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