Stunned, she drew back, but he followed, crowding her against the closed door with his body and his anger. “Don’t you get it? You could’ve been killed out there.” He stabbed a finger towards the atrium, then placed his palm flat against the door beside her head, effectively trapping her.
“Well, I wasn’t, thanks to you,” she fired back. “That’s why HFH doctors work in teams, remember? So we can watch each other’s backs.” She shoved at his chest with both hands, but he was like sun-warmed granite, hard and immovable. “Damn it, let me go!”
She saw the change in his eyes, a flash of resignation and a wash of heat. Her body answered the call before she was even aware of receiving it, and he bent close and whispered, “I can’t.”
Then he kissed her, and all that restless, edgy energy redirected itself to her lips, and to the places where their bodies merged. Her palms burned where they rested on his coveralls. Almost without volition, her fingers curved into the material and held fast.
The gap of seven years was bridged in that first instant of contact. Her lips parted on a sigh as they were covered with his, the touch surprisingly gentle for such a hard, elemental man.
She dug her fingers in deeper, feeling the wall of his chest beneath the coarse coverall material. Unsatisfied, she slid one hand up, into the vee of his unbuttoned uniform, and found warm, resilient flesh covered with a smattering of hair.
Warm flesh, not hot. He’d been hot before, burning with fever and smelling faintly of exotic spices and sickness. The memory seared her with excitement and a dull undercurrent of shame.
“Nia.” He broke the kiss for a moment to search her eyes. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done that, but that scene in the atrium scared the hell out of me.” He pressed his lips to her temple, like he’d done the morning he’d sent her back to her father. “Please. If you’ve ever forgiven what I did to you, to your father, please give me this. Please pull out of Investigations and find something safer to do.”
His tone, and the casual caress, stabbed straight into her heart, which she’d long ago tried to armor against the memory of Rathe McKay. But his words brought a wash of pure, clean anger to chase away the thrill of his touch. “Something safer?” She cursed in Arabic and had the satisfaction of seeing him wince. “What is your definition of safe? Should I spend the rest of my days barefoot, pregnant and waiting for my man to come home?”
He let her go and stalked away, stopping on the opposite side of the desk. “No, of course not.” He stared at a generic poster of a cheerful-looking palm tree shading an empty beach. “But this isn’t what your father wanted for you. He didn’t want you working dangerous assignments for HFH, and he didn’t want you involved with—” He broke off and cursed. “He didn’t want you involved with any of this.”
The pain pulsed in her heart and low in her back. “Don’t you dare speak of my father. You have no right.”
He grimaced. “Think what you will, but Tony was the best friend I ever had. Yours was the closest thing I ever had to a family.”
“Yet you abandoned us,” Nia said quietly, hating that her voice broke when she said, “You abandoned me. My father.”
“I did what I thought was best.”
“You did what came naturally.” She turned away, betrayal and need tangling together in a messy ball in her chest. “You ignored the people who loved you. Just like in Tehru.”
There was a beat of silence. Another. The room chilled.
Nia couldn’t believe she’d said that. Couldn’t believe she’d even thought it. Her anger fled from a wash of shame, and she stretched out a hand. “Rathe, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—”
He stepped away, eyes blank. “Sure you did. And you’re right, at least about what happened with Maria. Which proves my point. Women don’t belong in war zones. They don’t belong in dangerous situations. And they sure as hell shouldn’t traipse around the world looking for trouble.” He scowled and looked away. “Quit HFH while you can, Nadia. Start a medical practice somewhere safe. Pediatrics in a small town, maybe, or a GP near your mother. You’re not cut out for this life.”
She hissed through her teeth. “Because I’m a woman?”
He nodded shortly. “This isn’t going to work. I can’t mentor you if I have to keep saving you from jumping on the back of a moving laundry van or being knifed in the damn lobby.” He reached for the doorknob, opened the door he’d pressed her against minutes earlier while they kissed. “I’ll call Jack and ask him to reassign you. After what just happened, I’m sure he’ll agree it’s for the best. You’re simply not tough enough for Investigations.”
She lifted her chin. “You have no idea how tough I am, McKay. Don’t think you know me because you knew my father.”
“I know enough,” he said flatly, still not meeting her eyes.
“Fine,” she snapped. “But don’t bother calling Wainwright. I’ll do it.” She turned her back, lifted the phone and waited pointedly for him to leave. When she heard the door close behind him, she lowered the handset and pressed both hands flat to the desk as the fight drained out of her.
This assignment wasn’t anything like she’d imagined it would be.
She’d had it all planned out, how she’d impress the senior investigator with her quick wits and—if necessary—her guts. How they would solve the case in record time and shock Wainwright.
And if news of her success reached Rathe McKay in some far-off land, she’d imagined he might be happy for her. A little proud. And maybe, just maybe, he would think of her and regret dismissing her twice—once when he’d pushed her from his bed and again later when he’d brusquely refused to see Tony that last time.
But nothing about this job had turned out right. Nothing.
Nia sighed and picked up the phone. She stabbed Wainwright’s number and waited while his secretary put her through.
He sounded concerned. She’d never called him during an assignment before. “Nia? What’s wrong? Do you have a problem?”
She tightened her fingers on the receiver and wished there was another way. “No, Jack. You have a problem.”
IN A SERVICE ELEVATOR headed down to the depths of Boston General, Rathe rubbed his chest where the skin felt tight and tender. An odd sensation flooded through him. It was shame, perhaps, and disappointment that Nia had agreed to be reassigned. It surprised him that she’d given in so easily.
Don’t think you know me, she’d said, but he knew enough. He knew that she had grown into a beautiful woman—a beautiful younger woman, though the ten years between them didn’t seem as important now as they had before. And he knew that the kiss they’d shared upstairs would haunt him once she was gone, just as the memory of her touch had stayed with him long after he’d hopped on an airplane to wherever, with the imprint of Tony’s fist tattooed on his jaw.
The elevator doors opened and Rathe stepped out, remembering that day and the pain. The subbasement echoed with a noisy quiet, filled with hisses of steam and the hum of machinery nearly below the level of his hearing. Above the background he heard a whisper of sound. A cough or perhaps a footstep.
He tensed. The skin on the back of his neck tightened, though there was no logical reason for it. Any number of hospital personnel could be in the subbasement for legitimate reasons.
But his instincts told him otherwise.
With a flash of gratitude that Nia was safe upstairs and soon to be assigned to another HFH division, he eased closer to the puke-green cinder block wall and crept toward the corner up ahead, where a second corridor branched off the main hallway. The noise came again, and this time there was no mistaking it. Running footsteps.
“Damn!” Discarding stealth for speed, Rathe sprinted around the corner. Ahead, a tall, navy-clad figure disappeared