Doctor Seduction

He threw back his dark head and laughed. “Points for honesty,” he said. “I like that. I’m Ricky Mercado, by the way.”

“Oh! I’ve heard of you.”

“Good or bad?”

“Bad, actually.” Had she really just said that?

He didn’t seem offended. “Well, I’ve reformed.”

“How much?” Cait almost choked on her tongue. Was she flirting again? Such a thing could only get her into hot water, especially with this man. She had to knock it off right now.

“Listen,” he said, motioning at the store, “if you were heading in there for something to drink, why don’t I spare you the trouble? I’d really like to take you out for a cocktail.”

Cait felt the sidewalk shift beneath her feet. He wanted to take her out? Just like that? “Thank you, no.”

“You’re sure?”

“I’ve got plans,” she lied, and was shocked at the ease with which the words rolled off her tongue.

“Too bad.”

He looked as if he meant it, she thought bemusedly. She took another step toward the liquor store. A man like Ricky Mercado would gobble her up whole. There was something dangerous about him, some mob connection if she remembered correctly, not to mention his very air. Then again, the mob in Mission Creek had been more or less dismantled over the summer.

Was she actually thinking about accepting his offer? Cait fled into the store before her tongue could betray her again.

After twenty minutes she finally made her choices—a cabernet and something intriguingly called cactus schnapps.

The cost exceeded the cash she had in her purse, as it was right before payday, so she had to use a credit card. Normally she only used credit cards for emergencies. She almost changed her mind, but the clerk was looking at her impatiently. Vowing to write a check for the balance that very night, before they could charge her interest, she handed over the plastic.

She’d never be able to buy her own home if she tossed money away on such things as interest payments on credit cards, she thought. Then she had the sudden realization that it hadn’t seemed very important when she’d been coming undone in Sam Walters’s arms.

“Stop!” she told herself. She had to stop dwelling on him! Cait pressed her hands to her cheeks.

The clerk stopped moving just as he was about to run the card through a little machine. “You don’t want to buy it, after all?”

“Of course I do.” Cait waved a hand impatiently. “Just finish there.”

Three minutes later she hurried back to her car with her purchases. When she got home, her landlady was pouring water on the flowers lining the walkway of the pretty white house on the street. Cait lived above the garage in the back. After she tucked her car into one of the spaces, she came out to find the elderly woman waving to her.

“Hello, Mrs. Brody!” she called back.

“What have you got there?” The old woman motioned to the bag in Cait’s arms.

“This?” Cait looked down at the bag. “I thought I’d have a glass of wine with supper.” She decided not to mention the cactus concoction.

She looked up in time to see the woman frown. Cait remembered too late that Mrs. Brody was a teetotaler.

“It’s been a particularly difficult week,” Cait added.

The woman’s expression softened. “Poor dear. What all happened to you in that man’s basement, anyway?”

“Nothing!”

The woman looked flabbergasted at the outburst. Cait turned tail and jogged to the steps at the side of the garage that led up to the second floor. She ran up them and closed the door hard and securely behind her.

The best thing she could do with herself now was prepare supper, she decided, and sip some wine while she cooked. She set the bag on her kitchen counter and hurried to the bedroom to change out of her scrubs.

It was a room she’d always cherished. There was a blue-and-white Amish wedding-ring quilt on the single bed. The furniture was pine and somewhat plain, but she’d added blue Cape Cod curtains to the single window and had warmed things up with a cheval mirror in one corner and a quaint antique washstand in the other. There were a few blue-silk flower arrangements, as well, and a solitary framed photo on the dresser of the mother she couldn’t remember.

Cait stripped out of her scrubs and shoved everything into the hamper just inside her closet door. A knock sounded at the front door at the same time.

Several months ago, such an event would have been preposterous—she never had visitors. But lately Tabitha Monroe had taken to stopping by without warning. Or it could be Mrs. Brody, she thought, to pass further opinion on her bottle of wine. It could even be Sam.

Her heart stalled.

Given their conversation this afternoon, she was no longer even remotely sure what he was capable of. Cait rushed to the dresser and dragged out a pair of shorts, hopping into them on her way to the closet. She snagged a short-sleeved blouse off a hanger and buttoned it with fumbling fingers as she headed back to the living room. She was about to pull open the door when everything inside her froze.

It could be Sam…or it could be Branson Hines. Or some other raving lunatic determined to unravel her life. “Hines is in jail,” she whispered resolutely. “And it can’t happen to the same woman twice in one lifetime.” Then again, why couldn’t it? Where was that written?

“Cait?” Tabitha’s voice came through the door. “I know you’re in there. Mrs. Brody said you just got home.”

Cait breathed again and threw the locks. She’d had two more installed yesterday, and though she didn’t remember doing it, she had obviously engaged all three when she’d come in a little while ago. “Hi,” she said.

The breeze plucked at Tabitha’s dark-blond curls. She held a large brown bag and she shoved it toward her. “I brought Chinese.”

Cait took the bag because she knew Tabitha would let go of it one way or the other. The hospital administrator was trying hard to improve on her workaholic tendencies, but she still had a waste-no-time edge to her. “I don’t like Chinese,” Cait protested.

“Everybody likes Chinese,” Tabitha scoffed. “Can I come in?”

Cait also knew from past experience that it would do no good to say no. And she actually liked Tabitha. Her friendly persistence just made her nervous. “Sure.” She stepped back from the door.

Tabitha swept inside. “I didn’t think you needed to be cooking on your first day back to work,” she said by way of explanation.

“I find cooking therapeutic.” But Cait carried the bag into the kitchen and peered into it before she set it down and returned to the living room. “There’s enough in there for five people!”

“Two,” Tabitha corrected. “I’m joining you. I’ve already been to visit Jake. I’ll go back to the hospital after we eat.”

At the mention of Jake White, Cait recalled that the cop had actually proposed to Tabitha. It left Cait with a vague, wistful feeling.

“How’s he feeling?” she asked. Jake had been shot rescuing Sam and her from Hines.

“He’s chipper. Eager to go home. How’s Billy?”

On cue, the cat belly-wormed his way out from beneath Cait’s dark-red Western-style sofa. “Not so chipper,” she said. “I think you cost him one of his lives.” Disputing that, the cat yawned and began cleaning himself as though he hadn’t a care in the world.

“How was I supposed to know he was going to freak out like that and nearly botch the rescue?” Tabitha went and gathered up the cat, crooning to him.

“Cats hate loud noises. Gunshots especially. Hostage scenes are not their favorite things.”