The paperwork in her hand crinkled and Ripley knew they could shut her down unless she could defend Ida Mae’s death at the inquiry. The sixty-something grandmother had been scheduled for release. She’d been happy and fit following her treatment. She shouldn’t have died.
What had gone wrong?
Ripley shook her head as she turned the corner and strode across the hospital’s tiled atrium toward the café. The waterfall fountain burbled to itself, but she wasn’t soothed by the sound. Even shorthanded, her department’s survival rate was one of the best in the country. She was up to date with all the new methods and ran a ruthlessly tight ship. The trite explanation she’d been forced to give Ida Mae’s husband—sometimes these things just happen—was baloney.
She didn’t allow these things to happen to the patients she cared for, agonized over. She was determined to figure out why Ida Mae had died.
Ripley was halfway across the atrium when she heard running footsteps and her brain fired emergency! But before she could spin around to see what was wrong, a hot, sweaty body hit her from behind, and a man bellowed, “You killed my wife!”
She staggered forward with a shriek as the focused response of a doctor fragmented to sheer feminine terror. She fell to her knees beneath her attacker’s weight and smelled old, sour whiskey and unwashed man. Her shock was instant and complete. Paralyzing.
“You killed her!”
Half sitting on the cold tiles, Ripley struggled to face him. “Wait! Wait, I didn’t kill anyone, I didn’t—” She broke off when she recognized the rumpled, teary man towering above her.
It was Ida Mae Harris’s husband. He’d brought flowers every day during visiting hours.
His mouth worked. Grief etched the deep grooves of his face. “She was fine, you said. She was coming home today.” He held out a glass rose, one of the many trinkets sold in the hospital gift store. “Our fiftieth anniversary was next week. I bought her a flower.”
A tear tracked across one wrinkled cheek as he snapped the glass rose in two with a vicious, violent motion. He pointed the stem toward Ripley. Light glinted off the wickedly pointed end and a manic rage sparked in his eyes. Alcohol fueled the flames to a blast that burned through her chest. “Now Ida Mae is dead. You killed her!”
Ripley struggled to her knees and held out both hands, barely aware of the gaping onlookers and the sound of the fountain behind her. Fear coiled hard and hot in her stomach. She saw the hands shake and was only dimly aware they belonged to her. No! she wanted to shout. I didn’t kill her! My patients are my life. They’re my family, don’t you understand?
But he was beyond understanding. So she tried to soothe. Tried to defuse, saying, “Mr. Harris. Losing your wife is a terrible, terrible thing, but this won’t make it any better.”
He’d seemed calm when she had called to break the news of Ida Mae’s death. But Ripley knew shock—and anger—could be delayed. And intense.
When another tear creased his cheek to join the first, Ripley thought she might be getting through. She rose to her feet and held out a trembling hand, palm up, and tried to steady the quiver in her voice. Tried to hold back her own scared tears when she said, “Give me the piece of glass, Mr. Harris. Ida Mae wouldn’t have wanted you to do this.”
It was the wrong thing to say.
“Ida Mae didn’t want to die!” the big man roared. He brought the makeshift knife up and leapt on Ripley with a snarl on his lips and fierce grief in his eyes.
The glass stem swept down in a glittering arc and chaos erupted.
A woman screamed. A nearby display of children’s watercolors crashed to the floor, overturned by the stranger who’d hidden behind it. Ripley lurched away from Mr. Harris, twisted and fell to the ground as the stranger charged across the tiles, grabbed Harris, and hurled him into the fountain.
Water smacked onto the tile floor and the onlookers shrieked.
There was another enormous splash as Ripley’s dark savior followed his combatant into the fountain. She struggled to her feet in time to see the man haul Harris up by his collar, punch him hard and drop the suddenly limp figure back into the water.
And the world stilled. Silenced. Even the fountain seemed muted. And Ripley stared as two pieces of information battled for control of her conscious mind.
She was safe. And the stranger was magnificent.
Breathing hard, six-foot-two inches of rugged male glared down into the roiling fountain with water sheeting down behind him. His long nose and heavy brow made his profile more fierce than handsome, and across the distance that separated them, she couldn’t tell what color his eyes were. They just looked…black.
The wet material of his cotton shirt and dress pants clung like a lover to the tight bulges of his biceps and the long muscles of his thighs and calves. Ripley’s mouth dried to sand when he leaned down and hauled Harris out of the water with a filthy curse and those muscles bunched and strained.
Paying no attention to the gathering crowd, the stranger stepped out of the fountain and dumped the now-weeping man on the tiles, leaving him for the uniformed police officers who poured into the atrium with guns drawn, only to find the situation under control.
Then the stranger turned toward Ripley and their eyes locked. A click of connection arced between them like a live wire. She felt a tremble in her thighs and an ache in the empty place between them. It didn’t feel like fear. Far from it. How could fear exist side by side with this sensation?
He walked toward her and Ripley was barely aware of the growing hum as the onlookers started talking in loud, excited tones about their own imagined bravery during the dangerous moments.
She saw only him. Dark, wet hair clung to his wide brow and the damp shirt hung from his chest like chain mail. He held out his hand. Glass sparkled on his palm.
“I’ll take that.” The nasal Boston twang jolted Ripley out of her trance, and she looked blankly at the officer who had materialized beside her. When he pointed at the glass rose stem, she shook her head and slid it into the breast pocket of her lab coat, though she couldn’t have said why.
The slight bump of a glass thorn pressed through the fabric to touch her skin, and she had to suppress a shiver. The imprint of Harris’s hands stung her side and shoulder. She could feel him against her, hot and sweaty and mad with grief. The fine trembles that began in her stomach threatened to work their way out, but Ripley knew she couldn’t let them take control.
She had to be a doctor now. She was Ripley Davis, MD. She couldn’t be soft. Davises don’t make public scenes, growled her father’s voice in the back of her mind, and the familiar anger helped her push the shakes aside.
She could be a frightened woman later. In private.
Gesturing toward the officers herding witnesses into the coffee shop, she said, “That’s not necessary. I won’t be pressing charges.” She focused on hospital policy. Head Administrator Leo Gabney’s policy. It was easier to think of policy than what might have happened if Harris had been a little quicker with the makeshift knife, the other man a little slower with his rescue.
The trembles in her stomach threatened to take over.
“Why the hell not?” The stranger’s voice was as dark and fierce as his face. It was steel and smoke and anger, with a hint of softness at the edges. In an insane flash, Ripley wondered what it sounded like first thing in the morning.
How it would sound calling her name.
And why in God’s name was she thinking about that? She didn’t need a man. Didn’t need sex. She was a doctor. She saved lives. She didn’t need a man to make her feel whole. That was a weakness, just like love. Like the need for rescue.
It was adrenaline, Ripley decided when the stranger’s brows drew