With Valor And Devotion

The boy looked up hopefully. His hair was as straight as Mike’s was wavy and might have been cut with pinking shears it was so uneven. “Yeah, that’s what I gots.”

Kristin suppressed a smile. “I see.” But that wouldn’t help her to locate whatever adults were responsible for Randy. “Maybe he’ll experience a spontaneous cure by the morning. I’ve heard of that happening in cases like this.” She risked a glance at Mike. He looked troubled.

“Can I go to sleep now? I think it’s past my bedtime.”

“It certainly is.” Despite her vow to keep her emotional distance, she reached down and covered the boy with a light blanket, letting her hand linger in a caress. He was about the age Bobby would have…

She thrust the thought aside. “Do you want me to stay until they take you upstairs?”

His eyelids drooping, he shook his head.

Mike gestured that they should leave. Instinctively, Kristin knew she shouldn’t go anywhere with the man, not even as far as the nurses’ station. But it seemed childish to object.

He followed her out of the cubicle, a little too closely, she thought. She could feel his eyes on her, the heat of his body warming the air around her. Or maybe she just imagined that he’d slipped inside her personal space. Whatever the case, her skin flushed and the hairs on her nape rose. To her dismay, she suddenly wished she’d worn an austere business suit tonight instead of casual slacks and a boat-neck T-shirt. Protective armor to bolster her good sense would have been a good idea, too.

Behind her, Mike was fascinated by the sassy sway of her ponytail—like a determined red flag warning him off—in contrast to the inviting swing of her hips. A woman of contradictions, he suspected. But then, what woman wasn’t?

He smiled to himself. This one had green eyes, not bright like spring grass, but a deeper shade that made him think of a forest glade that held dark, painful secrets. An intriguing thought and more fanciful than was his usual style.

She stopped, turned abruptly, and he almost ran into her. A part of him wished he’d taken advantage of the opportunity to touch her, to see if her skin was as soft as it appeared. Maybe later….

She looked up at him with those deep, secret-filled eyes. “Did Randy tell you anything about who’d he’d been living with?”

“Nope, and I don’t think he’s going to either.”

Her nicely arched auburn brows lowered into a frown. “Why not?”

“The house had been vacant a long time. I’d guess they were squatters and maybe left him on his own while they went off to the movies or something. From what I saw, they didn’t have much in the way of possessions. Itinerants would be my guess and probably leery of the law.” He shrugged. “Maybe the cops can find out something from the neighbors but I wouldn’t bet my paycheck on it.”

“If I can’t find his family or a responsible adult, I’ll have to place him in foster care.”

“A typical bureaucratic response.”

She looked surprised by his sharp tone. “That’s how the system works. You can’t leave a child alone.”

“Sometimes it’d be better for the kid,” he muttered, knowing full well that wasn’t the case for a boy as young as Randy. Unless someone turned up, he’d become just another cog in the system, and a pretty damn helpless one at that. But Ms. McCoy—social worker—being on the other end of the stick, couldn’t fully understand that. “Maybe he’s already in the system. Maybe that was a foster family he was living with and he’d just as soon not go back.”

“Our foster families aren’t usually squatting in an empty house,” she said defensively. “They’re checked out better than that.”

“Usually.”

“Could he be a runaway?”

“Pretty young for that. And I think there was too much stuff in there for him to have carried it on his own—an old cot he slept on, a mattress in the master bedroom and some basic equipment in the kitchen.”

“Then it’s a mystery, isn’t it?” She glanced around as the double doors opened to the ambulance entrance and an elderly man was brought in on a gurney.

Addy swept past them with a clipboard and a tray of supplies for the new arrival.

“Hey, don’t wear out your dancing shoes, Addy,” Mike warned with a grin.

“Sugar, if you’re askin’, I’m dancing.” She laughed as she vanished into the examining room with the patient.

Mike smiled after her. He’d dated Addy a couple of times, his limit with most women. She was fun, full of laughter and a helluva good dancer. But he’d found if he saw a woman more than once or twice they got the wrong idea. A few laughs, a bottle of wine and a bouquet of flowers were all any woman could expect from him. A man who’d been raised in a dozen different foster homes in the same number of years didn’t know anything about commitment.

When he turned back to Kristin, she’d set her jaw in a stubborn line. “If you’ll excuse me, I’m going to call the police and ask them to check with the neighbors first thing in the morning. Maybe they can learn something of value.”

“Maybe,” he said noncommittally, wondering why she’d gone all torque-jawed on him. He didn’t usually have that effect on a pretty woman.

“Meanwhile, I’m sure you have other things to do. I’ll look in on Randy later to see that he’s settled comfortably in his room.”

With that, she turned on her heel and marched out of the emergency room. Mike watched the red semaphore wagging its danger signal. Definitely an intriguing woman. Too damn bad she was a social worker.

“Good lookin’, isn’t she?” Addy dropped a patient chart on the counter and unhooked her stethoscope from around her neck.

“You could say that. But I get the feeling she doesn’t like me very much.”

“What? A woman capable of resisting your charms? Bet that doesn’t happen often.”

“Nope, it doesn’t.” And Mike couldn’t quite help but think he’d enjoy the challenge of changing Kristin’s mind, no matter what her job was.

Chapter Two

Mike spent his day off on the boat he kept in the marina at Morro Bay. Something always needed to be done—the motor overhauled, the decks wiped clean, the scuba gear checked. Not that he objected. On a sunny day, it was a helluva nice way to spend some time—with the added bonus of frequent female companionship as women dropped by to say hello.

Funny how this time he’d compared them all to a green-eyed redhead he’d met only briefly in the emergency room. And they’d all come up short.

Now, as he parked his pickup behind Station Six the next morning, he was ready to get back to work on his twenty-four-hour eight-to-eight shift. He wasn’t an adrenaline junky, but he needed some serious work to keep his mind off a libido that had a will of its own. He was kind of hoping they’d be training on the tower today. A few trips up and down that sucker hauling a mile of hose over his shoulder and he’d sleep just fine tonight. No fantastic dreams featuring a redhead to interrupt his Zs.

Dressed in his uniform, duffle bag over his shoulder, he went inside, taking the stairs to the third-floor living quarters two at a time.

“Hail, our hero!” Virtually all of the members of C-shift were waiting for him in the dining hall along with every guy on B-shift, about to go off duty.

Mike halted in his tracks. “What’s going on?”

Logan Strong, a C-shift member of the ladder truck company, produced a huge picture pasted on a three-by-four-foot poster board, a blowup of a newspaper photo. Mike squinted, trying to make out the grainy reproduction.

“The fair city of Paseo del Real—or at least the press thereof—has declared you a hero,” Logan announced, grinning broadly. “Congratulations.”

Oh, shoot! The picture was of Mike carrying Randy to the ambulance, the kid wearing his helmet. The headline read, Hero Rescues Child from Fiery Inferno.

“Ah, come on, guys. I didn’t do anything—”

“You got that damn straight,” Jay Tolliver said. “I could have been the hero if you hadn’t pushed your way inside before me. Think how many points I would have made with Kim if you’d let me go first.”

Mike lowered his duffle to the floor. “You don’t need any points with your new bride, Tolliver. She’s already nuts over you, though we’ve gotta question her judgment in that regard.”

Jay laughed, and so did the rest of the crew.