The Greatest Risk

She rolled out from under him and onto her knees. The skirt was indeed stuck. She should have never taken Dr. Strong’s advice to use only half doses of NoWait oil.

“You are already nearly the perfect size, my dear,” he had explained to her, his sincere brown eyes making her feel as if she was the most beautiful woman in the world. “Apply a half dose of the oil behind your ears for its nutritional value.”

If she’d taken the full dose, her skirt wouldn’t be bunched up around her hips and refusing to move.

Her attacker’s grin had evolved into a deep chuckle. If he wasn’t wheelchair-bound, she would probably hit him for that chuckle, and for the frank and insolent way he was evaluating parts of her legs that, to date, had only been shown at the beach.

“Impertinent,” he repeated slowly, as if he was trying on a new label to see if he liked it. She suspected he did.

She frowned disapprovingly at him.

“Are you okay?” he asked, propping himself up on one elbow. His eyebrows arched wickedly as if he had taken a front-row seat at the peep show.

“No, I am not okay,” she said through clenched teeth. “I am exposing myself to half the hospital!”

He suddenly seemed to get it that she was not finding this situation nearly as amusing as he was. He shoved himself upward and then leaped lightly to his feet. He held an arm down to her.

She stared at him, astonished, as if he was a biblical character who had folded up his cot and walked.

“You aren’t handicapped!” She ignored his arm and rocked back from her kneeling position to sitting, hoping that changing position would help her untangle the skirt where it bound her legs. The skirt, however, was determined to thwart her. When she got home tonight, she was rubbing a whole bottle of NoWait behind her ears!

He folded arms over a chest she now saw was massive. He had on a blue hospital gown that bound the muscles of his arms as surely as her skirt was binding her thighs, his result being far more attractive than hers. Underneath the gown, thank God, he had on a faded pair of blue jeans. He watched her undignified struggles with infuriating male interest.

“It’s against the law to pretend to be handicapped,” she told him, though she had no idea if it was or not.

“Handicapped?” He followed her glance to the overturned wheelchair. “Oh, that.”

He watched her for a moment longer, then, apparently unable to stand it, moved quickly behind her and without her permission put his hands under her armpits and set her on her feet.

For some ridiculous reason an underarm deodorant jingle went through her head. She hoped, furiously, ridiculously, she wasn’t damp under her arms.

“You were driving like a maniac,” she said, yanking herself away from him to hide her discomfort at how it had felt to be lifted by him, so easily, as if she were a feather, as if the NoWait could gather dust in her bathroom cabinet forever.

“And you weren’t watching where you were going,” he said, coming back around to face her, looking down at her, smiling with an easy confidence and charm that might have made her swoon if he wasn’t so damned aggravating.

She glared at him. She bet that smile had been opening doors—and other things—for him his entire life.

How dare he be so incredibly sexy, and so darned sure of it?

“Are you saying this was my fault?” she demanded.

“Fifty-fifty?” he suggested with aggravating calm.

“Oh!”

“Mr. August!”

He turned toward the voice. Maggie turned, too. Hillary Wagner, a nurse Maggie knew slightly from her own work as a social worker at Children’s Connection, an adoption agency and fertility clinic that was affiliated with this hospital, was coming toward them, looking very much like a battleship under full steam.

Apparently here was a woman who was immune to the considerable charm radiating off Mr. August. “What on earth have you been up to now?”

“Remember the nurse from One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest?” he asked Maggie in an undertone.

Maggie sent him a look. Was he an escapee from the psych ward, then?

Hillary took in the upturned wheelchair, and her tiny gray eyes swept Maggie’s disheveled appearance.

“Mr. August, you’ve been racing the wheelchairs again!” she deduced, her tone ripe with righteous anger. “And this time you’ve managed to cause an accident, haven’t you?”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said, and hung his head boyishly, but not before giving Maggie a sideways wink.

“Mr. August, really! You cannot be racing wheelchairs down the hallways. Who were you racing with? Don’t tell me it was Billy Harmon.”

“Okay. You won’t hear it from me.”

“Don’t be flip, Mr. August. He’s a very ill boy. Which way did he go?”

“I think I caught a glimpse of him wheeling off that way in a big hurry when I had my, er, collision. Frankly, he looked better than I’ve ever seen him look, not the least ill.”

“You are not a doctor, despite that horrible prank you pulled, visiting all the poor ladies in maternity.”

“Isn’t impersonating a doctor illegal?” Maggie asked.

“It certainly is!” Hillary concurred.

But he ignored Hillary and turned to Maggie, not the least chastened. “What are you—a lawyer? I wasn’t impersonating a doctor. I found a discarded lab jacket and a clipboard. People jumped to their own conclusions.”

“You are a hazard,” Hillary bit out.

“Why, thank you.”

“It wasn’t a compliment! Billy is sick, Mr. August, and even if he wasn’t, wheelchair racing is not allowed. Do you understand?”

“Aye, aye, mon capatain, strictly forboden.” He managed to murder both the French and German languages.

Maggie wanted to be appalled by him. She wanted to look at him with the very same ferocious and completely uncharmed stare that Hillary was leveling at him.

Unfortunately, he made her want to laugh. But it felt to Maggie as if her very life—or at least her professional one—depended on hiding that fact.

Hillary drew herself to her full height. “I could have you discharged,” she said shrilly.

“Make my day,” he said, unperturbed by her anger. “I’ve been trying to get out of this place for a week.”

“Oh!” she said. She turned to Maggie. “Are you all right? Maggie, isn’t it? From Children’s Connection? Oh dear, your skirt is—”

“Very attractive,” Mr. August said.

The skirt continued to be bound up in some horrible way that was defying Maggie’s every attempt to get it back where it belonged.