скачать книгу бесплатно
The Doctor's Mission
Lyn Stone
Dr. Nick Sandro's top-secret mission: to help undercover agent Cate Olin recover from an attempt on her life.The safehouse? His own apartment, where her body– which he'd dreamed about for years–was suddenly his responsibility. Nick had loved Cate since childhood, but he'd accepted this job as a favor to her family, to her boss. No way he'd cross the line.For a civilian, Cate's gorgeous doctor sure was secretive. About giving up his career as a surgeon. About not letting Cate in. But when a terrorist hell-bent on revenge came after both of them, saving each other's lives depended on sharing everything.
“I’m sorry you had to do that,” Cate said.
Nick said nothing. What was there to say? He had taken lives today for the first—and he hoped last—time. Right now, he was pretty revved up and the anger was still ruling. Later, he suspected the impact of what he’d done would hit him.
“You’re trained to save lives,” Cate said as if reading his mind. It was disconcerting. Hell, everything that had happened since she came back into his life had been disconcerting.
She had shot someone today, too, he remembered. “Did it bother you?” he asked.
“Yes, but there’s no choice. Well, there was one, but when it’s live or die, I’m gonna choose live every time.” There were tears in her eyes.
He eased out of traffic, turned down a dirt road and parked behind trees. “Come here,” he said gently. She slid her arms around his waist, laid her head on his shoulder and held him tight. For several long moments, he simply held her close.
Dear Reader,
What do people do when they can no longer work in their chosen profession? How do they totally reinvent themselves? I’ve seen this done, up close and personal, and it’s no easy task, giving up that in-the-know status, that feeling of being right in the middle of life-changing events, doing everything you can to fix them. And suddenly, you’re on the outside of it all.
As with any drastic upheaval in life, it helps to have a support system, but I wondered what would happen if that was also taken away. Here is the story of two individuals, dedicated to their jobs to the exclusion of all else, who are forced together by duty and circumstance. Can they help each other deal with the emotional trauma while dodging both danger and a passion they’ve denied for years?
Read on to see how COMPASS Special Agent Cate Olin and neurosurgeon Nick Sandro tackle their demons after the fall….
Enjoy!
Lyn Stone
The Doctor’s Mission
Lyn Stone
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
LYN STONE
A painter of historical events, Lyn decided to write about them. A canvas, however detailed, limits characters to only one moment in time. “If a picture’s worth a thousand words, the other ninety thousand have to show up somewhere!”
An avid reader, she admits, “At thirteen, I fell in love with Bronte’s Heathcliff and became Catherine. Next year, I fell for Rhett and became Scarlett. Then I fell for the hero I’d known most of my life and finally became myself.”
After living four years in Europe, Lyn and her husband, Allen, settled into a log house in north Alabama that is crammed to the rafters with antiques, artifacts and the stuff of future tales.
For my Al, master of reinvention, soul of inspiration and
forever the very heart of me.
Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Epilogue
Prologue
Bernese Alps, Switzerland, November 6th
Sunlight sparkled off the perfectly powdered slope. Thin, crisp air added to the euphoria zinging through Cate Olin’s veins as she looked out over the awesome peaks surrounding her. “On top of the world,” she sighed.
Cate tossed her companion a smile. Werner looked almost as impressive as the scenery. Together, he and the Alps would make a terrific travel ad for winter fun and games. And she would spend no more time with him than she would with these mountains.
He had approached her in the bar last night and asked her to dance. They’d talked, laughed, danced some more and then he had suggested they ski together the next morning. So here she was, having some much-needed fun, her reward for a tough mission accomplished.
After a light breakfast at Le Chalet d’Adrien, they had caught a hop, then ridden the lift to the top of Col des Gentianes to ski off-piste. Werner said it was supposed to be a fun run. A friend of his had highly recommended it.
Werner adjusted his goggles, then his gloves. She would love to know what he was thinking right now, but telepathy did not work on this guy. That was okay, too. That skill required concentration and mental energy. Her last assignment had taken a lot out of her and she badly needed a couple of weeks of nothing but recreation.
He slid slowly to her side, their skis parallel as he leaned sideways to kiss her cheek. “Ready to rock and roll?”
His Austrian accent was cute and he knew it. Cate took a second simply to enjoy the way he looked. She toyed with the idea of sleeping with him later. She might. And she might not.
Sex without any deep emotional involvement would be a new experience for her and one she thought she might find more depressing than satisfying. She sensed Werner didn’t do deep.
“Give me a minute.” She adjusted the bright red cap she wore and determined not to worry about anything today.
Cate shook the tension out of her legs one at a time, lifting each ski as she relaxed her muscles. She shrugged her shoulders to loosen them, then set her poles and grinned at Werner. “Okay, let’s boogie!”
“Take the lead.” He gestured broadly for her to go ahead of him. “I would like to watch your derriere!”
Cate hesitated, then experienced one of those uh-oh moments when he gave her a playful shove and shouted, “Go, you little chicken!”
Laughing, she wanted to glance back, but had to gain her balance and keep it. The bright morning sun had paved the powder with a slick-as-glass surface.
Cate flew, unable to control her speed the way she wished. The slopes she had experienced before had been bumpy with the tracks of others, offering a bit of traction. And not this steep. She slalomed, attempting to brake, tried to snow-plow to no avail, then considered falling down, just to stop her rapid descent.
After a harrowing run, the trail leveled out a little where it edged against a steep incline on her right. Suddenly she heard a distinctive crack, then another. A rifle!
Ten feet to her left, the slope dropped off like a cliff’s edge. To her right, the snow-covered wall. Above, the rumble of an avalanche. No accident of nature.
She dug in her poles, pushed hard and picked up speed, trying to outrun the fall, go perpendicular to it, get out of its way. To God knew what. But someone had skied this way earlier today. The trail led somewhere besides over the edge of an abyss. She hoped.
Snow pelted her head and shoulders, slid down, obliterated her path. There was nowhere to go but over the edge, where the descending rush of snow would take her anyway if it didn’t cover and smother her here.
Instinctively, Cate tucked her poles beneath her arms, squatted down and fell sideways. She snapped off her skis, scrambled for the cliff’s edge and looked over for a safe way down. A rolling crush of white shoved her from behind and took her with it.
As white blanked out the blue of the sky, Cate fought panic. She struggled to stay on the surface. Couldn’t let it bury her. The heat from her body would encase her in ice in less than half an hour. If the oxygen trapped with her lasted that long and the weight of the snow didn’t crush her.
Then she hit something really hard that broke her slide and she began to tumble head over heels.
She wanted to scream, but her mouth wouldn’t move. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, knowing it could be full of snow and the last one she would ever take.
Chapter 1
Martigny Hospital, Valais, Switzerland—November 27th
Nick Sandro swore under his breath. He knew what he had to do. His parents had put it to him like an order. Look after Cate. Friendship demanded it. He had no excuse not to. He had done it reluctantly during the greater parts of their childhood and adolescence. He would have to do it now.
Bracing himself, he pushed open the door of her hospital room. “Hi, Catie,” he said softly. “You awake?”
Her smile looked as forced as his felt. “Hey, Nick. They told me you were here. It was good of you to come.”
“Glad to,” he said with a shrug. “Besides, Mom and Dad would have my head if I didn’t come and see about you.”
“Like old times, huh? Trying to match us up.” Tears leaked from her right eye, but the smile stayed in place.
She looked frail. Her long, straight hair had been snipped close to her scalp in the area around her incision. The rest lay lank and lifeless around her pale, striking features. She had wide, dark-lashed eyes of the deepest blue imaginable, a straight no-nonsense nose and a luscious mouth that begged kissing. Even after all this time, he could still recall the feel of those lips and the taste of her as she’d kissed him. The sensation still raised guilt. He had been twenty. She had been jailbait.
“How are they?” she asked.
“Fine,” he said, keeping his voice bright. “Dad’s in London at a seminar. Mom went along. They’ll stay for a vacation and return home in a few weeks.”
“Yeah, they sent me a card. Picture of the horse guards,” Cate said with a chuckle. “Inside, it said Giddyup.”
Nick laughed with her, losing a little of the wariness he felt. “Serious get-well wish.”
“Karen? How’s she?”
“Pregnant. Divorced again. She should have known better than to marry another doctor.” He grimaced automatically, but added a small laugh to show he wasn’t carrying a torch for his ex-wife.
Cate smiled at him. “She’s a real dunce, that girl.”
He nodded, smiling. “It was a mistake. We’re both wiser.”
She sighed heavily. Her smile remained, wistful but sincere. Nick wondered if Cate ever regretted passing on marriage. As far as he knew she had never shown the slightest interest in it. He had kept pretty close tabs over the years through their parents. “How about this Austrian you were with on the slopes? Important?”
The smile crooked a bit. “Mostly to himself. But he did save my bacon when he called for the rescue.”
“But the bastard didn’t try to dig you out. I’d like to break his neck.”
“Judging by the tracks, they think he did try after he called in. One of his skis was found near where I was buried. Apparently, he fell on the way or was caught in a secondary slide. They probably won’t find him until spring thaw.”
“So he wasn’t involved in trying to kill you.”
“Somebody probably paid him to ski that particular slope. He was pretty insistent we do that one. Jack said Werner made a cash deposit in his account the day before, but it wasn’t enough to hire someone to conspire in a murder. True, Werner was a little vain, but I know he was no killer.”
Nick saw a tear trickle down her cheek, but she didn’t seem to be really grieving over the man, just sad that he’d been lost.
Even without makeup, hair a mess and dressed in a wrinkled, faded hospital gown, Cate was the most beautiful woman he knew. She was tall, nearly six feet; her body was angular, yet very graceful. He noted her nails were clipped to the quick with no polish, making her supple, long-fingered hands look smaller than he remembered.
The need to hold and reassure her hit him like a fist every time he looked at her. He hadn’t worried enough about his own reactions before taking this on. Maybe he should have examined his reasons a little more carefully. No way could he let them seclude her in some safe house without the kind of help she would need, though, no matter how hard this got for him. The government might furnish doctors to check on her, but who was to say what sort and whether they would be concerned about anything other than her vital signs.
Cate was observing him closely. “You’re looking good, Nick. Still plundering around in people’s gray matter?” she asked as a brave attempt at being chipper.
He looked away from her direct blue gaze. “I’m taking some time off.”
“Knocking around Florence, Jack says. Working vacation?”
“Sort of. I came over a few months ago. Attending some seminars at the Johns Hopkins campus there.”
“Teaching them how to cut?” she asked, blunt as ever.
“No, not teaching.” So she didn’t know what had happened. Hadn’t heard. What had proved a life-changing event for him hadn’t even warranted a paragraph in the local paper. No one had died, after all. He hadn’t really been on duty when it had happened, just in the wrong place at the wrong time. His parents would not have mentioned the incident to her except to relate how lucky he was to have escaped death.
No, he was the only one who felt the full impact of his injury. He could no longer operate. His career was over. No reason Cate should have heard about it. Oddly enough, she was probably the only one who would fully understand. Eventually she would, but he couldn’t dump that on her now. She had enough problems of her own.
“Odd that you’d choose Florence,” she said. “I would have thought Rome. Isn’t that where your grandparents were from?”
He nodded. Her parents came in just then and he turned to greet them. “See you later,” he said to Cate. “I’ll leave you to your visit.”
Jack Mercier, Cate’s boss, was waiting for Nick in the lounge across the hall. “Did you tell her?” he asked, frowning.
“Not yet,” Nick said. “I’m still not sure…”
