Doing It Right (6 page)

“That will teach you to save lives, you bastard,” she said solemnly and they both laughed.

They had barely begun their meal when Jared’s pager went off. He sighed, swallowed, and un-clipped it for a quick glance. “I’ve got to go back to the hospital,” he said. “Let me call you a cab.”

“I’m coming with you,” she said, tossing her napkin on the table.

“No, Kara, stay here and enjoy the food, you—”

“This isn’t a date, Jared,” she reminded him coolly, though she’d had trouble remembering that fact herself. “I’m sticking close for the next few days. Besides, it’s not hard to get your pager number. For all you know, this is a trick. I’m coming with you.”

He looked pleased. She had no idea why. “Okay. I’ll call us both a cab.” They stood, and, as Ishiguro approached, he waved his pager at the restaurant owner. “Gotta run, Ish. Everything was fabulous. I’m sorry we couldn’t finish.”

“That’s quite all right, Dr. Dean. We’ll box it up and send it to the hospital for a late snack. I hope you’ll stop back later for dinner.” He shook Jared’s hand, then beamed with surprised delight when Kara bowed. She did it out of a perverse, continual
need to prove her late sensei, a man similar to Ishiguro in looks but quite dissimilar in temperament, wrong. He’d told her once, when she was very small, that Americans bowed like cows danced. She’d spent as much time trying to perfect her bow as she had trying to perfect her defensive techniques.

Ishiguro, smiling, returned her bow and they left.

At the hospital, she watched Jared work and was impressed all over again. He was deft, compassionate, constantly smiling, and if he felt it was appropriate, gently teasing. The patients seemed to adore him. Certainly the nurses were fond of him. She bristled as more than one nurse “accidentally” brushed by Jared, touched his arm, laughed a bit too loudly at his jokes. Then she scolded herself for bristling.

Calling Jared back to the hospital had not been a trick. Still, Kara kept a wary eye out. She hadn’t heard any word on the street about Carlotti, which was good news, so far. Carlotti was like a freight train—slow to get going, almost unstoppable once he reached full speed. When things started to happen, they would happen fast. For now, she and Jared could enjoy the calm before the storm.

Hunger gnawed at her, but she ignored the sensation. It was too bad their lunch had been interrupted, but they could grab a bite or maybe chow on leftovers when Jared finished his work. She certainly
wasn’t planning to leave him alone while she stuffed her face.

She saw he was looking for her and stepped up behind him, tapping his shoulder. He turned and blinked with surprise when he saw it was her. “How do you do that?” he said, half complaining, half admiring. “I’ve been looking all over for you and I never see you unless you want me to.”

“Inner city emergency room,” she reminded him. “Remember?”

“Right. Don’t walk on your hands to prove your point, I get it. And I’m
starving.
The interns grabbed our leftovers, the bastards. Want to get some supper?”

She glanced at the clock and saw with a start that she had been watching and admiring and thinking about him for close to five hours. It felt like five minutes.

She nodded and he reached for her hand, unthinking. She stiffened for a moment, then let him hold her hand. His fingers were warm and—odd!—she felt their warmth all the way down to her toes. “I’m sorry you had to wait so long,” he was saying, “I finished as quickly as I could.”

“I don’t mind,” she said, and pulled her hand away.

No doubt about it. Dr. Dean was dangerous. She was used to physical danger, used to the worry of some street snitch giving her up to the cops, used to gang toughs trying to take down A.A. as some sort of stupid initiation rite, but she had no idea how to deal with emotional danger. No idea how
to stop herself from liking a man. She wondered for the first time if she was protecting him because it would thwart her enemy, or because she couldn’t bear to see him hurt.

Supper was delightful. Jared noticed Kara ordered everything he did and wasn’t sure why. Was it a sign of respect, or a lack of imagination?

He asked her. She made an exasperated sound and salted her fries. “Nice question. Lack of imagination, of course. The truth is, since you won’t let me pay my way, I didn’t want to bankrupt you by ordering three steak dinners.”

“But I could be rich,” he said, watching her long fingers as they curved around her burger and lifted it to her mouth. “Filthy, disgustingly rich.”

“And we’re eating at Denny’s?” She took a bite, chewed, swallowed, then said with finality, “You’re not rich at all.”

“How do you—oh, cripes. You cracked the hospital personnel files, didn’t you?” He let his head fall into his hands. “Did you leave any of the benefits staff conscious?”

“There aren’t a lot of them around at two A.M.” Then, almost anxiously, she added, “I wasn’t snooping. I wanted to find out about you before I decided to get further involved. And by the way, did you know a good secretary makes more than you do in this city?”

“That’s a lie. A mediocre secretary makes more than I do. Doctors don’t make the bucks until
they’ve been in the field for a while. Hell, six years ago I was still in med school.”

“Taking your cadavers out to lunch,” she added, smiling at him.

“It helped pass the time.” He stretched in the booth, glancing around the restaurant. It was a typical Denny’s, only a third full this time of the evening, and around them the muted clink of silverware on plates mingled with customer chatter.

It was a relief to be relaxed with Kara. He could look into her blue eyes without fantasizing about knocking their Fiesta burgers to the floor and taking her on the table while the waitress gaped and asked if they wanted anything else to drink. They could have a normal conversation. Well, as normal as a conversation about her cracking the hospital’s confidential files could be.

Their thwarted lunch had helped. The nap she’d talked him into last night had also helped. But the raging hard-on he woke with had not. Neither had that weird-ass dream. Perhaps knowing Kara was in the next room, barely twenty feet away, made the stiffness between his legs demand urgent attention. Maybe it was the fact that he had thought of nothing and no one else for the past three days.

He had stumbled to the shower, still half asleep, and beneath the warm spray replayed their first—and, since he was keeping score, their only—kiss, only this time instead of pushing him away she had been pulling at his clothes. In his mind, her slender fingers tugged at his belt buckle, slipped his
zipper down, her small, hot hand eased into his boxers and clasped him, caressed him, while she whispered in his ear exactly what she expected him to do to her the moment she was finished with him.

He had climaxed so hard his knees had buckled. Only then did he notice the water had turned cold. With a yelp, he had leaped past the curtain, standing on the bathroom carpet shivering, freezing, feeling more than a little foolish—but temporarily sated.

Now, finally, her power over him had eased. Here they were, having a conversation about med school cadavers like two ordinary people, and he was fine. Sure, a mob boss had put out a contract on his life and Kara was the only thing between him and a baseball bat lobotomy, but the fact remained, all was well with the world.

“I really think we should get married someday,” he said, and nearly bit his tongue.

She rolled her eyes. “Always joking.”

“Yup, that’s me, Joke Central.” Cripes, what was wrong with him? He was sated, her hold over him was purely physical, and she had no power over him, dammit, so what was wrong? She’d turned his life upside down in less than a week, he didn’t know anything about her, but she was all he could think about, dream about.

He mentally shook himself, then looked at her to ask if she wanted dessert, and that was when she did it again. Her gaze flicked past him, to the front door, and then back to him. Her expression was
neutral; if she had been any other woman he wouldn’t have been alarmed. But Kara, he was beginning to realize, hid strong emotions—fear, anger, passion—behind an icy mask and he didn’t like the way she kept glancing over his shoulder.

He turned and saw nothing out of the ordinary. Some new customers, but it was getting close to dinnertime and that was to be expected. He turned back to ask Kara what was going on, only to realize with a start that she had already gotten up and was strolling unhurriedly toward the front door. At her place was thirty dollars in cash.

“Wait!” he said, grabbing her money off the table and digging frantically for his wallet. “I said this was on me, remember?” He opened his wallet to find a movie ticket stub and two quarters peeping up at him. Dammit! No time to get cash yesterday and he’d been planning to pay for lunch with a credit card. With a muffled curse, he tossed her money back on the table and started after her.

He caught up with her as she was entering a dingy park across the street. The park was so small it was hardly the width of a city street, with a pitiful swing set and a teeter-totter that looked like it could deal death to unwary toddlers. The sodden sandbox was full of mud and a squatting cat, doing what Jared didn’t want to think about. But the park, he saw with alarm, had one advantage for an ambush—trees pressed in closely on all sides but one and hardly anyone could see them from the street.

“What the hell is going—” was as far as he got
before Kara seized his arm, kicked over a park bench, and forced him behind it.

“Stay down,” she said firmly, “and out of the way.”

“What am I, your dog? You’re not the boss of me. I …” He trailed off as Kara spun to deal with the accountants who had been following them.

He recognized the men. They had been, he realized, the last customers to take seats in the restaurant. They must have followed him and Kara right out the door into the park. There were three, all average-looking men with ordinary builds, nice suits, and expensive haircuts. Before he could figure out just when Kara had gone crazy and started attacking business executives, he noticed the one closest to her had his hand stiffened in a wicked-looking chop. Kara ducked under the blow and kicked the man high up on the ribs. Jared winced as the evil accountant bent, whooshing for breath and cradling his side.

The second one groped in his pocket and whipped out a pen—but it wasn’t a pen, it was a three-foot-long antenna that whistled through the air like a blade. Kara reached out almost casually, and at the same time she caught the guy’s wrist, she brought her knee crashing into his groin. But the third one was flanking her, moving past Kara’s sight line and awfully close to Dr. Jared Dean, ER resident and pissed-off would-be boyfriend. The creep was going to whack
his
Kara?

“Mistake!” he yelled, as he shoved the park bench over. It caught Bad Guy #3 just behind the
knees, effectively tumbling him face first to the damp ground. Jared pounced, and in midair imagined himself landing on the bad guy’s back, forcing the air out of his lungs, and reigning triumphant.

Instead, the man flipped over quick as a snake, and as Jared’s knees thudded to the ground on either side of Kara’s assailant, a walloping pain exploded in Jared’s nose.

He clapped both hands to his face, tasting blood and wondering dazedly when the bad guy had had time to throw a punch. As the man reared to a sitting position, Jared brought his head forth in a crude but effective head butt.
Now,
he thought with grim humor,
there’s two of us holding our faces and thinking about throwing up.

Hard fingers seized his ear and hauled him straight up. “Putz!” Kara hissed, just before she kicked Jared’s bad guy in the chin, snapping his head back into the dirt. Jared looked around blearily and noted with no real surprise that Kara’s two assailants were down for the count.

“Are you talking to me?” he asked thickly, then spat to clear his throat. “And let go of my ear, will you?”

“How did you ever get your medical license if you can’t. Follow. Directions.” Without a look at the unconscious men, she was marching Jared out of the park, across the street, back to his apartment. She never let go of his ear. She never stopped scolding him in a furious whisper. Finally, he reached up and pried her fingers loose.

“Back off, blondie,” he said crossly. “If you expect me to cower behind a damned bench while you get set upon, you need some new medication.”

“I expect you to do as you’re told,” she growled. They were now standing outside his apartment door and Jared fumbled tiredly for his keys. Before he could produce them, Kara yanked at her sleeve, produced two thin blades, and in about six seconds had his front door unlocked. He realized dazedly that it took him longer to unlock the door with a key than it took her to pick the lock.
Three cheers,
he thought,
for American ingenuity.

She marched him inside, toward the bathroom. “I can’t adequately protect you if you insist on throwing yourself in the path of danger. What’s the matter with you? Any five-year-old knows enough to keep his head down and let the other person take the lumps.”

“Bull
shit
,” he replied politely. He found himself leaning against the sink while she ran warm water in the basin, found a washcloth, and gently pressed it to his nose and mouth. The tender motion was a puzzling conflict with her tight-lipped expression, narrowed eyes, and sharp words.

“Where I come from, you don’t let the lady take the lumps. Jeez, what kind of household did you grow up in, any—” He made himself stop talking and stared at her. She was tending to his face and wouldn’t look at him and no wonder—Kara hadn’t exactly been brought up in the be-kind-to-children-and-animals mode.

“Putz,” she said again, and he silently agreed.

A long moment passed, then he caught her wrists and gently took the washcloth away from her. “I can do that. And quit manhandling me, will you? Don’t make me kick your ass.”

She snorted and he continued. “Listen. I get that you’re truly angry with me. I couldn’t figure out why until right now—you truly feel it’s your job to get hurt and mine to stay safe?” She said nothing. “The thing is, I see us as more of a team.”