“Maybe I should just take a look while I’m here.” Idiot. Not your job! Leave now, before you touch her. If you touch her… She leaned forward and he put one hand on her hair even though he didn’t need to. He felt guilty, like one of those doctors who fondled patients on the sly. Her curls were as thick and soft as he imagined. He ran a thumb across her nape as he lifted the gauze to check the stitches. When she shivered a little he almost came undone. He replaced the bandage quickly and stepped back.
“They look good, Kat. And any scar won’t show unless you pull your hair up. I’d say you’re a very lucky lady to come away with just a scar, considering the fall you took. But you’ll need to take things easy for a while. No late nights and bar hopping. No tabletop dancing.”
She looked at him with that shuttered, slanted glance, and again he thought, Go, just go. Get out of here. This wasn’t the wanton tease from the club. This was a real girl and he felt even more strongly for her. Forget messing with her stitches, the medical small talk. He wanted to take her in his arms. Why this strange pull, this connection? Yesterday it had been all about the amazing body, the challenge of the frown. Now, he realized, it was about something more. She looked back down at her hands, a faint blush rising in her pale cheeks.
“I do appreciate your help. For you to stay all night… And I know I bled all over you.”
He shrugged and smiled. “You really know how to maim yourself. But you’re okay, and that’s all that matters.”
“Well… Thank you. I wouldn’t have liked to bleed out at the bottom of the stairs at Masquerade.”
“No. It wouldn’t have been a very dignified way to go.”
She looked up at him, her deep green eyes narrowed in a question. “You seem awfully young to be a surgeon.”
“Thank you. But I’m not that young.”
“You’re younger than every other surgeon I’ve ever seen.”
“And how many have you seen?”
She pursed her lips and he grinned by way of apology. “Okay, you’re right. I’m slightly younger than average. I started college early.”
“When you were twelve?”
“Not quite,” he hedged. He had been almost sixteen.
“You’re like Doogie Howser, huh? Child genius?”
“I was just really motivated. I always wanted to be a surgeon. My parents were both surgeons.”
“They were? They died?”
“They retired last year. Went off to spend their golden years in Aruba.”
“Oh, nice.”
Her Oh, nice was difficult to decipher. Approval? Derision? He mentally compared his serious, reserved parents with the effusive Elena Argounov. He loved his parents, but his childhood had been lonely, quiet. Solitary. He wondered what Kat’s childhood had been like, with her prodigious mother and all those women he’d assumed were sisters since they all looked like different versions of Kat.
“Did you make these?” Kat asked, turning to the window. Someone, perhaps her mother, had lined up all his little origami figures like soldiers on the windowsill beside her bed. He’d made a cat, a dog, a crane, a fish, a pig, a tiger and even a bird with flappable wings. Kid stuff. He could fold more complicated things, but that took a level of concentration he hadn’t possessed last night as he watched her sleep and obsessed about intracerebral hemorrhage and aggravated axonotmesis.
“Yeah. I’ve been making those for ages. I make them for kids sometimes before surgeries to calm their nerves.”
“You’re like Patch Adams.”
“Patch Adams. Doogie Howser. Any other celebrity doctors you’d like to compare me to?”
She laughed then, a weak laugh, but it was a laugh. He stared at the way her face changed when she smiled. It was over too soon.
“Do that again.”
“Do what?”
“Laugh. Or at least smile. I thought you weren’t capable of it.”
She snorted softly, with another quick smile that left him wanting more.
“I wonder what it would be like to see you laugh until you were breathless.” His words came without thought, without intention. She sobered and looked down at her hands, then back at him. They were still looking at each other when Elena returned.
“Ouft,” she sighed. “Gift shop is closed. But thank you for staying. You think she is okay? She go home soon?”
“Tomorrow, I expect,” Ryan said. “Her physician will be by to discharge her.”
Elena dug in her purse, brought out a business card and handed it to him.
“You come to our house so Ekaterina’s papa can give thanks to you. She is his princess. He will wish to thank you very much. He is not so strong in his mind now and he does not like hospitals, so he cannot come here,” she said. “You come and see us. Come for dinner.”
He looked down at the card. ELENA ARGOUNOV, FORTUNE-TELLER AND SPIRITUAL ADVISOR. And under that, in ornate, swirly script, “Show me your palm and I will tell you your future.”
“You call first if you like, let us know you are coming. A big boy like you, an important doctor has great appetite, yes? I cook lots of food.”
The phone number was there, the address too. Unbearable temptation.
“Thanks, Mrs. Argounov, but I have consultations, office hours. Surgeries of course, and then work at the club some evenings—”
“You call and you come,” Kat’s mother snapped in her inimitable style.
“Yes, I sure will,” he assured her. “When things slow down, I’ll call.”
But he wouldn’t call. He absolutely wouldnot call. Kat watched him pocket the card, watched the entire interaction with an ambivalent look on her face. Oh, her glorious curls and those lovely pouting lips he wanted to kiss.
Run, you idiot. Run.
Forget it. It’s too late.
Chapter Three
It took over a week for Kat to get back on her feet. Then she started work from home, which was impossible with all the noise, so she returned to working at the office probably sooner than she should have. Her stitches itched
