Millionaire M.D. (3 page)

Maybe she didn't know he was in love with her.

Maybe she'd never think of him as anything more than the old friend she'd grown up with.

For damn sure, maybe she'd never realize that his offers to marry her were sincere.

But if Winona were in trouble, Justin was going to be there for her—whether she wanted him there or not.

W
inona was in such trouble.

She'd slept with the same dream two nights running, replaying the evening of the Texas Cattleman's Club gala. She
knew
it was just another dream, because the same details kept getting embellished. In the dream, she was breathtakingly gorgeous—which was a lot of fun, but not remotely realistic. She'd been whirling and swirling on the dance floor, not tripping, being graceful—which was another reason she knew it was a dream. And she kept dancing with different men—man after man after man, all of them adorable, all of them charmed by every word that came out of her mouth, fighting to have another spin with her around the floor….

Okay, okay, so these were pretty ridiculous dreams. But they were
her
dreams, and she was having a great time with them.

Only in this particular night's version, Justin pulled her into his arms. For “The Tennessee Waltz”—which had to be one of the schmaltziest songs of all time, a song doomed
to bring out romantic feelings in even the toughest of women—such as herself—and suddenly she was naked. Whirling around the floor. Waltzing. Without a stitch on. Only being naked was okay, because there wasn't a soul in the room who realized that she was naked. Except for herself.

And Justin.

Alarm bells started clanging in her ears, but Winona determinedly ignored them. Obviously this wasn't real, and since this happened to be her personal, wicked dream, she didn't want to let go of it until she had to.

Justin couldn't take his eyes off her. She whacked him upside the head—which was such a real, logical thing for her to do that for a second, Winona freaked that this wasn't a dream—but he didn't seem to mind, and the whack didn't seem to stop him from looking, either…a long, slow look that began with her naked toes, dawdled past long slender legs (this was a dream, for sure), past hips without a single spare ounce of fat on them (and a damn
good
dream), up, his gaze a caress that took in waist and proud, trembling breasts and white throat, then up to her vulnerable, naked eyes.

Yeah, she wanted him.

She'd always wanted him.

Another alarm bell clanged in her mind—but for Pete's sake, in the privacy of a dream, a girl should be able to be honest with herself. Justin looked like a young Sam Elliot. Tall. Lanky. With a slow, lazy drawl and a lot for a girl to worry about in those sexy eyes. Cover those broad shoulders in a tux and a woman just wanted to sip him in—correction—sip him in and lap him up both.

A vague memory surfaced in her dream. She'd been twelve. Until she'd been fostered with the Gerard family, she'd never had a bike, and she was new to the family, still waiting for someone to hit her, someone to scold her. It'd happen. She just didn't know when yet, but she was wary this time, prepared to protect herself. She didn't need any
body to watch out for her…it was just the bike. Oh man, oh man, she wanted to ride a bike so badly, and everybody assumed she knew how, at her age. But she didn't. And the first time she took it out, it was almost dusk, because no one was on the street then, no strangers to see her.

And Justin had been there when she'd crashed into a tree. Helped her up. Righted the bike. A gorgeous heartthrob of a seventeen-year-old—with a chivalrous streak—enough to make her tough, hard, mean, cold heart go
hoboyhoboyhoboy.
He'd touched her cheek. Made her laugh. Then she'd had to punch him for helping her, of course. What else could a twelve-year-old do?

More alarm bells clanged in her mind. The same, annoying, insistent alarm bells.

Winona's eyes popped open on a pitch-black bedroom. She wasn't twelve and falling into a sinking-deep, mortifying crush with Justin Webb. She wasn't dancing naked with Justin at the Texas Cattleman's Club, either. It was just her bedroom, and the telephone was ringing off the hook, at seven in the morning—according to the insane neon dials on the bedside clock.

The instant she read the time, though, she snapped awake fast. There was only one reason for a telephone call at this crazy hour. Trouble. And although technically she was a nine-to-five cop, working with at-risk teens, reality was that kids never got in trouble at nice, convenient hours.

She fumbled for the lamp switch, then hit the ground running, shagging a hand through her tousled hair as she grabbed the receiver.

“Winona?”

Not a kid. An adult's voice. Her boss, from the precinct. “You know it's me. What's wrong, Wayne?”

“You know the jet that was supposed to take off last night for Asterland? The hotsy totsy flight with all the royalty and dignitaries and all?”

“Yes, of course.” So did the whole town.

“Well, something went wrong. She lifted off, barely got in the air before they were radioing in some garbled, panicked message about a problem. Next thing, they're making an emergency landing about fifteen miles out of town, middle of nowhere, flat as a pancake. Fire broke out—”

She got the gist. The details didn't matter. “Holy cow. How can I help?”

“Truthfully, I don't know.” Winona could well imagine Wayne squinting and rubbing the back of his head. He didn't like trouble in his town. The way Wayne saw it, Royal belonged to him. Anyone took the crease out of those jeans ticked him off. “I'm calling from the scene. Everything's a mess. This all just happened less than a half hour ago. First thing was getting everybody off the plane safely. Only a couple seem badly injured, the rest are just shaken. But what the hell happened, I don't know. And I don't want every Tom, Dick and curious Harry messing with my crime scene. It's still dark. Only so much I can get done until daylight—”

He was talking more to himself than to her. Winona knew how her boss's mind worked. “So where could I be the most help? At the hospital? The plane site? The office?”

“Here,” Wayne said bluntly. “You gonna kick me straight to Austin if I admit I just want a woman here?”

“Probably.” Holding the phone clamped to her ear with one hand, she reached for the deodorant on the dresser and thumbed open the lid. Applying deodorant one-handed was tricky, but she'd done it before.

“Well, then, you're just going to have to kick me. To be honest, everything's being handled that needs to be. It's just, that ain't good enough. Not for this. Dad blame it, we seem to have the makings of a major international incident. First, we have a plane that I'm told is top of the line, perfect, nothing can go wrong—but it still crash-landed. Then we have embassies calling. We have Washington calling. We've got fire trucks from Midland to Odessa joining in to help us. Then half the town—naturally—is starting to show up as the
sun comes up, it's like trying to stop an avalanche. Next thing the women'll be bringing casseroles. It's a madhouse. We
got
to find out what caused this plane crash and to do that, we have to get everybody out of here and get some kind of order. I just want my whole team here, that's all. Even if—”

“Wayne?”

“What?”

“Stop talking. Give me directions.” He did. “I'll be there in twenty minutes.” She hung up and started moving. Plucked white panties from the drawer, pulled them on, then hopped into low-rise, boot-cut jeans. She stood up, head scrambled. Not by Wayne's call in itself. Maybe she was hired to work only with juveniles, but this wasn't some big eastern city. This was Texas. People pitched in whenever there was a crisis, and no one gave a rat's toenail over whether helping fit a job description.

But a plane crash-landing was big news—and troubling. She knew every single face that had been on that flight—they'd all been at the Texas Cattleman's Club gala two nights ago—and a few of them were personal friends of hers besides. Pamela Miles had been flying to Asterland to be an exchange teacher. Lady Helena had made herself known around town because she was the kind to involve herself in caring causes. On top of that…well, the whole world was troubling these days, but not Royal. Things just didn't happen here. Sure, there were some thefts and squabbles and people who lost their screws now and then, but nothing unusual. Nothing happened there that would ever draw attention from outsiders.

Suddenly she heard a sound—a sound odd and unexpected enough to make her quit jogging down the hall and stop for a second. The sound had seemed like a mewling baby's cry—but of course, that was ridiculous. When she heard nothing again, she picked up her pace.

In the peach-and-cream kitchen, she flicked on the light, started her espresso machine, then peeled back toward her
bedroom, mentally cataloguing what she still had to do. She needed coffee, her hair brushed, an apple for the road, and yeah, something to wear above the waist. She never wore a uniform—if you were going to dress for success with kids, you wore jeans and no symbols or labels to put them off—but that wasn't to say she could arrive at a crash site topless. There were times she fantasized about giving Wayne an attack of apoplexy—God knew her boss was a hard-core chauvinist—but not today.

She pulled a sports bra over her head, burrowed in a drawer for an old black sweater…then jerked her head up again.

Damn. Somewhere there
was
a sound. An off-kilter, didn't-belong-in-her-house sound. A puppy crying? A cat lost in the neighborhood somewhere nearby?

Silently, still listening, she straightened the sweater, pulled on socks, shoved her feet into boots, grabbed a brush. Her hair looked like a squirrel's nest, but then that's how it looked when it was freshly styled, too. A glance at her face in the bathroom mirror somehow, inexplicably, made her think of Justin again…and that dream in which his gaze had been all over her naked body.

She scowled in the mirror. First, strange dreams, then strange sounds—she'd seemed to wake up in la la land today, and on a morning when she needed to be her sharpest.

Swiftly she thumbed off the light and started hustling for real. In the kitchen, she poured coffee, then backtracked to the hall closet for her jacket, scooping up the stuff she needed: car keys, an apple, a lid for her espresso, some money for lunch. Almost the minute she finished collecting her debris, her feet seemed to be instinctively making a detour. One minute. That's all she needed to check all the rooms and make absolutely positive that nothing was making that odd sound from inside the house. It wasn't as if she lived in a mighty mansion that would take hours to check out. Her
ranch-style house was downright miniscule—but it was hers. Hers and the bank's, anyway.

She'd put a chunky down payment on it last year. She was twenty-eight, time to stop renting. Time to start making sure she had a place and security and in a neighborhood with a lot of kids and a good school system. Her bedroom was cobalt-blue and white, and, since decorating choices scared her, she'd just used the same colors in the bathroom. A second bedroom she used as a den, where she stashed her TV and computer—and anything she didn't have time to put away. The third bedroom was the biggest, and stood starkly empty—Winona wasn't admitting the room was intended for a baby, not to anyone, at least not yet. But it was.

The kitchen was a non-cook's dream, practical, with lots of make-easy machines and tools, the counters and walls covered with warm peach tiles that led down into the living room. A cocoa couch viewed the backyard, bird feeders all over the place, lots of windows…
damn.
There, she heard the sound again. The mewling cry.

Either that or she was going out of her mind, which, of course, was always a possibility. But she unlatched the front door and yanked it open.

Her jaw surely dropped ten feet. Her ranch house was white adobe, with redbrick arches in the doorways. And there, in the doorway shadow, was a wicker laundry basket. The basket appeared to be stuffed with someone's old, clean laundry, rags and sheets…but damned if that wasn't where the crying sound emanated from.

The car keys slipped from her fingers and clattered to the cold steps. The apple slipped from her other hand and rolled down the drive, forgotten. She hunched down, quickly parting the folds and creases of fabric.

When she saw the baby, her heart stopped.

Abandoned. The baby had actually been abandoned.

“Ssh, ssh, it's all right, don't cry….” So carefully, so gingerly, she lifted out the little one. The morning was icy
at the edges, the light still a predawn-gray. The baby was too swathed in torn-up blankets and rags to clearly make out its features or anything else.

“Ssh, ssh,” Winona kept crooning, but her heart was slamming, slamming. Feelings seeped through her nerves, through her heart from a thousand long-locked doors, bubbled up to the pain of naked air. She'd been abandoned as a child. She knew what an abandoned child felt like…and
would
feel like, her whole life.

A crinkle of paper slipped out of the basket. It only took Winona a few seconds to read the printed message.

Winona's cop experience immediately registered several things—that there'd be no way to track the generic paper and ordinary print, that the writing was simple but not uneducated, and that somehow the mother of the baby knew her specifically—well enough to identify her name, and well enough to believe she was someone who would care for a baby.

Which, God knows, she would.

As swiftly as Winona read the note, she put it aside. There was no time for that now. The baby was wet beneath the blankets, the morning biting at the January-freezing temperatures. She scooped up the little one and hustled inside the warm house, rocking, crooning, whispering reassurances…all past the gulp in her throat that had to be bigger than the state of Texas.

God knew what she was going to do. But right now nothing mattered but the obvious. Taking care of the child. Making sure the little one was warm, dry, fed, healthy. Then Winona would try to figure out why anyone would have left
the baby on her doorstep specifically…and all the other issues about what the child's circumstances might be.