Yearnings: A Paranormal Romance Box Set (50 page)

“
We’ll have to wait until they move off,” she commented, trying hard not to notice Tyr’s brooding presence right beside her. He radiated a heat that seeped through her clothes and pressed against her skin.

As the seconds dragged on, Sal realized that Tyr had what he’d come for. The baby’s blood. She knew he would honor his promise to leave and never return. These fleeting seconds trapped in the office might be her last chance to gain some measure of closure around Maria’s death.

“
Please. I need to know. What killed my friend?”

Tyr kept a vigilant gaze toward Richard and the nurse. “Many call such a Venificus, but it is no more than a beast.” Shifting his gaze to her, he frowned. “Does such knowing make your loss any the less?”

Once the words were out of his mouth, she found that Tyr was right. No knowledge could diminish her loss. Her mind might accept that, but her heart felt the need to cast about for a reason to stop blaming herself.

“
No … I just … If I hadn’t sent her for the blood. Or if I’d just gone down to find her earlier …”

Tyr turned back toward the window. “If anyone is to blame for her death, it is I.”

* * * * *

CHAPTER 24

“
You?” Sal asked, almost afraid to hear the answer.

“
In tracking the beast, I tracked a scent which covered your friend. I thought her his next victim.”

“
So it was you in the ER, during the lightning flash?”

Tyr nodded slowly, then hung his head, taking several breaths before elaborating. “But the scent was not hers. It was another’s—with whom she had lain.”

Oh, God. Jeremy. The blood bank attendant. Maria must have worked her way around to bedding the buff college student. While Sal loved her friend greatly, it was no secret that the head nurse was considered the hospital’s very own welcoming committee.

“
Here’s your employee orientation booklet and a quick lay. Once you’re done, return them both to Human Resources and enjoy your tenure here.”

No wonder Maria had been so eager to go on such a meager errand.

Knowing the head nurse, she probably thought she could squeeze in a quickie before she was missed. While this information should have relieved Sal, the knowledge that she was in no way responsible for Maria’s death gave her no solace.

Tyr clenched his jaw. “By the time I double-backed on the trail and found the true source …”

They both knew what happened. There was no point in speaking it.

* * * * *

CHAPTER 25

The intimacy created by their shared grief became unbearable. She wanted to comfort him in the same instant that she wished to be comforted by him. There was something powerful and binding about skulking in the shadows together, doing forbidden acts.

Breaking the tension, Sal looked out the window. Richard didn’t look like he was going to budge anytime soon. Damn it. For such a pacifist, he could be a pit bull when he wanted.

“
He is familiar to you?” Tyr asked.

His raspy voice brought up goose bumps along her neck. She didn’t even know you could get them there. “Yes, he’s … he’s my fiancé.”

She knew Tyr well enough to know that tilt of his head meant he didn’t understand her phrasing. “We’re promised to be married,” she explained, while showing him her engagement ring. It felt like an odd conversation to be having, given the pheromones permeating the small room.

“
You are bound to him?”

“
Well, I wouldn’t exactly …” Oh, what did
it
the syntax matter? She knew what Tyr meant. “Yes.”

Sal watched Tyr as he surveyed Richard through the blinds. She tried to read the effect that the news had on him. The slight squint to his eyes that deepened his tan crow’s-feet. The rippling of his jaw muscles as they clenched and unclenched. Or how his stubble swirled as it coursed up his cheek.

Tyr turned to her. “You love him?”

Startled, Sal stumbled for an answer. “Yes. Of course.”

“
Is it ‘
yes
,’ or ‘
of course
?’ ”

She flushed red as he stared at her. Even without his demanding tone, he could still unnerve her. Sal cleared her throat. “Yes.”

“
Truly? With no reservations?”

Cheeks burning, she rushed to answer—not so much out of passion, but to end his appraising look. “I said, ‘yes.’ ”

His expression was inscrutable as he brought out the tiniest of vials. It seemed cut from a glacier, and it sparkled in the low light.

“
Of all the essences that blood holds, love is the most potent. Its use is rare, but irreplaceable …” As he looked at the vial, his face clouded over. “It has been empty too long.”

Tyr extended his hand to her, as he had done in that crimson hallway and again to the baby boy. “May I?”

Without thinking, Sal placed her wrist in his palm, this time knowing what came next. “Of course.”

“
You must think of him. Feel in all the ways you love him as you speak his name.”

Which became difficult, since Tyr’s warmth stirred a longing she hadn’t known possible. Sal didn’t rattle easily. Yet, she stood trembling at his touch. Sal had to close her eyes in order to even picture her fiancé.

Richard was shorter, slimmer, and you couldn’t smell the testosterone on him. But that’s not what Tyr had asked.

What was the single, most appealing characteristic that she could name about Richard? The answer came in the form of their captivity. They wouldn’t have been trapped in the office if her fiancé hadn’t been so concerned about her that he searched her out. If he didn’t measure up in any other way, Richard
did
love her.

“
Richard Updike.”

This time, the blade cut sharply into her flesh and each drop of blood stung as it fell from her skin into the vial. Tyr tenderly fit the crystal stopper as he met her eyes.

“
Even though you shall remember none of this once we are parted, I shall be eternally grateful.”

Sal knew that Tyr might be right, but only partially. At night, in her dreams, the worst memories would return. Those flashes of the death and despair would haunt her, and she wouldn’t even remember why.

She glanced through the blinds. Richard and the nurse were moving off. In just a few moments, Sal would be left with the sight of Maria’s dead eyes forever. If knowing all that she had learned didn’t lessen the pain, why keep such a memory for an eternity?

“
I know I told you not to …” She didn’t even know how to ask. “But is there any way to make me forget?
All
of it?”

Tyr’s lips turned downward. “I am bound by my promise.”

“
I release you.”

To Sal’s surprise, Tyr’s hand slipped under her hair to grasp the back of her neck. He pulled her close, so close she both feared and thrilled at the idea that he would kiss her. Their bodies pressed so close together that the leather lapel of his coat dug into her skin. Breath mingling, Sal didn’t know if she’d rebuff or accept his advance.

Instead, he brought his palm to her forehead. “Forget.”

* * * * *

CHAPTER 26

“
Sal! What are you doing up here?” Richard asked as he rushed over.

But she wasn’t sure where she was, let alone what she was doing. The last thing she remembered was charting. “I was just …”

As Richard pulled her into a hug so tight that he nearly squeezed the breath from her, Sal heard a baby’s cry, then another. Glancing around, she realized she was up on the peds ward. Over his shoulder, she spotted the NICU. What was she doing up here?

Then she found the chart in her hand. Dimitri Rollins.

“
Hey, that’s one of ours,” the nurse announced, snatching the metal-backed record from her.

They both looked at her, but she had no idea how where she had gotten it. Near panic, she spouted the first lie she thought of. “I was just checking on a patient.”

The nurse studied the chart. “There are orders here for a CT scan stat, but I can’t read who wrote them.”

Richard glanced over. “That’s Sal’s writing.”

Again, they both looked at her for answers she simply didn’t have.

Granted, something nagged at the back of her mind. Like she had forgotten to turn off the stove or lock her car in the Filmore district.

“
I didn’t realize we’d asked for an ER consult,” the nurse said with as much condescension as she could pack into the words.

Her fiancé raised an eyebrow. “I’m sure Dr. Calon has her reasons.”

If only she did. Sal wasn’t about to admit she was having some kind of stress-induced blackout, so she kept up the lie. “The mom’s a friend of the family. She asked me to come up and take a look at him.”

While it was clear that the nurse didn’t want to take on Dr. Updike, she also didn’t like an emergency doc treading on her turf. “And I’m supposed to wake up a radiologist for an emergency CT because…?”

Sal ran out of lies, so she told the truth. “I’ve just got this gut feeling.”

Richard smiled, and then turned to the nurse. “Are you really going to risk that she’s right?”

“
Fine. I’ll call the attending.”

While the nurse went to schedule a test that Sal didn’t even remember ordering, Richard escorted her down the corridor. As they ran out of hallway, Sal went to open the stairwell door when Richard hit the button to the elevator.

“
Since when did you take the stairs?” Richard asked.

For the life of her, Sal didn’t know.

* * * * *

CHAPTER 27

Sal bolted upright in bed, drenched in a cold sweat. Panicked to the point of abject terror, it took a few moments for her to realize that she was in Richard’s bedroom. Next to her, he still slept.

She couldn’t remember a nightmare, yet her heart pounded against her sternum. There was a dread deep in her belly. A sense of doom.

Then she remembered her charts.

Crap! She hadn’t finished them.

How could she have left the hospital with all that paperwork still pending? To the Badger, the only sin greater than killing a patient was leaving your charts unsigned. If Sal had any chance of getting that attending position, Stacy would make sure this oversight cost her dearly. She could just hear Manning’s taunting. The superior tone.

Not if Sal finished the charts before the Badger got in at five. Throwing back the covers, she pulled on a robe and went into Richard’s home office.

Sal might have forgotten her laptop at the hospital, but if she’d left it on, she could network and finish the charts without anyone the wiser.

As Richard’s PC booted up, she looked out over San Francisco. It was so quiet. Peaceful. A fog replaced the rain clouds of yesterday, shrouding the City in a blanket of gray.

How many times after a swing shift would she and Maria go over to Treasure Island and climb up on Indian Rock? As strange as it sounded, the best spot out of all the Bay Area to view the City was sitting atop that huge boulder. Most of those spectacular photos of San Francisco that sold millions of postcards were shot from that vantage point.

In a fog like tonight, the City’s lights would twinkle a surreal yellow. It was so easy to see how George Lucas had soaked up this view, then imagined the cloud city of Bespin for
The Empire Strikes Back
. No matter how many times they sat up on that rock, Maria would tell her that story.

Then, invariably her friend would launch into a rant over the Ewoks in
Return of the Jedi
, but those moments were still some of Sal’s most savored.

Ones that would never be repeated.

Tugging her robe tighter over her shoulders, Sal turned her back on the picture window and set about connecting to her laptop. She typed rapidly, accessing the Internet, tapping into the hospital’s network, then onto her laptop’s virtual desktop.

Wasn’t technology grand? She might as well be sitting on that hard metal chair in the residents’ office. Only Richard’s ergonomic mesh chair was far kinder to her bottom.

Rapidly, Sal flipped through her open programs. If memory served her, she had at least another twenty charts to finish typing up.

Sal glanced to the clock. It was only 3:00 a.m. Plenty of time to get the paperwork in order before the Badger arrived at his den to review the night’s work.