M.D. Most Wanted

The man scowling just outside the swinging doors, peering through the glass and glaring at their every move, was temporarily forgotten.

The X rays confirmed what Reese already suspected. Miraculously, there were only two fractured ribs. But there was a great deal of internal bleeding going on. If the situation wasn’t corrected immediately, it would turn life threatening in less time than it took to contemplate the circumstances or even to explain them to her not-so-silent guardian.

They had to hurry.

The instant the doors parted, the hulking man came to rigid attention. Surprised that they were on the move again, he fell into place beside the gurney, trotting to keep pace.

“How is she?” he demanded. “Where are you taking her?”

“There’s internal bleeding,” Reese told him.

He took care to keep his own reaction to the man out of his voice. Stress took many forms, and Reese figured that the man’s concern might have been expressed in bullying behavior because of the nature of his work. He’d already seen the hilt of the gun the man wore beneath his overcoat and surmised that he was connected to some kind of bodyguard detail associated with the young woman. Either that or the man was her wise guy/hitman/lover.

“We have to stop it,” he continued. “We’re taking her to the main operating room.”

As they turned a corner, Reese glanced toward the man beside the gurney. He saw deep lines of concern etched into his otherwise smooth face. His expression wasn’t that of a man who was concerned about his job, but of a man who was worried about the fate of a person he cared about.

Reese wondered what the real connection between the two was and decided in the same moment that it was none of his business. All that mattered to him was doing whatever it took to save the woman’s life. Anything beyond that was out of his realm.

Moving swiftly beside the gurney, Wallace Grant took London’s small, limp hand into his. This was all his fault.

His fault.

Damn it, why had she driven away like that? It was almost as if she had been playing some elaborate game of chicken, daring him to catch her.

He was supposed to keep her safe, not jeopardize her life.

The ache in his chest grew. He wasn’t looking forward to calling her father and reporting this latest turn of events. The man had hired him to make sure that what had happened to the Chilean ambassador’s daughter didn’t happen to London.

The anger was gone, temporarily leeched out, when Wallace looked up at the man he was forced to place his faith in.

“Is she going to—?”

“Pull through?” Reese supplied, guessing the end of the man’s question. “I made her a promise that she would. I like keeping my promises.” They’d come to another set of doors. Reese suddenly felt sorry for the man who had threatened him. For a moment the bodyguard looked like a lost hound dog. Compassion filled Reese. “You’re going to have to stay outside.”

Wallace didn’t want to be separated. The irrational fear that she would die if she was out of his sight crowded into his fevered brain. He licked his lips as he looked past the doctor’s shoulder into the pristine room that lay just beyond.

“Can’t I just…?”

Reese firmly shook his head. There was no room for debate, no time for an argument. “No.”

Wallace dragged his hand through slicked-down brown hair. He knew the longer he stood out here arguing, the less time the doctor had to do what needed doing. Saving the ambassador’s daughter. Saving the woman he had sworn to protect with his very life.

“Okay,” Wallace said breathing heavily, as if dragging his bulk around had suddenly become very difficult for him. “I’ll be right out here if you need me.”

“There’s a waiting room,” Reese said, pointing down the hall toward the cheerfully decorated area that was set aside for the families and friends of patients in surgery.

“Right out here,” Wallace repeated, stationing himself in the corridor against the opposite wall. From his position he would be able to look directly into the operating room.

Reese shrugged. “Suit yourself.”

Maybe the man was a relative, Reese thought. Or connected to the woman on some level that went far deeper than first noted. Or maybe the man was one of those people who took their jobs to heart. If so, Reese couldn’t fault him. He fell into the same category himself.

The next moment Reese entered the operating room, and all extraneous thoughts about missed breakfasts, silent alarm clocks and strange personal connections were left out in the corridor.

Along with the man with the solemn face and worried eyes.

Three hours later it was over.

The freshly made openings had all been sutured closed, the bleeding had been stopped, the ribs had been taped. She wasn’t, as her bodyguard had demanded, better than new, but she would be well.

The woman’s vital signs had never faltered once. They’d remained strong throughout the lengthy procedure, as if her will to live was not to be snuffed out by whatever curve life and the road had thrown at her.

He wished all his patients were that resilient.

Weary, hungry, relieved, Reese stripped off his surgical mask and cap for the second time that day. Now that this newest crisis was over, he became aware again of the deep pinched feeling in his gut. It felt as if his stomach was stuck to his spine. He still hadn’t had a chance to take in anything more substantial than a stale candy bar.

This time, he promised himself, he didn’t care if the paramedics brought in Santa Claus and his eight tiny reindeer laid out on nine stretchers, he was determined to go get something to eat before he literally passed out from hunger.

At this point freshness would no longer play a part in his selection. He didn’t care what he ultimately got to eat. His only criterion was that it remain relatively inert long enough for him to consume it.

Even the bran muffin was beginning to sound pretty tempting.

But first, he knew, he had to go out and face the sentry out in the hall. The man who had remained steadfast throughout the entire procedure, standing there like an ancient gargoyle statue, guarding the door and watching the surgeon’s every move. Reese hadn’t had to look up to know that the deep-set brown eyes were taking in everything that was being done in the small, brightly lit operating room.

“How—” The single word leaped out at him as soon as Reese pushed open the door.

“She’s fine,” Reese said quickly, cutting the man off. He didn’t want to stand around for any more threats or whatever it was that the man had in mind now that the operation was over. “Like I said, she had some internal bleeding, but we found all the openings and sutured them. She had a couple of fractured ribs as well—”

Wallace stopped him right there. “Fractured?” he demanded. “You didn’t mention them before.”

Reese chose to ignore the accusatory note in the other man’s voice. Instead, he cut him some slack. It was pretty clear that they were both a little over-wrought, he thought.

“It could have been a great deal worse. The paramedic who brought her in said her car was totaled.” Reese saw guilt wash over the wide face. Had that somehow been his fault? he wondered.

“Yeah, it was.” And then, just as suddenly, the guilt left his eyes. His expression turned stony. “How soon can she be moved?”

“Why don’t we wait and see how she does first?” Reese calmly suggested. The next twenty-four hours would decide that. “In the meantime, maybe you should go to admitting and give them any information you can about her. Administration has forms to keep your mind busy for a while.”

“I don’t need to have my mind kept busy,” the man snapped.

“But I do.” With that, Reese turned on his heel and began to walk away.

“Hey, Doc.”

For a moment, Reese debated just continuing to walk away. There was no sense in encouraging any further confrontation. But if there was going to be another scene, he might as well get it over with now.

Suppressing a sigh, Reese half turned and looked at the larger man. “Yes?”

There was what passed as a half smile on the man’s face. He suddenly didn’t look the least bit threatening, but more like an overgrown puppy whose limbs were too big for his body.

“Thanks.”

Surprised, it took Reese half a beat to recover. He nodded. “It’s what I do.”

Mercifully, Reese’s stomach had the good grace to wait until he was well down the hall before it let out with a fearsome rumbling.

Each eyelid felt as if it was weighed down with its own full-size anvil.

Either that, or someone had applied glue to her lashes.

Maybe they should apply the same compound to the rest of her, London thought giddily, because she felt as if she had shattered into a million pieces.

A million broken, hurting pieces.

Breathing was almost as much of a challenge as trying to pry her eyes open. It certainly hurt a great deal more.

And right now there was a herd of drunken African elephants playing tag and bumping into one another in her head.

London heard a deep, wrenching moan echoing all around her, engulfing her. It sounded vaguely familiar.

It took her a beat to realize that the noise had come from her.

The pain was making her groan. And why did it feel as if there was a steel cage wrapped around her upper torso?

London opened her eyes or thought she did. The only thing that seemed to be filtering through was white. Lots of white.

Heaven? It didn’t feel hot, so it couldn’t be hell.

No, it felt cool, very cool.

Was she dead?

Where was the light everyone had always talked about? The light that was supposed to lead her to a better place. Or was that just a lie, a myth like unconditional parental love?

She thought she heard a male voice.

St. Peter?

Lucifer?

Batman?

Her mind jumped around from topic to topic like a frog attempting to reach safe ground using lily pads that kept sinking beneath his weight.

The male voice spoke again. This time she heard real words. A question. “How are you feeling?”

Was he talking to her?

With one last massive effort, London concentrated on pushing her lids open. This time she succeeded and saw—a man.

Not Batman, Superman, she amended. No cape, no blue tights that showed off rows of muscles, but definitely Superman. Right down to the chiseled chin and blue-black hair falling into brilliant blue eyes.

She swallowed. Her throat felt like rawhide. He’d asked her something. What? London searched the vacant caverns that comprised her mind and finally found the words, then laced them together.

Feelings, he’d asked something about feelings. No, wait, he’d asked her how was she feeling, yes, that was it.

It was a damn stupid question. How did she look? If she looked half as bad as she felt, Superman had his answer without her saying a word.

“How are you feeling?” Reese repeated for the third time.

He bent over close to her so she could hear him. He had been in twice before, only to find her still sleeping. This time, as he’d checked her chart, he saw her eyes flutter slightly. She was trying to come to.

London took a breath before answering. It felt like someone had shot an arrow into her ribs. “Like…I’ve been…run over…by…a…truck.”

Was that breathy, scratchy voice coming out of her? It didn’t sound like her, London thought. She tried to read Superman’s face and see his reaction to the pitiful noise. Was he recoiling in horror?

No, his eyes were kind. They were smiling.

She liked that. Smiling eyes.

“Not quite a truck,” Reese told her. “They tell me a pole did this.”

The single word brought with it a scene from somewhere within her brain. She and her parents, sitting at a long, white table, watching blond girls in native costumes with wide skirts, black corsets, red boots and wreaths of flowers in their hair, dancing.

Poland, her parents and she had been in Poland.

Poland, the last place her mother had been before she couldn’t be anyplace at all.

“Pole?” she echoed. She didn’t remember hitting a Polish national.

Reese saw the confusion in her face and wondered if she was suffering a bout of amnesia. Her airbag had failed to deploy and she’d hit her head against the steering wheel. Amnesia wasn’t unheard of.

“The one you tried to transplant by running into,” he told her gently, taking her pulse. The rhythm was strong. She had a good constitution. Lucky for her. “The paramedic almost wept over your Jaguar.”

The words were filtering into her brain without encountering matching images. Her jaguar. A pet cat? No, car, her car. The man was talking about her car.

Oh God, now she remembered. It all came rushing back at her as fast as she had raced her car to get away from Wallace.

She’d lost control and totaled her beautiful car.

London groaned, the loss hitting her between the eyes—the only spot on her body that didn’t hurt.

She raised her eyes to look at him as he released her wrist. “Is it totaled?”

“Like an accordion.”

The paramedic, Jaime, was still shaking his head and talking about the colossal waste of metal to anyone within earshot. He drove a small, secondhand foreign car whose odometer had gone full circle twice, and he looked upon the other vehicle as if it was a gift bestowed by the gods. He periodically drooled over Reese’s Corvette.

Reese studied London’s pale complexion for a moment. There was a bandage on her forehead where flesh had met wheel, but apart from that, she was a gorgeous woman, possibly the most perfect specimen he had ever seen. She could have been forever disfigured. Why had she risked losing all that in the blink of an eye?

“What were you trying to prove?”

“Nothing,” she answered quietly. She would have turned her head away if the effort hadn’t hurt so much. So she just looked at him steadily, meeting his probing gaze. “Just looking for space.”

He laughed shortly under his breath. The woman had intelligent eyes, and she certainly didn’t look stupid, but then, looks could be deceiving.

“You very nearly got it. Six feet by six by six,” Reese told her, pausing to write a notation in her chart. “A final space in the family plot.”

Beside her mother, she couldn’t help thinking. Maybe it would be peaceful there and she could finally find out who she was.

A flicker of rebellion rose from some faraway quarter that hadn’t been banged around relentlessly, and London looked at her intrusive surgeon with as much defiance as she could muster.

“A lecture? Save your…breath, doctor…I’ve heard…it all.”

She’d certainly heard more than her share. From her father, from Wallace, although she preferred the latter because at least Wallace was her friend. Her father, well, she didn’t really know what Ambassador Mason Merriweather was or how he figured into her life, other than to impose restrictions on her for as long as she could remember. Even Wallace and the other two bodyguards, Kelly and Andrews were part of her life because of him.

“Not a lecture, a fact,” Reese told her mildly. He slipped her chart back into its slot at the foot of her bed.

She was tired, very tired and there was this wide, soft, inviting region just waiting for her to slip into it. Its pull was becoming irresistible, but London struggled to ask one more question.

“Did you do it?”

The question caught him off guard. Reese looked at her. She appeared to be drifting off again. In another moment she’d be asleep, and the keeper at the gate would have to continue to wait before he would have the opportunity to talk with her.

“Do what?” Reese asked.

Every word was a struggle. Her mind was shutting down again. “Save…my…life.”

What he had done was utilize his training, his education and his instincts, not to mention the up-to-date technology that a hospital like Blair Memorial had to offer. There was no doubt in his mind that twenty years ago she would already have been dead. But even now, with all this at his disposal, there remained at bottom the x-factor. That tiny bit of will that somehow triumphs over death.

He allowed himself a small smile, though he doubted she could even detect it. “You saved your own life. I just put the pieces together.”

“Modest.” The single word came out on a labored breath. “Unusual…for…a…man.”

He began to say something in rebuttal, but it seemed that at least for now, his side wasn’t to be heard. His patient had fallen asleep again.

Just as well, Reese thought, standing at the foot of the bed and regarding her for one long moment. He didn’t feel like getting embroiled in a debate right now.

Not even if the opposing team looked like an angel. An angel, he mused, slipping out of the room, who had gotten banged up falling to Earth.

Very quietly he closed the door behind him.

Chapter 3

The moment Reese stepped out of the ICU, he found himself accosted by the big man who had stood vigil in the hallway all this time. He’d been told that Wallace Grant had been hovering around the nurses’ station ever since London had been brought out of recovery. To his credit, he had tried not to get in anyone’s way.

The question in the man’s eyes telegraphed itself instantly to Reese.

“She’s asleep,” Reese told him.

Wallace frowned as he sighed, frustration getting the better of him. He’d already put in a call to London’s father. The ambassador was scheduled for a meeting with a highly placed official in the Spanish government, but he’d canceled it and was catching the first flight from Madrid to LAX that his secretary could book for him. Wallace wanted to have some good news to give the man who signed his paychecks when he arrived.

Laying a large paw on Reese’s shoulder to hold him in place, Wallace blocked his exit.

“Is that normal?” he wanted to know. “I mean, shouldn’t she be waking up around now?”

Reese knew for a fact that the man had been looking in on London for his allotted five minutes every hour on the hour. The day nurse had told him so. But it was obvious that each time he did, he’d found the young woman unconscious.

“She did,” Reese told him. Surprise and relief washed over the other man’s face, followed by a look of suspicion. Wallace was a man who took nothing at face value. “For about five minutes,” Reese elaborated. “She’s going to be in and out like that for most of the day and part of tomorrow.” Very deliberately he removed Reese’s hand from his shoulder. “Maybe you should go home.”

Wallace looked at him sharply. “And maybe you should do your job and I’ll do mine.” Wallace didn’t appreciate being told what to do by a man who knew nothing about the situation they were in. “Her father pays me to be her bodyguard. I can’t exactly accomplish that from my apartment.”

Reese didn’t care for the man’s tone or his attitude. “Seems to me you didn’t ‘exactly’ accomplish it earlier, either, and you were a lot closer then.”

To his surprise he saw the anger on the other man’s face give way to a flush of embarrassment. His remark had been uncalled for. Reese chastised himself; he was civilized now, at least moderately so, and was supposed to know better.

He chalked it up to his being tired. It wasn’t an excuse, but it was a reason.

“Sorry,” Reese said. “I didn’t mean that the way it sounded.” He wasn’t up on his celebrities, but it seemed to him that someone so young wouldn’t normally need to have her own bodyguard. Her name didn’t ring a bell for him, but that, too, was nothing new. For the most part, except for his small circle of friends or his mother, he tended to live and breathe his vocation. “Why does she need a bodyguard?”

The wide shoulders beneath the rumpled brown jacket straightened just a fraction. That was all there was room for. The man had the straightest posture he’d ever seen outside of a military parade, Reese thought. He’d had Grant pegged as a former military man.

“You can ask her father that when he gets here,” Wallace told him, his tone formal. “It’s not my place to tell you.”

Guarded secrets. Definitely a former military man, Reese decided. He shrugged. Whether she had a bodyguard or not didn’t really matter to him, as long as the man stayed out of the way.

“Just an idle question. Don’t have time for many of those,” Reese confessed, more to himself than to the man in front of him. Before he left, he stopped at the nurses’ station and looked at the middle-aged woman sitting behind the bank of monitors, each of which represented a patient on the floor. “Page me if the patient in room seven wakes up.” He leaned in closer to her and lowered his voice. “And don’t forget to tell our semifriendly green giant here, too.”

Slanting a glance at the man who had resumed his vigil in the hallway, the strawberry blonde raised a silent brow in Reese’s direction.

He grinned. “Call it a mercy summoning,” he told her just before he left.

Reese was in the doctor’s lounge, stretched out in a chair before a television set showing a program that had been popular in the late eighties. He must have seen that particular episode five times, even though he’d rarely watched the show when it was originally on. Murphy’s Law.

He wasn’t really watching now, either. The program was just so much white noise in the background, as were the voices of the two other doctors in the room who were caught up on opposite sides of a political argument that held no interest for Reese.

For his part, Reese was contemplating the benefits of catching a quick catnap, when his pager went off.

Checking it, he recognized the number. He was being summoned to the ICU. He wondered if the nurse was just responding to his instructions, or if London had taken a turn for the worse.

“No rest for the wicked,” he murmured under his breath. Rising, he absently nodded at the two physicians, who abruptly terminated their heated discussion as they turned toward him in unison.

“Hey, Reese, you up for a party tonight?” Chick Montgomery, an anesthesiologist who knew his craft far better than he knew his politics in Reese’s opinion, asked him enthusiastically. “Joe Albright’s application to New York Hospital finally came through, and he’s throwing a big bash at his beach house tonight to celebrate.”

His hand already on the door, Reese shook his head. He didn’t feel like being lost in a crowd tonight. He had some serious sleeping to catch up on. “I’m not planning to be upright at all tonight.”

The other doctor, an up-and-coming pediatrician, leered comically. “Got a hot date? Bring her along, the more the merrier is Joe’s motto, remember?”

Reese didn’t even feel remotely tempted. “No hot date,” he told them. “I’m booking passage for one to dreamland tonight. Maybe I’ll actually manage to start catching up on all the sleep I lost while I was in med school,” he cracked.

That was the one thing he missed most of all in this career he’d chosen for himself. Sleep. When he was a kid, weekends were always his favorite days. He’d sleep in until ten or eleven, choosing sleep over watching early Saturday-morning cartoon programs the way all his friends did. Sleep had been far more alluring.

It still was.

Trouble was, he didn’t get nearly enough anymore. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d gotten a full night’s sleep. If anything, life after medical school had gotten even more hectic for him. There was always some emergency to keep him at the hospital or to drag him out of bed early.

You asked for it, he thought, walking down the first-floor corridor toward the front of the building.

The ICU was located just beyond the gift shop. As he passed through the electronic doors that isolated the intensive care unit from the rest of the hospital, Reese absently noted that the hulking guardian wasn’t hovering around in the vicinity.