeing with her assumption.

Amusement curved her mouth and he decided that she had a nice smile. A really nice smile. Something vaguely familiar stirred within him, but he couldn’t quite put his finger on what it was. These days, his work took up all his available time. When he wasn’t working, he was usually asleep. It kept him from thinking, or remembering.

Or noticing the emptiness in his belly that had nothing to do with food.

“Which makes you in charge,” Alyx concluded.

This would go faster if the man had slacked off and skipped a few workouts. She held her breath as she continued probing, waiting until she heard the sound of metal on metal: her scalpel hitting the bullet. And then there it was, the point of her scalpel touching the lethal part of the bullet. They were in business.

“Okay, we’re almost past the worst part,” she told him. He was being very quiet. She didn’t even hear him breathing. Sparing him a glance as she worked the bullet out of his flesh, she asked, “How are you doing?”

He watched her work in utter fascination. “Don’t feel a thing.”

She detected a note of frustration in his voice. He had no idea how lucky he was not to “feel a thing.” “Good.”

But it wasn’t, he thought. Not feeling anything made you hollow and that was how he felt, had felt for a lot of years. As if he was hollow. Unable to reach out, unable to forge any sort of a relationship with a woman. He had nothing to draw on as an example. All he remembered was shouting. Words of recrimination would bounce back and forth between his parents with frightening regularity. No words of endearment counterbalanced that, no warmth at all, other than the type that came from a heater in the garage.

“If you say so,” Zane commented on the doctor’s pronouncement.

Finally coaxing her quarry out into the open, Alyx deposited the bullet into the corner of the tray with no small feeling of triumph.

She glanced at her patient. His expression was completely neutral. He neither looked happy to be done with it or grimacing in anticipation of the pain.

“You are a very complex human being, Officer Calloway,” she commented.

He said nothing.

Alyx began to clean the wound again, making it as sterile as possible before she started sewing up the hole. The ensuing silence made her uncomfortable.

“So, are you a Yankees fan, or do you like to root for the underdog and cheer for the Mets?” she asked him as she prepared the sutures and needle.

Zane lifted his other shoulder and let it drop dismissively. He’d never watched more than a part of a game and those instances only occurred when he was at someone else’s place and they were watching the event. He had no use for watching grown men swinging a stick at a ball.

“Neither.”

There was finality in his voice. She raised an eyebrow in his direction. “You don’t follow baseball?” she concluded.

Zane moved his head from side to side only once. “No.”

She tried to remember if she’d ever met anyone who didn’t root for their home team. “How about football?”

The answer was the same. “No.”

“Basketball?” she guessed. “Soccer?”

“No and no.”

She wasn’t about to give up. There had to be some sport he enjoyed watching if not playing. He didn’t make her think of someone who liked being on the sidelines. “Bowling? The poker channel?”

Each question drew out the same answer. His “no” grew a little firmer each time.

He completely fascinated her. “A man not into sports. I didn’t know there was such a creature.” Her smile raced straight into his insides, pureeing them before he could think to sideline it. “Maybe you’re not so complex after all.”

His reasons sounded completely plausible to him. “I don’t have time to follow sports.”

What did he do that fired his imagination so much it kept him away from vegging out before his set at least once a week? she wondered. “What do you have time for?”

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