If You Loved Me (29 page)

"I was driving on Magnolia Bluff a few blocks from Thirty-fourth. I—I thought I saw something, but there was nothing there, just the rain." Her voice was melodious, husky. "Then suddenly I—something hit. I didn't see her until—"

"Wait outside," Alex said shortly, fighting his own urge to touch her shoulder with reassurance.

"I need to know she's okay."

He sent her a dark frown. "It's not
your
needs that matter here. There's a waiting room down the hall. Nurse Stanley will show you." He nodded to the ER nurse and turned back to the child.

He slid a small flashlight out of his pocket, "Sara, where's your mommy?"

"Mommy's in heaven. Will that lady really find Squiggles?"

People who made empty promises to motherless children should be shot, Alex thought grimly. Gently, he said, "Sara, look at my forehead right here, look at this spot while I shine my light in your eyes. Do you live with your daddy?"

"Mmm," agreed the girl, staring obediently at Alex's forehead.

"That's good. Keep looking while I look in your other eye. Is your daddy home?"

She shook her head vigorously, one brief shake before she winced and stopped.

"That hurts, does it?" The girl's left pupil was clear, but the right was slightly fixed. "Where's Daddy, Sara?"

"At work."

Alex felt her skull gently as he patiently drew details out of her. "Where does he work?"

"At the 'lectric place. It's a power station."

"Does your daddy have a name?"

"Of course, silly." He heard her breathe a laugh, then thought her headache choked it off. "My daddy's Wayne Miller."

"We're going to call your daddy at work and tell him you're here." He glanced at April Stanley, who had returned from showing the driver to the waiting room.

"He'll be mad at me," said Sara as April slipped away. "He'll be so angry because of Squiggles. Ouch! That hurts!"

"That's where you bumped your head when the car hit you. It'll feel better soon, Sara. Do you hurt anywhere else?" Her left shoulder and arm were both very tender, he noted. As he finished examining her, he continued gently probing for information.

"Who looks after you when Daddy's at work?"

"Mrs. Davis from downstairs. What if the lady can't find my kitty? It's raining, an' if Squiggles gets wet, he could get 'monia."

"Cats are very good at finding dry places to get out of the rain," said Alex reassuringly. "I had a cat once who used to hide under my front porch."

"We have a front porch. Maybe the lady will find her there."

"Squiggles might be under your porch right now, safe and dry. Now, Sara, Nurse Stanley is going to take you to get some pictures of your head and shoulder, then we're going to find you a bed so you can sleep here tonight."

He made some notes in Sara's chart, then motioned April Stanley to step outside with him. "X-ray—skull, left shoulder, and upper arm. Did you find Dad?"

"Yes. He's an electrical dispatcher, night shift. He'll be here in twenty minutes."

"Page me when he gets here, and let me know when those pictures are ready. Did anyone call the cops?"

"Done."

"Good. This baby-sitter sounds pretty iffy. Let's get a social worker out there Monday morning."

On his way to the doctors' lounge, he detoured to the waiting room where he found the red-haired woman standing with her back to a coffee machine.

She spun to face him as he stepped into the room.

Too restless to sit, he decided. Her eyes spoke of fire within, the sort of restless passion that would drive her to disappoint anyone who depended on her—including Sara, who believed this woman would find her kitten.

"Doctor, will she be all right?"

Something in her voice, her eyes, sent unaccustomed anger pulsing through his bloodstream. "What the hell were you thinking of?" he demanded. "Don't you know better than to move an accident victim? You could have killed that child."

"I didn't move her." Her eyes were wide, an impossible pure green. "I was going to call an ambulance, but she started crying about Squiggles and she wouldn't stay still. I thought it made more sense coming here than trying to find a phone, trying to—Is she all right?"

What the hell was it about her eyes? Green fire, he couldn't seem to look away.

She gripped his arm with surprisingly strong fingers. "Once I got her into the car, she seemed dazed. How badly is she hurt?"

He hadn't intended to tell her anything, but he found himself saying, "She may have a bit of concussion. She's bruised one arm and shoulder. At her age, there's the possibility of a greenstick fracture. I've sent her for X-rays, and we'll keep her overnight for observation."

"She's just a little girl. What was she doing outside at one in the morning?"

Good question, but her fingers burned like points of fire through his jacket, and he was damned if he'd speculate about Sara Miller with this woman.

"You better stick around," he said grimly. "The police will want to talk to you."

Her hand dropped from his arm as if he'd shocked her.

"What's your name?" he demanded.

"Jamila Ferguson."

Damn the woman, of course she wouldn't have an ordinary name like Linda or Jane. She'd probably been born Mary, but changed it to
Jamila
for a career as a dancer.

"Sit down," he growled. "The police are coming. They'll want your blood alcohol and a statement before you leave."

"I haven't been drinking."

He turned and walked out of the waiting room before he did something stupid, like grasp her flung-out hand and pull her hard against his body, bury his mouth in her red lips and...

He was overtired, short of sleep, and unaccountably attracted to a wild woman who'd pulled a hit-and-run, except she hadn't run. She'd brought the child to the hospital, and she seemed determined to wait in that empty waiting room until the cops came to take her statement.

He grabbed a coffee in the lounge, then checked Sara's X-rays. Clear.

Too late now to return to the benefit, where he'd originally planned to spend the night socializing with as many of the Thurston Foundation directors as he could.

Whatever he did with the rest of the night, he certainly wasn't going to think about the woman named Jamila Ferguson, and his insane urge to either shake her or kiss her.

* * *

Concussion wasn't good.

Jamie shuddered as she remembered the sickening sensation of impact. She'd struck a child with her car. That impact—the girl must have been thrown to the ground, hit her head. Just a moment earlier Jamie had thought she saw something move. She'd slowed and hadn't seen anything, except there
had
been something. That fleeting sense of something moving was her warning. If only she'd listened, stopped.

She paced restlessly across the empty waiting room. Why was it so empty? Weren't emergency rooms filled with people all the time? The whole place had pale green walls, the sort of ice green that could cool even the hottest red just by being present on the same canvas. Was it the green that made hospitals so frightening?

Where was the doctor? He'd walked away after looking at her as if she were dirt. She thought doctors in the emergency room would appear wearing green, or perhaps white lab coats, but he'd been formal in black jacket, white shirt, and bow tie. He'd been so good with the little girl, as if he knew exactly what to say.

He hadn't seemed impatient at all, until he looked at Jamie.

Why on earth had she told him her birth name? Nobody called her Jamila, although she supposed she'd be hearing the name more now that Liz had decided it sounded exotic.

Where had the doctor gone? Was the child alone now? Jamie hadn't been in a hospital since her mother's death when she was eleven, but she was certain any child would be terrified to be left alone in a hospital examining room.

"Excuse me, miss."

Jamie swung and found herself staring at a burly, uniformed policeman.

"Are you the driver of the car that hit the little girl?"

She swallowed. "Is she—"

"Why don't we sit down here?" He gestured to the plastic-covered sofa against the wall. "Could you use a cup of coffee?"

Ten minutes later, Jamie had half a cup of black coffee inside her, and she'd just finished giving the officer all the details of the accident. At his request, a nurse Jamie hadn't seen before appeared to draw a vial of blood from her vein. Jamie was glad she hadn't touched that glass of champagne. If she'd had the champagne, she might have been slower to brake her car.

Sara might be dead.

"I saw something just before the accident," she told the policeman. "Something moving on the road, but when I slowed down, there was nothing. I think it must have been the kitten. The little girl must have been hidden from me by the parked cars. I think that's why I didn't see her."

"It's not a part of town where you'd expect to see a kid outside in the middle of the night," he said sympathetically. "I talked to the doc, he says there'll be a social worker checking out the kid's situation. I'll be talking to her father, too, when he gets here. I think you're in the clear, Ms. Ferguson. Just be sure to notify your insurance company in the morning."

"What about the girl? I need to know—"

A small, harried man in his thirties rushed into the room, a nurse just behind him.

"Sara!" he said explosively. "Where's Sara? I need to see my daughter!"

"She'll be down from X-ray in a minute," the nurse assured him, evidently not for the first time. "Mr. Miller, your daughter's conscious and has only minor injuries, but Dr. Kent sent her for X-rays to be certain."

Jamie could see the worry in his pale gray eyes as he demanded, "What sort of doctor is Dr. Kent? If he's an intern, I want—"

"Dr. Kent is a pediatric specialist, a consultant on our staff. I assure you, Sara's in the best hands."

When the nurse slipped away, Jamie stepped up to Sara's father. "Mr. Miller, I'm Jamie Ferguson. I was driving the car."

"What was my daughter doing outside? She should have been in bed."

"She was trying to catch a kitten named Squiggles," said Jamie. "Sara was afraid it would get wet, that it would catch pneumonia."

"That cursed cat." He sank down into a chair. His throat worked. "Pneumonia. She must have... Sara's mother... she had a cold. Just a cold, then suddenly it was pneumonia." He gestured at the green walls around them. "She died here, six months ago."

Chapter 2

Ten minutes of shut-eye in the physicians' lounge hadn't done anything to tame Alex's irritation with the woman named Jamila.

It was forty minutes before he got out of the hospital, another fifteen before he found the address where Sara Miller lived, an old three-story house converted to apartments, surrounded by similar structures. A wealth of nooks, crannies, and porches for a kitten to hide under.

He saw no sign of skid marks on the road, nothing to testify to the earlier accident. Despite Alex's conviction that Jamila was the sort of woman who drove too fast, he knew from the minor nature of Sara's injuries that she must have been going slowly at the time of impact.

Three o'clock in the morning. Jamila Ferguson would be tucked in her bed by now. Wherever she was, it was a sure bet she'd forgotten her promise to find Sara Miller's stray kitten.

Alex wondered if he had a chance in hell of finding Squiggles.

If he did find the cat, he'd take it to Paula for a couple of days. His sister would be irritated, but she wouldn't turn the cat away. Then Alex would talk to Sara about adopting the cat out. If he checked around, he'd find a good home for it. He might have tried Diana, who had two young sons and no pets, if she weren't leaving for five weeks in Europe on tomorrow evening's jet.

Uncomfortably, Alex admitted that he was relieved Diana was going.

He'd been spending a lot of time with Diana lately, working on projections for the juvenile diabetic treatment center he wanted the Thurston Foundation to fund. Lunches together, sometimes dinners at her elegant condo, after which he'd read a bedtime story to her two energetic young sons. Then, last Saturday...

He'd been thinking of her as a friend, hadn't been expecting to find her in his arms, clearly expecting intimacy. She was a lovely woman, but he needed time first—time to think about what he wanted, where they were going.

Diana's trip to Europe would give him that time.

He knew she was exactly the sort of wife he wanted: intelligent, maternal, calm. When she returned, he was almost certain he'd take the next step and become her lover. Then, a few months later, he'd probably ask her to marry him. Meanwhile, he'd get Dennis to finish those pro formas for the treatment center, and he'd finalize the specifications for the building.

But tonight, he needed to find this kitten, then arrange a home for it where Sara could visit, at least until she accepted the landlord's anti-cat edict—or her father moved to a building that allowed pets.

He parked in an empty space just past Sara's building, shook off a wave of weariness, and took the flashlight from his glove compartment, the umbrella from the backseat. Outside the car, the rain seemed to drive harder as he walked along the sidewalk, bending down to shine his light under the cars.