One Season And Dynasties Collection

But although Miranda Steele presented herself as straightforward, there was nothing simple about this woman. And right now, he had an uneasy feeling he was in way over his head. Though he wasn’t someone who was ruled by desire, Colin had a feeling there would be no turning back for him if he stayed here a minute longer. And he wasn’t all that certain that the road ahead was one he should be venturing onto.

The sound of Lola barking in the background was what finally broke apart the moment—and forced him back to his senses.

Taking a step away from her, he looked at Miranda. Her lipstick was blurred from the imprint of his lips and she looked as dazed as he felt.

He was shaken up inside and it was a struggle not to show it. “Did you do that so that I’d come down to your children’s ward?”

That hurt, Miranda thought. Did he really believe she was that kind of person? The kind who physically manipulated people?

“No,” she answered, her voice low as she tried to collect herself. “I was just trying to kiss your cheek. You were the one who turned his head.”

His expression remained stoic and unyielding. “So you’re not trying to seduce me into seeing things your way?”

“No, I’m not,” Miranda cried, stunned. The moment had shattered and what had seemed so wonderful a second ago no longer was. “Forget I asked you,” she told him stiffly.

Damn it, those were tears filling her eyes. He hadn’t meant for any of that to happen. He wasn’t accustomed to dealing with a woman who didn’t have some ulterior motive—except for his aunt.

Hell, he wasn’t really used to dealing with women at all, Colin thought, feeling helpless and annoyed at the same time.

Unable to find the right words to express his regret for having hurt her, he marched to the front door, opened it and stepped outside.

He heard the door close behind him. Heard the lock being flipped into place. For just a split second, he considered turning around and knocking on the panel, to apologize.

But words didn’t come to him now any more than they had before.

If he tried to say anything, he’d only make things worse, he knew. Communication was not his forte, so instead he walked away.

Numb, confused, Miranda wiped away the tears sliding down her cheeks with the back of her hand. She wasn’t all that sure what had just happened here. All she knew was that Colin had taken off like a man who had been ambushed and then suddenly given the chance for a clean getaway.

She heard a car starting up and then taking off.

His car.

She didn’t understand. He had given off mixed signals. Why had he bothered coming over in the first place?

Turning away from the door, she sighed. “I really do wish I was a mind reader, Colin. Then maybe I could understand what’s going on here.”

She realized that she was absently running her fingertips along her lips. She could almost swear she could still feel his lips against hers.

Taste his lips against hers.

She closed her eyes for a moment, trying to focus her brain. She’d never been the type to let a guy throw her, or mess with her mind. But she’d never felt what she had felt this evening when he’d kissed her.

“C’mon, Miranda, this isn’t like you. Get a grip.” Opening her eyes, she saw that Lola was looking at her as if she understood what was going on here.

“You’re right, Lola. I don’t have time to waste like this. We have a tree to decorate and we don’t need anybody’s help, right, girl?”

Lola yipped, making her laugh.

“Of course right. So let’s get started. I’ll hang, you supervise. Deal?”

Lola barked again.

“Deal,” Miranda agreed, grinning.

With that, she went to the garage to get the ladder she was going to need in order to reach the higher branches.

Colin did his best to talk himself out of it and he succeeded.

For a day.

But the following day, he did something he had never done before. He called in and told his sergeant that he was taking half of one of his many accumulated vacation days.

The man sounded rather surprised. “Just a half day?”

“That’s all,” Colin answered.

If he took the whole day, he knew he’d wind up getting roped into spending the entire time visiting sick kids—kids who didn’t have the odds in their favor. He didn’t like admitting that he wasn’t strong enough to face something like that for more than a short amount of time.

It was obvious that Miranda was made of stronger stuff than he was, which was why he was going to the oncology ward as she’d wanted him to. He owed her an apology for the way he’d behaved the other night, and this was the only way he knew how to apologize.

He was probably going to regret this, Colin thought, not for the first time. But if nothing else, he was a man who always paid his debts. It was part of his code.

Miranda peered into one of the few private rooms that were located on the floor. Jason Greeley still appeared to be asleep. His mom had been here with the little boy all night. But the single mother had to go to work, so had left an hour ago. Since then Miranda had been checking on the five-year-old every few minutes. She didn’t want him waking up by himself.

Moving closer to the boy, she adjusted his covers. “You usually don’t sleep this long after a treatment, Jason,” she said, deliberately sounding cheerful. Cheer begot cheer, in her opinion. “Don’t turn lazy on me now. Your mama was here all night. She hates leaving you, but she had to go to work. But don’t worry, she’ll be back soon. And I’ll be here all day until she gets here,” Miranda promised.

The boy stirred a little, but didn’t open his eyes. His even breathing told her that he was still sleeping.

Miranda went on talking as if he could hear every word she said. “I’ve got cherry Jell-O waiting for you the second you open your eyes. You told me that was your favorite, so I made sure there’s plenty. All you have to do to get some is open your eyes. C’mon, baby, it’s not that hard.”

When he didn’t, Miranda sighed. “Okay, play hard to get. But you’re going to have to open them sometime. No sense in letting all that cherry Jell-O go to waste, you know.”

“How do you do it? How do you deal with this without falling apart?”

Startled, pressing one hand against her chest to contain the heart that had all but leaped out, nearly cracking her rib cage, she swung around to see Colin, all 6’2” and broad-shouldered, standing just inside the room. He was wearing his police uniform.

It took her a second to find her voice. “What are you doing here?”

“I was in the neighborhood and thought I’d drop by,” he quipped. And then his voice lowered. “Besides, I figured after the other evening, I kind of owed it to you.”

She wasn’t sure if he was referring to the kiss they’d shared or his walking out on her, but felt it best not to pursue the question. He was here, and right now, that was all that mattered.

“You don’t owe me anything,” she told him. “But these kids will get a big kick out of seeing a real police officer.” And then she glanced at her watch. It was early. “Speaking of which, aren’t you supposed to be out there, handing out tickets right now?”

“I took half a vacation day.” He expected her to ask him why he hadn’t taken a full day, followed by a whole bunch of other questions. Instead she just smiled at him, looking pleased.

“That’s great,” she enthused. “But if you’re only here for a little while, we’ll have to make the most of it.”

He wasn’t sure exactly what she had in mind, but he’d come to expect the unexpected with Miranda. “And exactly how are we going to do that?”

Her mind was already racing. “We’ve got a big recreation room where the kids play games and where we hold their birthday parties. Right now, it’s where we put up the ward’s Christmas tree.”

“But all the kids aren’t—”

She knew what he was going to say—that there were more holidays than just Christmas this season. She answered his question before he had a chance to voice it. “That’s all right. All kids like bright lights and presents. It helps to cheer them up a little.”

“And feel normal?” he guessed. That had to be what she was shooting for.

“They are normal,” Miranda told him calmly. She had to make him understand. “They just have more than their share of health issues, but you’d be surprised how they bear up to that. It makes me ashamed when I let everyday, mundane problems overwhelm me.”

“You? Overwhelmed?” he asked, teasing her. “I don’t believe it. Joan of Arc would probably see you as a role model.”

That was his idea of a joke, she realized. Her smile widened.

“Mama?” Jason opened his eyes and looked around the room, disoriented, obviously expecting to see his mother there instead of his nurse and a strange policeman.

“Hey, I didn’t mean to wake him up.” Colin looked contrite as he addressed Miranda. “I’m sorry,” he murmured.

She put her hand on his arm to keep him from leaving. “No, this is a good thing,” she assured him. “We were waiting for him to wake up.” She turned her attention back to the boy. “Jason, guess what? Remember that police officer I told you about?”

“The one who wouldn’t give you a ticket,” Jason answered. “I remember.”

“That’s right, he didn’t give me a ticket,” she repeated, raising her eyes to Colin’s for a moment before shifting them back to the boy. Colin looked surprised. “Well, this is him—and he’s here to visit,” Miranda announced.

“Cool,” the little boy said, with as much enthusiasm as he was able to muster, given that he was still trying to come around. Shifting in his bed, he looked to Miranda for help. “I want to sit up.”

Colin was about to press a button on the remote control attached to the guardrail on the boy’s bed when he saw Miranda slowly shake her head at him.

“You remember what to do, Jason,” she prompted. “We practiced.”

“Oh yeah.” Small fingers pulled the remote a little closer and then pushed one of the arrows. The back of his bed began to rise. He beamed, looking very proud of himself. “I got it right.”

“Of course you did.” She tousled his hair affectionately. “That’s because you’re such a smart boy.”

Jason’s chocolate brown eyes shifted to look at the policeman who had come to visit him. “Is that a real badge?” he asked, pointing toward Colin’s chest.

He glanced down and nodded. “It sure is.”

Jason looked at him hopefully. “Is it okay if I touch it?”

Colin came closer and leaned over the boy’s bed. “Go ahead.”

Small fingers reached out and very slowly and reverently traced the outline of the badge.

“Wow,” Jason murmured. “When I grow up, I’m gonna be a police officer just like you.”

No one had ever said anything like that to him before—since he didn’t interact with children—and Colin found himself truly moved, more than he thought possible. Especially since the boy was talking so positively about a future he might not live to see.

“And you’ll be a really great police officer. Maybe even a police detective, if you study very hard,” Miranda told the little boy. She could see that Colin had been affected. It wasn’t that she wasn’t as moved as Colin. She had just learned to handle her own onslaught of emotions so they wouldn’t get in the way of her being the best possible nurse she could be for the sake of the children.

“I’ll study real hard,” Jason promised. He sounded sleepy. And then he yawned. “I’m tired, Miranda.”

“Well, then I suggest you’d better get some sleep,” she coaxed.

It was obvious that he was trying not to let his eyes close. “But then I’ll miss seeing Officer Colin,” the boy protested.

“Tell you what,” Colin said. “I’ll come by again and see you before I leave.”

“And will you be back tomorrow, too?” the little boy asked. It was clear that he was losing his battle to keep his eyes open.

“Not tomorrow,” Colin answered honestly. “But I’ll come back soon.”

“Promise?” Jason asked sleepily.

“I promise,” Colin told him, saying the words as solemnly as if he were talking to an adult.

But the boy was already asleep again.

Miranda moved the covers up higher on Jason’s small body. “That was very nice of you,” she told Colin with genuine warmth.

He shrugged. “I didn’t do anything out of the ordinary.”

“Jason might argue with you about that—if he could argue,” she added, looking at the boy with affection. She glanced at her watch. “C’mon, we need to spread that charm of yours around before your coach turns into a pumpkin.”

Colin shook his head, mystified. “I never understand half of what you’re talking about.”

Miranda laughed. “You might just be better off that way.”

He inclined his head in agreement. “I was thinking the same thing.”

But Miranda didn’t hear him. She was on her smartphone, busy summoning the other nurses.

Chapter Twelve

In less than three minutes after Miranda finished making her call, the hallway outside Jason’s room was alive with activity.

As Colin looked on in amazement, nurses and orderlies pushed children in wheelchairs and patiently guided others who were using walkers, crutches or braving the way to the recreational room on their own under the watchful eye of an aide or a parent.

To Colin, it looked as if an organized mass evacuation was having a dry run. The whole thing seemed incredible to him, given the average age of the children. However, rather than leaving the building, everyone was going to the large recreation room that currently held the Christmas tree.

Glancing back, Miranda realized that the “guest of honor” directly responsible for this mass migration was still standing just outside Jason’s doorway. Determined to change that, she took Colin’s hand in hers.

“C’mon,” she coaxed.

The expression on his face was rather uncertain as he took in the masses. “That’s an awful lot of kids,” he told her.

She gently tugged on his hand. “They don’t bite,” she said cheerfully. “And having them all together in one place means you won’t have to repeat yourself. You can say things just once.”

The uncertain expression deepened. “What things?”

Miranda had nothing specific to offer, but she was confident that issue would be resolved naturally.

“It’ll come to you,” she promised. “And the kids’ll probably drown you in questions once they get started. C’mon,” she coaxed again, drawing him down the hallway. “You’re not afraid of a bunch of little kids.”

She said it as if she believed it, Colin thought. And it wasn’t the kids he was afraid of; he was afraid of inadvertently saying something that might wind up hurting one of them.

But now that she had started this parade of hospitalized children, like some sort of modern-day Pied Piper, he couldn’t very well hang back and watch from the sidelines. The sidelines had virtually disappeared in any case, as Colin found himself surrounded on all sides by children streaming into the rec room.

“Kids,” Miranda said in a slightly louder voice, when the commotion had died down and the children had all settled in. “This is my friend Officer Kirby. When I told him that some of you had never met a policeman or seen one up close before, he insisted on coming by to say hello.” Turning to look at Colin over her shoulder, she grinned at him and said, “Say hello, Officer Kirby.”

On the spot and feeling decidedly awkward, Colin murmured, “Hello.”

The moment he did, a cacophony of “Hellos,” mostly out of sync, echoed back at him.

Pattie, a little girl with curly red hair seated in a wheelchair in the front row, was the first to speak up. “Are you really a policeman?” she asked.

“Yes.” And then, doing his best not to sound so wooden, Colin added, “I am.”

The two extra words seemed to open up the floodgates. Suddenly he heard questions coming at him from all directions.

“Do you have a gun?” one boy in the back asked.

“Do you shoot people?” a boy beside him added.

“How many bad guys have you caught?” a little blonde girl ventured, while a smaller girl with almost violet eyes shyly asked him if he was “a good cop.”

Taking pity on him, Miranda spoke up, hoping that the piece of information she told them would somehow help the children to get a better image of the kind of police work he did. “Officer Kirby rides a motorcycle.”

A dark-haired boy with crutches beside his chair cried, “Cool!”

A little girl to Colin’s left asked, “Can you do a wheelie?”

“Did you ever fall off your motorcycle?” one little boy wearing a brace asked. “I fell off my bicycle once and broke my neck bone.”

“Your collarbone,” Miranda corrected gently.

“Oh yeah, my collarbone,” he amended. He was still waiting for an answer. “Did you ever fall off?” he asked again.

“No,” Colin answered. “I never have.”

“Did it take you a long time to learn how to ride your motorcycle?” a little girl sitting near the Christmas tree asked.

As he began fielding the questions a little more comfortably, more and more came his way. Before he knew it, Colin found himself immersed in a give-and-take dialogue with approximately twenty-five children of varying ages, confined to the hospital ward for a number of different reasons.

He was surprised, given the relative seriousness of their conditions, how eager the children all seemed to hear about his job and what he did on his patrols.

Some asked run-of-the-mill questions, like how long it had taken him to become a police officer. Others wanted to know what he thought about while he was out on patrol. Still others asked totally unrelated questions.

The queries came one after another, some voiced eagerly, others shyly, but there were no awkward silences. Everyone had questions, usually more than one. Or two.

Pleased, Miranda stood back, happy to see the children so caught up in their visitor. She kept a watchful eye on Colin, as well, ready to step in if it got to be too much for him. But as the minutes went by, she was fairly certain that he was doing fine. He didn’t need her to bail him out.

When the motorcycle officer answered a little girl named Shelly’s question if he’d ever had a pet hamster—he hadn’t—Miranda finally decided he’d had enough for one day and stepped in.

“I’m afraid Officer Kirby is going to have to be going,” she told the children. The news was met with youthful voices melding in a mournful “Oh,” tinged with surprise as well as disappointment.

“Can he come back?” the girl with the curly red hair, Pattie, asked. Then, not waiting for Miranda to reply, she took her question straight to the horse’s mouth. “Can you, Officer Kirby?”

“If I get the chance,” Colin answered diplomatically.

Progress, Miranda thought. She’d expected him to make an excuse outright. The fact that he hadn’t, that he’d said something half hopeful in response, made her feel that he was beginning to come around and see the light.

He was starting to see the children as people.

“When?” A persistent little boy wearing a wool cap over his bare head looked at his new hero hopefully.

“When his sergeant can spare him again,” Miranda told the child, grasping at the first handy excuse that came to her. The look in Colin’s eyes when their glances met assured her she’d come up with a good one. “Now, everybody, say goodbye to Officer Kirby.”

A swell of voices, more enthusiastic since the kids had gotten to spend some time with him, chorused loudly, “Goodbye, Officer Kirby,” while others added, “Come back soon!”

Putting her hand on Colin’s elbow, Miranda took control of the situation. She gently guided him out of the room. They swung by Jason’s room and he spent a little time there.

After that, Miranda walked him to the elevators.

“Well, you survived,” she observed happily, offering him a pleased smile.

“I guess I did, didn’t I?” There was no missing the relief, as well as the surprise, in his voice. Colin paused, looking back over his shoulder in the general direction of the rec room. “Are all those kids...you know...?”

Somehow, even though he’d spent more than an hour talking with them, Colin couldn’t get himself to say the word. Saying it made it that much more of an evil reality.

Miranda seemed to know exactly what he was trying to ask her. If the children were terminal.

“Treatments have greatly improved over the last five years. A lot of those kids have more of a fighting chance to beat the odds and get well, or at least have their diseases go into remission. Meanwhile, every day they have is special to them, and we all have to make the most of it.

“They really enjoyed having you come,” Miranda went on. “Thank you for letting me bully you into coming to the hospital to talk to them.”

“Is that what you call it?” he asked, amusement curving his mouth. “Bullying?”

“No,” she admitted honestly, raising her eyes to his. “I don’t. But that’s what I figure you’d call it, so I thought I’d put it into terms that you could relate to more easily.”

Her eyes were at it again, he thought. Doing that funny little laughing, twinkly thing that captivated him.

The elevator arrived and he put his hand against one of the doors to keep it from closing. He searched for words to answer her and finally said, “Maybe I’ll let you bully me into it again soon.”

There was no other way to describe it but to say that he saw joy leap into her face. “Just say the word,” she told him.

Doing his best not to stare, Colin nodded. “Maybe I will,” he said.

Stepping inside the elevator, he dropped his hand. Her smile was the last thing he saw before the doors shut.

During the remainder of the day, after he returned to the precinct and went on duty, Colin tried to tell himself that the heat he was experiencing radiating through his chest and his gut was nothing more than a case of heartburn. But he had a strong suspicion that even if he consumed an entire bottle of antacid tablets, that wouldn’t have any effect on the warmth that was pervading him.

He should have been annoyed. That pushy woman had invaded his world and messed with his routine. She’d completely messed up the natural order of things.

But somehow, try as he might, he couldn’t drum up the slightest bit of irritation. To make matters worse, he caught himself thinking about her.

A lot.

Thinking about her and wondering if he wasn’t inadvertently sealing his own doom if he just happened to stop by her place and see her again sometime in the near future.

Like tonight.

Telling himself that it was the holiday season and that everyone was guilty of experiencing some sort of generosity of spirit—why try to be different?—he didn’t go home after his shift was over. Instead, he hung around the precinct for a while, killing time by catching up on the paperwork that was the bane of every police officer’s existence.

And when he was finished and he’d made sure to file all the reports before leaving, Colin decided to play the odds. For this to work out, Miranda needed to be home instead of one of the two places she volunteered.

He had less than a fifty-fifty chance of finding her there, but he went and picked up a pizza anyway.

With the tantalizing aroma from the pizza box filling the interior of his vehicle, Colin made one more quick stop, at a pet store that was along the way, and then drove on to his final destination, Miranda’s house.