Crossing the Line

The orderly made a strangling noise. His face was red, his eyes bulging. His fingers loosened and he dropped the rubber bowie knife smeared with a theatrical solution simulating blood. The knife bounced harmlessly against the tile.

“What in the hell do you think you’re doing?” Elle demanded of the stranger, her body shot full of fear. “Let go of Ricky before you kill him.”

The stranger’s gaze pierced her so thoroughly she felt a breath-stealing blur of heated intensity.

“It’s a drill.” Elle glowered and laid her hands on her hips. “You’re suffocating my orderly.”

“Oh.” His shoulders lowered, and for the briefest of moments the stranger looked sheepish.

He let Ricky go.

The orderly bolted across the room, hand to his neck. “Not cool, dude,” he croaked. “Not cool.”

The nurses behind the desk rose to their feet, dusting off the seats of their scrubs pants. The two “bodies” on the floor sat up. One was the E.D. front desk ward secretary, sixty-eight-year-old Maxine Woodbury, who loved Confidential Rejuvenations so much she ignored the fact that she was past retirement age and just kept on working.

The second “murder victim” was the affable hospital janitor, Carlisle Jones. Carlisle was the father of five, and he frequently moonlighted as an extra in Austin-based movies and television commercials. He’d appeared in three of Sandra Bullock’s films and was on a first-name basis with Matthew McConaughey. Carlisle was always up for a starring role in Elle’s disaster-preparedness plans.

Everyone eyed the stranger speculatively.

“I didn’t realize it was a drill,” he muttered.

“So you think you’re what?” Elle folded her arms over her chest and assessed him with a glare. “TheArmaniAvenger?”

He cracked a smile, albeit a brief one. “I subdued the attacker.”

“You caught him by surprise. Do you know how irresponsible that was? Ever heard the adage that a gentle word turns away wrath? If Ricky had been a real patient and the nurses real hostages…” Elle shook her head.

The stranger put a hand to the left side of his chest. It was a quick, slight gesture, barely noticeable. But Elle, who had grown up the daughter, sister, granddaughter and niece of cops, had the strangest feeling he was wearing a shoulder holster underneath that fancy, dove-gray pinstripped silk suit. It was a gesture that said if the hostage situation had been real, he would have shot the suspect.

But her instincts about him and the image he projected didn’t fit.

Oh, the man looked like he could be a cop—he possessed the right posture, the right air of self-assurance, the “no bullshit” eyes. Like he’d seen too much of the world, knew too much to ever really trust anyone again.

What didn’t jive were the suit and the hair and the platinum watch and the way he seemed to be biting his tongue to keep from saying what was really on his mind.

She hated to admit it, but he intrigued her.

Plus, he was exceptionally handsome. Not that she let good looks sway her opinion of someone.

He leaned toward her, narrowing the gap between them. His gaze was level and she felt it again.

Something oddly exciting.

The chemistry surged up. A rush of hormones that told her sex with this man would be very good indeed. She experienced the knowledge in her lungs, in the pit of her stomach, between her legs.

It was more than his coal-black, stylishly cut hair. More than the tawny eyes and the angular bow-shaped lips she was already imagining grazing softly across the nape of her neck. More than the sexy cleft in his hard, masculine chin. Nervously she raised a hand to her hairline and averted her eyes from his face.

He felt it, too.

She saw it in the almost imperceptible quickening of the pulse at the hollow of his throat. Elle flicked her gaze back to his.

His eyes narrowed, but his pupils widened. He was struggling for control, trying to recover without her noticing he’d been affected, trying to hide that he was interested.

Very interested.

“My goal was to defuse the situation as quickly as possible,” he said, finally answering the question she’d posed. “Ever hear the adage that actions speak louder than words?”

He was throwing her words back at her. Giving as good as he got. Cop talk. He sounded like her parents and her brothers and her grandfather and her uncles.

“Do you always act first and ask questions later?”

“If need be.”

“Seems like a dangerous way to live.” She raised an eyebrow. It was almost as if he knew she’d pegged him. A cop trying to slip into someone else’s skin. Was he undercover? But why would there be an undercover cop at Confidential Rejuvenations? Could it have anything to do with the series of unfortunate events that had been going on at the hospital?

Nah, she was jumping to conclusions, reading something into his behavior that wasn’t there. Probably he was just like her—raised around policemen and steeped so long in the culture of law enforcement he behaved like a cop even when he wasn’t one.

“A flaw of mine.”

Now that definitely wasn’t coplike, readily admitting a shortcoming. But she found it appealing. Mark had never once admitted he was wrong, not even when she’d caught him red-handed with Cassandra. Her ex-husband had tried to turn it around, make his cheating Elle’s fault by saying she’d been too absorbed with her work.

The jackass.

“And,” the stranger continued. “I apologize for disturbing your drill.”

Admitting a fault and apologizing for it? From an alpha guy like this? She didn’t buy it. He was trying too hard to make her like him.

Why?

“Who are you?” She cocked her head upward and crossed her arms over her chest again.

“Dante,” a voice from behind Elle boomed. “You made it!”

Elle didn’t have to turn to see who was speaking. She’d spent five years of her life listening to that voice. A voice that had made promises he never intended on keeping.

The voice of her rat bastard ex-husband, Mark Lawson.

Elle gritted her teeth and tried to tamp down her resentment. A year ago, just when she thought Mark was finally ready to start a family, after she had put him through medical school, worked double shifts while he completed his residency in psychiatrics, he had dumped her for one of his patients. A twenty-one-year-old actress named Cassandra Roberts.

Cassandra, bless her little heart, couldn’t act her way out of a paper bag. But she was blond, beautiful and one shade above anorexic. Plus, her daddy was a big-wheel movie exec, and Mark had always been enamored of money, glitz and glamour.

Mark moved around Elle as if she didn’t exist and clasped the stranger in a bear hug. “Dante, man, you look great.”

So this was Dante Nash. Mark’s college roommate, and the newest surgeon to join the staff of Confidential Rejuvenations.

Just her luck.

Back when she and Mark were married and he would occasionally get drunk and chatty, he would reminisce about his college days at the University of Texas. During those times he’d tell of the antics he and Dante had gotten into, recounting tales of their prowess on the football field.