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He leaned against his rented SUV parked in front of a drugstore in a little strip mall and looked around, wondering where he could help next. There was still too much devastation and it was too long until dawn for him to think about going back to Gramma’s. And there was still lots of work remaining.
Now that he’d slowed down, Block realized that he was dead tired. He’d spent enough sleepless nights as a combat controller to be used to them, but he figured some of the volunteers, people like Macy, weren’t.
He wondered briefly how Macy was doing in her clinic and how many patients she must be seeing, but tried to push her out of his thoughts. For now, there was plenty for him to do—even if his bum leg was starting to hurt like hell.
He guessed he’d have plenty of time to baby his sore knee soon enough: either as an unemployed civilian or as a recruiter. Didn’t much matter which. Wasn’t much occasion for either one of those to be called out in the middle of the night and work for days on end without sleep. Maybe getting medicaled out of combat control wasn’t such a bad deal after all.
No, it was a terrible deal. Everything he’d strived to achieve was tied up in being a combat controller. He’d worked his tail off to be one of the best. Even though he’d managed to earn a degree in aviation management, he was too damned old to have to start back at the bottom at some other job. And there wasn’t an airport here, anyway.
“Hey, is that your SUV?”
He looked up, startled that he’d been so deep in his thoughts that he hadn’t noticed the man come up to him. “Yeah. It’s mine.”
“Do you know where Doc Jackson’s clinic is?”
Block shook his head. “But I could find it.”
“Doc Jackson needs some supplies over there, and I don’t have a way to get to her.” The man nodded toward a car half-buried under the branches of a fallen tree and shrugged.
“I can get the stuff to Dr. Jackson,” Block allowed.
The man grinned wider than a jack-o’-lantern. “Oh man, you are a lifesaver. You know where old Doc Cranston’s office was?”
Block nodded. They’d never been able to afford to go to Dr. Cranston, but everybody in Lyndonville knew where his office was.
“Let me get a dry shirt out of my car, and I’ll be glad to ferry your supplies over.”
While Block wiped himself off with the wet shirt, the man scurried inside. Soon he returned with several boxes full of supplies.
Block opened the back hatch and pulled out a dry air force sweatshirt and pulled it over his head. Then he turned to the man.
Taking the boxes, Block said, “I’m sure Dr. Jackson will appreciate this stuff.”
And he’d appreciate another chance to see Macy.
RUEING THE FACT that she’d sent her nurse home to be with her own family during a break in the action, Macy leaned back in the swivel chair behind the reception counter. She was so tired she could barely see straight. Every time she thought she had seen the end of the stream of injured coming into the clinic, another surge of patients would find its way to her. For the moment, the waiting room was empty and Macy took advantage of the calm. She closed her eyes, propped her feet up on a stool and tried to will herself another ration of energy.
Apparently, sheer will wasn’t enough.
The door creaked open, but Macy was too fatigued to jump up. “I’ll be with you in a minute,” she murmured wearily as she rubbed her tired eyes.
Warm strong hands massaged her shoulders, and as startled as she was to find them there, Macy couldn’t resist the respite from her aches and pains. She arched her back closer to the reviving action of the unknown hands. “I don’t know who you are, but if you’re single, will you marry me?” she murmured as she melted beneath the man’s strong fingers.
“Well, that’s the best offer I’ve had all night.”
Macy jerked away from the wonderful strong hands. “Alex?” she squeaked. “What are you doing here?”
“A guy from the drugstore over near Faron’s Trailer Park sent me with a load of supplies.”
“So you volunteered?” she asked dryly as she tried to compose herself. She poked several strands of runaway hair back behind her ears and smoothed the front of her white lab coat. Alex was here in beautiful, glorious, living color. Too bad he’d covered those magnificent muscles with a sweatshirt. A surge of adrenaline rushed through her—or maybe it was lust—and Macy found herself gaining her second wind.
“No, I was drafted.”
She tried to conceal her confused emotions from Alex as she lowered her feet from the stool and blinked up at him.
Her heart was racing, and Macy heard a roaring in her ears. She hoped it was from exhaustion and not a sexual reaction to Alex Blocker standing there in her clinic. No, that couldn’t be. Macy Jackson didn’t have reactions like that. And had she really asked him to marry her? She almost groaned with embarrassment.
Everybody knew that Macy had more important things to do with her life than fool around with men. There had been that one exception five years ago with Alex. And she didn’t like thinking about it most of the time.
With Alex back in town, she’d have a hard time forgetting.
While she’d been woolgathering, Alex had gone back outside and retrieved the supplies. He reappeared in the doorway. “This stuff is heavy. Where do you want me to put it?”
Macy felt her face grow warm. Here she was having hot flashes about Alex, and he was standing there with his arms full of boxes. “I’m sorry,” she finally managed. “I’m so tired tonight, I can barely think.” It was a better excuse than the real one.
She was going to have to come to terms with their one little lapse from reality five years ago when she’d allowed herself to think they might have started something. No, she had to keep her mind on the task at hand. She’d have plenty of time to revisit her one night with Alex later.
She just wished it hadn’t happened. No, she didn’t. For one very wonderful thing had come out of that. And now that Alex was here, she was going to have to deal with the results of that night. And so was Alex, even if he didn’t know about it. Yet.
She pushed herself up from the chair. “I guess I should see what you’ve got. We’re in a lull right now, but it won’t last long if the last few hours are any indication. I’d better get as much put away as I can before I get another flood of patients.”
“Just show me where.”
Trying to ignore the sparks of attraction practically snapping between them, Macy peered into the top box in Alex’s muscular arms. “Those look like first-aid supplies. I suppose I should leave them out right where I can get to them,” she said, thinking out loud. “Pretty much all my patients tonight have been broken bones and lacerations.” She showed Alex to one of the two examining rooms.
Alex lowered the boxes to the floor near the exam table. “You want me to divvy this stuff up so you’ll have some in each room?”
Why hadn’t she thought of that? Was she really that exhausted, or did Alex’s mere presence keep her from thinking clearly? It had to be a little of both. “That’s a great idea,” she finally said. Alex didn’t comment on her delayed response, but went straight to work.
Grateful that Alex was distracted from her for the moment, Macy turned to one of the other boxes. These, too, could be divided up between the two examining rooms. Trying to ignore Alex’s too-charismatic presence, she concentrated on putting everything away.
“I assume your place is okay,” Alex said, trying to ease the heavy blanket of tension that had settled over them, after they’d worked for a while. “I hear the new part of town where all the town houses and apartments are wasn’t in the tornado’s path.” He assumed that Macy had set up house in one of the new, upscale neighborhoods rather than in an old one.
“Everything’s fine. Some limbs and a few trees down, but the tornado missed us.” Macy had been chagrined to realize that, at first, she’d thought the damage in her neighborhood was terrible before she’d seen what was left of the trailer park.
Alex started to say something, but the clinic door swung open.
“Dr. Jackson, I need your help outside,” a middle-aged man shouted frantically. “My son is hurt. Bad.”
Macy hurried outside to find a woman hovering over a boy, his face white with pain, stretched out in the back of a battered pickup truck. A strong gust of wind whistled through the pines overhead, showering everyone with cold drops of water, and Macy shivered with the unexpected drenching. “We have to get him inside.”
She leaned over the side of the truck and spoke to the boy, not one of her regular patients.
Alex stepped up behind her. “Do you have a backboard?” he asked quietly, his warm breath sending shivers of delight skimming down Macy’s spine.
It surprised her that he seemed to know instinctively what she suspected. The boy could have a back injury, and any wrong move could cause the damage to be more severe. She had to think. “Yes, in the storage area.”
Alex turned to go get it, and Macy climbed into the bed of the truck to get a better look at her patient.
A quick examination showed that the backboard was probably not necessary, but it would make the boy more comfortable when they moved him inside.
The technician who usually helped with the portable X-ray machine hadn’t made it in, so she was going to have to do everything herself. At least Alex knew something about first aid. She’d enlist his help, as long as his presence wasn’t too distracting.
“I’m not going to be able to do much for him here,” Macy told the boy’s parents while she waited for Alex to return with the backboard. “But I can make him more comfortable until we can get him to the hospital in Florence.”
The man nodded, apparently relieved that something could be done. “What can I do?”
“When Alex gets back with the backboard you can help carry your son in. In the meantime, I’m going to try to call the hospital in Florence and see if they can send an ambulance out to pick him up. Otherwise, you may have to get him there yourself.”
For now, she would do what she could.
BLOCK WATCHED as the ambulance pulled out of the parking lot of the small clinic, and he glanced at Macy. She had to be dog tired. He could see in the slump of her shoulders that whatever reserve of energy she’d been operating with was long gone. Her face was drawn, and dark smudges rimmed her eyes. Her curly chestnut hair, once pinned into a tidy ball, had long since escaped from its constraints and tumbled loose and wild around her shoulders. She sagged against the doorjamb, and Block wondered if that was the only thing that kept her from collapsing.
“Come inside,” he said, taking her fine-boned hand and trying to forget the sparks he felt every time he touched her. Her fingers were cold, and her grip was weak.
She nodded, but seemed not to have the energy to speak as she followed him into the clinic.
“You’re limping,” she said, seeming to have suddenly come awake.
“No, I’m not.” Damn. He hadn’t wanted her to notice.
“Yes, you are. Come here. Let me see.”
Block blew out a long exasperated breath. The last thing he needed was to have her touching him, feeling him, setting him on fire. “It’s just an old injury that’s been slow to heal. And it always bothers me when it rains.”
“Then more reason that I should take a look at it,” she said, brooking no nonsense. “You could’ve reinjured it.”
“It healed the first time. It’ll heal again.”
“No, it won’t. Take off your pants,” she said in a whiskey-sour voice that would have seemed sultry in different circumstances.
“Excuse me?” Just listening to the innocent command in that come-hither voice had a part of his body that shouldn’t be awake standing at full attention.
“Oh, puh-lease. I can’t examine your leg if you don’t let me look at it. I’m fully familiar with male anatomy,” she said primly. “I won’t swoon.”
Yeah, but maybe he would, Block couldn’t help thinking. Finally realizing that he didn’t want to aggravate his injured knee further, he gave in. “I’ll just go in the examining room and get ready for you. Okay?”
“Fine. I’ll get the portable X-ray machine ready.” She turned and left him to undress.
Block kicked off his boots and pulled out of his wet jeans as quickly as he could. He looked around for one of those sheets they used as drapes in an exam room, found one, and wrapped it around him. He could care less if Macy looked at his leg, but he damned sure didn’t want her to see what happened to another part of his anatomy as soon as her fingers touched him.
And he’d thought the night had been long up until now….
Macy bustled back in, a professional look on her face. She arched an eyebrow as she saw the surgical scar left from when they’d put his knee back together. “When did this happen?” she asked as she pulled on latex gloves.
“Last summer. It’s why I’m here.” It was hard to think, much less talk with her gentle hands on his leg, but he forced himself to go on. “I’m supposed to interview for a job in Florence that doesn’t require jumping out of perfectly good airplanes.”
Macy probed the area around the still-red scar, and Block winced as she found a particularly tender spot.
“Does that hurt?”
“Like somebody jabbing a red-hot poker in my eye,” he said through clenched teeth.
“Sorry,” she muttered tersely. “I’ll need an X ray to be sure, but I think you’ve just overdone it. It doesn’t appear to have been reinjured.”
“Could have told you that.”
“Humor me, Alex. I am the doctor here.”
She went to the other room and returned quickly with a portable X-ray unit. He clenched his teeth tightly together while Macy situated him and took the pictures. It seemed to take forever for the films to develop, but finally, they were ready.
That done, she slapped the films on the viewing screen and looked at them carefully. “Looks like you were lucky. There’s no swelling and I see no evidence of any new injury. We’ll just bandage it and then you can go home to rest.”
Macy reached into one of the cabinets and returned with a rolled elastic bandage.
“I can do it myself.”
“I’m sure you can, but I’m in charge here. You can do whatever you want with it as soon as you get home,” Macy said as she expertly wrapped his leg. “I want you to stay off this as much as possible.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said, saluting and giving her a wicked grin. “I do thank you for fixing me up.”
Macy smiled. “No, you’ve been much more help to me than I’ve been to you. What can I do to thank you?”
A dozen sexy responses whizzed through his mind, but he swallowed them all. Except for one. “You don’t have to do anything, but…” Block answered huskily as another wave of desire surged through him. He glanced at her from lowered lids. Her chestnut hair tumbled around her face, and he longed to run his fingers through those enticing tendrils. Would they feel as silky as they looked? He drew in a deep, long breath. There was a way she could pay him back. Did he dare ask?
Block swallowed. “We could call it even with one little kiss,” he said. “You know, for old times’ sake.”
Chapter Two
Macy swallowed. How could he ask her that? She didn’t want to travel down that road again, but how could she resist? Wasn’t this what she’d been thinking about since the very instant she’d seen him through the smoke and the rain at the ravaged trailer park? She swallowed again, then moistened her lips.
Why not get it over with? She had to prove to herself that she was over Alex Blocker once and for all.
“All right,” Macy said slowly. “One kiss. And then I want you to go home and get some rest.”
Alex looked down at her, a wicked half smile on his face. He seemed to be taking his time collecting what she owed him. Macy tried not to squirm under his unrelenting gaze, but she couldn’t. She moistened her lips again. Why was her mouth so dry when her hands were so damp?
Finally, she could stand it no more. She stood on tiptoe and reached for him, circling her hands around his broad shoulders, then shifting them to his muscular neck. She took in a deep breath and drew him to her.
His kiss was tender, light as the morning dew, but suddenly Macy wanted more, and she didn’t know why. She pressed against him, trying to get closer, to feel his hard chest against her. Macy wasn’t sure who had taken the lead, but did it matter? She had what she’d dreamed of for five, long years: Alex in her arms again.
Without realizing it, Macy let out a low moan. Was it of pleasure or pain? She wanted this to go on forever, but she knew it had to stop. What if a patient came in? Still, she would let it go on as long as Alex wanted.
Suddenly Alex pulled away with a wrenching groan of his own. “We can’t do this,” he said thickly. “This isn’t the right place.”
Macy stepped farther away, her face burning with embarrassment.
Alex turned his back to her as he struggled to tug on wet jeans with the drape still wrapped around his middle. He zipped his pants, then sat on the metal stool to put on his boots. The drape slid to the floor. As he struggled with his wet laces, he finally said, “I have issues to deal with. The job, you, my knee…everything. It’s late. We’re both exhausted. It isn’t the right…
