Never before had taking Mr. Obregon’s pulse been so… fraught.
Mae had her fingers on his wrist, his pulse tapping against them under the thin skin there, her watch in her other hand. But she wasn’t looking at her watch. She was staring into those eyes of his, unable to look away.
“I can’t do this if you look at me so,” she whispered.
“But I can’t touch you,” he whispered back, his voice slippery as silk. “I can only look.”
He made it sound as if he could do nothing but look at her.
But then he did look away, and finally, finally she was able to start counting off.
Until his fingers brushed her forearm. It was light as the brush of a leaf falling from a tree, but all of her scattered with it. He kept his eyes to the wall, never breaking the pretense that this was simply their usual routine. That she hadn’t bared her bosom to him just last night.
“How’s my pulse today?” he asked in a more normal tone.
“A little fast,” she replied, only slightly shaky.
“Mmm.” That gaze hit her again. “I wonder why. And how is your pulse today?” Such wickedness he put into that question—her skin quivered with it.
She didn’t answer. Instead, she took his two forefingers and laid them across her wrist. It was a dangerous thing to do—how would she explain such a thing if they were caught?
She wouldn’t be able to. And yet she still did it.
For a space of time, they simply gazed at each other, his fingers measuring her pulse much as she did with his each and every day. And yet it was very, very different.
“A little fast, I think,” he said softly. “I wonder why.” He lifted his fingers from her wrist and she had to bite her lip.
“You know why,” she said, just as softly. “How did you sleep?”
His smile was knowing. “Are you asking to note on my chart? Or because you want to know?”
The sound of footsteps coming down the hall had her straightening with a quickness, one hand up to check her cap, the other smoothing out her apron.
“What are your plans for today, Nurse McCallahan?” he said, as if they were nothing more than patient and nurse.
Which of course they were. What else could they be?
“The usual, Mr. Obregon,” she said crisply. “Completing my rounds, giving injections, overseeing treatments.”
The footsteps died away.
“You know,” he said in a low undertone, “my first name is Joaquin.”
“I do know,” she whispered back. “And if you weren’t a patient and I weren’t a nurse, I might call you by it. And you might call me Mae.”
He leaned forward until their noses were a scant two inches apart. And only three inches between their mouths. “In three weeks, you won’t be a nurse here any longer.”
She pulled back. That was a little too far in this game of theirs, especially when they both knew she’d never see him once she was gone from here.
“And what are you doing today?” she asked, trying for briskness but merely achieving overloud.
He sat up straight. “I have a letter to write.” He sounded… pleased at the notion.
She couldn’t help the smile that pulled her mouth wide. “I won’t keep you then.”
“Don’t worry,” he said, his eyes darkening. “I’ll come find you when it’s finished, to show you.”
Her pulse scattered as she imagined him finding her in some darkened corner—
“Nurse McCallahan?”
From the hall, Sally’s voice shoved into the room and pushed them apart. Then Sally herself was in the doorway, looking at the two of them standing with several feet between them.
“Yes?” Mae asked, as if she hadn’t been in some strange game of seduction with a patient.
“It’s time for Mr. Detmarck’s injection.” Sally, thank goodness, looked as if she suspected nothing.
“Of course. I’ll come unlock the medicine cabinet for you.” Mae headed for the door, tossing Mr. Obregon a nod as she did.
She went about her duties much as usual—or at least she tried to. One ear was always cocked for the distinctive sound of his steps.
She performed her morning routine, checking charts, unlocking the medicine cabinet when needed, ensuring that every aspect of the sanatorium was as it should be. She took her lunch with the other nurses, then began her afternoon duties. Every time she rounded a corner, with each peep into a new room, she expected to find him, an envelope tucked in his long, elegant fingers.
Around four in the afternoon, she began to fret. He wasn’t in his room, nor in the library, nor in the sunroom.
So where was he?
She was marching back to the south ward for one last inspection before supper when she came across an open supply closet.
That was not supposed to be unlocked. She and Nurse Hodges would have to have a chat about this.
She lifted the ring of keys from her belt as she went to lock it. A long arm snaked out from the darkness of the closet, snaring her and pulling her in.
The door snapped shut behind her, encasing her and her captor in complete darkness. The inky blackness was filled with the rhythm of a man’s breath—a familiar rhythm, one she’d been recording daily for a year.
The light punched on and Mr. Obregon grinned at her.
Oh Lord, he’d pulled her in here to kiss her. She didn’t think her resolve was up to refusing him, not with him looking so steadily at her. Especially not with her newly found knowledge of how delightfully he could kiss.
“I have it,” he said in a low voice.
“Have what?”
He held up the envelope. She peered at the address, which was one of the little towns scattered in the valley.
That letter was not going to Los Angeles. Which meant neither was he.
She wasn’t disappointed, not a bit. She’d never once expected him to follow her. That was madness. All she wanted was for him to leave here.
“Well, you certainly earned your boon,” she said with a lightness that wasn’t in her heart.
He leaned close, the scent of his citrus shaving lotion growing stronger as he did. “Perhaps I’ve earned another?” An imperious lift of his eyebrow accompanied the request.
Oh yes.
“No,” she said, half to him, half to herself. “The agreement was for one letter. Another boon would require another task.”
“Hmm.” He tapped the envelope against his thigh. “What sort of task?”
She pondered that. Really, all she wanted him to do was to leave, to seize the life that could be his. Tricking him into doing that was going to take some thought.
Best to wait to hear back from that lawyer. Then she’d decide what he ought to do next and how to convince him to do it.
“I’m not certain,” she replied, trying for a sultry look and feeling ridiculous. But his eyes darkened rather gratifyingly anyway. “I’ll have to think of something.”
“You do that,” he said in a thrillingly low tone.
She pulled the envelope from his hand. “I’ll just put this in the post for you,” she trilled rather sillily, unable to keep her giddiness stoppered up.
When her fingers found the handle of the door, he stopped her with a hand on her forearm. “Make certain no one’s there,” he warned. “You don’t want to be caught like this.”
She opened the door a crack and peeped out. No one around.
“It’s safe,” she whispered to him.
He squeezed her hand. “You go first. I’ll leave in a few minutes, in case someone comes.”
She slipped into the hallway without looking back, the letter clutched tightly in her hand.
Joaquin had been sitting too long.
He dragged himself from one corner of the library to another, his cane thumping in time with his steps as he dodged the furniture. It didn’t feel good exactly, to force himself to move, but it felt better than sitting another minute longer.
The past few days he’d spent reading whatever law books were in the library, along with anything else that took his fancy. And when he wasn’t sitting, he was walking the grounds, pondering the possibility of actually leaving this place, while he waited for the lawyer’s response.
His mind was certainly invigorated by all this activity, but his body—well, that couldn’t quite keep up. The hum in his left side was slowly building to a screech, and before long he’d have to go lie down. The thought of spending hours in his little room as he used to do was repulsive. But there was no help for it.
His left leg began to quiver with weakness, and he only just made it to one of the sofas in time, panting with the effort. He stretched his legs before him, trying to relieve the ache building in him, the one trying to force him to double over. Closing his eyes, he willed himself to think of anything but the sensations swamping him. He pulled air through his teeth and waited.
“Mr. Obregon?”
A hand settled on his thigh, and he opened his eyes to see Mae staring back at him, her gaze filled with as much compassion as a man could ever want.
“I’ll help you to your room,” she said. “Now, where is your walking stick?”
“Wait.” He laid a hand on her arm. “Give me a moment.”
“Yes, of course.”
He didn’t need the moment to recover—this pain would take the better part of the day to recede. He needed the moment to simply look on her, her face soft in a way he didn’t think he’d ever seen before.
“Before I forget,” she said, reaching into the pocket of her apron, “I was coming to give you this.” She handed him a letter.
It was from the lawyer he’d written to. He quickly scanned the man’s reply, setting the letter aside when he’d reached the end.
Mae’s gaze on him was eager, hopeful.
Only a cur would shatter that gaze. “He’s recently taken on an apprentice,” he said, lowness dragging at him as he did.
Her face fell. Remarkable, how much emotion could play across her face when she wasn’t wearing her nursely expression. The lines of her face hardened into resolve. “You’ll simply have to write to someone else,” she proclaimed. “You do know other lawyers?”
“I do.” A wicked thought pushed through the pain, the disappointment. “Would another letter earn me another reward?”
Her pale eyes darkened, her cheeks turning the color of rose petals. “Yes.” Soft, breathy—the eagerness behind that word stirring his own desire.
“Then I’ll have to write again.” Although, perhaps she might kiss him even without another letter written…
“Yes,” she said again, leaning toward him. She set her hand on his thigh, the pressure increasing as her mouth closed the distance to his, until—
He gasped, his back bowing off the sofa, barely biting back something very foul in Spanish.
“Oh, I’m so sorry!” In a flash, she straightened away. “I should have known. So stupid of me—”
He laid a hand on her arm to stop her. “No, it’s all right. The pain is—it’s not usually so bad. Too much sitting and reading.” There was no shame in the admission—only regret that the moment had been ruined.
“Let’s get you back to your room,” she said. “Put your arm round my neck.”
Together, they levered him off the sofa, her stout little self supporting him just as she had on that camping trip. Once they’d returned to his room, he gratefully flopped onto the bed, throwing an arm over his head.
“Shall I fetch the doctor?” she asked, once again the efficient Nurse McCallahan. “He could prescribe something for the pain.”
Joaquin shook his head. “I only need to rest.”
“If there’s nothing else?”
He opened his eyes. He wasn’t letting her leave on that note. “I’m going to write that letter tomorrow. So you’d best be prepared.”
A stunned smile lit her features for half a moment before she wrestled them back into submission. “I’ll leave you to rest then.”
“Oh, there is one last thing.”
She paused halfway to the door, all of her taut with anticipation. He let the moment hang, just long enough to make it delicious.
“If it hadn’t been for this damned pain,” he assured her, “I’d have kissed you senseless back there. Earned or no.”
She took a sharp, short inhale—which hit him right in the belly—then hurried out of the room.
San Diego. This letter was going to San Diego.
All right, with this one Mae would admit her disappointment. She turned the envelope in her hands, the edges sharp against her fingertips, aware of Joaquin’s gaze on her.
She’d come across him in the sunroom as he was sealing up the letter. The presence of three other patients speaking quietly across the room tempered her wild exhilaration at finding him there.
He was standing much too close to her, his tooth-powder-scented breath washing over her like an astringent kiss. “Would you post that for me?” he asked in a tone so low, so dark, he might have been asking her to undress.
She slid a quick glance at the other patients, who’d taken no notice of them. “Of course,” she said, her nursely aplomb failing her. Her fingers wrapped around the letter, but he kept hold of it, both their hands clutching it.
“And then…” The silence stretched as he refused to finish that thought, her imagination filling in all kinds of thrilling things he might want for his boon, some of them involving the two of them nude.
Which of course would never happen, but her imagination refused to listen.
“Yes?” She couldn’t let that silence pull at her any longer.
“Help me to my room.” A quick flash of a smile from him as he released the letter. “Please?”
It was the please that melted her.
When she returned from adding the letter to the pile of post going out tomorrow, the other patients had left. He was sitting in one of the lounge chairs, eyes closed, the skin of his face drawn and white.
“Is it worse today?” she asked.
“No,” he said, opening his eyes.
“Did you call me back because you needed help?” She set her hands on her hips. “Or did you simply want to get me alone?”
His smile was boyish, at odds with the strain around his eyes. “A little of both.”
She’d miss that smile once she was gone from here. Her only consolation would be if he left as well.
She helped him to his room, enjoying the press of him against her more than she should have. Once he was lying down and as comfortable as she could make him, she went for the door.
“Could you stay?”
She paused and silently recited all the reasons why not.
I have rounds to finish. Charts to check. Syringes to sterilize.
And the most important of all: We might be caught.
“For a time.” She went to sit in the chair across from his bed.
He propped himself up on his elbows. “Does this count as my reward?”
She ought to say yes, to save them both from the potential of being caught. “No. We’re only visiting.”
“Tell me about your family.”
A request that intently spoken deserved a direct answer. “My mother had too many children, too young. In all my memories of her, she’s working. Until she fell ill.”
“And your father?”
She shifted, the chair hard against her thighs. “I never knew him. He… he wasn’t married to my mother, whoever he was.”
“Ah.” His voice was gratifyingly free of censure.
“And your family?” she asked, taking hold of a boldness she shouldn’t even be touching. “Why don’t they visit?”
“I thought it was because I’d survived. Survived but wasn’t whole, hearty, any longer.” He shifted on the bed, but not as if he was in physical pain. “I might have driven them away as well.”
“How?” she asked tartly.
“They brought me my old clothes—I refused to wear them. They brought me my books—I refused to read them. They brought me the walking stick—I refused to use it. Perhaps they thought I was refusing them as well.”
She folded her hands into her apron, her thumb finding a callus on her right forefinger and worrying at it. “Sometimes, when patients are very ill or in severe distress, they say things they wouldn’t otherwise.” Her thumb stroked across that bit of roughness. “Perhaps you might explain that to your family.”
“Perhaps.” His voice was choked with some emotion she could not name.
“You’re no longer sick,” she said firmly. “If you wish your family to see you differently, you must behave with them differently.”
He raised his head to stare at her. “Are you the managing sort because you’re a nurse? Or are you a nurse because you’re the managing sort?”
She laughed softly. “Don’t attempt to distract from the fact that I’m right.”
A gong sounded from down the hall, the deep tones a reminder of where and who she was. She rose, smoothing her apron as she did. “That’s the dinner bell,” she said briskly. “I’ll see you at evening rounds.”
“Of course.” His gaze was thoughtful, steady. “Thank you for your help.”
“It was my pleasure.”
And it really was.
Joaquin turned the letter over and over in his hands, the address on the front winking maliciously at him.
James T. Ringwood, Esq., San Diego.
Mae would no doubt be along soon to hear the contents. He dreaded having to speak them aloud. Just the sight of the letter made his chest ache with shame.
Thanks to her, he’d begun to believe that he might be able to leave. That he could repair things with his family and live a life of his own as an independent man. The kind of life a man ought to lead.
Perhaps he might not ever marry or father children, but he could at least regain some of his dignity through a profession.
But the words of Mr. Ringwood, Esq., revealed all his imaginings to be just that—imaginings. For when he listened to his body rather than Mae, he knew he could not do it. He could not sit at a desk all day, every day. The pain would be too great.
He’d have to admit that to Mae. Reveal the contents of the letter and why all this could never be more than a game between them.
Melancholy threaded his heart like a thousand needle-sharp wires, worse than it had been before because he’d never hoped before. He’d thought himself too ruined to ever leave—but she’d said he wasn’t. He’d believed her for a time, but—
“Mr. Obregon?”
He’d never even heard her come into his room he’d been so deep in his despair.
She knelt by his bed, settling a hand on his knee. “Joaquin?”
She said his name all wrong, but it still sounded so right.
“I got a letter today.” He handed it to her, taking the coward’s way out. She’d have to read for herself rather than him speaking it aloud.
She read quickly, her pale head at just the right height for him to set his hand upon the cap covering her hair. Of course, he didn’t—she’d be angry that he’d mussed her uniform.
When she raised them, her blue eyes were alight with rage. “That man has no notion of what he speaks of! Reluctant to offer a position to a non-able-bodied man, indeed.” She snapped the letter closed, pinching the creases of it between her nails. “It’s well that he replied as he did; you’re better off not apprenticing with such a man.”
He hadn’t even opened his mouth to correct her, and already he ached. “Mae,” he said gently, “he’s right. I lack the stamina to work all day.”
“But… but that doesn’t mean you can’t work at all.”
Stubborn Mae. “But I wouldn’t earn enough to support a family.” His scar pulsed as he admitted this next: “Or even a wife.”
She turned her face away, her hand curling into a fist against his knee. “You wouldn’t need to support a wife. Only yourself.”
He wanted to touch her so badly, to turn her face back to his. But all he could do was say her name.
“Please,” she begged. “There must be someone else you can write to. Someone who would be happy to have you even for only a few hours a day. Please don’t get stuck here. I couldn’t bear to think of you remaining here forever.”
“I—” He found he could not fail her. Not when she was the only one who believed he could become something more than this. “There is one last person I could write to. An acquaintance of an acquaintance. But perhaps he would be willing.”
She turned to him, her eyes bright with unshed tears. “I’d give you any reward you demanded if you wrote to him.”
Her belief that he might be capable of more than rotting away here was reward enough. He leaned forward and brushed a kiss against her lips, uncaring if they were caught. “Of course I’ll write to him.” As if could he do anything else when she looked at him as she did, when she begged him so fervently.
He left unsaid that she ought not to hope for anything more.