Lydia knew that getting personally involved with Lukas Graywolf broke all the rules.

But not getting involved with him would have been a waste. A waste no matter how this was all destined to end—tonight, or a week from tonight. That it would end she never questioned. What she questioned was whether or not it would affect her judgment or her performance as an FBI agent.

She told herself it wouldn’t. That she was thinking as clearly as ever.

And what she thought—clearly—was that what was happening here was too intense for her not to explore. Being with Lukas made her aware that she needed more than work. It made her aware that there was another Lydia Wakefield, one who needed the touch of a man’s hands.

A Lydia who had a woman’s needs—needs that had not been met in a very long time….

In Graywolf’s Hands
Marie Ferrarella

www.millsandboon.co.uk

MARIE FERRARELLA

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

To

Patricia Smith

and

fairy tales that come true

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

He was going to live.

Jacob Lindstrom was going to live to see his first grandchild born. Maybe even his first great-grand-child, if the man played his cards right. All because he, Lukas Graywolf, the first in his family to graduate from college, let alone medical school, had decided to make cardiac surgery his field of expertise.

That, and because Jacob’s wife had nagged him into taking a treadmill test, whose alarming results had sent the middle-aged corporate CEO to the operating table almost faster than he could blink an eye.

With excellent results.

Walking out of the alcove where friends and family were told to wait for news about the outcome of surgeries, Lukas let the door close behind him and took a deep breath. Never mind that it was basically recycled hospital air, it felt good, sweet, life-giving. And soon, Lukas thought, a hint of a smile finding its way to his lips and softening his chiseled features, Jacob Lindstrom would be able to say the same thing.

It was a good feeling to know that he had been instrumental in freeing another human from the grasp of death. His smile deepened ever so slightly as he turned down the long corridor.

This was probably the way his forefathers had felt. Those ancestors who, more than a handful of generations ago, had relied on the knowledge of plants and spiritual power to heal the sick and injured. There had been more than one shaman found in his family tree and, if he were to believe his mother’s stories, a few gifted “seers” and “healers” across the ocean in Ireland, as well.

It was a heady legacy, indeed, he mused. Lukas was one-quarter Irish, three-quarters Navaho but right now he was four-quarters exhausted. It had been a taxing surgery, not without its complications.

Turning a corner, he entered the doctors’ lounge. Shedding his scrubs, he put on his own clothes by rote, leaving behind his white lab coat. He was off duty, had technically been off duty for the past two hours. Except that Mr. Lindstrom’s surgery hadn’t exactly gone as planned. They’d almost lost the man twice.

Lindstrom’s vital signs were good now and there was every chance for a strong, rapid recovery.

Lukas had said as much to the man’s wife and grown children, who had spent the last few hours contemplating the possible demise of a man they had heretofore regarded as indestructible. He had barely finished talking when Mrs. Lindstrom had hugged him and blessed him.

He wasn’t much for physical contact, but he knew the woman needed it so he had stood still and allowed himself to be embraced, had even patted her on the shoulder. He’d left the woman with tears of joy in her eyes, counting the minutes until she could see her husband again.

Lukas’s mouth curved a little more as he shut his locker door. This was why he’d become a surgeon in the first place, why he had set his sights on heart surgery. The heart was the center of everything within a human being.

His goal was simple: to heal and preserve as many lives as he could. He figured the reason he’d been put on earth was to make a difference and he intended to do just that.

The rush that came over him was incredible and he paused beside the locker for a moment to savor it. He was one of the lucky ones, he knew. He could still feel the overwhelming elation after each surgery that went well. There were many in the medical community who had burned out, who performed surgery by the numbers and felt none of the gratification that he was feeling now.

They didn’t know what they were missing, Lukas thought, pity wafting through him. He picked up his windbreaker, feeling as if he could pretty near walk on water. Or at the very least, on some very deep puddles.

As he started to open the door to leave, it swung open. Allan Pierce, a first-year intern, stumbled in on the long end of a thirty-six-hour shift. His eyes brightened slightly, the way a private’s did in the presence of a four-star general.

“You on duty tonight, Dr. Graywolf?”

“Off,” Lukas told him crisply.

He could already visualize his bed, visualize his body sprawled out on top of it, the comforter lying in a crumpled heap on one or the other side of his body. Though it was only a year in his past, he’d gotten completely out of the habit of the long hours that interning and residency demanded. It wasn’t something he cared to revisit on a regular basis.

“Wish I were,” Allan mumbled. His shaggy blond hair drooped into his eyes, making him seem years younger than he was.

“You will be,” Lukas promised, feeling uncustomarily lighthearted. As a rule, he was distant with the interns. “In about five years. ’Night.”

So saying, Lukas walked out of the lounge and directly into the path of turmoil.

The rear doors of the emergency room sprang open as two ambulance attendants rushed in. A gust of leaves, chasing one another in the late autumn wind, swirled around the wheels of the gurney. The wounded man strapped to its board was screaming obscenities at anyone within earshot, but most were directed at the slender, no-nonsense blonde keeping pace with the attendants.

For just a second, as the wind lifted the edge of her jacket, Lukas thought he saw the hilt of a revolver. But then her jacket fell closed again and he found himself wondering if he’d just imagined the weapon.

Another man, older than the woman by at least a decade and wearing a three-piece suit, followed slightly behind her.

The man looked winded as he vainly attempted to catch up to the woman. Carrying a little too much weight for his age and height, Lukas judged. He wondered when the man had last had a treadmill test.

But there was little time for extraneous thoughts. The noise level and tension rose with each passing second. Nurses and attendants began to converge around the incoming gurney. From where he stood, Lukas had a clear view. He could see all the blood the man had lost. And the handcuffs that tethered him to the gurney.

One of the attendants was rattling off vital signs to the nearest nurse while the blonde interrupted with orders of her own. The screaming man on the gurney was a gunshot victim.

And then suddenly the patient fell eerily silent, pale in his stillness. He sank back against the gurney.

Lukas lost no time cutting the distance between himself and the injured man, pushing his way into the center of what looked as if it could easily become a mob scene.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the blonde frown at him. Placing his fingers on the artery in the man’s neck, he found no pulse.

The blonde grabbed his arm. “Who are you?” she demanded.

Lukas saw no reason to waste time answering her. There was a life at stake.

“Crash cart,” he ordered the closest nurse to him. “Now!” The dark-haired woman quickly disappeared into the crowd.

“Is he dead?” The blonde wanted to know. When Lukas didn’t say anything, she moved so that he was forced to look at her. Her hand gripped his wrist, her intent clear. She was going to hold it still until she got her answer. The strength he felt there didn’t surprise him. “Is he dead?” she repeated.

“Not yet,” Lukas snapped, jerking his wrist away.

The nurse he’d sent for the crash cart returned, hurrying to position it next to the gurney. There was no time to get the man to a room. What had to be done was going to be done in the corridor, with everyone looking on.

“Someone get his shirt open!” Lukas ordered.

He was surprised when the blonde was the first to comply, ripping the man’s shirt down the center. He saw the blood on her hands and arm then. Lukas pushed the questions back as he held the paddles up to have the lubricant applied. Directing the amount of voltage to be used, he held the paddles ready as he announced the customary, “Clear.” At the last second he jerked back the paddles when he saw that the blonde had one hand on the victim.

What was she doing, playing games? “Clear!” Lukas shouted at her angrily. “That means get your hands away from the patient unless you want to feel the roots of your hair stand on end.”

Glaring at him, the blonde elaborately raised both her hands up and away from the man on the gurney.

The monitor continued to display a flat line as Lukas tried once and then again to bring the man around. Raising the voltage, Lukas tried a third time and was rewarded with a faint blip on the screen.

He held his breath as he watched the monitor. The blip grew stronger. Lukas began to breathe again. He replaced the paddles on the cart.

“Get him to Room Twelve,” he instructed Pierce, who had been hovering at his elbow the entire time.

“Right away.”

Lukas took another deep breath as his adrenaline began to level off. From the looks of it, his night had just gotten a whole lot longer. By the time they could get another heart specialist down to the hospital, it might be too late for the man they’d just brought in. Casting no aspersions on the doctor on duty, Lukas knew he was better at this sort of thing than Carlucci was.

As with every patient he came in contact with, he felt responsible. He blamed it in part on his grandmother’s stories about the endless circle of life, how each person touched another. Was responsible for another. Between his grandmother and the Hippocratic oath, there wasn’t much margin for indifference.

He paused only long enough to wash his hands and slip on the disposable yellow gown the nurse—who seemed to materialize from out of nowhere—was holding up for him. The surgical gloves slid on like a second skin. They very nearly were.

Entering Room Twelve, Lukas nodded at Harrison MacKenzie, surprised to see the man there. He must have been in the area when he heard about the gunshot victim. Following the light in Harrison’s eyes, Lukas became aware of the woman again. She was shadowing his every move. Or rather, the man on the gurney’s every move.

Lukas spared her a glare as the paramedics and attendings transferred the patient onto the examination table. “You’re not supposed to be here.”

The blonde didn’t budge a fraction of an inch. Even as the gurney was being removed. They went around her. “He’s here, I’m here.”

Lukas assessed the damage quickly. There was a bullet lodged dangerously close to the man’s heart. “I take it that it’s not filial loyalty that’s keeping you in my way.”

The term almost made her choke. Her eyes glinted with loathing, the kind displayed for a creature that was many levels beneath human and dangerous.

“He and his friends just tried to blow up most of the Crossways Mall,” the blonde informed him grimly. “His friends got away. I’m not letting this one out of my sight.”

“The windows aren’t made of lead.” His hands full, Lukas nodded toward the swinging doors. “You can keep him in your sight from the hallway.” The fact that she remained standing where she was threatened to unravel the temper he usually kept securely under wraps. “The man’s losing blood at a rate that could shortly kill him, he’s shackled to a bed and he’s unconscious. Take it from me, he’s not going anywhere in the next hour. Maybe two. Now I’m not going to tell you again. Get outside.”

Frustrated, Special Agent Lydia Wakefield spun on her heel. The flat of her hand slapped against the swinging door as she pushed it open and stormed out of the room. The older man who had come in with her followed silently in her shadow.

“I’d say someone needs to work on their people skills,” Harrison observed.

Lukas looked up at the man who had befriended him in medical school, the man he felt closer to than anyone, other than his uncle Henry. There was a mask covering his face, but Lukas could feel the other man’s grin. “You talking about me, or her?”

The smile reached Harrison’s blue eyes, crinkling them. “A little of both.” He looked down at the patient. “I heard the commotion all the way to the elevator. I thought I’d offer you an extra set of hands, but it doesn’t look like you’ll be needing me.”

Harrison’s field of expertise was plastic surgery. He specialized in trauma victims.

If he knew Harry, the man probably had a hot date stashed somewhere. There was no need to keep him from her. Lukas shook his head. “Not unless he intends to wear his heart on his sleeve.”

Harrison remained a few minutes longer, just in case. “Did I hear her right?” He nodded at the man on the table. “You operating on a bomber?”

“I’m operating on a man,” Lukas corrected. “Whatever else he is is between him and his god. I’m not here to play judge and jury. I just patch up bodies.”

Harrison stepped back, undoing his mask. Drooping, it hung around his neck. “Well, I see that, as usual, you’re keeping things light.” He looked at his watch. If he bent a few speeding rules, he could still make his date on time. “I’ve got cold champagne and a hot woman waiting for me, so I’ll just leave you to your jigsaw puzzle.” Shedding the yellow paper gown, he tossed it into the bin in the corner.

Walking out, Harrison stopped to talk to the blonde, who was standing inches away from the swinging door. He had a weakness for determined women.

“Don’t worry, he’s as good as they make ’em,” he assured her.

She frowned. Right now, she wasn’t all that concerned about tapping into miracles to prolong the life of a man she considered pure scum.

“Just means the taxpayers are going to have to spend more money,” she said without looking at the doctor at her side.

“Come again?”

Standing at the window, she watched as people ran back and forth, getting what looked to be units of blood, doing things she wasn’t even vaguely familiar with. “If your friend saves his life, there’s going to be a lengthy trial.”

Harrison glanced at the man who had come in with the blonde before looking back at her. “Everybody deserves his day in court.”

She had thought that once, too. Before the job had gotten to her. Before she’d seen what she had today. She turned from the window to glare at the doctor spouting ideologies.

Her eyes were cold. “A man who would blow up innocent people to vent his anger or to carry out some kind of private war doesn’t deserve anything.”

Harrison took quiet measure of her. The woman appeared to be a handful by anyone’s standards. Probably gave her superiors grief. Not unlike Lukas on a good day, he mused.

“Odd philosophy for a law enforcement agent.”

“Oh, really?” Tired and in no mood for pretty-boy doctors who probably saw themselves as several cuts above the average man and only slightly below God, she fisted her hand at her waist. “And what makes you such an expert on law enforcement agents?”

“I’m not,” Harrison said. A seductive smile spread along his lips as he regarded her. “But give me time and I could be.”

Lydia saw her partner move closer and held up her hand to stop him in his place. “I think you’d better go now.”

Harrison raised his hands in complete surrender, taking one step back, and then another. He had places to be, anyway. With a woman who was perhaps not as exciting as this one, but who, he was willing to bet, was a whole lot more accommodating.

“Okay, but go easy on my friend.” He nodded toward the room he’d just vacated. “His head doesn’t grow back if you rip it off.”

She glared at the doctor’s back as he walked quickly away. It was easy to be flippant, to espouse mercy and understanding if you were ignorant of the circumstances. If you hadn’t just seen a teenage boy destroyed, a life that was far too short snuffed out right before your eyes.

Restless, Lydia couldn’t settle down, couldn’t keep from moving. If only she and Elliot had gotten there earlier.

But the tip they’d received had been too late. It had sent them to Conroy’s house, where they had uncovered enough powder and detonating devices to blow up half the state. It was by chance that they’d stumbled across the intended target: the Crossroads Mall exhibit honoring Native American history.

They’d rushed to the Crossroads, calling in local police, calling ahead to the mall’s security guards. To no avail. She couldn’t stop the bombing, couldn’t get the mall evacuated in time. She tried to console herself with the fact that things could have been worse. If this had happened at an earlier hour, the damage would have been far greater in terms of lives lost. And fortunately, it had happened in the middle of the week, which didn’t see as much foot traffic at the mall as a Friday or Saturday night.

The bombing, according to a note sent to the local news station and received within the past hour, had been meant as a warning.

For Lydia, even one life lost because of some crazed supremacy group’s idea of justice was one too many. And there had been a life lost. Not to mention the number of people injured and maimed. The ambulances had arrived en masse, and the victims being taken to three trauma hospitals in the area.

Knowing that only Blair Memorial had an area set aside for prisoners, so the paramedics had brought them here.

And now the doctor with the solemn face and gaunt, high cheekbones was trying to save the life of a man who had no regard for other lives.

It was a hell of a strange world she lived in.

Lydia leaned her forehead against the glass, absorbing the coolness, wishing her headache would go away.

“I can take it from here, Lyd,” Elliot was saying behind her. “You’re beat. Why don’t you go home, get some rest?”

She turned to the man who had been her partner from the first day she’d walked into the Santa Ana FBI building. At the time she’d felt she was being adopted rather than partnered. Elliot Peterson looked more like someone who should be behind a counter, selling toys, not a man who regularly went to target practice and had two guns strapped to his body for most of each day. He was ten years older than her, and acted as if he were double that. Elliot took on the role of the father she’d lost more than a dozen years ago. At times, that got in the way.

He was always trying to make her job easier.

Lydia smiled as she shook her head. She wasn’t about to go anywhere. “You’re the one with a wife and kids waiting for you. All I’ve got waiting for me is a television set.”

“And whose fault is that?” It was no secret that he and his wife had tried to play matchmaker for her, to no avail. Loose, wide shoulders lifted in a half shrug. There was no denying that he wanted to get home himself.

“Yeah, but…”

There was no need for both of them to remain here. “How long since you and Janice had some quality time together?”

Elliot pretended to consider the question. “Does the birthing room at the hospital count?”

Lydia laughed. “No.”

“Then I don’t remember.”

She looked at him knowingly. “That’s what I thought. Go home, Elliot. Kiss your wife and hug your kids and tell them all to stay out of malls for a while.”

The warning hit too close to home. His oldest daughter, Jamie, liked to hang out with her friends at the Crossroads on weekends. If this had been Saturday morning instead of Wednesday night…

He didn’t want to go there. Suddenly ten paces beyond weary, Elliot decided to take Lydia up on her offer. “You sure?”

This job could easily be turned over to someone in a lower position for now, but she wouldn’t feel right about leaving until she knew what condition the bomber was in.

She started to gesture toward the closed doors behind her. Pain shot through her arm and she carefully lowered it, hoping Elliot hadn’t noticed. He could fuss more than a mother hen once he got going.

She nodded toward the room. “As the good doctor pointed out, that guy’s not going anywhere tonight. I can handle it from here. If anything breaks, I can always page you.”

Grateful for the reprieve, Elliot patted her shoulder. “Night or day.” He glanced through the window. The medical team was still going full steam. “From the looks of it, it might be a while. Want me to get you some coffee before I go, maybe find you something clean to put on?”

She glanced down at her bloodied jacket. “My dry cleaner is not going to be happy about this. And, thanks, but I’ll find the coffee myself.” She didn’t like to be waited on. Besides, Elliot had put in just as full a day as she had. “You just go home to Janice before she starts thinking I have designs on you.”

Looking back at his life, he sometimes thought he’d been born married. Janice had been his first sweetheart in junior high. “Not a chance. Janice knows there isn’t an unfaithful bone in my body.”

That makes you one of the rare ones, Elliot, Lydia thought as she watched her partner walk down the long corridor. She vaguely wondered if there would ever be someone like that in her life, then dismissed the thought. She was married to her job, which was just the way she wanted it. No one to worry about her and no one to worry about when she put herself on the line. Clean and neat. She was too busy to be lonely.

“You’d think a state-of-the-art hospital would keep coffee machines in plain sight,” she muttered to herself, looking up and down the corridor. About to approach the receptionist at the emergency admissions desk, she heard the doors behind her swoosh open.

Turning, she saw the doctor who had earlier hustled her out of Room Twelve hurrying alongside an unconscious, gurneyed Conroy. They had transferred the suspect back onto a gurney and he was being wheeled out.

She lost no time falling in beside the doctor. “Is he stable?” she asked. “Can I question him?”

Stopping at the service elevator, Lukas pressed the up button. He’d never cared for authority, had found it daunting and confining as a teenager. The run-ins he had had with the law before his uncle had taken him under his wing and straightened him out had left a bad taste in his mouth.

“You can if you don’t want any answers.” The elevator doors opened. The orderly with him pushed the gurney inside and Lukas took his place beside it. “He needs immediate surgery, not a game of Twenty Questions.”

“What floor?” she demanded as the doors began to close.

Lukas pretended to cock his head as if he hadn’t heard her. “What?”

Irritated, she raised her voice. “What floor are you taking him to?”

The doors closed before he gave her an answer. Not that he looked as if he was going to, she thought angrily. What was his problem? Did he have an affinity for men who tried to blow up young girls and cut down young boys for sport because of some half-baked ideas about supremacy?

Her temper on the verge of a major explosion, Lydia hurried back to the emergency room admissions desk and cornered the clerk before he could get away.

“That tall, dark-haired doctor who was just here, the one who was working on my prisoner—”

“You mean Dr. Graywolf?” the older man asked.

Well, ain’t that a kick in the head? Conroy and his people had blown up the exhibit because of contempt for the people it honored and here he was, his life in the hands of one of the very people to whom he felt superior.

Graywolf. She rolled the name over in her mind. It sounded as if it suited him, she thought. He looked like a wolf, a cunning animal that could never quite be tamed. But even a cunning animal met its match.

Lydia nodded. “That’s the one. He just took my prisoner upstairs to be operated on—where was he going with him?”

“Fifth floor,” the man told her. “Dr. Graywolf’s a heart surgeon.”

A heart surgeon. Before this is over, Dr. Graywolf might need one himself if he doesn’t learn to get out of my way, Lydia vowed silently as she hurried back to the bank of elevators.

Chapter 2

Lydia looked around the long corridor. After more than three hours, she could probably draw it from memory, as she could the waiting room she had long since vacated.

Blowing out an impatient breath, she dragged her hand through her long, straight hair. It was at times like this that she wished she smoked. Or practiced some kind of transcendental exercises that could somehow help her find a soothing, inner calm. Pacing and drinking cold coffee to which the most charitable adjective that could be applied was godawful, didn’t begin to do the trick.

She knew what was at the root of her restlessness. She was worried that somehow John Conroy would manage to get away, that his condition wasn’t nearly as grave as that tall, surly doctor had made it out to be. And when no one was looking, he’d escape, the way Lockwood had. Jonas Lockwood had been the very first prisoner she’d been put in charge of. His escape had almost cost her her career before it had begun.

She and Elliot had managed to recapture the fugitive within eighteen hours, but not before Lockwood had seriously wounded another special agent. It was a lesson in laxness she never forgot. It had made her extra cautious.

Something, she had been told time and again by her mother, that her beloved father hadn’t been. Had Bryan Wakefield been more cautious with his own life, he might not have lost it in the line of duty. The ensuing funeral, with full honors, had done little to fill the huge gap her father’s death had left in both her life and her mother’s.

Lydia crumpled the empty, soggy coffee container in her hand and tossed it into the wastebasket.

The corridor was almost silent, and memories tiptoed in, sneaking up on her. Pushing their way into her mind.

She could still remember the look on her mother’s face when she’d told her that she wasn’t going to become a lawyer because her heart just wasn’t in it.

Lydia smiled without realizing it. Her heart had been bent on following three generations of Wakefields into law enforcement. Her great-grandfather and grandfather had both patrolled the streets of Los Angeles and her father had risen to the rank of detective on the same force, doing his father proud.

Her mother had argued that she could become part of the D.A.’s office. That way, she would still be in law enforcement, only in the safer end of it. But Lydia had remained firm. Sitting behind a desk with dusty books or standing up in court in front of a judge whose bout of indigestion or argument with a spouse might color the rulings of the day was not for her.

With tears in her eyes, her mother had called her her father’s daughter and reluctantly given her blessing while praying to every saint who would listen to keep her daughter safe. Lydia had no doubt that her mother bombarded heaven on a daily basis.

Mercifully, Louise Wakefield remarried six months after Lydia had successfully completed her courses at Quantico. Her stepfather, Arthur Evans, was a kind, genteel man who ran a quaint antique shop. Her mother made him lunch every day and always knew where to find him and what time he’d be home. It was a good marriage. For the first time in nearly thirty years, Lydia knew her mother was at peace.

Lydia looked at the wall clock as she passed it. She sincerely wished she could lay claim to some of that peace herself right now. Glancing at the clock again, she frowned. It announced a time that was five minutes ahead of her own watch. Not that it mattered in the larger scheme of things. It just meant that her prisoner had now been in surgery for three hours and forty minutes, give or take five.

She rotated her neck and felt a hot twinge in her shoulder. It had been bothering her the entire time she’d been here. She couldn’t wait for this night to be over. All she wanted to do was to go and soak in a hot tub.

It was her bullet they were digging out of Conroy. If he hadn’t moved the way he had, it would have been lodged in his shoulder, not his chest. Though she was filled with loathing for what he’d done, she’d only meant to disarm him. Cornered, the man had trained his weapon on Elliot. There’d been no time to debate a course of action. It was either shoot or see Elliot go down.

Lydia felt no remorse for what had happened. This kind of thing went with the territory and she had long ago hardened her heart to it. If there was pity to be felt, it went to the parents of the boy whose life had been lost and to the people who, simply going about their business, had been injured in the blast.

Lydia sighed. The world seemed to be making less sense every day.

She found herself in front of the coffee machine again. If she had another cup, she seriously ran the danger of sloshing as she moved. But what else was there to do? There was no reading material around and even if there had been, she wouldn’t be able to keep her mind on it. She was too agitated to concentrate.

Digging into her pocket, she winced. Damn the shoulder anyway. It felt as if it was on fire. Probably a hell of a bruise there. When she’d shot him, Conroy’s weapon had discharged as he’d fallen to the ground. She’d immediately ducked to keep from getting struck by the stray bullet. As near as she could figure, she must have injured her shoulder when she hit the floor.

Lydia glanced down at herself. The jacket and pants she had on were both discolored with the prisoner’s blood. Shot, he’d still tried to put up a fight. It had taken Elliot and her to subdue him. For a relatively small man, Conroy was amazingly strong. She supposed hate did that to you.

She looked accusingly at the operating room doors. Damn it, what was taking so long? Were they rebuilding Conroy from the ground up?

Lydia stifled a curse. She knew she could have someone from the Bureau stationed here in her place, but she didn’t want to leave until she had a status report on the bomber’s condition. She wanted to know exactly what she was up against. There was no way she was going to lose this one, even for a blink of an eye.

Her stomach rumbled, reminding her that not even she could live on coffee alone. She tried to recall when her last meal had been. The day had taken on an endless quality.

Lydia jerked her head around as she heard the operating room doors being pushed open. The sound of her heels echoed down the corridor as she quickly returned to her point of origin.

The physician who had given her such a hard time emerged, untying his mask. He looked tired. That made two of them.

“Well?” she demanded with no preamble.

It didn’t surprise Lukas to find the blonde standing here like some kind of sentry. Gorgeous, the woman still bore a strong resemblance to a bull terrier, at least in her attitude. Their earlier exchange had convinced him that she wasn’t someone who would let go easily. Or probably at all, for that matter.

Lukas took his time in answering her, walking over to the row of seats in the waiting area and sinking down onto the closest one. The woman, he noted, remained standing.

“Well, is he alive?” she pressed.

Lukas pulled off his surgical cap and looked at her. “Yes. He’s lucky. The bullet was very close to his heart. Less than a sixteenth of an inch closer and he’d be on a slab in the morgue.”

Her mouth twisted. Whether the word lucky was appropriate or not was a matter of opinion. “Too bad the boy his bomb blew up wasn’t as lucky.”

Lukas didn’t feel like being drawn into a debate. Weary, he rose to tower over the woman. It gave him an advantage. He found he preferred it that way. “Look, I don’t want to know what he did. My job is to patch him up as best I can.”

Her eyes grew into small points of green fire. “How can you not care?” she asked heatedly. “How can you just divorce yourself from the fact that the man you just saved killed a teenage boy? That he might have killed more people had his timing been a little more fine-tuned.”

The woman was a firebrand. The kind his uncle always gravitated toward. Too bad Uncle Henry wasn’t here to appreciate this, Lukas thought.

“Because I’m a doctor, not a judge and jury.” The look in his eyes challenged her. He knew all about hasty judgments. “Are you sure you have the right man?”

She laughed shortly. The tip they had gotten had specifically named John Conroy as the mastermind of the new supremacy group whose goal was to “purify” the country. The explosives they’d found in his house erased any doubts that might have existed. What they hadn’t found, until it was too late, was the man himself.

“Oh, I’m sure.”

There was something in her voice that caught his attention. “That was your bullet I took out.”

“Yes.” And he was going to condemn her for it, she thought. She could see it coming. There was a time for compassion and a time for justice. This was the latter. Lydia raised her chin. “We chased him down into the rear loading dock behind the mall. I shot him because he was about to shoot my partner.”

The hour was late and he should be on his way. But something kept Lukas where he was a moment longer. “I didn’t ask you why you shot him. Figured that was part of your job.”

She didn’t like the way he said that. “You weren’t there.”

“No, I wasn’t. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a life to get back to. Or at least a bed.”

Finished, he brushed past her and accidentally came into contact with her shoulder. The woman bit back a moan, but he heard it. Lukas stopped and took a closer look at the bloodied area around her shoulder. When she’d first come in, he’d assumed that the blood belonged to the prisoner. Now he had his doubts.

“Take your jacket off.”

Startled by the blunt order, she stared at him. “What?”

“I thought that was pretty clear.” There was a no-nonsense tone to his voice. “Take your jacket off,” he repeated.

Even as a child, she had never liked being ordered to do anything. It raised the hairs on the back of her neck. “Why?”

The last thing he wanted right now was to go head-to-head with a stubborn woman. “Because I think that’s your blood, not his.”

Lydia turned her head toward her shoulder. Very gingerly, she felt the area around the stain. Flickers of fire raced up and down her arm. Now that he said it, she had a sinking feeling he was right.

Dropping her hand, she gave a dismissive shrug with her uninjured shoulder. “Maybe you’re right. I can take care of it.”

Lukas glanced over her head. The operating room was free now. The orderly had wheeled his patient into the recovery room. Administration had sent in a security guard to watch him. That should please Ms. Law and Order, he thought.

“So can I. Come with me.” It wasn’t a suggestion. He caught her hand and dragged her behind him.

She had no choice but to accompany him. “You have a real attitude problem, you know that?”

Lukas spared her a glance. “I was going to say the same thing about you.” He released her hand and gestured toward a gurney. “Sit there.”

Lydia looked around the empty room, panic materializing. “Where’s the prisoner?”

Opening a drawer in a side cabinet, he took out what he needed. “They took him to recovery.”

Lydia turned on her heel, about to leave by the rear door, the way she assumed Conroy had. “Then I have to—”

He caught her hand again. This woman took work, he thought.

“Stay right here and let me have a look at that shoulder before it becomes infected,” he instructed. “Relax, your prisoner’s not about to regain consciousness for at least an hour.”

She frowned, torn. Her shoulder was beginning to feel a great deal worse now than it had earlier. “You know that for a fact?”

The surgical pack in place, Lukas slipped on a pair of latex gloves. “Pretty much.”

Maybe she was overreacting, at that. “Is he still handcuffed to the railing?”

In reply, Lukas nodded toward the metal bracelets lying on the countertop. “They’re right there.” He saw her look and watched her face cloud over. Like a storm capturing the prairie. “I figured you might be needing these for someone else.”

She bit back a curse. Unconscious or not, she would have felt a great deal better if Conroy were still tethered to the railing on his bed. “This isn’t a game.”

“No one said it was.” He nodded at her apparel. “Now take your jacket off. I’m not going to tell you again.”

Tell, not ask. The man had a hell of a nerve. Setting her jaw, Lydia began to shrug out of the jacket, then abruptly stopped. The pain that flared through her left shoulder prevented any smooth motion. Acutely aware that the physician was watching her every move, she pulled her right arm out first, then slid the sleeve off the other arm. She tossed the jacket aside, then looked at her blouse. It was beyond saving.

She sighed. The Wedgwood blue blouse had been her favorite. “What a mess.”

“Bullets will do that.” Very carefully, he swabbed the area and then began to probe it. He saw her eyes water, but heard no sound. The woman was a great deal tougher than he’d assumed. He knew more than a couple who would have caused a greater fuss over a hangnail. “How is it you didn’t realize you were shot?”

She measured out every word, afraid she was going to scream. “The excitement of the moment,” she guessed. “I hit the floor when he fired. I just thought I banged my shoulder.” Lydia sucked in a breath, telling herself it would be over soon. “It wouldn’t have been the first time.”

“And not the first time you were shot, either,” he noted as he began to clean off the area. There was a scar just below her wound that looked to be about a year or so old.

Lydia pressed her lips together as she watched him prepare a needle. “No, not the first. What’s that for?”

“That’s to numb the area. I have to stitch you up.” He injected the serum. “How many times have you been shot?”

She hated needles. It was a childhood aversion she’d never managed to get over. Lydia counted to ten before answering, afraid her voice would quiver if she said something immediately.

“Not enough to make me resign, if that’s what you mean.”

He couldn’t decide if she was doing a Clint Eastwood impression or a John Wayne. Tossing out the syringe, Lukas reached for a needle. “You have family?”

Watching him sew made her stomach lurch. She concentrated on his cheekbones instead. They gave him a regal appearance, she grudgingly conceded. “There’s my mother and a stepfather.” She paused to take a breath. “And my grandfather.”

That made her an only child, he thought, making another stitch. “What do they have to say about people playing target practice with your body?”

Did he think she was a pin cushion? Just how many stitches was this going to take? “My mother doesn’t know.” She’d never told her mother about the times she’d gotten shot. “She thinks I live a charmed life. My father was killed in the line of duty. I don’t see any reason to make her worry any more than she already does.”

Lukas glanced at her. She looked a little pale. Maybe she was human, after all. “What about your grandfather?”

“He worries about me.” Lydia kept her eyes forward, wishing him done with it. “But he’s also proud. He walked a beat for thirty years.”

“So that makes you what, third generation cop?”

“Fourth,” she corrected. “My great-grandfather walked the same beat before him.” Lydia looked at him sharply. He was asking an awful lot of questions. “Why? Does this have to go on some form, or are you just being curious?”

Lukas took another stitch before answering. “Just trying to distract you while I work on your shoulder, that’s all.”

She didn’t want any pity from him. “You don’t have to bother. It doesn’t hurt.”

He raised his eyes to her face. “I thought FBI agents weren’t supposed to lie.”

His eyes held hers for a minute. She relented. “It doesn’t hurt much,” she amended.

He knew it had to hurt a lot, but he allowed her the lie without contradiction. “That’s because the wound was clean.” He paused to dab on a little more antiseptic. It went deep. “The bullet cut a groove in your shoulder but didn’t go into it. That’s why you probably didn’t realize it. That and, as you said, the excitement of what was happening. They say that when Reagan was shot, he didn’t know it until someone told him.”

It felt as if he was turning her arm into a quilting project. Just how long was this supposed to take? The last time she’d been stitched up, the doctor had hardly paused to knot the thread. “Maybe I should run for president then.”

The crack made him smile. “Maybe. You’d probably get the under-twenty-five vote. They don’t examine things too closely.”

Another slam. Did he get his kicks that way? Or was it because she didn’t crumble in front of his authority? “Anyone ever tell you your bedside manner leaves something to be desired?”

He found that her feistiness amused him despite the fact that he was bone-weary. “Most of my patients are unconscious when I work on them.” He cut the thread. “There, done.”

Gingerly, she tested her shoulder, moving it slowly in a concentric circle. She felt the pain shoot up to her ear. “It feels worse.”

“It will for a couple of days.” Rising, he set the remaining sutures aside, then preceded her to the door. He held it open for her. “If you ride down to the first floor with me, I’ll write you a prescription.”

She paused long enough to pick up her now ruined jacket before following him to the door. “I told you, I don’t need anything for the pain.”

He began to lead the way to the elevators, only to find that she wasn’t behind him. “But you might need something to fight an infection.”

She looked down at her shoulder, then at him accusingly. “It’s infected?”

“The medicine is to keep that from happening,” he told her, coming dangerously close to using up his supply of patience.

“I have to go guard the prisoner.” And to do that, she needed to know where the recovery room was located. She had a feeling he wasn’t going to volunteer the information.

She was right. “There’s a security guard posted outside the recovery room. You need to get home and get some rest.”

The security guards she’d come across were usually little more than doormen. They didn’t get paid enough to risk their lives. Conroy was part of a militant group, not some misguided man who had accidentally blown up a chem lab. “You ever watch ‘Star Trek’?”

The question had come out of the blue. “Once or twice, why?”

“Security guards are always the first to die.”

“Your point being?”

“Someone professional needs to be posted outside his room,” she told him impatiently.

That was easily solved. “So call somebody professional.” He saw her open her mouth. “As long as it’s not you.” The issue was non-negotiable. “Doctor’s orders.”

Certainly took a lot for granted, didn’t he? “So now you’re my doctor?”

Taking her good arm, he physically led her over to the elevator bank.

“I patched you up, that makes me your doctor for the time being. And I’m telling you that you need some rest.” He jabbed the down button, still holding on to her. “You can bend steel in your bare hands tomorrow after you get a good night’s sleep.”

She pulled her arm out of his grasp, then took a step to the side in case he had any ideas of taking hold of her again. “Look, thanks for the needlepoint, but that doesn’t give you the right to tell me what to do.”

“Yeah, it does.” The elevator bell rang a moment before the doors opened. He stepped inside, looking at her expectantly. She entered a beat later, though grudgingly, judging by the look on her face. “Your mother has gray hair, doesn’t she?”

“Does yours?”

He inclined his head. “As a matter of fact, it’s still midnight-black.” After writing out a prescription for both an antibiotic and a painkiller, he tore the sheet off the pad.

“Then you must have left home early.” She folded the prescription slip he had handed her. “I’ll fill this in the morning.”

“The pharmacy here stays open all night. I’ll ride down with you if you like.”

He certainly was going out of his way. But then, she knew what it was like to be dedicated to getting your job done. She couldn’t fault him for that. “I thought you had a bed you wanted to get to.”

“Like your prisoner, it’s not going anywhere.” He pressed the letter B on the elevator keypad. “A few more minutes won’t matter.”

Lydia had always been one to pick her battles, and she decided that maybe it would be easier just to go along with this dictator-in-a-lab coat than to argue with him.

With a sigh, she nodded her head in agreement as the elevator took them down to the basement.

Chapter 3

The scent of vanilla slowly enveloped her, began to soothe her.

Ever so slowly, Lydia eased herself into the suds-filled water. Leaning back, she frowned at her left shoulder. The cellophane crinkled, straining at the tape she’d used to keep the wrap in place.

Graywolf had warned her about getting her stitches wet just before she left him and, though she’d pretended to dismiss his words, she wasn’t about to do anything that might impede her immediate and complete recovery. There was no question in her mind that she’d go stir crazy inside of a week if the Bureau forced her to go on some sort of disability leave. She had no actual hobbies to fill up her time, no books piling up on her desk, waiting to be read, just a few articles on state-of-the-art surveillance. Nothing she couldn’t get through in a few hours.

Her work was her life and it took up all of her time. Yes, there was the occasional program she watched on television outside of the news and, once in a while, she took in a movie, usually with her mother or grandfather. There was even the theater every year or so. But for the most part, she ate and slept her job and she truly liked it that way. Liked the challenge of fitting the pieces of a puzzle together to create a whole, no matter how long it took.

It hadn’t taken all that long this time, she thought, watching bubbles already begin to dissipate. The tip they’d gotten from Elliot’s source had been right on the money.

Looking back, she thought, things seemed to have happened in lightning succession. An informer in the New World supremacy group they had been keeping tabs on had tipped off the Bureau that a bombing at a populated area was in the works. Initially, that had been it: a populated area. No specifics. That could have meant a museum, an amusement park, anyplace. For a week, with the clock ticking, they’d all sweated it out, having nothing to go on.

And then they’d gotten lucky. Very lucky, she thought, swishing the water lazily with her hand, letting the heat relax her. If that informant hadn’t had a run-in with Conroy and been nursing a grudge against him, they would have never been able to piece things together. Even so, they’d gotten to the mall only seconds before the explosion had rocked the western end, the site that had just been newly renovated and expanded and had been filled with Native American art and artifacts.

As Elliot had driven through the city streets, trying to get there in time, she’d been on her phone, frantically calling the local police and alerting mall security to evacuate as many people as possible.

It been an exercise in futility. They’d reached the mall ahead of the police. She’d scanned the parking lot, taking in the amount of cars there, appalled at the number, even though by weekend standards, it was low.

The explosion had hit just as they’d parked. The force had sent one teenager flying into the air. He was dead by the time she’d reached him. It was then that she and Elliot had spotted Conroy running around the rear of what was left of that part of the structure.

She barely remembered yelling out a warning. All she could focus on was Conroy turning and aiming his gun in Elliot’s direction. The rest had happened in blurry slow motion.

And try as she might, she still didn’t remember being hit.

There were others involved; she knew that they were going to be caught. It was a silent promise she made to the teenager who wouldn’t be going home tonight. Or ever.

Lydia sank down farther into her tub, the one luxury she had allowed herself when she moved in, replacing the fourteen-inch high bathtub with one that could easily submerge a hippo if necessary. Some people took quick, hot showers to wash away the tension of the day; she took baths when she had the time. Long, steamy, soul-restoring baths.

The phone rang, intruding.

Glancing at the portable receiver she’d brought in with her, Lydia debated just letting her machine pick up the call. But the shrill ringing had destroyed the tranquillity that had begun seeping into her soul.

Besides, it might be about Conroy.

Stretching, she reached over the side of the tub for the receiver and pressed the talk button. “Wakefield.”

“Don’t you ever say hello anymore?” The voice on the other end had a soft twang to it.

She smiled, sinking back against the tub again, envisioning the soft, rosy face, the gentle, kind eyes that were too often set beneath worried brows. “Hi, Mom. What’s up?”

“Nothing, darling. I was just lonely for the sound of your voice.”

Lydia knew evasion when she heard it. For now she played along. “Well, here it is, in its full glory.”

“You sound tired.”

Her mother was slowly working up to whatever had prompted her to call, Lydia thought. That was the difference between them. She pounced, her mother waltzed. Slowly. “It’s been a long day.”

There was just the slightest bit of hesitation. “Anything you can tell me about?”

Her mother knew better than that. “Just lots of paperwork, that’s all,” Lydia told her. Idly, she moved her toe around, stirring the water. Bubbles began fading faster. The scent of vanilla clung.

She heard her mother laugh shortly. “You lie as badly as your father did.”

Lydia glanced at her shoulder to make sure it was still above the waterline. Keeping it up wasn’t easy even if she was leaning against the soap holder.

“You don’t want to know details, Mom.” It was supposed to be an unspoken agreement between them. Her mother didn’t ask and she didn’t have to lie. Her mother was slipping. “All you need to know is that I’m okay. I’m soaking in a tub right now.”

“Alone?”

Half asleep she still would have been able to hear the hopeful note in her mother’s voice. “Yes, unless you count Dean Martin on the radio.”

Her mother made no effort to silence the sigh that escaped. “Sorry, I was just hoping…”

She knew what her mother was hoping. It was an old refrain. “Mom, don’t take this the wrong way, but not tonight, all right?”

“Something happened, didn’t it? I heard about the bombing.”

Here it comes, Lydia thought. The real reason for the call.

“Was that you—”

“Doing the bombing?” Lydia cut in cheerfully. “No.” She decided to toss her mother a bone. Even the Bureau wasn’t entirely heartless. “Doing the picking up of pieces? Yes. We’ve got a suspect in custody—that’s all I can tell you.”

There was disappointment and frustration in her mother’s voice. “I can get more from the evening news, Lydia.”

When she was small, her mother had been her first confidante. They would talk all the time. But she wasn’t small anymore. On an intellectual level, she knew her mother understood why she couldn’t say anything. It was the heart that gave them both trouble.

For a second her thoughts sidelined to the surgeon who had pushed her out of the operating room. Who had insisted on stitching her up. She forced her mind back to the conversation.

“They’re at liberty to talk, Mom, I’m not. They don’t have a possible case to jeopardize.”

She heard her mother sigh. Louise Wakefield Evans had been both the daughter and the wife of a policeman. She, better than anyone, knew about procedures that had to be followed.

Still, she said, “I hate being shut out this way, Lydia.”

Lydia shifted in the tub, then quickly sat up. She’d nearly gotten the bandage wet.

“I’m not shutting you out, Mom. I’m shutting evidence in.” The water was turning cool. “Mom, I’m turning pruney, I’d better go.”

Her mother knew when to take her cue. “All right. Good night, Lydia. I love you.”

“Love you, too, Mom.”

Before her mother could change her mind, Lydia pressed the talk button, breaking the connection and ushering in silence. She dropped the receiver onto the mat.

Lydia felt bad that she couldn’t share what had happened to her today with her mother, but she knew it would only have served to agitate and worry Louise. In the long run, she’d rather her mother had semipeace of mind by remaining in the dark than live with daily terrors—even if she could give her details, which she couldn’t.

Her mouth curved slightly as a question her mother had asked echoed in her brain.

Was she alone?

That would place her mother among the eternal optimists. Louise still nursed the hope that Lydia would be swept off her feet, marry and chuck this whole FBI special agent business.

Lucky for her, Louise hadn’t seen that surgeon tonight. There was no doubt in Lydia’s mind that her mother would have been all over Graywolf, plying him with questions, inviting him over for Sunday dinner. Louise Wakefield Evans was desperate for grandchildren and Lydia was the only one who could provide her with them. She’d had a brother, born first, but he had died before his first birthday, a victim of infant crib death syndrome. With no other siblings available, Lydia was the only one left to fulfill her mother’s hopes.

“Sorry, Mom,” Lydia murmured as she leaned forward to open up the faucet again.

The next moment, hot water flowed into the tub again, merging with the cooling liquid that was already there.

First chance she had, she was going to talk to Arthur about getting her mother a puppy. She knew her stepfather was sympathetic to her. A new puppy should occupy her mother, at least temporarily.

Closing her eyes, Lydia let her head fall back against the inflated pillow lodged against the back of the tub. An image of the surgeon materialized behind her lids.

Startled, she pried her eyes open.

What was she doing, thinking about him? She was supposed to be trying to make her mind a blank.

Maybe it was the medicine, making her woozy.

Lydia blew out a breath, ruffling her bangs. She decided that soaking in the tub might not be the smartest thing to do if she were truly sleepy. Death by Suds was not the way she wanted to go.

Lydia reached for a towel.

The rhythmic staccato of high heels meeting the freshly washed hospital floor had Lukas looking up from the chart he was writing on. Half a beat before he did, he knew it was her. He’d picked up on the cadence last night. Fast, no nonsense, no hesitancy. A woman with a mission.

Closing the chart, he replaced it on the nurse’s desk, still watching the woman approach. He wondered vaguely if Ms. Special Agent was focused like that all the time or if it was the job that brought it out. Did she know how to kick back after hours? Did she even have “after hours”?

Lukas had a sneaking suspicion she didn’t.

That made two of them.

Even after he’d gone home last night to catch a few hours of well-deserved sleep, he’d wound up calling the hospital to check on Jacob Lindstrom, the patient he’d operated on before Ms. Special Agent had thundered into his life.

Lukas’s eyes swept over her as she walked toward him. The woman was wearing another suit, a powder blue one; but this time she had on a skirt instead of pants. The skirt brushed against her thighs as she walked and gave him the opportunity to note that her legs were as near perfect as any he’d ever seen. Long, sleek, and just curved enough to trigger a man’s fantasies.

It made him wonder why Harrison hadn’t hit on her last night. Special agent or not, she looked to be right up his best friend’s alley.

But then, maybe Harrison had hit on her and she’d set him straight. That would have been a first. Lukas made a mental note to catch up with Harrison to ask for details when he got the chance. If there had been a conquest last night, something told him he would have known it. One way or another.

“You’re here bright and early,” he commented as she came up to him.

He didn’t look as tired, she observed. His sharp, blue eyes seemed to be taking in everything about her. She’d always thought that Native Americans had brown eyes. “So are you.”

Her mouth looked pouty when she said the word “you.” Something stirred within him, but he dismissed it. He’d been around Harrison too long. Maybe the other man’s ways had rubbed off on him. “I have patients to see.”

Lydia inclined her head, as if going him one better. “I have a prisoner to interrogate.”

And here, Lukas thought, was where they came to loggerheads. It hadn’t taken long. Less than a minute, by his estimate.

“Not until he’s up to it.”

“If he’s conscious, he’s up to it, Dr….” Lydia paused and, though she knew his name, made a show of looking at the badge that hung from a dark blue cord around his neck. Since the back of the badge faced her, she turned it around. “Graywolf.” Releasing the badge, she raised her eyes to his face. “This wasn’t some spur-of-the moment, impulsive act by a deranged man acting out some sick fantasy. This was a carefully planned act of terrorism. This man is part of a group that call themselves the New World Supremacists. I assure you, he wasn’t alone at the mall last night. I want to make sure his friends don’t go scurrying off to their garages to concoct some more pipe bombs to kill more innocent people. The only way I’m going to do that is to get names.”

He understood all that, but he was coming at this from another angle. He had to put the welfare of his patient first. “Ms. Wakefield—”

“That’s Special Agent Wakefield,” she corrected him. Taking out her wallet, she opened it for him. “It says so right here on my ID.”

Holding her wallet for a moment, Lukas looked at the photograph. She looked better in person. The photograph made her look too hard, too unforgiving. There was something in her eyes that told him that might not be the entire picture.

He dropped his hand to his side. “I always wondered about that. Is ‘special’ a title, like lieutenant colonel?” he deadpanned. “Are there any regular, nonspecial agents at the agency?”

“We’re all special,” she informed him, finding that she was gritting her teeth.

“In our own way,” he allowed magnanimously. “Even people accused of crimes.”

Not in her book. “Just why are you yanking my chain, Doctor?”

Because it was there, he realized. But he gave her a more reasonable answer.

“Maybe it’s because you insist on getting in my way. The man you shot almost died on the table last night. Twice. I’d like to make sure he doesn’t. Having you go at him like a representative of the Spanish Inquisition isn’t going to help his recovery. I think it might be better if you hold off asking any questions.”

Not hardly. And she didn’t particularly like being told what to do. “I don’t give a damn about his recovery, Doctor. I just want him to live long enough to give me the names of his buddies.” She watched him shiver and then turn up the collar of his lab coat. It wasn’t particularly cold. “What are you doing?”

“Trying to protect myself from frostbite.” He slid his collar back into place. “You always come off this cold-blooded?”

She could almost literally feel her patience breaking in two.

“I happen to be a very warm person,” Lydia snapped, then realized how ridiculous that sounded coming in the form of a growl. A smile slowly emerged to replace her frown. “Ask anyone.”

It was amazing. He wouldn’t have thought that a simple smile could transform someone’s face so much. But it did. The woman in front of him seemed light-years removed from the one he’d just been talking to. This one looked younger, softer. Way softer.

“Maybe I will.”

He was being nice. So why did she feel so uneasy all of a sudden? And why was he still looking at her as if he was dissecting her a layer at a time? “What are you staring at?”

“Your smile.”

Instinctively she began to press her lips together to blot out her smile, then stopped. The smile was replaced by a glare. “What’s wrong with my smile?”

He spread his hands. “Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Makes you look like a completely different person, in my opinion.”

As if she gave a damn about his opinion. “I’ll remember that the next time I need a disguise.” It was getting late and she had to get down to business. “Have you moved my prisoner since last night?”

She had remained long enough for Conroy to be transferred from recovery to a single-unit room, where she’d made certain that a policeman from the Bedford police force was stationed.

Lukas was about to remind her that the man was his patient before he was her prisoner, but he let the matter drop. He’d learned early on that butting his head against a stone wall never brought victory.

“I wouldn’t dare. I left him just where I found him this morning.”

She could do without the sarcasm. “How is he?”

It was Conroy’s chart he’d been writing on when he heard her approach. “Still weak.”

That was a relative term in her opinion. “I don’t want him to dance, I just want him to talk.”

“That might be difficult. He’s on a great deal of pain medication—speaking of which,” he segued smoothly, “how’s your shoulder?”

Graywolf’s question only reminded her of how much the shoulder ached. “If I was a bird, I’d have to postpone flying south for the winter, but under the circumstances, I guess it’s all right.”

Lukas nodded. “I need to see you back in a week to take the stitches out.” She was favoring her left side. Would it have killed her to follow his instructions? “I see you’re not wearing a sling.”

She’d actually toyed with the idea this morning, arranging and adjusting several colorful scars around her arm and shoulder. They’d only made her feel like an invalid. “I don’t want to attract attention.”

Too late, Lukas thought. Three orderlies had passed by since she’d stopped to talk to him and all three had been in danger of severely spraining their necks as they turned to look at her. “Then maybe you should wear a paper bag over your head.”

“What?”

Was she fishing for a compliment, or was she wound up so tightly about her job that she didn’t see her own reflection in the morning? “I’m just saying that a woman who looks like you do always attracts attention.”

Her eyes narrowed in surprise. “Are you coming on to me, Doctor?” She’d dabbled in profiling. Graywolf didn’t seem the type.

“Me?” He raised both hands, fingers pointed to the ceiling. “I wouldn’t have the nerve to come on to someone like you. I’m just making an observation, that’s all.” He looked at his watch. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got the rest of my rounds to make.”

He was turning away from her when she called after him. “You mean you’re not going to hover over me while I try to question the prisoner?”

Lukas stopped to look at her one last time. “Would it do any good?”

A smile crept back to her lips as Lydia shook her head. “No.”

“Then I won’t.” He crossed back to her, fishing into his coat pocket. He took out a card and pressed it into her hand. “There’s my number if you need me.”

She glanced down at the card. Three numbers were neatly printed above one another. “Pager, cell phone and office number.” Lydia raised her eyes from the card. “What about your home number?”

“Unlisted. On a need-to-know basis,” he added just before he left.

Looking after him, Lydia thoughtfully folded the card between her thumb and forefinger and tucked it into her jacket pocket.

“Damn but I never thought I’d live to see the day.”

Roused from her thoughts, Lydia spun around to face Elliot. “See what day?”

He was grinning. Wait until Janice hears about this! “The day you were flirting.”

“Flirting?” Lydia echoed incredulously. “Are you out of your mind? I was not flirting.”

“No?” Elliot crossed his arms at his chest, waiting to be convinced. “Then what do you call it?”

“Talking.”

“I see.”

There were times when her partner got on her nerves—royally. “Don’t give me that smug smile.”

He made no attempt to eliminate it. “I wasn’t aware that it was smug.”

“Well it is,” she told him. Because one of the nurses had stopped what she was doing and was obviously eavesdropping, Lydia pulled her partner aside, out of earshot. “What is this, a conspiracy? My mother calls to find out if I’m alone in the bathtub and then you come along and tell me you think I’m flirting.”

Elliot made a mental note to later ask her what had prompted her mother’s question. For now, he shrugged innocently. “Can’t help it. In spring a person’s mind often turns to thoughts of love, remember?”

What did that have to do with anything? “It’s autumn. Remember?”

Unruffled, Elliot laughed. “I’m late, it’s been a busy year.”

Okay, she’d been a good sport long enough. This had to stop. “Elliot, I’m packing a gun.”

The look he gave her was completely unimpressed. “I’m shaking.”

This was getting them nowhere. And the day stretched out in front of her, long and unaccommodating. “Let’s go, we have a prisoner to interrogate.”

“Lead the way.” Her partner’s expression had turned appropriately serious, but there was a twinkle in his eye she had trouble ignoring.

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