FROM HOUSECALLS TO HUSBAND Page 8

  He knew the instant her consciousness returned. Even before he began to ease his arm from beneath her head, he felt tension seeping into her supple muscles, and heard the faint shift of her breathing from deep to shallow.

  "It's a quarter to six," he whispered, the need to hurry forcing him from the bed. "What time do you usually get up?"

  Her muffled, "Six," sounded oddly strained.

  "Then stay put. I'm going to be late if I don't leave now." He didn't consider it a very good sign that she hadn't moved. But he had no time now to worry about why she wouldn't turn to face him. "I have a seven-o'clock surgery." He could make it home in ten minutes. Less than that since there would be no traffic and if he hit the lights right. It would take him twenty minutes to shave, shower, dress. Another thirty to get to the hospital, change again, and scrub in. They'd just have to start late. No way would he go into a surgery rushed. Talking more to himself than to her, he murmured, "I'll have to do rounds after."

  The room was dark, mostly shapes and shadows. He wasn't familiar with the space, but he managed to collect his clothes and pull on his pants without stumbling over anything. What he couldn't find were his shoes.

  "You left your shoes in the living room."

  She was sitting up now, and pushing back the tangle of hair he'd buried his fingers in last night. With one hand clutching the comforter to her throat, her slender shoulders bare, and one long, shapely leg visible in the light spilling through the doorway, she looked as tempting as sin itself.

  "Right." In the shadows, he saw her grip the thick material tighter. "Thanks."

  "Mike?"

  The uneasy sound of his name stopped him in the doorway. He didn't know if it was regret he sensed in her, or caution. He had no idea what she was feeling. He didn't even know what he was feeling himself. Self-recrimination and embarrassment were high on the list, though. Never in his life had he allowed his physical needs to control him. Yet, with Katie, he'd kissed her once and promptly kissed his control goodbye.

  Now he was acting as if he couldn't get away from her fast enough.

  "You know I have to go, Katie." He had no idea what she wanted him to do; what he wanted to do. Reassure her? Kiss her? Keep his hands to himself? Drop dead? All he did know was that until he had time to figure it out, he didn't want to do anything to make the situation worse. "I'll see you at the hospital. Okay?"

  She gave him a nod, the motion as tentative as the feelings churning inside them both.

  A moment later, hating the way he was leaving, he found his shoes and coat and headed out the door.

  * * *

  Chapter Five

  « ^ »

  When a surgeon was late for surgery, it wasted the time of the entire surgical team and backed up every case scheduled behind it for the rest of the day. Knowing how conscientious Mike was, and having a friend in OR who occasionally grumbled about such backups, Katie could hardly fault Mike for his abrupt departure. There was just something about having a man race from her bed and bolt for the door, no matter what his reason or excuse, that added a touch of humiliation to the varying degrees of embarrassment and anxiety she was already dealing with.

  She'd never had a one-night stand in her entire life. And the fact that she'd just had one with Mike had kept her vacillating between total disbelief and abject panic all morning. It was a fair indication of her mental distress that she was wishing he'd been a total stranger.

  What in heaven's name had she done?

  "There you are." Cindy, the copper-haired RN with the cinnamon freckles who'd joined the team last month, hurried toward her as Katie left a patient's room. "Dr. Brennan just put my patient on this," she said, holding up a clear vial. "What is it I'm supposed to do for his study? All he said was that the instructions are on the forms, but I can't find them and Alice isn't here."

  "Take the patient's blood pressure every fifteen minutes for two hours after it's administered," Katie replied, hating the way her heart had hitched knowing Mike was on the floor, "and do an arterial line draw every thirty minutes for three hours."

  Cindy rolled her brown eyes toward the ceiling. "Like I don't have enough to do around here. I've still got lines to pull on the angiogram in 309 and I'm supposed to pick up my daughter at dance class at four." The exasperated look she aimed at her watch said she'd barely make it. "These drug studies are such a nuisance sometimes."

  "If you're running behind, I'll do it. All I have left to do is chart."

  The older woman's expression immediately turned quizzical. "I wasn't hinting for you to do it for me," she said, sounding surprised that Katie didn't know that. "I'm just whining."

  "It's okay." The smile she offered was a tad weak, but it served the purpose. "Go ahead and administer it. I'll get the readings."

  Too grateful for the assist to question it any further, the petite redhead told Katie which patient it was, turned on her rubber-soled heel and headed around an empty gurney. Sidestepping the same gurney, Katie disposed of the empty IV bag she'd just replaced and turned into the med room for the supplies she would need. Most of the staff pitched in and helped each other when they could, but her offer now had little to do with team support. She just wanted to stay busy. It was the only way she could avoid dwelling on what had happened last night. Every time she thought about it, which was roughly every other minute, she felt sick.

  She had totally jeopardized her relationship with Mike; allowed feelings she should have kept locked away to break free. She knew better. She was thirty years old, for Pete's sake. Old enough to know that sex changed everything between a man and a woman. Feelings. Expectations. The roles they played in each other's lives.

  What had happened last night could easily ruin what they had, but she couldn't let that happen. Even if he felt something beyond friendship for her, which she seriously doubted, there was no future for them. Not as a couple. He didn't want to be bothered with a relationship, and she had no intention of living the way her mother had, raising a child with a husband who had no time for family dinners or school plays or going for walks in the snow—and that was if he stayed around long enough to get past the first couple of years. Half the doctors on staff had been divorced at one time or another—Mike included. Not that she blamed him for the demise of his marriage. But the statistics did point out that doctors were simply a bad risk. Logic aside, she and Mike weren't lovers. They were friends. And she would do everything in her power to make sure that was what they remained.

  If he was still speaking to her.

  Since she'd been tied up with the same patient for the last twenty minutes, she had no idea how long he'd been in the unit. Considering that he'd already spoken with one of the nurses about a patient, it was apparent that he hadn't felt compelled to find her as soon as he'd arrived.

  "Hi."

  The sound of Mike's deep voice sent her heart to her toes.

  Totally disquieted at the thought of facing him, she slowly turned from the counter. He stood still as stone in the doorway of the cabinet-lined room, his blue eyes fixed like lasers on hers and his expression as guarded as she felt. He looked terribly intimidating standing there in his white shirt and navy sport coat. Very big. Very male. And very capable of making a woman kiss her common sense goodbye.

  Recalling all too well that he'd done precisely that last night, her glance faltered.

  "Hi," she echoed, finding the tray in her hand the safest place to look. "Checking on your patients?"

  "Just finished."

  "How did your surgery go?"

  "Fine. Do you have a minute?"

  He clearly wasn't interested in small talk, or in wasting time. As soon as she murmured, "Sure," he glanced over his shoulder to see who was behind him in the hall, then stepped into the crowded little room. A moment later, he closed the windowed door with a quiet click. He looked uncertain, which wasn't like Mike at all. And a little edgy, which wasn't like him, either.

  "I know this isn't the place to talk. I just didn't know when
else I'd get a chance to see you today." A muscle in his jaw jerked as he cautiously scanned her face. "Are you all right?"

  Katie opened her mouth, and promptly shut it again. She'd never had trouble talking to Mike before. Ever. Yet she had no idea how to answer him now.

  "Maybe this would be easier if I hadn't left the way I did this morning."

  "You were late. I know you had to go."

  "Thanks for the understanding," he murmured, self-deprecation heavy in his tone, "but I still don't think it helped. You didn't deserve that."

  She tried to smile, if for no other reason than to ease some of the bridled tension radiating from his body and fraying the ends of her nerves.

  "Don't worry about it." The smile never materialized. Regret wouldn't allow it. "Your oversleeping isn't the problem. I mean, it didn't matter as much as … well, not like…"

  "Having slept together?" he suggested.

  She pulled a breath, and slowly blew it out. Something about the way he said the words, the hint of memory in his eyes, pooled heat low in her stomach. "Yeah. That," she agreed, wanting to pace but having nowhere to go. "I'm just not totally sure how that happened."

  Mike said nothing for a moment. He just stood with his hands in his pockets, the way he sometimes did when he was with a patient. He watched her—much as he might a patient, too—as if he needed to hear what she had to say about where the discomfort was before he could decide the best way to proceed.

  "Does it matter?"

  "No," she quietly replied, unwilling to expose any more of herself than she already had. She didn't want him digging too much. She didn't want to dig much more herself, for that matter. "It doesn't."

  "Then maybe you shouldn't worry about it."

  She gave a little nod, clutching at the advice. He didn't seem to think it mattered why things had gotten so out of hand. Either that, or he'd already figured out the reason on his end and he was too much of a gentleman to tell her there wasn't anything all that complicated about the human sex drive.

  The problem now was where they went from here.

  He seemed to be trying to figure that out, too, as his glance skimmed her mouth, then immediately jerked to her eyes.

  He cleared his throat. "Are we all right? With each other, I mean?"

  As questions went, that one was loaded. It asked everything from Do you hate me? to What do you expect from me now? But, with the hospital operator paging an orderly over the PA, and a parade of people constantly passing the window behind him, he didn't seem any more comfortable with getting specific than she did. He was only performing triage—a quick assessment of the damages to determine how serious the problem was, and what needed to be done immediately to keep the situation from getting worse. All she cared about just then was that he didn't seem to want things screwed up between them, either.

  "I'm okay … if you are." She pushed her fingers through her hair, the motion showing more agitation than she'd wanted him to see. "Why don't we just chalk last night up to a brief moment of insanity. Or the movie. Or the wine," she quickly added, though they both knew that hadn't been the case at all. "Okay?"

  With anyone else, Mike would have breathed a sigh of relief at her willingness to dismiss the incident as of no consequence. He thought he should have with Katie, too. And he did. In a way. As close as he could figure, what had happened last night had simply been the result of two people who'd been deprived too long and who'd trusted each other with their physical needs.

  He could live with that explanation. It was honest, neat and as uncomplicated as he could make it, under the circumstances. And Katie seemed all right with her own rationalizations, despite the fact that they rang more of "excuse" than explanation. Still, if she was willing to go on as if nothing had happened, then that was what he'd do, too, even though making love with her had done nothing but make him want more. The mere thought of how she'd responded to him, of the mindless passion that had erupted between them, made him want to back her up against the counter and lose himself completely in her heat. But she clearly wasn't comfortable with the idea of a repeat performance. And the last thing he wanted to do was ruin the best relationship he'd ever had by pushing for something she didn't want.

  There was no mistaking the faint tension filling the air in the moments before he finally said, "Okay," and reached for the door. But they were saved having to let that tension escalate by the abrupt rap of Cindy's knuckles against the window.

  Pulling the door open, Mike stepped back.

  "Excuse me," Cindy said to him, slipping past. Soles squeaking on the beige linoleum, she headed for a box on the end of the counter, grabbed a handful of alcohol pads and dropped them into her pocket. "Are you tied up now?" she asked Katie.

  Pretending she was only smoothing the front of her scrub top, Katie pressed a hand to the knot of nerves in her stomach. "No. I can help. I was just getting some tubes."

  "She's taking readings for me for your study," Cindy pointed out good-naturedly, oblivious to the strain snaking between the attractive surgeon by the door and the woman he cautiously watched. "I just heard Dr. Carlisle tell Dr. Chapman that you may be asked to present a preliminary paper on it at a conference.

  "They did dozens of drug studies at the hospital I worked for in Salem," she continued, opening and closing doors in her search for whatever she was looking for now, "but this is the first one I ever heard of that actually has doctors excited."

  "Thanks," Mike murmured, since she obviously intended her remarks as a compliment. "It's nice to know it might have some merit."

  Mike had mentioned the possibility of the conference to Katie the evening she'd helped him input his data, and being asked to present to one's colleagues was an enormous compliment. But she was fairly sure he wasn't really thinking about his paper at the moment. If he had been, she was certain he would have reminded her that she'd promised to help him organize his materials, and asked what nights she was free this week. All he did was give her a lingering look she couldn't decipher at all before he told them both he had to go and headed out the door.

  Cindy wasn't as slow on the uptake as she'd first appeared. Watching Katie release a long, low breath, her glance bounced to the door and back again. "Is everything okay?"

  "Yeah. Sure." Avoiding the curiosity etched in the other nurse's face, she asked, "Why?"

  "Because I have a strange feeling I just interrupted something."

  "Not at all," Katie assured her, trying for nonchalance as she picked up the tray of supplies she'd come in for. "We were just talking."

  "You and Dr. Brennan are friends, right? Old friends from what I hear."

  "We lived next door to each other when we were kids."

  "Oh."

  "Ready?"

  Skepticism ran rampant over the woman's freckled face, but Cindy was too busy to indulge in any further speculation. Katie didn't doubt, however, that had the woman had time, she'd have poked a little more. There was nothing certain members of the staff liked more than gossip, and Cindy fit right in with that crowd. Katie, however, wasn't about to give her any grist for the mill. Once the hospital grapevine started feeding a rumor, it took forever for it to die. She and Mike would get past this. They simply had to.

  Some decisions were a snap to make. It was the execution that posed the problem.

  Because Katie finally had some time off, she didn't see Mike for the next couple of days. She didn't hear from him, either. Neither was unusual. They could go weeks seeing each other only at work or at Granetti's. But the unease that had hung between them like a wall when they'd parted in the med room wouldn't allow her to shake the feeling that his silence wasn't a good sign. She didn't think it a good sign, either, that her heart skipped every time the phone did ring. Until she'd gone to bed with him, she wouldn't have even thought about him calling—much less lain awake at night trying to figure out why he wasn't.

  Her next day back at the hospital was Sunday. Since Mike didn't work weekends unless he was on call, which h
e wasn't, she didn't see him then, either. But Monday morning, as she hurried into the nearly deserted cafeteria to grab a bagel, he was standing at the beverage counter next to the cold sandwich station.

  He was in green surgical scrubs, the tucked-in top and drawstring pants doing more for his wide shoulders and impossibly narrow hips than a custom suit would do for most men. Judging from the snug green surgical cap covering his hair, it seemed that he was between procedures.

  Her first thought when her footsteps faltered was that she could leave before he saw her. Her second thought was that the first was ridiculous.

  Determined to act as normal as … normal, she strolled over to the tall, silver urns and snagged a foam cup for herself from the stack. On the outside, she was fine. Inside, the sudden, anxious knot in her stomach had effectively canceled the need for solid food.

  "Did you do anything exciting this weekend?" she asked, watching him fill his cup with strong black coffee.

  He'd been preoccupied, totally unaware that anyone had come up beside him. At the sound of her voice, he hesitated an instant before he cut a glance toward her. Eyes the color of a fathomless lake scanned her face, quick and assessing, before he turned his attention back to his cup.

  Despite the quirk of a smile that had come too late to be anything but an afterthought, there was infinitely more caution than welcome in his expression.

  "I wired new speakers to my stereo," he replied, moving farther down the line for a white plastic lid. "And I went up to Mount Hood with my brother," he added, hitting the highlights.

  "To ski or to look at the cabin he wants to buy?"

  "To look at the cabin."

  "What did you think?"

  "It needs work." The lid snapped on with a quiet click. "You were out late last night."

  His tone was remarkably conversational. It was the observation itself that threw her.