Книга - Shelter from the Storm

Shelter from the Storm
RaeAnne Thayne


Experience the thrill of life on the edge and set your adrenalin pumping! These gripping stories see heroic characters fight for survival and find love in the face of danger.Diagnosis: desire Six foot and spicy hot, Sheriff Daniel Galvez wasn’t the kind of man women said no to. Unless you were Lauren Maxwell. Years ago, Daniel had worked a case that had destroyed her family…and her trust in men. Now Lauren’s come home, a trauma doctor, all cool-eyed and distant – and in need of a strong lawman to help her safeguard a battered teenage patient.Holed up together, Daniel swears to bridge the distance between them – even if it means having his own heart broken again.







Something warned her shewasn’t alone.

Lauren turned and found Daniel standing in the doorway, his eyes shadowed. Her relaxed feeling disappeared. Acutely conscious of her yoga clothes – a midriff-baring tank top and stretchy capris – she swallowed hard.

“Snow’s stopped.”

Her nerves tingled at the hoarse note in his voice.

“I…good. That’s good.” How could he possibly talk about the weather with all the currents zinging between them? She couldn’t even manage to string together a coherent thought.

“How’d the, er, low-down dog go?”

That strange note in his voice caught her attention again and she took a closer look at his expression. She finally saw the hunger there – hot desire with an edge of desperation.

She continued to stare at him, hypnotised by the twitch of muscle in his jaw. He was so big, so dangerously male, and all she could think about was how easy it would be to tug him into the bedroom right now and get her hands on all that hard strength…


ABOUT THE AUTHOR

RaeAnne Thayne finds inspiration in the beautiful northern Utah mountains, where she lives with her husband and three children. Her books have won numerous honours, including a RITA® Award nomination from Romance Writers of America and a Career Achievement award from Romantic Times BOOKreviews magazine. RaeAnne loves to hear from readers and can be reached through her website at www.raeannethayne.com or at PO Box 6682, North Logan, UT 84341, USA.



Dear Reader,

When I was writing the book that became TheInterpreter (September 2006) I introduced a couple of secondary characters – a big, gorgeous sheriff and a dedicated family doctor in the small fictional town of Moose Springs, Utah. Daniel Galvez and Lauren Maxwell both had important roles to play, but as is the case with many secondary characters, they both disappeared stage left once their respective jobs were done.

Usually that’s the end of it, but from the instant Daniel and Lauren showed up in my subconscious, they lingered there and I knew I would have to write their story. I couldn’t wait to find out why there was such tension whenever they showed up. What dark secrets stood between them? Why did Daniel freeze every time Lauren walked into the room? Why did she treat this man everyone else respected and admired with such cool reserve?

I had a great time writing their story, discovering those answers. I have to say, Daniel Galvez became one of my all-time favourite heroes, quiet and strong, willing to risk everything to keep all the people in his town safe – especially the woman he has always loved.

All my best,

RaeAnne




Shelter from the Storm


RAEANNE THAYNE




www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)


To Darcy Rhodes, for sharing your singing and your smiles, for changing diapers and telling jokes and helping us take unforgettable journeys we once thought were impossible. You’ll always be part of our family!


Chapter 1

“Would you take your shirt off, please?”

Under other circumstances—and from just about any other woman—Daniel Galvez might have been tempted to take those words as a rather enticing request.

From Dr. Lauren Maxwell, he knew all too well she meant nothing suggestive—as much as he might wish otherwise.

He sighed, detesting this whole ordeal, even as he knew he had no choice but to comply. His right hand went to the buttons of his uniform and he wrestled them free, uncomfortably aware of her watching him out of those intense blue eyes that seemed to miss nothing.

He had to work hard to hide a wince as he shrugged out of his shirt, mentally bracing himself for the moment she would touch him with those cool fingers.

The pain didn’t worry him. He had coped with much worse than a little scratch on the arm. Handling Lauren and the feelings she always stirred up in him was another matter entirely.

She watched him take off his shirt, her eyes veiled as they always seemed to be in his presence, and he wondered what she saw. The dirt-poor Mexican kid on the school bus in the fraying, too-small jeans and the threadbare coat? Or the harsh, hard-as-nails cop she must hate?

Those cool, lovely features didn’t reveal even a hint of whatever she might think of him. Just as well, he thought. He had a feeling he was better off not knowing.

“Sorry to come in so late,” he said as he pulled his blood-soaked shirt away. “I wouldn’t have stopped if I hadn’t seen the lights on as I was driving past.”

She raised an eyebrow, though her attention remained fixed on his reason for being in her examination room of the Moose Springs Medical Clinic. “That’s quite a nasty laceration you’ve got there, Sheriff. What were you going to do about it, if you weren’t going to stop here? Stitch it up yourself?”

If he were capable of such a feat, he probably would have tried rather than finding himself in this uncomfortable position. “I figured I would catch a minute to run into the emergency clinic in Park City later.”

That was still his preferred option. But since he was missing two deputies this weekend in a department that was already understaffed, he didn’t have that luxury.

This was his third night of double shifts and he just couldn’t spare the personal leave to drive the half hour to Park City, sit in the emergency clinic there while he waited his turn for a couple hours among all the banged-up skiers and tourists with altitude sickness, then drive a half hour back to Moose Springs.

With the ski season in full swing, Park City in January was crazy anyway—throw in an independent film festival that drew thousands of Hollywood types and their entourages, and he would just about rather chew tire spikes then spend time there if he didn’t have to.

Even if that meant baring his chest for Lauren Maxwell.

“You know I’m always on call for you and your deputies if you need me,” she said. Though her voice was low and polite, he still felt a pinch of reprimand.

She stepped forward, close enough that he could smell the subtle, intoxicating scent of jasmine and vanilla that always seemed to cling to her. She didn’t touch him yet, just continued to study the jagged three-inch cut on his upper arm that was beginning to throb like hell.

“How did you say you were injured?”

“Bar fight down at Mickey’s. Some joker from out of town got mad when Johnny Baldwin kept playing ‘Achy Breaky Heart’ on the jukebox.”

“Uh-oh. He and Carol are fighting again?”

“Apparently. By about the sixth go-around, the tourist had had enough of Billy Ray and tried to physically prevent Johnny from putting in another quarter.”

“I hope you didn’t arrest him for that. Sounds like justifiable assault to me.”

A muscle twitched in his cheek at her dry tone, though it was taking most of his concentration to keep his mind on the story and away from how incredible it felt to have Lauren Maxwell’s hands on him, even in a clinical setting.

“Most of the bar probably would have backed the guy up at first. But of course he had to go and push his luck. He went just a bit too far and insulted both Johnny and any woman stupid enough to go out with him in the first place. And of course three of Carol’s brothers happened to be sitting at the other end of the bar and they didn’t take too kindly to that. By the time I got there, everybody in the place was having a good old time throwing punches and smashing chairs. I was trying to take the tourist into custody, mostly for his own protection, when his buddy came after me with the business end of a broken beer bottle.”

“I’m sorry.”

He lifted his uninjured shoulder. “Hazard of the job.”

“Should I be expecting more casualties?”

“From what I could tell, the damage seemed to be mostly bloody noses and a couple of black eyes. The paramedics showed up just in case but I appeared to get the worst of it.”

“I imagine Mickey’s not too crazy about having his bar ripped apart.”

“You know Mickey. He was right in the middle of it all.”

She probed the edge of his wound and he couldn’t hide a grimace.

“Sorry,” she murmured, stepping away. “I’m going to have to clean it up a little before I can put in any stitches. Sit tight while I grab a suture kit and some antiseptic.”

“No problem.”

The moment she left the room, he huffed out the breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. Okay, so this hadn’t been one of his better ideas. He should have just accepted his fate and driven into Park City, to hell with the jam it would put in his schedule.

Being here alone in the medical clinic with Lauren after hours was far too intimate, much too dangerous for his peace of mind.

He sighed, frustrated once again at this tension that always simmered between them.

It hadn’t always been this way, but the events of five years earlier had changed everything. Lauren was still cordial, unfailingly polite, but she didn’t treat him with the same warmth she gave everyone else. Every interaction between them seemed awkward and tense.

Though they grew up a few blocks away from each other, they may as well have been on different planets when they were kids. For one thing, she was three years younger. At thirty and thirty-three, now that didn’t seem to make much difference. But when he was thirteen and trying his best to find his place in the world, a ten-year-old girl held about as much interest to him as learning the fox-trot.

Beyond that, they had been worlds apart demographically. She had been the smart and beautiful daughter of the town mayor—his dad’s boss—and he had been the son of Mexican immigrants who never had enough of anything to go around but love.

He had tried to cross that social divide only once, the year he finished out his football scholarship and graduated from college. He had come home to work construction at her father’s company for the summer before starting his police-officer training in the fall and he suddenly couldn’t help noticing smart, pretty little Lauren Maxwell had grown into a beautiful college freshman, home for the summer between terms.

One night she had stopped by her father’s office at the same time he dropped in after a job to pick up his paycheck. They had talked a little, flirted a little—though in retrospect, that had been one-sided on his part—and he had ended up asking her to dinner.

She had refused him firmly and decisively, almost horror-stricken, leaving him no room at all to maneuver around his abruptly deflated ego.

He could survive a little rejection. Hell, it had probably been good for him, a college jock far too full of himself.

If that had been the end of it, he imagined they could have salvaged at least a casual friendship over the years, especially after they both returned to settle in Moose Springs. She was the town’s only doctor and he was the sheriff, so they were bound to interact sometimes.

But what came after had effectively destroyed any chance he had of claiming even that.

There was too much history between them, too many secrets, for anything but this awkwardness.

He wasn’t sure how much she knew. Enough, obviously, for her to simmer about it. If she knew the whole truth, she would despise him even more. Somehow that knowledge did nothing to squash the attraction that always seethed under his skin, the edginess he couldn’t seem to shake.

The door opened suddenly and she returned carrying a tray of bandages and suture supplies. He must have done a credible job of hiding his thoughts. She gave him a smile that almost looked genuine—until he saw the murkiness in her blue eyes.

“You’ll have to sit down so I can reach your arm. You can rest it on this table.”

He hesitated only a moment before he sat down where she indicated and thrust out his arm. The cut was jagged and ugly and still stung like hell, but he knew it looked worse than it really was.

Still, he winced when she pulled out a needle to numb the area. He would far rather face a dozen broken beer bottles than a needle. She caught his expression and gave him a reassuring smile. “It will only sting for a minute, I promise.”

Feeling foolish and itchy at her nearness, he stoically endured the shot, then the gentle brush of her hands as she washed off the blood with Betadine and went to work stitching him up. He finally had to focus on a painting on the wall of two children on a beach eating ice cream and couldn’t help wishing for a little cold refreshment to offset the heat of her fingers touching his skin.

“You’re very good at that.”

She didn’t look up from her careful suturing. “Thanks. I considered a surgical specialty when I was in med school but I decided I wanted to see more of my patients than their insides.”

“Lucky for us, I guess.”

She didn’t answer and the silence stretched between them. He scrambled around for another topic of conversation and grabbed the first one that came to him. “How’s your mother?”

This time her gaze did flash to his, her expression unreadable. “Good. The warm St. George climate agrees with her. She’s become quite a rabid golfer now that she can play all year.”

He tried to picture soft and prim Janine Maxwell ripping up the golf course and couldn’t quite get a handle on it. But then he never would have pictured Lauren Maxwell choosing to practice in quiet Moose Springs, when she could have gone anywhere else in the world.

Oddly, she seemed to follow his train of thought. “Mom wants me to sell the clinic and open up another one in southern Utah.”

He didn’t like the sudden panic spurting through him at the thought of her leaving. “Will you?”

Her hair brushed his arm as she shook her head. “Not a chance,” she said firmly. “Moose Springs is my home and I’m not going anywhere.”

He didn’t miss the defiance in her voice and he fully understood the reason for it. Things couldn’t always be easy for her here—he knew there were some in town who would rather drive the thirty-five minutes to Park City for their medical care than walk through the doors of any clinic run by the daughter of the town’s biggest crook.

The good people of Moose Springs hadn’t taken R. J. Maxwell’s embezzlement of more than a million dollars of their hard-earned money very kindly. Even five years after his death, there were those who still carried a pretty hefty grudge.

Most people in town didn’t blame the daughter for the father’s sins, but he had heard enough whispers and veiled innuendos to know most didn’t mean all. A certain percentage of the population wasn’t as fair-minded.

If the full story ever emerged, he knew that percentage would probably increase dramatically.

Lauren’s own mother had been quick to escape Moose Springs after the scandal broke. He couldn’t understand why Lauren seemed determined to remain in town despite the ugly blotches on her family’s laundry.

“That should do it,” she said after a moment, affixing a bandage to the spot. “I’ll write you a prescription for a painkiller and an antibiotic, just to be on the safe side.”

“Just the antibiotic,” he said, shrugging back into his ruined uniform shirt.

“That’s a nasty laceration. You might be surprised at the residual pain tomorrow.”

“I’ll take an aspirin if it gets too bad.”

She rolled her eyes but before she could speak, his communicator buzzed with static and a moment later he heard his dispatcher’s voice.

“Chief, I’ve got Dale Richins on the line,” Peggy Wardell said. “Says he was driving home from his sister’s in Park City and blew a tire.”

“He need help with it?”

“Not with the tire. But when he went in the back to get the spare, he found a girl hiding in the camper shell of his pickup.”

He blinked at that unexpected bit of information. “A girl?”

“Right. She’s beat up pretty good, Dale says, and tried to escape when he found her but she collapsed before she could get far. She only hablas the español, apparently. Thought I’d better let you know.”

He grabbed for his blood-soaked coat, sudden dread congealing in his gut. One of the hazards of working in a small town was the fear every time a call like this came in, he didn’t know who he might find at the scene.

He knew just about everyone in the growing Latino community around Moose Springs and hated the possibility that someone he knew—someone’s hija or hermana—might have been attacked.

“Thanks, Peg. Tell Dale I can be there in five minutes or so.”

“Right.”

He headed for the door, then stopped short when he realized Lauren was right on his heels, passing a medical kit from hand to hand as she shoved the opposite hand into her parka.

“What do you think you’re doing?” he asked.

“I’m coming with you,” she said, that Lauren stubbornness in her voice. “Sounds like you’ve got a victim who will need medical care and if I go with you, I can be on scene faster than the volunteer paramedics.”

He didn’t want to take the time to argue with her—not when a few seconds consideration convinced him the idea was a good one. Lauren was more qualified to offer better medical care than anything the volunteer medics could provide.

“Let’s go then,” he said, leading the way out into the drizzling snow.

Daniel drove through the slushy roads with his lights flashing but his siren quiet, at a speed that had her hanging on to her medical kit with both hands.

She gritted her teeth as he hit one of the town’s famous potholes and her head slammed against the headrest.

“Sorry,” he said, though he barely looked at her.

Nothing new there. Daniel seldom looked at her, not if he could help himself. She was glad for it, she told herself. She didn’t want him looking too closely at her. He already knew too much about her, more than just about anyone else in town—she didn’t want him aiming those piercing brown eyes too far into her psyche.

She gripped her bag more tightly as he drove toward the scene, trying not to notice how big and hard and dangerous he seemed under these conditions.

Sheriff Daniel Galvez was not a man any sane person would want to mess with. He was six feet three inches and two hundred and ten pounds of pure muscle. Not that she made note of his vital statistics during the rare times she had treated him or anything—it was just hard to miss a man so big who was still as tough and physically imposing as the college football player he’d been a decade earlier.

Beside him, she always felt small and fragile, a feeling she wasn’t particularly crazy about. She wasn’t small, she was a respectable five feet six inches tall and a healthy one hundred and fifteen pounds. It was only his size that dwarfed her. And she wasn’t fragile, either. She had survived med school, a grueling residency and, just a few months later, crippling shock and disbelief at the chaos her father left in his wake.

She shoved away thoughts of her father as Daniel pulled the department’s Tahoe to a stop behind a battered old pickup she recognized as belonging to Dale Richins. The old rancher stood behind his camper shell, all but wringing his hands.

He hurried to them the moment Daniel shut off the engine. “The little girl is inside the camper shell of my truck. I had a horse blanket in there. I guess that’s what she was hiding under. Looks like you brought medical help. Good. From what I can see, she’s beat up something terrible.”

He looked at Lauren with a little less suspicion than normal, but she didn’t have time to be grateful as she headed for the back of the pickup. Daniel was right behind her and he didn’t wait for her to ask for help—he just lifted her up and over the tailgate and into the truck bed.

He aimed the heavy beam of his flashlight inside as she made her careful way to the still form lying motionless under a grimy blanket that smelled of livestock and heaven knows what else.

She pulled out her flashlight, barely able to make out the battered features of a Latina girl.

“She’s so young,” Lauren exclaimed as she immediately went to work examining her. Though it was hard to be sure with all the damage, she didn’t think the girl was much older than fourteen or fifteen.

“Do you know her?” Daniel asked, leaning in and taking a closer look.

“I don’t think so. You?”

“She doesn’t look familiar. I don’t think she’s from around here.”

“Whoever she is, she’s going to need transport to the hospital. This is beyond what I can handle at the clinic.”

“How urgent?” Daniel asked from outside the pickup. “Ambulance or LifeFlight to the University of Utah?”

She considered the situation. “Her vitals are stable and nothing seems life-threatening at this point. Send for an ambulance,” she decided.

She lifted the girl’s thin T-shirt, trying to look for anything unusual in the dim light. She certainly found it.

“Sheriff, she’s pregnant,” she exclaimed.

He leaned inside, his expression clearly shocked. “Pregnant?”

“I’d guess about five or six months along.”

She moved her stethoscope and was relieved to hear a steady fetal heartbeat. She started to palpate the girl’s abdomen when suddenly her patient’s eyes flickered open. Even in the dim light inside the camper shell, Lauren could see panic chase across those battered features. The girl cried out and flailed at Lauren as she tried to scramble up and away from her.

“Easy, sweetheart. Easy,” Lauren murmured. Her skills at Spanish were limited but she tried her best. “I’m not going to hurt you. I’m here to help you and your baby.”

The girl’s breathing was harsh and labored, but her frantic efforts to fight Lauren off seemed to ease and she watched her warily.

“I’m Lauren. I’m a doctor,” she repeated in Spanish, holding up her stethoscope. “What’s your name?”

Through swollen, discolored eyes, the girl looked disoriented and suspicious, and didn’t answer for several seconds.

“Rosa,” she finally said, her voice raspy and strained. “Rosa Vallejo.”

Lauren smiled as calmly as if they were meeting for brunch. It was a skill she’d learned early in medical school—pretend you were calm and in control and your patients will assume you are. “Hello, Rosa Vallejo. I’m sorry you’re hurt but an ambulance is on the way for you, okay? We’re going to get you to the hospital.”

“No! No hospital. Please!”

The fear in the girl’s voice seemed to hitch up a notch and she tried to sit up again. Lauren touched her arm, for comfort and reassurance as much as to hold her in place. “You’ve been hurt. You need help. You need to make sure your baby is all right.”

“No. No. I’m fine. I must go.”

She lunged to climb out of the truck bed but Daniel stood blocking the way, looking huge and imposing, his badge glinting in the dim light. The girl froze, a whimper in her throat and a look of abject terror in her eyes. “No policía. No policía!”

She seemed incoherent with fear, struggling hysterically to break free of Lauren’s hold. Daniel finally reached in to help, which only seemed to upset the girl more.

“Hold her while I find something in my kit to calm her,” Lauren ordered. “She’s going to injure herself more if I don’t.”

A moment later, she found what she was looking for. Daniel held the girl while Lauren injected her with a sedative safe for pregnant women. A moment later, the medicine started to work its calming effect on her panicked patient and she sagged back against the horse blankets just as the wail of the ambulance sounded outside.

Lauren let out a sigh of relief and started to climb out of the truck bed. When Daniel reached to lift her out, she suddenly remembered his injury. She ignored his help and climbed out on her own.

“You’re going to break open all those lovely stitches if you don’t take it easy.”

“I’m fine,” he said firmly, just as the volunteer paramedics hurried over, medical bags slung over their shoulders.

“Hey, Mike, Pete,” Lauren greeted them with a smile.

“You trying to take over our business now, Doc?” Pete asked her with a wink.

“No way. You guys are the experts at triage here. I happened to be stitching up the sheriff at the clinic after the big brawl at Mickey’s bar. When he received this call, I rode along to see if I could help.”

“Busy night for all of us. What have we got?”

Daniel stepped closer to hear her report and Lauren tried not to react to his overwhelming physical presence.

She gave them Rosa’s vitals. “I have a young patient who appears to be approximately twenty weeks pregnant. It was tough to do a full assessment under these conditions, but she looks like she’s suffering multiple contusions and lacerations, probably the result of a beating. She appears to be suffering from exposure. I have no idea how long she’s been in the back of Dale’s pickup. Maybe an hour, maybe more. Whether that contributed to her hysteria, I can’t say, but I do know she’s not very crazy about authority figures right now. Seeing the sheriff set her off, so we may have to use restraints in the ambulance on our way to Salt Lake City.”

“You riding along?” Mike Halling asked.

“If I won’t be in the way.”

“You know we’ve always got room for you, Doc.”

She stood back while he and Pete Zabrisky quickly transferred the girl to the stretcher then lifted it into the ambulance.

“I’m guessing she must have climbed in the back of the truck in Park City, or wherever Dale might have stopped on the way. Though I’m pretty sure the attack didn’t happen here, I’m going to put one of my deputies to work processing the scene,” Daniel told her while they waited in the stinging sleet for the paramedics to finish loading Rosa into the bus.

“All right,” she answered.

“I won’t be far behind you. I’d like to question her once she’s been treated.” He paused. “I can give you a ride back to town when we’re done, if you need it.”

She nodded and climbed in after Mike and Pete. Maybe she had a problem with authority figures, too. That must be why her stomach fluttered and her heartbeat accelerated at the prospect of more time in the company of the unnerving Daniel Galvez.


Chapter 2

Watching Dr. Lauren Maxwell in action was more fascinating to him than the Final Four, the World Series and the Super Bowl combined. As long as she wasn’t working on him and he didn’t have to endure having her hands on him, Daniel wouldn’t mind watching her all day.

As he stepped back to let the ambulance pull past him, with its lights flashing through the drizzle of snow, he could see Lauren through the back windows as she talked to the paramedics in what he imagined was that brisk, efficient voice she used when directing patient care.

In trauma situations, Lauren always seemed completely in control. He never would have guessed back in the day that she would make such a wonderful physician.

He still found it amazing that the prim little girl on the school bus with her pink backpacks and her fake-fur-trimmed coats and her perfectly curled blond ringlets seemed to have no problem wading through blood and guts and could handle herself with such quiet but confident expertise, no matter the situation.

She loved her work. It was obvious every time Daniel had the chance to see her in action. Medicine wasn’t a job with Lauren Renee Maxwell, it was more like a sacred calling.

In the five years since she’d come back to Moose Springs and opened her clinic, he had watched her carefully. Like many others, at first he had expected her to fail. She was the spoiled, pampered daughter of the man who had been the town’s wealthiest citizen. How could she possibly have the stamina to cope with all the gritty realities of small-town doctoring?

Like almost everyone else, he had quickly figured out that there was more to Lauren than anybody might have guessed. Over the years, her clinic had become a strong, vital thread in the community fabric.

They were all lucky to have her—and so was that young girl in the back of the ambulance.

“What am I supposed to do now?” Dale Richins asked, his wide, grizzled features concerned.

“We’re going to need a statement from you. The address of your sister’s house in Park City, any place you might have stopped between there and here. That kind of thing.”

“I can tell you where LouAnn lives. She’s on the edge of town, the only part the old-timers can afford anymore, with all the developers trying to buy everybody out. But I can tell you right now, I didn’t stop a single place after I left her house. Headed straight home. I don’t know if I even would have known that girl was back there if I hadn’t stopped to fix the flat. She would have likely froze to death.”

“You did the right thing, trying to help her.”

“What else was I supposed to do? Little thing like that.” He shook his head. “Just makes me sick, someone could hurt her and leave her to find her own way in the cold. Especially if she’s pregnant like the doc said. It’s got to be only eight or nine degrees out here. I can’t imagine how cold it was in the back of that drafty old camper shell while I was going sixty-five miles an hour on the interstate. It’s a wonder that little girl didn’t freeze solid before I found her.”

“Yeah, it was lucky you found her when you did.”

“Who do you figure might have done this to her?”

“I couldn’t guess right now until I have a chance to talk to her. I imagine she was probably looking for some way to escape when she stumbled onto your truck and camper shell. The lock’s broken, I see.”

“That old thing’s been busted since before you quit your fancy job in the city and came home. But yeah, that makes sense that she was looking for a way out.”

“So either she was injured somewhere near your sister’s house or she stumbled on your truck sometime after the beating. I’ll know better after I can interview her.”

Dale cleared his throat. “You let me know if she needs anything, won’t you? I can’t afford much, but I could help some with her doctor bills and whatnot.”

He couldn’t help being touched at the crusty old rancher’s obvious concern for his stowaway. Most of the time, Dale was hard-edged and irascible, cranky to everyone. Maybe Rosa reminded him of his three granddaughters or something.

“Thanks,” he answered. “That’s real decent of you.”

“Least I can do.”

“There’s Deputy Hendricks,” Daniel said as another department SUV approached. “She’ll take a statement from you with the particulars of your sister’s address and all, and then she can drive you home when you’re finished.”

“What the hell for? I can drive myself home.”

“I’m sorry, Dale, but we’re going to have to take your truck to the garage down at the station to see if we can find any evidence in the back. It’s standard procedure in cases like this.”

The rancher didn’t look too thrilled with that piece of information. “Don’t I have any kind of choice here?”

“You want us to do everything we can to find out who hurt that girl, don’t you?”

“I suppose…”

“You’ll have it back by morning, I promise.”

That didn’t seem to ease Dale’s sour look, but the rancher seemed to accept the inevitable.

“You heading to the hospital now?” he asked.

At Daniel’s nod, he pointed a gnarled finger at him. “You make sure R.J.’s daughter treats that girl right.”

Though he knew it was a foolish reflex, Daniel couldn’t help but stiffen at the renewed animosity in the rancher’s voice. How did Lauren deal with it, day after day? he wondered. Dale wasn’t the only old-timer around here who carried a grudge as wide and strong as the Weber River. She must face this kind of thing on a daily basis.

It pissed him off and made him want to shake the other man. Instead, he pasted on a calm smile. “Dale, if you weren’t so stubborn, you would admit Lauren is a fine doctor. She’ll take care of the girl. You can bet your ranch on it.”

The other man made a harrumphing kind of sound but didn’t comment as Teresa Hendricks approached. Daniel turned his attention from defending Lauren—something she would probably neither appreciate nor understand—and focused on the business at hand.

“Thanks for coming in on your first night off in a week,” he said to his deputy. “Sorry to do this to you.”

“Not a problem. Sounds like you had some excitement.”

He spent five minutes briefing her on the case, then suggested she drive the rancher home and take his statement there, where they both could be warm and dry.

“I’m going to follow the ambulance to the hospital and try to interview the vic,” he said. “If anything breaks here, you know how to reach me.”

The snow seemed to fall heavier and faster as he drove through Parley’s Canyon to the Salt Lake Valley. It was more crowded than he would have expected at eleven at night, until he remembered the film festival. This whole part of the state was insane when all the celebs were in town.

By the time he reached the University of Utah Medical Center, his shoulders ached with tension and he was definitely in need of a beer.

At the hospital, he went immediately to the emergency room and was directed down a hallway, where he quickly spotted Lauren talking to a man Daniel assumed was another doctor, at least judging by the stethoscope around his neck.

The guy was leaning down, and appeared to be hanging on every word Lauren said. He was blond and lean and as chiseled as those movie stars in their two-thousand-dollar ski jackets up the canyon, trying to see and be seen around town.

Daniel immediately hated him.

He took a step down the hallway and knew immediately when Lauren caught sight of him. She straightened abruptly and something flashed in her blue eyes, something murky and confusing. She quickly veiled her expression and it became a mask of stiff politeness.

Just once, he would love the chance to talk to her without the prickly shell she always seemed to whip out from somewhere and put on whenever he was near.

“Sheriff Galvez,” she greeted him, her delicate features solemn. “Have you met Kendall Fox? He’s the E.R. attending tonight. Kendall, this is Daniel Galvez.”

The doctor stuck out his hand and Daniel shook it, though he couldn’t escape the impression they were both circling around each other, sizing up the enemy like a couple of hound dogs sniffing after the same bone.

He didn’t miss the dismissal in the doctor’s eyes and for the second time that night, he had to fight the urge to kick somebody’s ass. He wouldn’t waste his energy, he thought. Lauren was too smart to go for the type of smooth player who couldn’t remember the name of the woman he was with unless she had it tattooed somewhere on a conveniently accessible portion of her anatomy.

“How’s our victim?” he asked.

“She’s gone to Radiology for some X-rays,” Lauren spoke up. “The tech should be bringing her back in a moment. Kendall…Dr. Fox…and I were just discussing the best course of action. We think—”

Dr. Jerk cut her off. “She has a little frostbite on a couple of her toes, an apparent broken wrist and some cracked ribs.”

“How’s the baby?” Daniel pointedly directed his question back to Lauren, ignoring the other man.

She frowned, looking worried. “She’s started having some mild contractions right now. We’ve given her medication to stop them, but she’s definitely going to need to be closely observed for the next few days.”

“She give any indication who put her here?”

Lauren shook her head. She had discarded her parka somewhere, he observed with his keen detective eye, and had put surgical scrubs on over the pale blue turtleneck she had worn when she treated his shoulder. Her hair was slipping from its braid and he had to fight a ridiculous urge to tuck it back.

“She clams up every time we ask.”

“I was afraid of that. She’s got to be frightened. It would sure make my job easier if she could just give me the name, age and last-known address of the son of a bitch who put her here. Of course we have to do this the hard way. Can I talk to her?”

“You cops. Can’t you even wait until the girl gets out of X-ray?” Fox asked.

Daniel slid his fists into his pockets and pasted on that same damn calm smile that sometimes felt about as genuine as fool’s gold.

He really hated being made to feel like a big, dumb Mexican.

“I didn’t mean this instant,” he murmured. “But I would like to talk to her as soon as possible, while the details are still fresh in her mind.”

The doctor looked like he wanted to get in a pissing match right there in the hallway, but before he could unzip, a nurse in pink scrubs stuck her head out of one of the examination rooms.

She didn’t look pleased to find the E.R. doctor still standing close to Lauren, a sentiment with which Daniel heartily concurred. Her reaction made him wonder if the good doctor was the sort who left a swath of broken hearts through the staff.

“Dr. Fox, can you come in here for a minute?” the nurse asked. “I’ve got a question on your orders.”

The doctor’s handsome features twisted with annoyance but he hid it well. “Be right there.”

After he walked down the hall, a tight, awkward silence stretched between Daniel and Lauren. He found it both sad and frustrating, and wondered how he could ever bridge the chasm between them.

He wasn’t exactly sure how much Lauren knew about the events that led up to her father’s exposure and subsequent fall from grace. If she knew all of it, she must blame him for what happened next.

He sure as hell blamed himself.

“How’s your arm?” she asked.

The blasted thing throbbed like the devil, but he wasn’t about to admit that to her.

“Fine,” he assured her. “Sorry I wasted your time on that. If I’d known I would have to make a trip down here to the city, I could have just had them fix me up here while I was waiting to interview our beating victim. But then, I doubt anybody on staff here can claim such nice handiwork.”

She blinked at the compliment and he watched a light sprinkle of color wash over her cheekbones. “I…thank you,” she murmured.

“You’re welcome.”

They lapsed into silence again.

“How’s Anna these days?” Lauren asked after an awkward moment. “I heard she was in the Northwest now.”

Grateful for the conversation starter, he smiled at the thought of his baby sister. “She loves Oregon. She runs a little gift shop and gallery in Cannon Beach that seems to be doing well. I took a few days and drove up there last year and she seems happy.”

“She’s not married?”

Some of the tension between them seemed to ease as they talked and he wanted to prolong the moment indefinitely. “No. Marc’s the only one of us to bite the bullet so far. He and his wife live in Cache Valley. They have twin boys we all spoil like crazy.”

“And Ren is still in Central America?”

“Right. We can’t get him away from his sea turtles.”

She opened her mouth to answer, but cut off the words as a hospital worker pushed a gurney around the corner.

“Here’s Rosa,” she said.

The beating victim looked even younger here in the harsh glare of the hospital lights and her bruises showed up in stark relief against the white linens. Daniel studied her features, trying hard to find any hint of familiarity, but he was certain he didn’t know her.

He helped push the gurney through the door into the examination room, earning a censorious look from Lauren for the mild exertion. He returned it with a bland smile, though he had to fight down a spurt of warmth. He liked her worrying about him far too much.

“How did it go, Riley?” she asked the kid, who looked young for an X-ray technician, as his hospital ID identified him.

“Good. She fell asleep while I was waiting for the films and I didn’t have the heart to wake her. Poor thing.”

“She’s been through a terrible ordeal. She must be exhausted.”

Lauren took the films from him and slid the first of several into the light box hanging on the wall. She studied it, then exchanged it for another and finally a third, a frown of concentration on her lovely features.

“Just as we suspected,” she said after a moment. “She’s got three broken ribs, a fractured ulna and a broken nose.”

“Somebody did a real number on her.” He was angry all over again at the viciousness behind the attack. “How’s the baby?”

Lauren studied tape spitting out from a machine that was attached to a belt around Rosa’s abdomen. “The contractions have stopped. That’s a good sign. We did an ultrasound earlier and the fetus seemed healthy. It’s a miracle. She’s a dozen different shades of black and blue on her abdomen. My guess is somebody kicked her hard at least two or three times in an effort to induce abortion.”

Daniel had a feeling this was one of those cases that would grab on to him with rottweiler jaws and not let go until he solved it. “Can I talk to her?” he asked.

Lauren pursed her lips. “My instincts say to let her sleep for a while, but I understand your urgency. You likely have to return to Moose Springs as soon as possible.”

“I do. I’m sorry. We’re shorthanded tonight.” He paused and met Lauren’s gaze. “It’s not just that, though. I want her to tell me what happened. The quicker she identifies whoever did this to her, the quicker I can lock the bastard up.”

Though he spoke with a hard determination that didn’t bode well for the perpetrator, Lauren didn’t feel so much as a twinge of sympathy for whoever had done this. They deserved to feel the full wrath of Daniel Galvez, a terrible thing indeed.

“I’m right there with you on that sentiment,” she told him. “In fact, if you gave me half a chance, I’d like to be the one twisting the key in the lock.”

“I’ve got to catch him first and I can’t do that until I talk to Rosa.”

Lauren sighed. “All right. Why don’t you wait in the hall while I wake her, though. She might panic if you’re the first thing she sees when she opens her eyes.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Am I really that scary?”

She felt her face heat and regretted her fair coloring that showed every emotion to the world like a big neon billboard. “I meant your uniform,” she answered stiffly, though she had to admit, she found the man absolutely terrifying.

Could he tell? she wondered, hoping it wasn’t as obvious as her blush. She wasn’t afraid he would physically hurt her, though he was big and powerful and all large men tended to make her uncomfortable on some instinctive level.

With Daniel, though, she was more wary of her own reaction to him and all the feelings he sparked in her, emotions she would rather not be experiencing for someone with whom she had such a tangled, complicated relationship.

To her relief, he let the matter drop. “Yell when it’s safe for me to come in, then,” he murmured, slipping out of the room with far more grace than a man his size should possess.

The room immediately felt about three times bigger without his overwhelming presence filling it. Lauren let out the breath she always seemed to hold around him and moved to her patient’s bedside.

“Rosa? Niña, I need you to wake up.”

When she didn’t respond immediately, Lauren gently shook her shoulder. “Rosa?”

The girl’s eyes blinked open and she looked around in wild confusion, panic blooming in her dark eyes. Her gaze shifted to Lauren and a light of recognition sparked there. “Doctora.” She covered her abdomen with her hands. “El bebé. Está bien?”

“Sí. Sí. Está bien.” She smiled, wishing she had a little better command of Spanish. If things weren’t so tensely uncomfortable with Daniel, she might ask for private lessons. But of course, that was impossible, so for now she would have to muddle through.

“Rosa, the sheriff is here to talk to you about who hurt you.”

The panic returned to her features. “No. No policía.”

Lauren sighed. The physician in her wanted to urge her patient to rest, to promise her she could have this difficult interview later when her body had a chance to begin the healing process.

She couldn’t, though. Daniel had a job to do—a job she very much wanted to see him conclude with an arrest. She just had to trust that he would handle a frightened girl with both tact and compassion.

“I’m sorry, Rosa,” she answered in Spanish. “But you must tell him what happened.”

The girl shook her head, her hands clasped protectively around her abdomen as if she feared Daniel would snatch the child from her womb. Lauren gave her a reassuring pat. “It will all be all right. You’ll see. Sheriff Galvez only wants to help you.”

Rosa said something in Spanish too rapid for Lauren to pick up on. She had a feeling she was better off not knowing.

She went to the door and opened it for Daniel. “She’s upset and doesn’t want to talk to you,” she said in an undertone. “I honestly don’t know how much she’ll tell you. I’m sorry. I can give you a few moments but if I think you’re upsetting her too much, I’ll have to kick you out.”

“All right.”

When he entered the room, Rosa shrank against the bed linens, her fine-boned features tight with tension. Daniel pulled out one of the guest chairs and sat on the edge of it. He moved slowly, like someone trying to coax a meadowlark to eat birdseed from his hand.

He spoke Spanish in a low, calm voice. She couldn’t understand him well, both because he pitched his voice low and because he spoke too quickly for her limited comprehension skills.

After a moment, Rosa answered him quickly, reluctance in every line of her body.

Lauren found it a surreal experience trying to follow their conversation when she only understood about one word in five. Even without a perfect command of the language, she could hear the compassion ringing through his voice.

He genuinely cared about Rosa, Lauren thought. The girl might be just a stowaway he had never seen until an hour ago, but he wanted to get to the bottom of things. She suddenly knew Daniel would go to any lengths to protect the girl. Fate had dropped her into Moose Springs, and she had become one of his charges.

She had a feeling his sincerity wasn’t translating for Rosa. She shook her head vehemently several times, and Lauren could at least understand the most frequent word the girl employed. “No” sounded the same in English and in Spanish.

After several moments of this, Rosa turned her head against the wall, a clear message that she was done talking to him. Daniel said something, his voice low and intense, but Rosa didn’t turn around.

At last Daniel stood with a sigh, his big handsome features tight with frustration. He tucked a business card in Rosa’s hand. The girl closed her fingers around it, but didn’t even look at either the card or at Daniel. With another sigh, Daniel nodded to Lauren and left the room.

She followed him. “She won’t talk?” she asked when the door closed behind them.

“She claims she doesn’t remember what happened to her.”

Lauren frowned. “She has no head injury that might account for a loss of memory. I suppose it might be some self-protective psychological reaction to the trauma…”

“There is no loss of memory. She remembers perfectly. She’s just not telling.”

“Doesn’t she understand her safety and that of her baby is at stake here?”

“I think that’s exactly what she’s thinking about. I think she just wants to pretend none of it happened. ‘I’m fine, the baby’s fine. That’s all that matters,’ she just kept saying over and over.”

“I’ll talk to her. She’ll be under my care and the attending’s here for at least the next two or three days. I want to consult with the high-risk ob-gyns on staff here and make sure we monitor her closely to ensure no lasting harm to the fetus from her injuries. I don’t know that it will do any good, but I’ll try to persuade her she has to talk to you, or whoever did this to her will get away with a double attempted murder.”

“Thanks, Lauren. I’ll try to stop back in first thing in the morning. Maybe she’ll change her mind about talking to me by then.”

“You put in long hours, Sheriff.”

He smiled and the sight of those white teeth flashing in that darkly handsome face sent her stomach trembling. “I could say the same for you, Doc.”

She gazed at him for far longer than was probably polite, until he finally cleared his throat.

“You still need a ride back to Moose Springs?”

Chill, she chided herself. This was Daniel Galvez, the one man in town who shouldn’t rev her motor. She would be better off with a player like Kendall Fox. At least he just annoyed her. Being with Dr. Fox never left her feeling like she had just stood in a wind tunnel for two or three days.

“If it’s not too much trouble.”

“No trouble,” he assured her, though she couldn’t help feeling he wasn’t being completely truthful.

“Just give me a few more moments to wrap things up with Kendall and I should be ready.”

“Here comes the good doctor now.”

She turned and found Kendall walking purposefully down the hallway.

“The sheriff is my ride back to Moose Springs since I came in the ambulance,” she said quickly, hoping to deflect any more flirtation. “Do you mind if I leave my patient in your care?”

“We’ll take good care of her until they can find a bed for her on the medical floor.”

“I’ll be back first thing in the morning to check on her,” she said. “I want a phone call in the night if her condition changes at all. Make sure the nurses know that when they admit her upstairs. Any change at all, I want to hear about it.”

“I’ll take care of her, I promise.” Kendall gave her the full wattage of his lady-killer smile. “I’m on until seven in the morning and I expect doughnuts and some decent coffee out of the deal.”

“Done.”

As her interactions with Dr. Fox went, this one was fairly innocuous. She could only hope she would get through the hour-long drive with Daniel Galvez as painlessly.


Chapter 3

The slushy snow of earlier in the evening had given way to giant, soft flakes as the temperature dropped. Daniel drove away from the U. toward the canyon that would take them back to Moose Springs through the feeder streets along the foothills. Roads here were mostly clear, though he knew the canyon would probably be dicey.

He was painfully aware of Lauren sitting beside him and wondered if they had ever been alone like this. He was so conscious of her that it took all his powers of concentration to keep his attention on driving as he took the exit to I-80 through the canyon.

Still, he was aware of every movement from her side of the SUV. When he caught her covering a yawn, he risked a look at her. “Go ahead and sleep if you need to. I’ve got a pillow in the back.”

“I’m all right. It’s been a rather long day. I imagine you know all about those.”

“This week, I certainly do.” He signaled to change lanes around a car with out-of-state plates going at a crawl through what was just a light layer of snow.

The scanner crackled with static suddenly and he heard radio traffic of somebody in Park City reporting a drunk-and-disorderly patron at one of the popular restaurants on Main Street.

“I’m sure that’s not the first one of those they’ve had this week,” Lauren said.

“Yeah, and it won’t be the last until Sundance is over. The detective I spoke to tonight on the way here sounded just a little frazzled.”

“Things are busy enough in Park City in the winter with all the skiers. Throw in the film festival and it’s a nightmare.”

“Have you been to any screenings this year?”

She shrugged. “I don’t have a lot of free hours to go to movies. You?”

“No. I caught a few screenings last year but I’m afraid this one is going to pass me by. Too much work.”

“We’re pathetic, aren’t we? Sounds like we both need to get a life outside our jobs.”

“I’d love to,” he deadpanned, “but who has the time?”

She laughed out loud at that, the low, musical sound filling all the cold corners of his Tahoe. “We are pathetic. I was thinking the exact same thing. By the time I finish a twelve-hour shift at the clinic, I’m lucky to find the energy to drive home.”

“You need a vacation.” He pushed away the image of her on a white sand beach somewhere, a soft sea breeze ruffling her hair and her muscles loose and relaxed.

“Funny, that seems to be the consensus,” she said. “You’ll be surprised to find, I’m sure, that I’m actually taking one next week. Coralee and Bruce Jenkins are going on a cruise. Rather than hire a temp to be the office manager for a week, I decided to close the whole clinic and just give everyone the time off. My staff needed a break.”

“Good for you!”

“The town got along without any doctor at all for a long time. I’m sure a few days without me will be bearable.”

“What are you doing with yourself?”

“I haven’t decided yet. Mom’s bugging me to come down and visit for a few days. I might. Or I might just stick close to home, try out some new cross-country ski trails, maybe take in a movie or two in Park City.”

“I’m sure Dr. Fox would be happy to take you to a screening if you just said the word.”

He immediately wished he had just kept that little statement to himself. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Lauren’s eyes widen with surprise. Even from here, he could see color flare on her delicate cheekbones. “Kendall? I don’t think so.”

He knew he should let it rest but he just couldn’t seem to make himself shut up. “Why?” he pressed. “He’s good-looking, successful, probably loaded. Seems like a good catch.”

“Maybe you should date him,” she said tartly.

“I’m not the one the good doctor couldn’t take his eyes off.”

“You’re delusional. I’d be happy to refer you to a doctor who can prescribe something for that.”

He laughed, but figured he should probably change the subject before he revealed too much, like the attraction he had done his best to hide for more than a decade. Before he could come up with a conversational detour, she beat him to the punch.

“What about you?” she asked. “I heard rumors of wedding bells a few summers ago when you were dating little Cheryl White.”

“She wasn’t little,” he muttered.

“Not in physical assets, anyway. But wasn’t she barely out of high school?”

He had to admit, he was a little stung by her implication that he might be interested in jailbait. At the same time, he had to wonder why she noticed who he dated. “Cheryl was twenty-one when I started dating her. She didn’t even have to use fake ID to get into Mickey’s.”

“That must have been a relief for you. It probably would have been a little awkward to have to arrest your own girlfriend.”

It must be late, if she could tease him like this. The tension usually simmering between them was nowhere in sight as they drove through the snowy night. He savored the moment, though he was fairly certain it wouldn’t last.

“For the record, Cheryl was never my girlfriend. We only dated a few times and we never discussed wedding bells or anything else matrimony-related. You ought to know better than to listen to the Moose Springs gossips.”

Even without looking at her, he could feel her light mood trickle away like the snow melting on the windshield.

“You’re right. Absolutely right.” Her voice cooled several degrees in just a few seconds. “Who gossips to you will gossip of you, isn’t that what they say? And I certainly don’t need to be the subject of any more whispers in Moose Springs.”

The ghost of her father loomed between them and all the usual tension suddenly returned. He would have given anything to take his heedless words back, but like those snippets of gossip spreading around town, they couldn’t be recalled.

His hands tightened on the steering wheel and he made some innocuous comment about the weather. She responded in a quiet, polite voice, as if those shared moments of intimacy had never been.

It was nearly midnight when he pulled up in front of the clinic. Three or four inches of snow had fallen while they had been in the city and her aging Volvo was buried.

He reached across the space between them to his jockey box for his window scraper. The movement brought him closer to her and he was surrounded by jasmine and vanilla.

His mouth watered and his insides gave one big sigh, but he did his best to ignore his automatic reaction. He pulled out the scraper and returned to the safe side of the vehicle—but not before he heard a quick, indrawn breath from Lauren.

He chanced a look at her. The SUV was parked under a lamppost and in the pool of light, he found her blue eyes wide and her lovely features slightly pink.

He wasn’t quite sure what to think about that so decided to put it from his mind. “Wait here where it’s warm,” he ordered.

Her forehead furrowed with her frown and now any flush that might be on her features turned to annoyance. “Are you kidding? I just put seven stitches in your arm, Daniel. You wait here where it’s warm. Better yet, go on home and rest. I don’t need a police escort to scrape the snow off my car.”

“Wait here,” he repeated, in the same no-nonsense voice he used with the prisoners at the jail.

Her sigh sounded exasperated, but he didn’t let that stop him as he stepped out into the blowing cold that soaked through the layers of his coat to settle in his bones.

Nights like this made him feel all his thirty-three years—and more—and he couldn’t help but remember every single hit he took as a running back at Wyoming. He ignored the aches, especially the throb and pull of the stitches in his arm, as he brushed the snow off her car then scraped the thick ice underneath.

He wasn’t particularly surprised—just annoyed—when she joined him in the cold. She slid into the driver’s seat of her vehicle and turned over the engine. After a chugging kind of start, the motor engaged. A moment later, she emerged with another window scraper and went to work on the other side of the vehicle.

When the windows were clear, she stood back. “Thank you for your help,” she murmured. “And for the ride.”

He didn’t want it to end, he realized, as tense and uncomfortable as things became at the end there.

How pathetic was that?

“Don’t you have any gloves?” he asked. “Your hands are going to be freezing by the time you get home.”

“They’re around somewhere. I keep buying pairs and losing them between here and my house.”

He reached into the pocket of his parka. “Here. Take mine. I’ve got an extra pair in the squad vehicle.”

Her mouth lifted slightly. “No offense, Sheriff, but your hands are a little bigger than mine.” She waggled delicate fingers that would be dwarfed by his gloves and he felt huge and awkward. “Thank you for the offer but it’s only half a mile. I should be fine.”

“Good night, then,” he said. “Thanks again for your help earlier stitching me up.”

“You’re welcome. Be careful of those sutures.”

She smiled a little and it took all his willpower to keep from reaching between them, tucking her into his warmth and kissing the tired corner of that mouth.

She climbed into the Volvo and he returned to his Tahoe as she slowly pulled out of the parking lot into the deserted streets, her tires crunching on snow.

He pulled out behind her and they seemed to be the only fools out on the road on a cold January night. Everybody else must be snuggled together at home.

Okay, he didn’t need that image in his head. Suddenly the only thing he could think about was cuddling under a big quilt with Lauren in front of a crackling fire while the snow pelted the windows, her soft body wrapped around him and jasmine and vanilla seducing his senses.

Reality was light-years away from fantasy—so far it would have been amusing if he didn’t find it so damn depressing as he followed her through the snowy streets.

She lived on the outskirts of town, in a trim little clapboard house set away from her neighbors, the last house before the mountains. When they reached it, Lauren pulled into her garage and slid from her Volvo. In the dim garage light, he could clearly see her exasperated look as she waved him on.

He shook his head and gestured to the house. He waited until the lights came on inside and the garage door closed completely before he drove off into the snowy night.

She stood at her living room window watching Daniel’s big SUV cruise slowly down the street.

How very like him to follow her home simply to ensure she made it in safely. It wasn’t necessary. The distance between the clinic and her house wasn’t far. Even if her ancient car sputtered and gave out on the way, she could easily walk home—in good weather, she walked to and from work all the time.

Yet Daniel had been concerned enough to take time out of his busy schedule to follow her home. A slow, steady warmth spread out from her core as she watched his taillights disappear in the snow.

She shouldn’t feel so warm and comforted by his simple gesture, as if those big, strong arms were wrapped around her. It was foolish to be so touched, but she couldn’t remember the last time someone had fussed over her with such concern.

Just his nature, she reminded herself. Daniel was a caretaker. He always had been. She could remember watching him on the bus with his three younger siblings, how he had always stood between them and anybody who might want to bully them. He wouldn’t let anybody push them around, and nobody dared. Not if they had to run the risk of incurring the wrath of big Danny Galvez.

Oh, she had envied them. His sister had been in her grade and Lauren used to be so jealous that Anna had an older brother to watch out for her. Two of them, since Ren was just a year younger than Daniel.

She had longed for a noisy, happy family like the Galvezes. For siblings to fight and bicker and share with.

Siblings. Her mouth tightened and she let the curtain fall, hating the word. She shouldn’t feel this anger at her father all over again but she couldn’t seem to help herself.

She had siblings as well. Three younger brothers from her father’s second family, the one she and her mother had known nothing about until after R.J.’s suicide and all her father’s dark secrets came to light.

A few years ago she had met them and their mother—a woman who had been as much in the dark about her husband’s other life and Lauren and her mother as they had been about her. They had all seemed perfectly nice. Children who had adored R.J. as much as she had and a widow who had still seemed shell-shocked.

They hadn’t wanted any further relationship. Just as well, because Lauren didn’t know if she quite had the stomach to continue being polite to the innocent children who had been the cause of R.J.’s relentless need for cash. Maintaining two households couldn’t have been cheap and her father’s way of augmenting his income was dipping into the public till.

She sighed and pushed thoughts of her half siblings away, focusing instead on Daniel Galvez and his caretaking of the world.

She shouldn’t feel singled out simply because he followed her home to make sure she arrived safely. This wasn’t any kind of special treatment, just Daniel’s way with everyone.

Imagining it meant anything other than politeness would be a dangerous mistake.

She turned away from the window and the dark night. Returning to her empty house late at night always depressed her, highlighting the lonely corners of her life. She needed a dog, a big friendly mutt to lick her chin and rub against her legs and curl up at her feet on the rare evenings she was home.

With her insane hours, she knew that wouldn’t be fair to any living creature, though perhaps she should get a fish or something, just for the company.

She turned on the television for noise and headed for the bathroom. A good, long soak in hot water would chase away the tension of the day and perhaps lift her spirits.

She had no reason to be depressed. She was doing the job she loved, the one she had dreamed of since she was a young girl in junior high biology class. If she had no one to share it all with, that was her own fault.

She was lonely. That was the long and short of it. She longed for someone to talk to at the end of the day, for a warm body to hold on a winter’s night.

Too bad her options were so limited here—eligible single males weren’t exactly thick on the ground in a small town like Moose Springs—but she was determined to stay here, come hell or high water.

What other choice did she have? She owed the town a debt she could never fully repay, though she tried her best. She couldn’t in good conscience move away somewhere more lucrative and leave behind the mess her father had created.

The best cure for loneliness was hard work and she had never shied away from that. And perhaps she ought to stay away from Daniel, since spending any time at all with him only seemed to accentuate all the things missing in her life.

Her gray mood had blown away with the storm as she drove through the predawn darkness the next day through town. Her clinic hours started at nine but she figured if she left early enough, she could make it to see Rosa at the hospital in Salt Lake City and be back before the first patient walked through the door.

She felt energized for the day ahead as she listened to Morning Edition on NPR. The morning was cold and still, the snow of the night before muffling every sound. She waved at a few early-morning snow-shovelers trying to clear their driveways before heading to work.

Most of them waved back as she passed, but a few quite noticeably turned their backs on her. She sighed but decided not to let it ruin her good mood.

This area was settled by pioneer farmers and ranchers and for years they had made up the bedrock of the rural economy. But for the last decade or so Moose Springs had become more of a bedroom community to workers in Park City and Salt Lake City who were looking for a quiet, mostly safe place to raise their families.

She was glad to see newcomers in town and figured an infusion of fresh blood couldn’t hurt. Still, she hoped this area was able to hang on to all the small-town things she had always loved about it.

The interstate through the canyon was busy with morning commuters heading into the city, but the snow had been cleared in the night so the drive was pleasant.

As she had promised, she stopped at her favorite bakery not far from the hospital to pick up a dozen doughnuts and several cups of coffee for Kendall and the floor nurses.

Juggling the bag, the cup holder and her laptop, she hurried inside the hospital and went straight for the E.R., hoping she could catch the nurses who had helped with Rosa before their shift changed in a half hour. She had learned early in her career that nurses were the heart and soul of a hospital and she always tried to go out of her way to let them know how much she appreciated their hard work.

She found several nurses gathered at the station. They greeted her with friendly smiles.

“No sexy sheriff with you this morning?” Janie Carpenter, one of the nurses she had worked with before, asked her.

If only. She shook her head. “Sorry. I’m on my own. But I brought goodies, if that helps.”

“I don’t know.” A round, middle-aged nurse grinned. “Between doughnuts or a hottie like that, I’d choose the sheriff every time. I was thinking I just might have to drive to Moose Springs and rob a bank or something. I certainly wouldn’t mind that man putting me under arrest.”

“Or under anything else,” Janie purred. “Think he might use handcuffs?”

Lauren could feel herself blush. She wanted to tell them Daniel was far more than just chiseled features and strong, athletic shoulders. But maybe he enjoyed being drooled over. She pulled one of the doughnuts out and grabbed the last cup of coffee in the drink holder.

“I owe this to Dr. Fox. Is he around?”

Janie rolled her eyes. “Haven’t seen him for a while. He’s probably flirting with the nurses on the surgical floor. I’ll be happy to set it aside for him, though.”

She handed over the stash, not believing her for a second. Oh, well, she tried. It was Kendall’s own fault for being such a player.

She waved goodbye to the nurses and headed up to Rosa’s floor. Nobody was in sight at the nurse’s station on this floor except a dour-looking maintenance man haphazardly swirling a mop around.

Served her right for coming just as the nurses were giving report. She could hear them in the lounge as the night shift caught the fresh blood up on their caseload.

She smiled at the janitor but he still didn’t meet her eye so she gave up trying to be nice and began looking for Rosa’s chart. Probably in with the nurses, she realized, and went to the lounge to ask if they were done with it.

“Here it is. She had a very quiet night,” a tired-looking nurse said, handing over the chart. “No more contractions and I peeked in on her about an hour ago and she was sleeping soundly.”

“Thank you.”

When Lauren returned to the desk, the janitor was gone. She spent a moment flipping through the chart, pleased with what she saw there. Her vitals were stable and her pain level seemed to be under control. The few times she had awakened, she had seemed calm and at ease.

Lauren didn’t want to wake her patient, but she also didn’t want to leave after coming all this way without at least checking on her.

As she paused outside the door to her room, a strange whimpering noise sounded from inside and her heart sank. Despite what the night nurse had charted, maybe the mild painkillers Rosa had been treated with weren’t quite cutting it.

She pushed open the door to check on the girl, then gasped.

The horrific sight inside registered for only about half a second before Lauren started screaming for security and rushed inside to attack the man who was trying to smother her patient.


Chapter 4

After that first instant of disoriented, stunned panic, everything else seemed a blur. She rushed the man, almost tripping over the mop and bucket on her way toward him as she yelled for him to stop and for security at equal turns.

With no coherent plan, she slammed into him to knock him away from her patient. The force of her movement knocked them both off balance and they toppled against the rolling bedside table, sending it crashing to the floor and the two of them after it.

The man scrambled to his feet to get away and Lauren lunged after him, barely registering the coarse fabric of his janitor’s uniform as she grabbed hold of it. For some wild reason she was intent only on keeping him there until security arrived, but he was just as intent on escape.

He shoved her to get her away from him, hissing curses at her in Spanish as he fought her off. Finally he just swung his other beefy fist out and slugged her, the blow connecting to the cheekbone and knocking her to the ground.

White-hot pain exploded in her skull. In an instant he was gone. She couldn’t have stopped him, even if she hadn’t been forced to release him when she fell.

Lauren’s vision grayed and her stomach twisted and heaved from the pain. She wanted to curl up right there on the floor, but Rosa was clutching her throat and still gasping for air. Lauren forced herself to keep it together for her patient’s sake. Using the bed for support, she pulled herself to her feet and hurried as fast as possible to the terrified girl’s side.

“Come on, sweetheart,” Lauren urged, grabbing the oxygen mask from the wall above the bed and placing it as gently as possible over Rosa’s mouth at the same time she hit the emergency call button.

“Take deep breaths. That’s the way. You’re fine now. Nobody’s going to hurt you.”

Though she forgot all about the language barrier and spoke in English, Rosa seemed to understand her. The shaken girl made a ragged, gravelly sound deep in her throat and Lauren handed her the water glass by the side of her bed just as the first nurses rushed in.

“What is it? What happened?” the first one asked. “Are you okay?”

Lauren was shaking, she realized, and her head throbbed like it had been crushed by a wrecking ball. “No. I’m not okay. A man just attacked my patient. Call security. Have them block all the exits and entrances. They need to look for a Latino male in his mid-twenties. He was wearing a maintenance worker’s uniform but it was too short for him so I’m guessing it wasn’t real.”

“You’re bleeding!” the nurse exclaimed.

“Forget about me,” she said harshly. “Just call security!”

The nurse rushed out and Rosa gave a strangled whimper. Lauren saw she was inches away from hysteria. She slid onto the bed and gathered the girl to her, as much to comfort her as to find a safe place to sit for a moment before her legs gave out.

“You’re okay. You’re safe now.”

“Mi bebé. Mi bebé.”

“Okay, okay. We’ll check everything out but I’m sure your baby is all right.”

As the adrenaline spike crested, Lauren had to fight to hold on to her meager breakfast. It wasn’t easy.

She had been physically attacked only once before in her life and finding herself in this situation again brought back all those long-dormant feelings of shock and invasion she thought she had worked through years ago.

She didn’t know what was stronger, the urge to vomit or the urge to crawl into a corner and sob.

“Rosa. Is that the same man who hurt you?”

The girl hesitated, though Lauren could tell she understood her fractured Spanish.

“The only way you can be safe is to report what happened so he can be arrested.”

The gross hypocrisy of her words struck her, but she couldn’t worry about that now. Not when her patient’s life was at stake.

“Rosa, you’re going to have to tell someone what happened. You have no choice anymore. Will you talk to Sheriff Galvez?”

Rosa let out a sob and curved both hands over her abdomen. After a moment, she gave a long, slow nod.

He was bone-tired, so tired all he wanted to do was pull over somewhere, put his hat over his face and doze off for a few decades.

A smart man would be home in bed right about now dreaming soft, pleasant dreams that had nothing to do with crimes or accident reports or people in need.

He, on the other hand, had decided on a wild hair to drive into the big city after his shift ended to check on their assault victim. He could only hope a night in the hospital had changed her mind about talking to him about what had happened to her.

He worked out the kinks in his neck as he parked his SUV and headed for the front entrance of the hospital. Four security guards and a Salt Lake City police officer stood just inside, a pretty heavy security force. Maybe they had beefed up security for some kind of high-profile patient. His guess was that some kind of A-list movie star from the film festival had broken a leg on the slopes or something.

He recognized the city cop as Eddie Marin, an old friend from police training. “Hey, Eddie. What’s going on?”

The officer greeted him with familiar back-slapping. “Galvez, long time no see.”

“What’s with all the uniforms?”

“Incident up on the medical unit. Some dude tried to off a patient. We’ve sealed off the entrances but the guy seems to be in the wind. We can’t find any trace of him.” He gave Daniel a considering look. “Not saying we don’t appreciate all the help we can get, but isn’t this one a little far out of your jurisdiction?”

“I’m off duty, just following up on an assault victim dumped in my neck of the woods. What does your suspect look like? I’ll keep an eye out for him on my way up.”

“We had an eyewitness who caught him in the attack and was hurt trying to fight him off. She was pretty shaken up but Dr. Maxwell described a Latino male in a janitor uniform, five feet eleven inches, one hundred ninety pounds, half his left eyebrow missing from a scar. Only problem is, we can’t find the bastard anywhere in the hospital.”

Daniel registered none of the description, too caught up in the words preceding it. “Did you say Dr. Maxwell? Lauren Maxwell?”

“I think that’s her name. You know her?”

“She was injured?”

Eddie blinked at his urgent tone. “Perp punched her and knocked her to the floor. She’s pretty banged up and needs a couple stitches but she won’t leave her patient.”

“What room?”

Eddie gave him a careful look. “You okay, man?”

“What the hell room are they in?”

The officer told him and Daniel didn’t bother waiting for the elevator, he just raced for the stairs, his heart pounding.

He wouldn’t say he was intimately familiar with the sprawling hospital but he had been here many times on other cases. He knew his way enough to find the room Eddie had indicated, and in moments he reached the medical wing.

Even if the officer hadn’t given him the room number, he would have known it instantly by the crowd of people milling around. His own uniform seemed to smooth the way as he fought his way through until he made it to the room.

He found Lauren just outside the doorway, gesturing to another Salt Lake police officer he didn’t recognize.

She was holding a blood-soaked bandage to her cheek and her face was pale and drawn. Rage burned through him at whatever bastard might have hurt her and he wanted to fold her against him and keep her safe from the world.

She cut off her words the moment she saw him.

“Daniel!” she exclaimed, shock and relief mingling in her voice. Before he quite knew how it happened, she seemed to slide into his arms, pressing her uninjured cheek against the fabric of his uniform and holding on tight.

She felt delicate and fragile against him and despite the layers of his coat, he could feel the tiny shudders that shook her frame.

She sagged against him for only a moment, just long enough for him to want to tighten his arms and hold on forever. After entirely too short a time, she pulled away, a rosy flush replacing the pale, washed-out look she had worn when he first saw her.

He wanted to pull her back into his arms but he knew they didn’t have that kind of relationship. The only reason she had turned to him in the first place was likely because he represented a familiar face, comfort and security amid her trauma.

Already, he could see her replacing the defenses between them and once more becoming the cool, controlled physician who could handle anything.

“What happened?” he asked.

She let out a breath. “It was terrible. Absolutely awful. I walked into the room to check on Rosa about half an hour ago and found a janitor with his hands around her neck, choking the life out of her. Only he obviously wasn’t really a janitor. She says he was the same one who attacked her.”

“How is she?”

Her eyes softened and he had the impression that had been exactly the right thing to say, though he wasn’t quite sure why.

“Petrified and shocked. She keeps saying mi bebé over and over. Physically, I don’t think she was injured by the latest attack but she’s severely traumatized by it.”





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