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CLUB TIMES

For Members’ Eyes Only

I’ve got a secret….

I have to say that this week, I have a little crush on Dr. Sam Walters. He flashed his pearly whites at me in the grocery store as I was fondling fruit. Talk about drop-dead gorgeous! I also caught his nurse, Caitlyn Matthews, standing near the potatoes (carbs don’t help anyone, Caitlyn), and she was eyeing the good doctor, too. I like a man who eats from the four food groups.

Thank goodness, Branson Hines is out of our hair. Let’s take a collective sigh of relief that Mission Creek is free of another troublemaker, although I’ll bet our small town can stir up a little excitement now and then. What do you think, members?

I must leave you for the time being because of something that needs my undivided attention. You guessed it. I have a bun in the oven, the stork’s gonna pay me a visit in eight months, I’m expecting a bundle of joy. Shocked? I bet you thought I was an old biddy… Well, there’s still plenty of mileage left in this body. Who’s the father, you ask? I’ll never tell….

Make sure to keep your eyes and ears open to the goings-on in the wild and wonderful world of Mission Creek. And our very own Lone Star Country Club, the place that makes your heart and soul come alive!

About the Author

Having grown up on an island, BEVERLY BIRD loves to write of any locale that does not involve beaches, sand or seagulls. Writing for the LONE STAR COUNTRY CLUB series had the added advantage of getting to “meet” so many other authors who were involved, sharing ideas and inspiration.

Doctor Seduction
Beverly Bird

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Welcome to the

Where Texas society reigns supreme—and appearances are everything.

Could danger still lurk behind the doors of Mission Creek Memorial Hospital?

Dr. Sam Walters: He had once managed to disguise his powerful attraction for his nurse through his brusque, intimidating manner. But when they were held against their will for three days, this hot-blooded pediatrician’s suppressed desires just couldn’t be denied. Can their tenuous relationship survive the devastating aftershock of their life-altering captivity?

Caitlyn Matthews: She didn’t know if she’d ever get past being traumatized by a demented criminal. Nor did the dedicated nurse know how she’d ever be able to reveal to her roguishly charming colleague that their brief yet electric interlude had a most unexpected result!

Branson Hines: Although the Mission Creek Madman is finally behind bars, he is still bent on revenge. Does he have one final ace up his sleeve?

Holly Sinclair: This chipper new hospital cafeteria worker is an all-too-willing confidante to a beleagured Nurse Caitlyn. But what really lurks behind her sunny smile?

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

One

Everything looked just the same, she thought.

Caitlyn Matthews stopped her car at Mission Creek Memorial Hospital and looked around. The automobiles and SUVs stacked side by side in the employees’ parking area were the same ones that had been here last Tuesday. The American flag still snapped to attention with each hot gust of south-Texas wind. The original hospital building looked strong and impressive, but the windows of the new maternity wing looked a little shinier than the others. Maybe that was her imagination. If the wing already harbored nasty memories, then, Cait thought whimsically, it had the air of a haughty celebrity who was not about to reveal the skeletons in her closets.

She had worked at the hospital for the past four years now. The sight of it should have filled her with a sense of normalcy, of hope. Instead, she realized that it was entirely possible she was about to throw up.

She unclenched one hand from the steering wheel to press her fingers against her lips. What’s wrong with me? I can’t be like this. It’s just not acceptable. Cait took her hand away from her mouth with a jerky motion and laughed aloud at the thought. A lot of things she would never have allowed before had been creeping into her life lately.

Her life was a shambles, a disaster. It was in sharp little shards at her feet, and she had no idea what to do about it. But she did know that having her life torn apart and tossed about for a few short days was not going to undo her permanently. She would just have to pick up the pieces and put them all back together again. What frightened her was that she was starting to think she might not be able to put them back in the same order they’d been in before.

“Give it time,” Cait told herself. She had a plan. But first she had to force herself to simply step into the hospital again.

She got out of her dark-blue Ford compact and locked the door behind her, then jiggled the handle to make sure it was secure. She pivoted to the hospital and began to walk before she realized she’d better be absolutely positive her vehicle was locked. She went back and tested the handle again.

“Fine,” she said. “It’s fine.” Of course it was. The car was locked up tight and in fine shape. In its two years she’d taken it in for service at three thousand, six thousand, twelve and eighteen thousand miles, almost right on the dot each time. It was steady, reliable.

She was the one falling off her rocker lately.

Cait turned away from the car like a marine drill sergeant. She made it through the front doors of the hospital just fine. But as it turned out, that was the easy part. The man she’d suddenly decided to give her virginity to after twenty-five otherwise chaste and uneventful years was right there in the lobby, staring at her.

It was unconventional, but Dr. Sam Walters prided himself on marching to a different drummer. He stepped off the elevator with a mission, towing the boy behind him by one hand.

Gilbert Travalini was nine years old, scared out of his mind and, in all likelihood, he was dying, though Sam had yet to give up the fight to turn that particular tide. New marrow would be transplanted into his bones at seven o’clock tomorrow morning. The match wasn’t as close as Sam would have liked and there was a chance the boy’s body would reject it, but until that happened, Gilbert was still a motor head and Sam happened to own one very fine, candy-apple-red Maserati. Said Maserati was currently parked outside.

“Let’s go,” he said, tugging the boy into the lobby. “If all that stuff about speed was just some macho bluff on your part, better cough up the truth now before you wet your pants.”

“You’re going to let me ride in it?” Gilbert’s blue eyes bugged.

“I’m going to do better than that. I’m going to let you drive it.”

The kid stumbled in thrilled shock. Sam caught his elbow and held him up. “Easy does it now.”

“That’s against the law,” Gil said.

“Are you going to rat me out?”

“No! No, sir.”

“Then come on. I’ve got thirty minutes before rounds and—”

And then she was there.

Sam’s voice was chopped off in midsentence and he came to a stop. He had a single, inane thought: this isn’t supposed to happen yet. They’d only gotten out of that underground room where they’d been held hostage a few days ago. He’d figured it would take Caitlyn Matthews weeks to recover and get back to work. At least, it would take the average woman that long.

But little Miss Tight Buns obviously considered it her patriotic, Hippocratic, fuss-budget duty to get back to work as soon as possible after the singularly worst event in her ultra-organized life, Sam thought. She’d probably do it if only to make his life miserable, he thought.

His eyes narrowed as she came toward him. A petite, waifish blonde, her every stride was measured and precise. That little chin of hers was held high, and her sapphire eyes moved neither left nor right. Every germ within a fifteen-yard radius either saluted or ran for cover at the sight of her, Sam decided sourly.

His heart, meanwhile, was pounding like a trip-hammer.

“What are you doing here?” he demanded when she came to a stop in front of him.

“I work here,” Cait replied without looking at him. Then she leaned down to look into Gilbert’s eyes. “Running off on me, are you?”

“No, ma’am. Yes, ma’am. I’ll be back, though,” the boy said, clearly rattled.

Cait straightened again and transferred her attention to Sam. “Where are you taking him, anyway?”

“Nowhere.” Sam felt like a kid himself, one just caught in a naughty act by a particularly unpleasant teacher.

What was he supposed to do about this situation, anyway? He decided this was all her fault. No matter that he should have known it would eventually come to this when he’d first taken it into his head to touch her in that underground room. For that one insane, stress-induced moment he’d thought he would just taste her and that would be that. But he hadn’t stopped there because something amazing and overwhelming about her had swum through him and over him and drove him to a place where nothing else mattered except the scent of her, the feel of her, her heat.

Now they were back at the hospital, back to being co-workers, and he couldn’t seem to get his stride.

“Why are you guys in the lobby?” she asked in that quiet, even voice, bringing him back.

Sam looked around, then recovered enough to wink at Gil. “Could be just a wrong turn. Right, sport?”

“Knowing you, why do I doubt that?” Cait took Gil’s other hand. “Come on, kiddo, back to bed with you.”

“No! Please!” The boy pulled hard against her grip, forcing her to let go.

Cait looked at Sam again, frowning. “What are you up to?”

Sam felt temper slide into his blood. Maybe it mingled with his panic. “Tell you what. When I start reporting to my nurses, you’ll be the first one I come to.”

He saw her recoil. “I’m sorry,” he said to her, then turned to Gil. “Go sit down over there for a minute.” He pointed at the little lounge tucked in one corner of the lobby. The boy hurried off.

“That’s the first sensible thing you’ve said yet,” Cait commented.

“You just can’t hold your tongue, can you?” That was a new side to the normally quiet Caitlyn, he thought, and it made something with hard, hot fists punch inside his brain. “You shouldn’t be here. What’s wrong with you, anyway? Why are you back at work so soon?”

“Why are you?”

“I’m a doctor. I have patients.”

“So do I.”

“Someone else can fill in for you. They’ve been doing it for days.”

That chin of hers came up again. “Well, they don’t have to do it any longer. The world didn’t suddenly come to an end when we…when I…when Hines…”

He watched her come up against the issue of what had happened to them—between them—in that room and back off again. Okay, that was good. She was a complication his life didn’t need. And there was no doubt he’d snag up her life pretty nastily, too. They were the two most disparate people you could ever imagine, and they still had to work together. They had to leave behind that underground room—and everything they had done there—and move forward.

His knees went a little weak as he considered the alternative—that she might think they shared some kind of…relationship now. He could always give her his ex-wife’s phone number, he thought. Nancy could set her straight on that score.

He decided to avoid pursuing their current topic and switched gears. “I’m taking Gil for a ride,” he said suddenly.

“In what?”

“My car.”

“Why?”

“He’s got this thing for speedmobiles. And he’s dying.”

He saw her wince, but then she rallied. “He can’t possibly have been discharged. Do his parents know about this?”

“Are you questioning me again, Nurse?”

She backed off a step. “Of course not.” Then something glinted in her eyes. That was new, too, he thought, startled. She’d always been docile to a fault.

“Yes,” she amended.

“Well, don’t. It’s none of your concern.”

“He’s my patient. Have you considered the risk of infection if you take him out of here?”

He withered her with his gaze and glanced at his watch. “That’s why he’s chock-full of antibiotics. I’ll see you for rounds in twenty minutes.”

“Where can you take Gilbert Travalini in twenty minutes?” she persisted.

To the barren roads snaking through the federal land behind the Saddlebag bar, he thought, and to a brief, small slice of heaven before, God forbid, the boy actually saw the pearly gates for real. “Don’t worry about it,” he answered. “Get to work.”

She backed off another step.

“Caitlyn—Nurse Matthews.” He corrected himself fast. Her gaze lifted to his, a little too fast, a little too searchingly. Sam felt his stomach spasm. “It was a one-time thing. You know that, right?”

This time her expression didn’t change. “Of course. I never intended for it to be anything else.”

You were a virgin, damn it! The words blared through his head, though Sam held himself back from shouting them aloud. Virgins didn’t run around suddenly unzipping their uniforms on a whim. Rigid, prissy little virgins didn’t. This virgin shouldn’t have. So why had she?

And why him?

“Please be careful,” she said suddenly. She inclined her head toward the boy. “With whatever you’re intending to do with Gilbert.”

And that, he thought, was all the importance she gave to making love with the doctor she’d worked with and driven crazy for the past four years. Sam raked a hand through his dark hair. “Come on, Gilbert,” he called. “Time to roll.”

The boy launched out of his seat with more energy than he should have possessed. They headed for the lobby doors together. Sam didn’t look back.

He didn’t see her eyes fill with tears.

Cait completely forgot that she’d dreaded stepping foot back into this hospital. She blinked hard and fast against crying, and practically dove headfirst into the corridor that led to the new maternity wing. Everything inside her screamed to get away from Sam Walters before he saw her fall apart.

“Oh, God, what have I done to my life?” Suddenly Cait’s starched spine crumbled and she leaned against the wall, hugging herself. She was shaking. Badly.

It was a one-time thing. You know that, right?

The truth was, she’d spent the past three days in a state of agonized expectancy because she hadn’t actually been sure.

She hadn’t seen him or heard from him since they’d been rescued from Branson Hines and the underground room where he’d held them hostage until Tabitha Monroe—the hospital administrator, who for some reason felt compelled to be Cait’s friend when Cait very much preferred her solitude—had taken it into her head to have all twelve orange pounds of Cait’s cat pose as a baby in a blanket in an effort to meet Hines’s ransom demands. Cait scrubbed her hands over her face as she stepped into the maternity wing. Tabitha sometimes tended toward extremes, but it had worked. Sort of.

She veered left. The new wing was like no hospital she’d ever imagined working in. The walls were done in bright, primary colors that jarred her a little in her current mood. She passed the newborns in the nursery without looking at them. Her stride hitched up as she passed the storage room where Branson Hines had cornered twelve employees a week ago, changing her life forever.

She reached the nurses’ station, then hesitated and looked around furtively.

No one was here. She’d banked on it. She knew hospital routine and right now, everyone would be gearing up for rounds, cleaning up after breakfast. She stepped behind the desk and found the large brown envelope she was looking for near the computer station. It was the one that would carry memos and other paperwork from this department to other areas of the hospital. She unwound the little string that held it closed, drove a hand into her pocket and came up with a slim, white envelope.

She’d printed Dr. Jared Cross’s name in neat block letters across the front and underlined it three times. She’d sealed it with a little blob of white wax.

“Help me, please,” she whispered, “before I lose my mind.” She dropped her envelope into the bigger one, closed it again and fled the maternity wing.

She could have just gone to his office to ask for an appointment, sparing herself all this subterfuge. For that matter, she could have sent the note via the nurses’ station in her own pediatrics unit. But she didn’t want anyone to know what she was up to. She didn’t want any of her co-workers to go stuffing their own mail inside the pediatrics envelope, recognizing her handwriting on a personal envelope to Dr. Cross.

They couldn’t know. No one could know what was happening to her. And she certainly couldn’t confide in a stranger, couldn’t go outside the hospital to another psychiatrist. The mere thought nearly crippled her with panic. Maybe she wasn’t his usual prepubescent patient, but Cait knew Jared Cross. He was the director of child psychiatry at Mission Creek Memorial, and something about him had always appealed to her. He was a little gruff, eminently practical, not given to maudlin emotion.

She would have to trust him with this. There was no one else.

Cait rode the elevator up to the pediatrics floor in the main building. She was in Chelsea Cambridge’s room when Sam walked in. This time she was ready for him.

“Good morning, Doctor.”

He scowled at her as he took the patient’s chart from her hands. “So that’s how we’re going to play this, hmm?” he asked in an undertone.

Cait hesitated. It was as though they’d never spoken downstairs. Maybe he was going crazy, too. Or maybe she had imagined that whole encounter.

The very real possibility of that had her stomach rolling.

“It was a one-time thing,” she said, just to be sure.

“That it was.”

She turned away from him quickly to ease down the sheets on the little girl’s bed because she wasn’t at all sure what her expression would reveal at his response. Then she watched him gently palpate the child’s abdomen, and her mind spun away.

Those hands…

Cait had a sudden, shattering image of them on her own skin, closing over her breasts, his breath hot where his face had been buried at her throat. She’d thought she’d been dying. Not because of anything Hines had done or might still do, but because for the first time in her life, she’d known what it was to be touched, really touched. And she had craved it, had needed it with something so strong it had vibrated inside her.

Why had she done it?

Because he’d been funny and kind and gallant in that room, neither outrageous nor as arrogant as she’d come to believe during the years she’d worked with him. Because she’d been terrified that God would give her no more days after that one, and because there was something huge in life she was going to miss if she didn’t make love with that man right then, right there. Because he was devastatingly good-looking with those sometimes stormy, sometimes laughing eyes and the little cleft in his chin. For once in her life she’d wanted to do something wild and daring and exhilarating. She’d done it because she’d needed him.

“Nurse Matthews?”

Cait snapped back. “I’m sorry. What?”

“Would you like to pay attention here?”

“I was.” Her breath still felt short. But he’d already looked away from her, toward the interns who had gathered behind them.

“Okay, guys, this is what you’re not supposed to do when you’re with a patient—phase out on something personal,” he said to them.

Cait felt her face heat with embarrassment. “I didn’t…”

He shot her a sardonic look, the kind that only he could muster. He went on with his examination of the child.

“Coming?” he asked her as the others began leaving the room.

Cait refused to meet his eyes. “I’ll be right behind you.”

“Make it snappy.”

Out of nowhere, Cait felt anger bubble up in her. She gave him a sharp, little salute before she realized she was going to do it. She was fiercely glad when he looked startled.

They landed in Gilbert’s room next. The boy was back in bed, his color high. “Well,” she said quietly, “he appears none the worse for wear.”

“Questioning me again, Nurse?”

“Who, me? I wouldn’t dream of it, my being your subordinate and all.”

Satisfaction was something hot and sharp under the skin that wasn’t entirely unpleasant, she discovered when he seemed unable to respond. She liked it.

He gave her his shoulder, picked up Gilbert’s chart and addressed the interns again. That was when she saw Jared Cross hovering in the doorway. Cait stepped quickly aside when the psychiatrist motioned to her.

“You wanted to see me?” he asked.

She hadn’t expected him to get her note so quickly, or to act on it so promptly. “Yes.”

“I’ve got about twenty minutes until my first appointment. Do you have time now?”

Cait glanced back at Sam. He seemed oblivious to her now. She cleared her throat loudly, but he didn’t glance her way.

To hell with him, then. “Okay,” Cait said.

She matched Dr. Cross stride for stride down the corridor to his office at the end of the floor. To his credit, she thought he was mincing his steps a bit, allowing her to keep up. He was a good foot taller than her own five foot two. He was also a gentleman, of sorts. When they reached his door, he pushed it open and seemed to suggest she step through first when suddenly he made a move of his own. They hit shoulders in the threshold. Or at least, Cait thought, her shoulder nailed his upper arm.

“Sorry,” she said quickly. Then, in his office, she hesitated. “I, uh, wanted to see you in a professional capacity.” She felt her face flame.

Dr. Cross went to his desk and sat, lacing his fingers together and catching them behind his head. Rumor had it that he had found himself a pretty heiress and was happily besotted these days. Cait thought it showed. He seemed more relaxed than she had ever seen him.

Maybe that was what happened to a person when sex turned out right, she thought.

“I gathered that,” he answered. “Have a seat.”

“I don’t have a lot of time.” But she took the chair across from him. She desperately needed his help, but now that she was here, she faltered. This sort of thing was never supposed to have happened to her. “I don’t know where to start,” she murmured.

Cross brought his hands down. “Want me to do it for you?”

She blinked at him. “How can you? You don’t even know why I want to see you.”

“Try this on for size. You’re having a hell of a time getting back to the woman you were before the rest of Hines’s hostages escaped through the vent in that storage room, before he returned in time to keep you and Sam Walters from doing the same thing.”

“I…yes.”

“Now, suddenly, you’ll be going about your business and—wham!—blazing fury seems to come at you from out of nowhere.”

Cait sat up straight. “You’re good.”

He grinned and she liked him better for it. “I memorize well and I read all the books.”

“What books?”

“On post-traumatic stress disorder.”

She sat up straighter. “I don’t have a disorder.”

“Tell me what’s been happening to you lately.”

With the simple question, she felt something begin to shake inside her. Cait sank back in her chair again. “It’s not just Hines. He was crazy, a horrible person, but he’s gone.”

Cross nodded. “He’s in jail. Which, theoretically, should make you feel safe again. But you don’t.”

Cait shuddered. “People like him don’t happen to people like me, at least not twice in the same lifetime. And he’s incarcerated.”

“He was supposed to have been incarcerated once before.”

It was true, Cait thought weakly. Hines had disrupted the ribbon-cutting ceremony for the new maternity wing, then tried to kidnap the son of Crystal Bennett, the hospital fund-raiser. Already wanted for other crimes, he’d been remanded to the maximum-security prison in Lubbock. Somewhere between Mission Creek and Lubbock he’d escaped to follow the hatred in his heart right back to the hospital. He’d uprooted her life, not to mention those of several other people. But she and Sam had been the only ones held hostage in a room beneath his house. And then—

No, she couldn’t think of that again.

“Caitlyn?” Cross prodded.

She jumped. “I’m sorry. What?”

“You were saying?”

She felt herself flush. “I was about to say that I seem to be doing a lot of that lately—fading in and out. That’s what I meant. Hines is over, behind me. But I’m different.”

“Flashbacks?” he asked. “Do you experience flashbacks to your time in that underground room?”

She felt Sam’s hands on her breasts again. The heat that slid up over her skin, from her chest to her throat to her face, was excruciating. “Yes,” she said quietly.

Cross was watching her closely, but he said nothing.

“I think the worst part is that I’m…I’ve become paranoid,” she whispered, the final scalding admission. The word made her sound so…crazy.

“Checking your locks three, four, five times?”

“That’s it.” She swallowed dryly. “And I keep feeling like someone is…I don’t know. Watching me. Following me.”

Cross sat forward and put his elbows on his desk. “Describe your childhood to me in five easy sentences.”

Cait’s eyes went big. “What kind of a shrink are you? I thought that sort of thing was supposed to take weeks. ‘Tell me about your parents…. Did you wet the bed?”’

He laughed. “I’m a shrink who has a few more minutes with you today and who wants you to schedule another appointment. But in the meantime I’d like to point something out to you, and I might be able to do it if you answer my question in a nutshell.”

Cait took in air and shrugged. She felt fragile. “Okay. When I was two, my mother left me with her aunt so she could find a decent job in a larger city. She didn’t come back.”

“What about your father?”

Cait lifted one shoulder again carefully. “Who knows?”

“Where he was?”

“Who he was.”

“Ah. Okay, what happened then?”

“My great-aunt died when I was four and from then until I was eighteen I pretty much bounced from foster home to foster home.” She touched her hands to her cheeks. “I am so terribly embarrassed about the way I’ve been acting lately. Why does any of this matter?”

“I just wanted to nail down the fact that you had a shaky childhood.”

“But it didn’t affect me.”

“Sure it did. Your childhood is directly responsible for the type of adult you’ve become. For every action, there’s a reaction, and that goes for the human psyche, too. The reaction doesn’t necessarily have to be negative. Maybe you never had a problem with your past before—until Branson Hines grabbed you.”

Cait brought her chin up. “I put myself through college, then nursing school. I’m here. I did fine.”

He nodded.

“Those foster parents were kind enough. No one was ever cruel to me!” She shouted it and was instantly mortified. “Oh, heavens.”

“What?”

“That. That’s what I mean! I’m volatile. I’m…I’m out of control.”

Cross grinned. “I like that word. Control. Great nutshell word.”

“Why?” she pleaded.

“Because that was what you’ve had your whole life—or at least from the time you left that last foster home and went to college. And now—” he snapped his fingers “—it’s gone. Hines took from you something you’ve fought hard to never have to relinquish again.”

“Control,” Cait whispered.

Cross nodded. “Rumor has it that you run a pretty tight ship here at work. What about at home?”

She paid her rent months in advance just in case anything untoward should happen and she was suddenly unable to find the money. The apartment was hers, the first place she could really call home, and she would not lose it. “I…yes. I guess.”

“You had no control over things when Hines took you,” Cross went on. He laid his palms flat on the desk. “He proved that all your efforts in that area have been for naught. That could shake a person like you to the core. Anyway, here’s the deal. You did the right thing in coming back to work today. But I’d recommend that you confront the site of your trauma, too, and all the people associated with it.”

“The room where it started?” She didn’t want to go there.

“And Sam Walters. Though you work with him, so I imagine you’ve already dealt with him, right?”

Sam. Cait bit her lip.

“Was that a problem?” Cross asked. “Seeing him again?”

“Of course not. I’ll do whatever I have to do to get back to normal.”

“Good.” He watched her closely. “Caitlyn, is there something else you want to tell me about your abduction?”

She jolted. “Like what?”

“I don’t know. That’s why I’m asking. You tell me. Something else that might have rocked your world during that time?”

She’d made love with Sam. “Absolutely not.”

“People react in some startling ways when they think their time is running out.”

“Not me.”

“They do uncharacteristic things.”

“I never got uncharacteristic until I got home again. That’s when all this started.”

Cross stood. “You’ll tell me sooner or later. I do want you to make another appointment. It would probably work best if you came in on your day off. We’ll have more time together that way.”

Cait pushed to her feet, as well. “Okay.” She was back to being polite and agreeable. For now, she thought a little wildly. Who knew how long it would last?

“I’m sorry this happened to you, to everyone Hines touched.”

Cait nodded. “Thank you. But he’s gone now.”

“With my help, you’ll get the old Caitlyn back. But I seriously doubt if she’ll ever be quite the same person she was before all this happened.”