His gut eased its stranglehold. Gray relaxed against the headboard. "Okay. That"s manageable. No need to head straight for the E.R. yet. Any trouble breathing?"
"No."
"Did you call her pediatrician?"
Sound waves crackled for three heartbeats.
"I"m sorry." Lori"s voice steadied and chilled. "I shouldn"t have bothered you in the middle of the night. Goodb-"
"No!" Gray closed his eyes and wondered if he would ever figure out how to dodge the land mines that seemed to surround Lori. "That"s not what I meant."
"I shouldn"t have woken you up. I just- Never mind."
"Lori-"
"Go back to sleep, Gray. I"ll call her pediatrician."
"Lori!"
"What?"
"I"m on my way."
Her sigh shuddered through the phone. "Thank you."
Gray whipped on a pair of shorts and a threadbare Eagles concert T-shirt. He slipped on deck shoes without socks, tucked his medical bag under his arm and sprinted for the door. He told himself there was nothing to worry about. He"d checked Magda thoroughly before she"d been released from the hospital. The kid was okay.
Lori wasn"t, though. Her trembling voice reverberated through his mind.
d.a.m.n it, he should have insisted on staying. He"d let his pride shove him out the door when she"d needed him.
He slid into his car and revved the engine. Tires squealing, he tore out of the parking lot.
Intellectually, he knew guilting himself out was bunk. Children went home from the hospital every day without an in-house doctor to pull baby-sitting duties. Parents managed.
But Lori never asked for help.
Gray accelerated through a yellow light and made the half-hour drive downtown in under twenty minutes.
Taking her stairs two at a time, he charged toward Lori"s apartment. With each pounding step he told himself to get a grip. In a couple of weeks he would be three thousand miles away from Lori and Magda. He wouldn"t be here for late-night panic calls. He needed to settle them in and cut ties.
Lori tore the door open before he could knock. His fist paused in midair.
Not that he could find much air.
Lori stood before him, dressed for bed. Flowered women"s boxers hung low on her hips as if the lightest tug would pull them free. A white tank top plunged too low for his comfort level. Tiny roses dotted the neckline, magnetizing his attention where it had no business straying.
Forget hankering for her in silk or satin, he had the hots for cotton, especially when it clung to Lori"s gentle curves. Her hair tangled in a wild disarray around her shoulders. He"d seen the look before. Only, he"d been the one to put it there with his hands.
His gaze settled on her eyes. Her panicked eyes. Heat fell away.
"Thank G.o.d you"re here." Lori shoved a harried hand through her hair. "She"s back in her room."
Childish sniffles, followed by a hacking cough echoed down the hallway. Not the rumbling cough he"d expected. Gray frowned. "Lead on."
He followed Lori as her bare feet padded along the hardwood floors, then over Oriental runners. Each twitch of her hips taunted him, those baggy boxers defying gravity by staying in place.
Lori rushed ahead to Magda"s bed and perched on the edge beside her, smoothing a hand along the little girl"s back. The door creaked shut behind him.
A cool-mist vaporizer hummed on the bedside table. It wafted a hazy sheen around Lori, like that fuzzy lighting used to illuminate heroines in the movies.
Gray ripped his gaze away. Time to slip into doctor mode, fast, best for everyone.
Magda lay curled on her side, coughing until she gagged. She stared at Gray, hostility replaced by pleading. Fix me.
He"d seen that same message in the eyes of countless patients. Please, fix me.
It never failed to thump him somewhere around what a woman might have called his heart.
However, the plea in those two tiny brown eyes, echoed in Lori"s larger set of matching ones, leveled him. Like an upper cut right to the solar plexus.
He"d wanted to be needed. No doubt about it, Lori and Magda needed him now, so much so that he didn"t think three thousand miles would be far enough away to make him forget their pleading eyes.
Lori didn"t want to ponder overlong on why she"d needed to call Gray. Surely calling the pediatrician would have made more sense. But hearing Gray"s voice on the other end of the phone had shaved the edge off her panic. His arrival had pared it down further to an almost manageable level.
Almost.
Magda hacked her way through another choking cough, and Lori"s panic returned full force. She always managed, always. This vulnerability scared her to the roots of her hair.
Like a fool she"d called the last man she should have. The only face she could envision through her claustrophobic fear. For Magda"s sake, Lori would lean on him. For the moment.
Gray sat on the opposite side of the bed from Lori and pulled out his stethoscope. Gently he lifted Magda from under the covers. "Cool to the touch. No spiked fever to worry about."
Lori pressed her trembling hands to her shaking knees. "That"s really good. Right?"
"Absolutely." Shoving aside the shoulder on Magda"s Winnie the Pooh nightgown, he listened to her chest and back. "No rattling breath sounds to indicate a relapse. But something"s going on with that cough."
Magda whimpered, and Lori almost groaned in time with frustration.
Gray scrubbed the knuckles of his fist over his chin. "If she could just tell me where it hurts."
Lori straightened, inspiration lighting now that her fear had eased to a more manageable level. "She can. Sign language, remember?"
"How would she tell me where it hurts?"
"That"s a new one, kind of tough, but we"ll give it a go. Let me see your leg."
"Huh?"
"Your injured leg. Stretch it out on the bed."
Gray extended his leg, his brow furrowed. Lori grabbed his ankle. A mistake. His warmth, the bristly hair, the flex of muscles and bones beneath her touch scattered her thoughts like fall leaves. Warning herself not to linger, doing it anyway, she turned his leg so the bandage faced out. "Magda?"
She turned to Lori, wide eyes blinking.
Lori pointed to Gray"s bandage, gave an exaggerated wince. Then she placed her pointer fingers facing each other and waggled her hands. "Hurt."
An image of Gray sprinting across the runway after her flared to life in Lori"s mind. When had he been wounded? She"d never even seen him stumble. He"d just come for her without a care for himself.
Lori pointed to Gray"s leg again, plastering on a pained expression, not a difficult task at all, and repeated the gesture. "Hurt."
Another image flamed to life, of Gray dragging her onto the plane. His injury must have been excruciating by then. Instead he"d focused the intensity of those glittering emerald eyes on her. He"d been mad as h.e.l.l.
Her memory overlaid a sheen of concern in his eyes, even fear for her mingling with his anger. Had it been there before? Or was she only remembering what she wanted to?
That bandage glared at her with agonizing brightness. She needed for him to go before she started crying all over his wounded leg.
Lori pointed to Magda and made the "hurt" symbol. "Magda hurts?"
Magda frowned, and Lori raised her hands to explain again. Then Magda"s face cleared. She pointed to her stomach, placed her pointers together and wiggled her tiny hands, mimicking Lori"s gesture. Magda repeated the process again, a questioning look on her face.
Lori nodded. "Yes, your tummy hurts." She turned to Gray, feeling as if she"d saved another orphanage full of kids all over again. "Her stomach hurts!"
They"d figured it out, together, an accomplishment too heady for her comfort level.
Gray nodded. "Okay, we"re getting somewhere."
With any luck he would dose Magda up and be on his way. He could pack his bag and take those too-tempting muscular legs out of her apartment before she started dreaming up late-night thoughts. She didn"t think she could take much more of barely dressed Gray while moonlight cast a yellow hue a little too like candlelight romance.
Lori tucked Magda under her arm and asked Gray, "What can you do for her, Doc?"
"Doc," Magda parroted.
Gray grinned and ruffled Magda"s hair. She ducked from his touch and patted her hair back in place. Lori offered him an apologetic grimace. "Sorry."
"No problem. Let"s just focus on finding out what"s wrong with her. At least I know where to start looking." Gray placed his hand on her belly, palpated lightly and frowned. Magda flinched, doubling over. He rested his stethoscope over her stomach. His eyes widened. "Uh, oh." Magda coughed. Groaned. Gagged.
"Lori, move!" Gray scooped the little girl up and ran full-out to the bathroom, positioning her head over the toilet howl with only seconds to spare.
Lori trailed after them helplessly.
Gray held the back of Magda"s neck and looked at Lori. "Not pneumonia this time. She"s just got an old-fashioned case of the stomach flu."
"Stomach flu." Relief diffused the tension from her, and she slumped against the bathroom door. Adrenaline gushed through her in waves, leaving her with an absurd urge to laugh.
So much for concerns about late-night pa.s.sion and mood-setting moments. If Magda"s green pallor was any indication, Lori had a long night ahead of her and romance wasn"t even an option.
Four hours and countless loads of laundry later, Lori sagged onto the floor beside Magda"s bed. She leaned her head against the mattress with a weary sigh.
She needn"t have worried about ending up in some unexpected, mind-numbing clench with Gray. They"d both been too busy taking turns cleaning up after Magda.
It was a miracle there weren"t more only children in the world. How did parents ever find the energy necessary for the s.e.x to make another baby?
Who"d have thought taking care of one sick kid could suck the life right out of a person? They hadn"t even been dealing with anything life threatening. Just a simple stomach flu like the one going around the base.
Lori watched Gray as he strode through the bedroom door. Thank G.o.d she"d had his help.
Doubts slunk in with insidious force. How was she ever going to manage alone? How easy it would be to succ.u.mb to the temptation of calling for his help over the next month. A dangerous mix of alarm and antic.i.p.ation fizzed within her.
Gray dropped down beside her, having just changed into clean workout clothes from his car. "Any noise from our little patient?"
"Nope. She" s sleeping, for a while at least."
"Probably worn-out."
"She"s not the only one."
Propped open, the French doors ushered night breezes and sounds inside, clearing away the dank, sick-room odor and replacing it with a tantalizing intimacy. Bells chimed four times, the distant rush of waves echoing from the harbor a few blocks over.
Lori shifted toward Gray. "I didn"t even think to ask. You"re not on call are you?"
"Not until Sunday."
"Oh, good. Thank you for coming. I know I don"t have any right to ask-"
"I want to help. I"ve told you that already."
And he had helped, so much. His steady calm and frequent smiles had lent her a confidence she needed. "I don"t know what I would have done without you."
"You would have managed."
Maybe, but his smiles had helped more than he could know. More than she wanted him to know. "I don"t really have that much experience with kids. I never had younger cousins around, never baby-sat."
"I guess not, with moving so much."
"I feel like such a fraud. What do I know about taking care of a child long-term?"
"You"ve been a foster parent. You have training."
"Short-term placements. And all the textbook training in the world can"t teach me how to deal with this for real. She"s counting on me, for so much more than food and a temporary place to sleep." A gust ruffled the sheers on the French doors, swirling the room with hints of ocean and marsh. Warmth and hints of bay rum waited an arm"s reach away. "What if I screw up? The stakes are so high here, and I"m all she has."
"Parents make mistakes, Lori, but you"ve already got the tough parts figured out. Some people are just born to be parents."
"And some aren"t?"
"Some aren"t."