She left her finished coffee in the cup holder, locked her car and walked to the back door, where she let herself in with her key and reached for the light switch.
Click!
But nothing happened.
She hit it again, but the rooms remained dark, not even the few security lamps glowing. And it was colder than usual in the offices.
The damned circuit breaker!
She’d like to wring her lowlife, tightwad of a landlord’s neck! How many times had she complained, even ordering out an electrician once herself?
“Great,” she muttered.
She knew the layout of the offices, of course, and she had a flashlight in her desk drawer, so she worked her way through the back hallway and past the examination rooms, which somehow appeared dangerous and slightly sinister, the odd shapes of the equipment looming like robotic monsters and sending her already vivid imagination into overdrive.
It’s just the damned lights.
Fingers running along one wall, she eased past the exam rooms and around the corner. She stubbed her toe on the edge of the freestanding scales, then bit her tongue to keep from letting out a yowl.
She did, however, curse under her breath.
All the electronic equipment, the phones and fax machines and computers, usually gave off a bit of light from the buttons, which reminded the users that they were plugged in and waiting, but no little green or blue lights glowed. The rabbit warren of rooms was completely and utterly dark, save for those rooms with windows, where the faint light from the streetlamps slid through the slats of the windows and striped the floors and opposing walls with thin, watery illumination.
The place was creepier than she expected, but with only a little trouble, she found the door to her office and pushed it open. Her eyes had adjusted to the semidark, and she made her way to her desk and opened the second of a stack of drawers to her right, her fingers delving into the dark space where she kept extra supplies.
The tips of her fingers touched the ridged handle of the flashlight, and she only prayed that the batteries weren’t dead. With a click, she turned on the weak beam, which was just enough to help guide her to the mechanical closet, where the main switch had flipped.
Weird.
Usually the switch to the outlets in the front office would snap off, but the rest of the rooms were unaffected. Then again, this old wiring probably hadn’t been up to code since the Kennedy administration.
Throwing the main switch, along with the security lights, she heard the furnace rumble to life.
Bam! Bam! Bam!
A loud pounding echoed through the rooms.
She slammed the door to the closet shut, realizing Trace O’Halleran and Eli were already here. Sure enough, she heard Trace’s voice boom through the walls. “Dr. Lambert? Kacey?”
“Coming!” She was already hurrying along the hallway and through the front reception area, snapping on banks of fluorescents, which flickered before offering up any real illumination. “Sorry,” she said quickly. “I’m having trouble with the electricity here. The circuit breaker is always flipping. A real pain in the behind.” Then, as he walked inside, she said to the boy, “Hey, Eli. How are you feeling?”
He didn’t answer, and she could see as the lights began to fill the offices with illumination that he was feverish. He coughed loudly, and he winced. “Complains of a sore throat,” Trace said.
“Let’s take a look.” She twisted the dead bolt behind them and said, “Come on, Eli.” The boy was wearing pajamas, a jacket, and was wrapped in a sleeping bag. Once in the examination room, she took his temperature and other vitals, looked down his throat and ears, and listened to his lungs. All the while Trace stood leaning against the counter, his fingers gripping its edge.
She forced a smile. “I think we need to get you into the hospital,” she said, trying to sound encouraging.
“Hospital?” Trace repeated.
“Noooo!” Eli, taking a cue from his father, began to protest but ended up only with another coughing fit that made him cringe and his eyes water.
“I think yes.” She glanced toward Trace, silently suggesting he support her on this. “It’s just to make sure you’re going to get better as fast as possible.”
“Sounds like a plan,” Trace said.
Eli’s face crumpled as he had another coughing fit.
“Hurts, doesn’t it?” she said to the boy. “I know. You’ll feel better.”
“You’ll come with me?” Eli asked.
“Of course,” Kacey assured him. “I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”
“I don’t have to stay there.”
“For a while,” she said, “but let’s figure that part out once we get there, okay?” To Trace, she added, “I’ll meet you at the ER at St. Bart’s, and we’ll get him admitted.”
“You got it.”
Two hours later Eli was in a hospital bed, hooked up to an IV, pronounced “stable,” and sleeping soundly. The nursing staff was taking care of his boy and had promised to call Trace in the morning and keep Kacey in the loop. From what Trace got out of it, his son still had bronchitis, along with strep throat and possible pneumonia. Kacey had insisted the boy stay overnight where he could be monitored, his fever tended, and Trace was a little relieved, though he wanted to camp out in his son’s room on the one uncomfortable chair.
“I’ll look in on him before I go to the clinic tomorrow,” Kacey promised as they walked out of the main lobby of the hospital and into the parking lot, where several cars were scattered around and the sky was thick with clouds. A cold breeze skated down the canyon where the river, far below, cut through the shimmering lights of the town.
“He won’t like being here.”
“Who does?” She glanced back at the building, lights glowing upward for three stories, a garland of fresh cedar bows draped over the portico. “But he should be out tomorrow, I’d think.”
He walked her to her car, and as she opened the door, Trace grabbed her by the crook of the arm, holding her back a second. “Thanks, Kacey,” he said.
“No problem.”
“I mean it.”
She looked up at him expectantly, turning her face so that as the first flakes of snow fell from the sky, they caught in her eyelashes and melted against her cheeks.
In the bluish lights from the security lamps, she appeared a little ghostlike, her skin pale, her eyes a shade darker than they were in daylight. For half a heartbeat, he was reminded of Leanna.
Or was it Jocelyn?
A chill settled in his guts. “You’re more than welcome, Trace,” she said and smiled. “I’m glad you called. Eli needed to be here.”
“You could have just advised me to bring him to the hospital. You went a step further.”
“Yeah, well, maybe I wanted to see him,” she said with a smile that touched his heart. In that second, he experienced an urge to kiss her. While the snowfall increased, fat flakes dancing around them, he wanted to wrap her in his arms and press his lips to hers and just see what happened.
She felt it, too. Her gaze held his, and his breath seemed to stop in his lungs.
Don’t do this — kissing this woman will only complicate things.
And yet there it was. Between them.
“I’ll give you a call after I see him in the morning.” Then, before he could react, she stood on her tiptoes, hugged him, and even brushed a kiss along his cheek, her lips running across the stubble of his beard.