"Whose rule was that, anyway?"
Before Gray could answer, a loadmaster called to him. Tables, chairs, even a few stretchers had been set up at makeshift exam stations to triage patients. She studied one young face after another. The flight was only slated to transport ambulatory pa.s.sengers.
And if someone needed care beyond what they could provide in-flight? How could she leave behind a sick child in a country where bombs and gunfire still whispered insidiously in the distance?
She refused to think about that. Gray would patch them up and board them. When it came to his job, the man was determination personified.
Lori flipped her braid over her shoulder. "What do you need from me?"
His eyes snapped to hers. "Going for a little rule breaking yourself, huh?"
She shot him her best withering stare. "In the examinations."
A self-deprecating smile flickered across his face before disappearing altogether. "Keep the flow moving, bring me a child, pa.s.s the one I just finished with over to the load-masters so we can board them. The faster we get out of here the better."
"I thought we had four hours?"
"The sooner we"re out of here, the better," he repeated. Bombs growled in the distance as if applauding him. Uniformed workers didn"t even break stride. Children barely winced. "Thank G.o.d the Red Cross already gave them their immunizations and TB tests. Saved us time and the kids" irritability in-flight. For now, anything you can do to calm them, hugs, pats, whatever, will speed things along."
"Like their mothers would have done for them in a checkup." Her own mother hadn"t been much for chicken soup, but she"d always ordered the best of room service. Hugs and an afternoon of cartoons rounded out the treatment. Hugs. The cure-all for kids. She could do that. Longed to do that.
"Exactly." Gray"s gaze swept the roomful of children who would never see their mothers again. His cheeks puffed on an exhale. "Just do what you can for them."
"Got it."
A representative from the orphanage brought the first child forward-a toddler, not more than a couple of years old but with none of the chubby-cheeked health of the babies in Lori"s dreams. Carefully she scooped him into her arms. So frail. Even needing a bath and fresh clothes, he carried that precious baby scent universal to all small children.
c.o.c.king his head to the side, the boy studied her with dark, curious eyes. Quick as a flash, he yanked her braid.
"You"re a little stinker." She grasped the tail of her braid and tickled his chin, earning a gurgling giggle. She pa.s.sed him to Gray, their eyes locking over the tiny head. Their arms brushed in the exchange.
For the first time in a year he touched her, and the pure pleasure of that careless caress closed her throat. She wanted more, like a dangerous, addictive narcotic. She wanted his hands on her again.
Lori transferred the toddler to Gray and backed away.
He plopped the child on the edge of the gurney. With a broad, gentle hand he chucked him under the chin and tipped up the boy"s name tag pinned to his tattered sleeper. "Well, h.e.l.lo, Ladislov. What a big name for a little guy."
Gray kept his tone low and rea.s.suring as he skimmed off the sleeper, stripping the baby down to his diaper.
Those big hands were so tender with the child, Lori had to look away. "Sorry. I should have done that for you."
"Next time. We"re fine now. Right, Ladislov?" Gray ran his hands along spindly legs and arms, explored a b.u.mp on the boy"s head, listened to his chest, continuing the physical with relative ease until he tried to peer inside the child"s ears.
Ladislov made his displeasure known.
Loudly.
He lurched off the gurney.
Gray and Lori both caught him in midair.
Lori took control and cradled the screeching child. "Hang on. I"ll have him settled in a second."
She tucked her chin on top of his head and swayed from side to side, humming rea.s.surance. The oddly domestic scenario wrapped around her and squeezed with suffocating force.
Life wasn"t playing fair today, either.
The baby"s shrieks dwindled to hiccuping sobs. Gray scratched his jaw. "Just sit on the gurney. Hold him, but turn him to face me and I"ll finish up."
Lori hitched onto the edge, a difficult maneuver with at least twenty pounds of baby crawling to snuggle closer. Gray braced her elbow and balanced, lifting until she perched in front of him. His hand dropped away a second too fast.
Her elbow burned.
Gray selected an instrument from the tray. "I need to check his ears. Hold his arms for me." Gray flipped the light off and on in front of Ladislov"s face. "See, pal. Just an otoscope. Nothing scary, right?"
Ladislov thrust his bottom lip out mutinously and wriggled. Lori clasped the tiny hands in hers, her arms locked around little Ladislov. Gray canted toward her. He wheeled the chair forward until he was abreast with her legs.
No way in h.e.l.l was she inching her knees apart for him to slide nearer. Lori angled forward.
In a horrifying flash, she realized just how close little Ladislov"s ear was to her breast.
Before she could adjust the child into a different position, Gray leaned the rest of the way and slid the otoscope into the boy"s ear. He peered inside. A scant two inches of air separated her breast from Gray"s cheek. If she moved even the least bit...
Uncomfortable as h.e.l.l, Lori held herself very still.
Ladislov wasn"t as accommodating. He twisted. Squirmed. Tried to slide free.
Gray bobbed his head, keeping the instrument in place. "Hang tough, buddy," he mumbled words the child had no hope of understanding. "Almost through with this one. There"s just so much wax, I"ve gotta..."
Gray"s wrist brushed Lori"s breast. Heat flooded her.
"Please, little guy." She whispered a tight plea. "Hold still."
Gray froze. His face tipped, and he peered up at her, his green eyes deepening to a glittering emerald. His brow lifted before he returned to make short order of the other ear.
With the heel of his boot, he pushed, rolling away. Far away. Not far enough. "All set."
Her shoulders sagged as she exhaled. "He"s okay?"
Gray scribbled in the boy"s thin chart. "Just a minor ear infection, a little fever and congestion. His ears might be uncomfortable when the plane descends, but nothing dangerous. I"ll start him on antibiotics now. He"ll feel better before we land." Gray pa.s.sed the chart to one of the technicians and filled an eyedropper with pink, syrupy medicine. He reached for the boy. "Time to drink up, pal."
Lori pa.s.sed Ladislov to Gray and couldn"t stifle the taunting whisper in her mind. She"d once thought this man would be the father of her children. Now she knew with certainty this was the only child she would ever give Grayson Clark.
d.a.m.n his too charming soul.
*** Gray watched Lori pa.s.s over yet another newborn, her elegant hand bracing the little behind until he rested snuggly in a loadmaster"s arms. She looked so d.a.m.ned right with a child. Why didn"t she find some great guy and work on increasing the world population?
Sweat dribbled down Gray"s forehead, stinging his eyes. He swiped his wrist over his brow. The hangar had turned into a furnace.
He whipped a red bandanna from the zippered thigh pocket of his flight suit. Three quick yanks and he"d knotted the do-rag around his head. "Bring on the next batch."
With inherent dancer-like grace, Lori knelt in front of a boy. She looked too good, even after being tugged, spit up on-clung to. Way too beautiful.
So much for his bright idea they should work together. He"d only wanted to prove to the crew ... to himself ... that he could be with her and remain unaffected.
He didn"t doubt his ability to do his job, no matter the circ.u.mstances. But did she have to test his resolve to the limit? The occasional whiff of her peach scent chased away the acrid bite in the air, if for just a distracting second.
Gray drummed his fingers on a stack of ragtag charts while Lori offered nonsensical, soothing words to a child.
There wasn"t anyone better suited than Lori to deal with the traumatized children he would evaluate. Odd how he trusted her more than others from the base he"d worked with countless times.
Even during the beyond-tense moment while he"d checked little Ladislov"s ear, leaned too close, she"d never winced because that child needed her. Lori always put others" needs first. A bomb could have detonated, and Gray knew she wouldn"t have moved.
Only he would notice the hitch in her breathing-and wished like h.e.l.l he didn"t know her well enough to understand its significance.
Meanwhile, his patients had to be his priority, and that included ignoring the wisp of hair sneaking free from Lori"s braid to caress her brow.
Gray opened the next file. "Okay, kiddo."
As he"d done in the plane, Gray escaped into the reliable routine of his job. He evaluated one child at a time, not a chart or a case, but a person. Nikola, Antonije, Goran, Vasiliji, Jelena, each the complete focus of Gray"s attention for his or her ten minutes while he checked vitals, cleansed and bandaged cuts, a.s.sessed broken teeth, ground his own teeth at the sight of a partially healed gunshot wound on an eight-year-old.
Gray pa.s.sed off a chart and stretched his shoulders, glancing at his watch as his arm arced up. An hour and a half until takeoff. The walls rattled with another burst of gunfire- and something else. A grenade? Or a land mine? Did they sound closer or were his heightened senses exaggerating?
Lori didn"t flinch, but her complexion downgraded from ivory to milky. Noise inside the hangar waned for five heart-stopping seconds, then resumed. Gray glanced around the warehouse and caught the commander"s attention two tables over. "Can we step up the pace, Colonel?"
Lt. Col. Zach Dawson"s tense nod wasn"t rea.s.suring, but Gray had been through worse. Just not with seventy-two children and Lori depending on him.
The next child shuffled forward, clinging to the hand of a soft-figured orphanage worker in a dulled-out white uniform. Gray spun his chair to face her fully and found a little girl, around three or four. Sprigs of hacked, dark hair damp with sweat curled along her round face. With those cropped locks, she"d probably been deloused. Poor kid.
A harsh cough rumbled from the tiny chest as she tucked behind the woman"s long skirt. Gray looked up at Lori. He knew when he was out of his league.
She crouched in front of the girl. "h.e.l.lo-" slowly Lori reached to tap the name tag "- Magda."
Dirty little fists eased their grip on the dress. One wide, dark eye peeked warily, her cough dwindling to a raspy sigh. Lori kept her hand extended and steady.
The older woman mumbled a few words in another language, pried her skirt free and nudged Magda forward. If only they had more time to ease this kid through the exam. But they didn"t. Gray stifled the rush of frustration over things he couldn"t change.
Lori extended her other hand to the girl. A look of resignation crossed the tiny face. Magda dropped her arms to her sides and waited, helpless.
Lori gasped, the first substantial reaction he"d heard from her all day. Who could blame her? This kid was a heartbreaker.
She stood, small and still, her navy cotton dress a size too big and drooping off one shoulder. A grubby Barbie poked from either end of her clenched grip. Magda met his gaze dead-on, her eyes flat. A living casualty of war.
He"d seen the look too often in his father"s eyes, a look cultivated in a Vietnamese POW camp. A look the old man still carried in unguarded moments. Gray had long ago accepted he couldn"t heal his father or his family any more than he could fix the real problem for these children. He could only bandage them up and pa.s.s them off to true healers like Lori.
Too many emotions churned within Gray. Complicated mishmashes of things he couldn"t deal with now, didn"t want to wade through ever again. Keep it simple. Give the kid a bandage and a smile. It was all he had to offer.
Lori heard the creak of Gray"s chair as he shifted. She wanted to ask for his help with this child whose soulful eyes lashed at emotions already too bare after a draining day.
But she wouldn"t. She could handle it on her own. Asking for help had never been her forte, anyway.
Gunfire grumbled outside. Not much time. Lori eased forward, no fast motions, and carefully picked up the little girl. She placed Magda on the gurney, then hitched up to sit beside her.
Gray pulled the stethoscope up to his ears. Magda cringed back. Lori encircled her shoulders and squeezed. "Shhhh. It"s okay."
"Yeah, see." Gray held the stethoscope on his own chest.
Magda frowned. He grinned, put it on his forehead, his chin, his nose, like any mischievous kid except for that beard-stubbled jaw. Magda buried her face against Lori"s shoulder.
"Ah, playing hard to get are we, little Magpie." Gray held up the stethoscope. "Look. Here"s how it"s done."
He reached toward Lori and paused, as if waiting for permission. She swallowed and nodded. The disk rested safely in the center of her chest, no accidental brushes. Good.
Except he would hear her heart tap dancing double time.
Heaven help her if he flashed that wicked grin of his her way, because she didn"t think she could keep from blushing-or screaming.
He didn"t look up.
Worse, his head bowed and he simply listened. Disk pressed against her chest, he listened without moving as if the sound of her racing heart might mean something to him. Lori stared down at that strong neck, his dark hair peeking from the edges of his red bandanna. Boyish, rugged, appealing.
Wrong.
She"d had enough of playing doctor with him for one day. For a lifetime.
Magda"s hand untwined from Lori"s shirt and inch by tentative inch snuck forward until she touched Gray"s bandanna.
He jerked away. Magda winced. The tight lines around his eyes eased, and he tapped his head. "You like this? With that stylish "do" you"re sportin" little one, I can"t say I blame you for wanting some head cover. I"d give you mine, Magpie, but it"s probably soaked by now." His hand snaked into his thigh pocket. "How about this?"
Tugging free a blue bandanna, he waved it in front of her. Her brown eyes sparkled to life for the first time. Her fingers gripped the Barbie in an excited, tight fist.
Gray folded the fabric into a triangle and draped it over Magda"s head. His total focus on his small patient riveted Lori. He knotted the three ends over Magda"s butchered hair.
Leaning back, he smiled a full-out grin and gave the girl a thumbs-up. "Beauty."
Lori wanted to gut punch him.
How dare he be so ... so ... everything.
Her mind wandered angry paths as he warmed the stethoscope on his hand. Gray should have left her alone and let her work with Tag in his baggy flight suit. Or with happily married Lancelot. Or with Bronco, who was more like a big brother. A really big brother.
Instead Gray had to torment her with all those appealing ways that had rattled her world first time around. Except she would be smarter now, resist temptation. She would heed his warnings and the warnings of her own heart, a heart she had no intention of entrusting to Grayson Clark.
She wouldn"t be fooled by his bandanna-bonding. This charming vagabond had zero interest in happily-ever-after, and she couldn"t settle for less. "I think she"s ready for you to check her out now."
"Okay, Miss Magpie, let"s listen to those lungs." He rested the disk on her reed-thin chest, moved it around, frowned, moved it along her back, then front again, lingering longer than he had with the other children.
"d.a.m.n," he whispered, before draping the stethoscope around his neck while he used the otoscope to look up her nose and in her ears, his doctor-face smooth and expressionless.