The stretcher wheels made a steady dull rumble on the tile floor. Feeling a little like a gangster’s moll, Kay let her eyes flicker in Mitch’s direction. His face…well, he didn’t look much like a gangster, but beyond that she wasn’t exactly reassured.
His hair was Irish black, silky blue-black, brushed back. One of his eyebrows seemed slightly higher than the other, adding character to his features…but his face already had plenty of character. The man had known pain. His skin was wind-weathered and ruddy with vitality, but the network of lines around his eyes was deeply embedded, and something had etched a jagged V between his brows.
Still, he had the most beautiful eyes. Old eyes, haunted with experience, dark and emotional. His face was angular, with a very straight nose, a clearly defined chin and cheekbones, a broad forehead.
And his smile was utterly disarming. A slow, lazy twist of his lips totally captured her attention, until she realized the smile was directed at her. He had caught her studying him; he was amused. And those wicked eyes just kept on looking.
Kay averted her own gaze. One would almost think she was nervous, the way her pulse was suddenly thumping in her throat. Well, maybe she was, but not because some stranger had the sexiest eyes this side of the Rockies. It was simply fear of getting caught with the gurney.
No one paid them any attention until they reached the nurses’ station. Kay held her breath as they wheeled close to the Formica counter. Rhoda’s eyes lifted up. Then her body did the same.
“Mitch? What the devil are you up to now? You just take that stretcher-”
“Sssh.” Mitch raised one finger to his lips and wheeled on past her.
“That leg was swollen this morning-”
“It’s up on four pillows.”
“You have that child back in his room in ten minutes!” the nurse hissed furiously after him, but Kay could hear the laughter in her voice. Obviously, it was at least unofficially all right for Peter to be out of bed for a short time. And Mitch was not unknown to Rhoda.
Offhand, Kay expected Mitch was not unknown to a lot of women. One look from those dark eyes and most women would turn to putty in his hands. Kay, of course, was not susceptible. Sex without commitment was one of her taboos.
His eyes seared hers again as they rounded another corner, and she wondered vaguely if that wasn’t rather a prudish philosophy for a twenty-seven-year-old woman.
What was a night? Who’d know? Her mother was three thousand miles away.
That’s not funny, the puritanical part of her brain announced repressively.
They maneuvered the stretcher into the elevator. A few minutes later, they were on the ground floor. Orderlies and nurses passed, then a doctor. To heck with it; Kay offered a brazenly cheerful “hello” to the last. In for a dime, in for a dollar.
In front of room 104, Mitch gently pushed the gurney against the wall, adjusted the pillows under Peter’s leg and disappeared inside the hospital room, leaving Kay in the corridor with Peter.
He seemed to be gone years before a feminine voice softly called out, “Petie?”
Peter promptly burst into tears, crushing Kay’s hand so tightly he hurt her. “Mom?”
“Honey, I’m fine. I miss you, darling. And in just three more days…”
They talked, mother and son. They weren’t able to see each other, but it was enough. Mitch came back out and leaned against the doorway, staring at Kay. She knew darn well there were tears in her eyes. Not the kind of tears that fell, just the kind that welled there, causing a soft blur. She lifted her chin, not really caring a whit if he saw them.
Any one of them could have done it, Kay reflected. The nurses, Peter’s doctor, his mother’s. She should have thought of it herself. All the child had wanted was to know his mother was all right.
Mitch had simply walked in and done it. No fanfare, no applause.
He was an extraordinary-looking man, though she couldn’t define why. He looked too old for his years, far too grave. Almost as if he didn’t know how to laugh, yet he obviously had a sense of humor. And a sense of mischief. Those deep, worn lines didn’t go with a man who stole stretchers and broke rules. Kay had a definite feeling that Mitch didn’t live by the rules. Anyone’s. Except his own.
One might be inclined to pursue the man, if one were a brazenly forward type of woman. Kay, of course, had more decorum.
Chapter Two
“You certainly know your way around the clinic,” Kay remarked conversationally. “I don’t know where you found the gurney, and I wouldn’t have had the least idea how to elevate his bed-”
“Most hospitals are pretty much the same,” Mitch replied.
Kay waited, but nothing else was forthcoming. “You come here often?”
“Every other Saturday.”
“Same here.” At the sudden silence, Kay said softly, “Peter will be leaving soon.”
“And so will his mother.”
They’d already been dumped out of the elevator and had now covered the distance to the hospital entrance. Through the glass doors, Kay stared out at the steadily pouring rain. Conversation was not exactly going like a house afire. Mitch answered in more than monosyllables, but he certainly volunteered very little.
The less he volunteered, the more curious Kay became. Mitch was proving to be a very mysterious man. Kay had never had a high tolerance for mysteries, particularly when they were packaged with magic eyes and endless shoulders. Actually, the sex appeal was only part of it.
Mitch came across as indomitable and self-contained.
She liked his quiet assurance and she loved the way he’d handled Petie and she was increasingly captivated by his lazy, disarming smile. But those shadowed pain lines on his forehead and around his eyes bothered her; and for a man who’d threatened to make her personal earth move with his eye-to-eye contact, he was suddenly turning shy. No man with looks like that could conceivably be shy-not around women. Something about him proclaimed a loner-and yet he didn’t seem the type.
“You come to the hospital just for the children?” she asked.
Mitch flashed her a quick smile, an acknowledgment of her nosiness; the wry look was almost enough to make her flush with embarrassment.
Except that his eyes trailed down to her lips, as if he were evaluating their kissability, their touchability. The heat in her cheeks took a dive, settling in far more private regions. Not a reaction she was used to from the simple glance from a stranger.
“I have the feeling you know your share about kids stuck in hospital beds,” he said quietly.
Diverted from her wayward fantasies, she nodded, turning serious. “My little sister has Crohn’s disease. A digestive ailment, not common, almost impossible to diagnose…” Kay took a deep breath, trying to control the sadness in her voice and sound perfectly matter-of-fact. “There was nothing the hospitals could do for her here, so about five years ago my family moved to Connecticut to be near a specialist. Jana and I were always so close…”
“She spent a great deal of time in hospitals?” he probed gently.
“Far too much.” Kay’s eyes darkened perceptibly. “And no, my coming here on Saturday mornings doesn’t help her at all when she’s that distance away, but somehow I just feel better doing it. I can remember all too well what it was like for her.”
“But you didn’t go with your family when they moved?”
“No,” She tugged the shoulder strap of her purse higher. “I visit often-so do they. If they’d needed me, I would have gone, too, but I couldn’t really help and I was settled here with a job. Plus, at the time, I was engaged.” The “not-anymore” was implicit. Regardless, she seemed to have said something wrong, because Mitch abruptly pushed open the door. The half-lazy smile was gone from his mouth. An impenetrable neutral expression had replaced it.