The Greatest Risk (8 page)

But there was something more there in his expression that she could not read.

She could not explain to him what had happened just now. She could not say,
I am not that kind of woman,
when she had just been exactly that kind of woman. Instead, she rolled down her window, just a crack.

“It would be best if we didn't see each other again,” she said.

He looked at her steadily, then nodded. “I think you're right,” he agreed.

She drove away quickly, before he had a chance to see how much his quick agreement had hurt her.

 

Luke folded his arms over his chest and watched Maggie leave the parking lot. Somehow he had not figured her for the kind of gal who would squeal her tires.

But then what had he figured right about her so far?

The answer was nothing. He just was not reading her right. That kiss! He was still smoking from the heat of it.

And trembling slightly, if he was going to be totally honest about it.

The truth was that was the way he had always imagined Amber would kiss—with a kind of no-holds-barred intensity that left a man feeling as though the world was disappearing, crumbling beneath his feet.

As if there was nothing that remained but sweet, soft lips, and hot, lush curves pressed into his chest.

Wait! If he looked the world over he would never find a woman less like Amber than little Miss Maggie Mouse.

Amber would drive a vintage fire-engine-red Barracuda convertible. Amber would wear short leather skirts and sashay her hips. She would hustle pool, not flub balls onto the floor. She would drink whiskey not soda.

All in all Amber was not the kind of girl a boy took home to Mama.

Which was the whole idea. Luke August had decided a long, long time ago he was never taking a girl home to Mama.

Or at least not one Mama would approve of.

And he had a feeling his mother would approve of Maggie. Maggie with her soft eyes, and her obvious intelligence and decency. Maggie who helped little chil
dren as her life's work, and didn't have a clue how sexy she was.

He would have had never to see her again for that reason alone, even if she had not suggested it first.

Though, going back to his room he had to admit that he was just a tiny bit frosted that Maggie had mentioned it first.

She must have been a whole lot less shaken by that kiss than he had been.

In the maintenance closet, he carefully returned Fred's stuff to where it had been. He stuck five bucks in the pocket so Fred could have a coffee on him in exchange for the loan he didn't know he had made.

Luke donned his gown over his jeans and sidled down the hall.

“Mr. August! Where have you been? Evening meds were over an hour ago.”

He turned to look at the night nurse. “Oh, just down in the TV room.”

“I looked there for you.”

“I went to the TV lounge on the next floor. They were tuned into something a little too tender on this one. One of those bachelorette things where she gives some poor sucker a rose. You know. Gigantic yuck.”

“Um-hmm.”

The nurse was older and had on sensible shoes and her uniform was pressed with military precision, but her face was kind and she was not at all like Nurse Nightmare.

“You don't believe me?” he asked, all innocence and wonder.

She leaned close to him.

“You have lipstick on your neck. Glossy. Peach-colored.”

“Oh.” Damn her observation skills. Luke had not wanted to think about glossy peach-colored lips again tonight. Or ever.

“Get to your room before I report you.”

“Yes, ma'am.”

“Did you have fun?” she asked as he headed down the hall.

“I'm still trying to figure that out,” he muttered, as much to himself as to her.

L
uke woke up in a nasty mood. That rarely happened to him. He nearly always woke up full of plans for his day, with a song in his heart—usually “What Do You Do With a Drunken Sailor?”—which he happily and loudly shared with anybody within earshot.

But this morning he gloomily contemplated the pure white of his hospital-room ceiling. He felt crabby and out of sorts. It had, he decided firmly, nothing at all to do with Maggie Mouse telling him she never wanted to see him again.

Not that the name Maggie Mouse was going to do now that he knew the stunning truth. The girl kissed like a house on fire.

He'd have to come up with a new name for her. If he was ever going to see her again, which he wasn't.

“So, no problem,” he said out loud. The real problem was this place. It was time to get out of here. He had way too much time on his hands, way too much time to think.

But when the doctor came on rounds, she did not look impressed to see him in his street clothes, his bag packed.

“No,” she said sternly, when he announced his plans for the day. “If I let you out of here, you would go straight back to work, the same as you did last time.”

“What if I promise?” he asked.

“You promised last time!”

“But last time I had my fingers crossed.” He held out his hands in front of him, a gesture of sincerity and honesty that she was not the least taken in by.

“Your body needs more time to repair itself.” She carefully explained to him what the most recent injuries to his back would do if he stressed them too soon. She mentioned words like
permanent disability
and
wheelchair,
which of course he knew to be baloney.

He was as strong as a team of oxen.

“I don't think I can stay, Doc. I'm going out of my mind. The food stinks, and there's nothing to do.” What he didn't say was that he did not need time to think about Maggie Sullivan or that kiss or how much fun he'd had playing pool with her or the way that black T-shirt had molded around her luscious curves.

Or her final words to him.

But even though he didn't elaborate, the good doc seemed to get it, that with or without her approval he was on short time now.

“All right,” she agreed with a sigh, “I'll read the report from your physiotherapy session today, and if it's good, we'll talk about this some more tomorrow.”

“I'm leaving tomorrow,” he said.

“Your insurance won't cover any of this unless I sign for your discharge.”

He gave her his high-voltage smile. She tried to look stern, but he could tell she couldn't resist that smile. “Which you will, right?”

“I said we'd talk about it tomorrow.”

But he knew it was settled. There. He was getting some control back over his life. He felt a little glimmer of his normal cheerfulness. By the time he'd ordered breakfast from the fast-food joint around the corner, enough for the whole ward, and had it delivered to the hospital, he was in a pretty good mood, passing out hash browns and egg sandwiches while serenading the other patients with “What Do You Do With a Drunken Sailor?”

“Mr. August!”

He had stopped to chat with a young nurse between rooms and deliveries, and he turned to see Nurse Nightmare bearing down on him. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the young nurse disappear.

He braced himself.

“Have you seen Billy yet this morning?”

“No, ma'am. I was going to bring him breakfast, though.”

She glanced at the brown paper bag, and he waited for the disapproving lecture. But it didn't come.

“He's not himself,” she said in a low voice. “I was hoping you might cheer him up. Without wheelchair racing, of course.”

“He's sick?” Luke asked, and felt the fist of fear close around his heart. He'd been right. It was time to get out of here. There were too many sick people around. You didn't want to go getting attached to sick people.

She shook her head. “Not any sicker than usual. He's sad, Mr. August.”

Sad. Sheesh. A sad seventeen-year-old boy with cancer. What Luke wanted to do was run the other way. He had nothing to offer in a situation like this. Nothing. He was rough and gruff, an unpolished construction crew boss.

“I wouldn't know what to do for him,” he said. “I'm not great in the sensitivity department.”

“Look, you self-centered lunkhead,” the nurse said. “Require more of yourself!”

She marched away, leaving him to stare after her, oddly hurt, though working in his field he'd been called worse and told off better many, many times.

“Self-centered lunkhead,” he repeated to himself. He was delivering breakfast to the other inmates. Didn't that count?

No longer singing, he finished his deliveries, annoyed that Nurse Nightmare had managed to get under his skin. So, if he did require more of himself, what would he do for Billy to cheer him up? Order a cake that a girl jumped out of? Pretend to be Patch Adams?

The truth was, he didn't have a clue, and the more he thought about Billy being sad, the more he wished he could be the one to help, to change it, to fix it. Maybe he didn't have a clue what to do, but he knew someone who did. He thought of the softness of her big hazel
eyes. He reminded himself they weren't going to see each other again.

But this was an emergency!

He looked at the clock, then went down to the phone at the end of the hall and looked up the Children's Connection phone number.

His heart seemed to be beating way too fast as he waited to be put through.

“Maggie Sullivan.”

She certainly sounded chipper this morning! Why had he assumed she would be as gloomy as he was?

“Maggie Sullivan,” she said again.

“Hi, Maggie.”

There was a long silence, and then she said his name.

He was not sure his name had ever sounded like that before. A breath, a whisper, a prayer.

He wanted to ask her how she felt. How she had slept. If she had thought of him the first thing when she woke up.

But it would be like signing a confession saying how he felt, how he had slept, what he had thought of first thing upon waking.

“Um, Maggie, I have this little problem. I was hoping you could help me with it.” As he explained the situation, he tried to think when the last time was that he had ever asked anyone for help with a problem. It had been a long, long time ago.

He realized, suddenly, and not with good grace, that something had lived within him, ignored and unidentified until this very moment.

Loneliness.

“So,” she repeated back to him what he had just told
her, “Billy's feeling sad this morning, and Hillary thought you could help?”

“That's right. But I can't, Maggie. I don't know what to say. I'm good at joking around. Small talk.” He decided not to tell her his idea about the girl jumping out of the cake. “Can you help me?”

“Do you want me to come?”

The question was posed softly, and yet he felt as if he was a man who had been trapped in the chilly depths of an icy crevasse, who had resigned himself to his fate, and then was suddenly thrown a rope.

He marveled that last night she had told him so firmly she could not see him again, and yet she put that aside instantly when the welfare of a child she didn't even know was at risk.

“Yeah,” he said after a moment. “I want you to come.”

“I'll be there in fifteen minutes. I'll meet you at the nurses' station.”

“Thanks, Maggie.”

He hung up the phone and stared at it. He had just called a woman he barely knew and asked her to help him. A woman who had said in no uncertain terms she never wanted to see him again. He should not feel good about that at all.

But he felt okay. He hummed his favorite ditty.

She arrived in ten minutes, five minutes early, precisely the kind of woman he had pegged her for before their “date” last night.

She looked like who she really was today, too. Her lustrous hair was coiled in a neat bun, she had on a slack suit in an uninspiring color that reminded him of porridge. She even had a little pair of granny glasses perched on her nose.

And underneath that was a secret they shared. A kiss that made that outfit such a lie.

He tried to keep that kiss out of his mind as he strolled toward her. He suspected she did, too.

“Thanks for coming.” He felt as if he was looking beyond the glasses to the richness of her eyes. He could imagine the hair spinning down over her shoulders, wondered what kind of underwear she had on.

It occurred to him it might have been a mistake to call her.

But that feeling didn't last. In a few moments, he knew she had been exactly the right person to call.

They went together into Billy's room. He was lying with his back to the door and them, looking very small and fragile under the blanket.

“Hi, Billy,” he said.

“I don't feel like racing wheelchairs today, Luke.”

“That's okay. I don't either. I brought you some breakfast.”

“Thanks.” But Billy did not turn toward them.

“I wanted to introduce you to a friend of mine,” Luke said.

Billy turned, the whole cocoon of his blanket turning with him.

Maggie went forward and put out her hand, forcing him to emerge from under the blanket to take it.

“I'm Maggie Sullivan.”

“Billy Harmon.”

She pulled up a chair and sat down, leaning forward, her hand cupped under her chin. “This is a lousy place to spend a gorgeous July day,” she said.

“I have cancer,” Billy said without preamble.

Luke tried to think whether Billy had ever told him he had cancer. He didn't think so. It had been one of the nurses or Billy's parents who had told him.

“What kind?” she asked softly, her voice soothing.

The floodgates opened. Billy told her what kind, and how long he'd been fighting it. Luke was astounded to know this poor kid had been in and out of the hospital since he was twelve years old. He'd lost all his hair. His friends treated him differently. His mom cried all the time.

And Luke had been wheelchair racing with him?

Then the boy was crying. Big racking sobs that Luke could feel inside his own body. He eyed the door, but he could see Maggie being so brave. She took the boy's hand.

He eyed the door once more, heard Nurse Nightmare in his mind telling him to require more of himself, and he went to the other side of the bed. He took Billy's other hand.

“Luke, I don't want you to see me crying,” Billy choked. “Guys like you don't cry, do they?”

He thought of his life. Had he deliberately made it into an emotional wasteland, where there were no tears because there was absolutely nothing worth crying about? “Hey. Everybody cries.”

“Do you?”

He felt as close to it at the moment as he had felt for years, so it was no lie when he said, “Yeah.”

“When?”

Hell.
But he suddenly remembered something. “When I was about your age I had a dog. My mom hated her. Said she made our house smell bad, and that there was dog hair on the furniture. One day I came home from school, and no more Stinkbomb.”

“You named your dog Stinkbomb?” Billy asked, and the first wisp of a grin flitted across his face.

This was more like it! “And for obvious reasons,” Luke said. “That dog could—” He suddenly remembered Maggie. “Uh, let's just say the dog was an impressive performer in the stink department.”

“So, your Mom was right?” Maggie asked. “The dog made the house smell bad?”

Luke frowned. He had never once in his life considered the possibility that his mother might have been right about anything. Had the dog really made life that uncomfortable for other people?

The problem with a girl like Maggie was she might make you look at your whole life from a different, deeper, more mature perspective. And who wanted to do that?

“You cried when Stinkbomb went missing?” Billy asked.

“Like a baby.” He didn't add that then he'd gone out on a stolen motorbike and had his first extremely impressive wreck. He'd broken his leg in four places.

But the admission that Luke had a softer side seemed to ease something in Billy. He looked at him for a long time, sighed, and then looked away.

“I just feel so scared,” Billy said. “I think I'm going to die.”

Every problem Luke had ever faced suddenly seemed small and insignificant. It seemed like there was nothing meaner in the world than a seventeen-year-old boy facing that kind of fear, a fear no one could help him with, no matter what they said or did.

He wanted to say with false confidence, “Of course you aren't going to die,” but he didn't know if it was
true, and Maggie caught his eye suddenly, as if she had guessed what he wanted to say. She gave a slight shake of her head.

“Is there something you would do if you were going to die?” she asked softly.

Billy wiped the tears from his face and nodded solemnly. “I'd make a will. When I try to tell my mom what I want, she goes off the deep end. It's just little stuff, like to give my kid brother my goldfish and my baseball glove, and to put my paper route money in my sister's college account.”

“I don't think those are little things,” Maggie said softly. “Not at all.”

Luke didn't, either. The kid was thinking of his own death, and he wasn't thinking of himself—the things he had left to do, the places he wanted to see—he was thinking of the people who loved him.

Luke had another aching feeling that his own life was a wasteland.

“I'd like them to play ‘Amazing Grace' on the bagpipes at the funeral.” Billy smiled wryly. “Not a single soul, besides you two, even knows I like the bagpipes.”

Luke decided Maggie was the bravest damn woman in the world, because she didn't flinch from any of that. He was mulling over the discovery that Billy had a brother and sister, and clenching and unclenching his fists behind his back, trying to keep himself from giving in to the emotion that clawed at his throat.