Authors: Virna DePaul
Impatiently, he glanced at his watch. It was already twenty past the hour. Rising, he strode to the receptionist’s window. She was another pretty blonde and she was talking to...
His eyebrows lifted in surprise.
The pretty doctor.
Simon waited as the women continued their chat, then cleared his throat.
They looked up. The blonde doctor’s green eyes widened in recognition.
Simon nodded. “Hello again.” Their gazes remained locked before he managed to turn his attention to the receptionist. “Do you know how much longer Dr. Shepard is going to be?” Simon asked.
“It shouldn’t be too much longer.”
“Right.”
He felt the gaze of the other woman on him and looked back at her. She smiled.
She had an incredible smile.
Attraction once again morphed into something else. Desire. Need.
He made up his mind to ask her out. Maybe she wasn’t into casual sex, but he could always get lucky, right?
Then he noticed the badge now hanging around her neck.
Nina Whitaker, MD, PhD. Psychiatry, Psychology.
A psychiatrist.
Just like Lana. Only Nina Whitaker was a twofer. An MD
and
a PhD.
She’d truly made it her life’s work to help the mentally ill.
Air left his lungs and the damned pain wormed its way upward again. Silencing a swearword, he turned away without returning her smile.
* * *
A
S THE TALL, BROODING
man stalked away from the receptionist’s window, Nina reached past Sandy to close the sliding Plexiglas window.
“God, isn’t he gorgeous?” the receptionist gushed.
That, Nina thought, is an understatement. For the second time that day, the brief glimpse of the man had gotten her motor running. “Gorgeous, sure, but he also has a major chip on his shoulder.” Her heart had nearly exploded out of her chest at seeing him again, but despite the renewed spark of interest in his eyes, she hadn’t missed how his expression had grown disdainful once he’d seen her name tag. “What’s his name?”
“Simon Granger. Isn’t that just hunky?”
The strong name fit him, she thought. “Who’s he here to see?”
“Dr. Shepard.”
Ah. That made sense. Kyle worked primarily with military and law enforcement. And since Simon’s hair was on the longer side, that meant... Nina nodded. “He looks like a cop.”
“Yep. You wanna talk to him? Who knows? Maybe he could be of service.” She grinned. “Seriously. Didn’t you say your meetings with the police chief had stalled?”
More like hit a brick wall,
Nina thought. Karen had been wrong. Even given Nina’s experience with establishing the MHIT program in Charleston, she was having little luck convincing San Francisco officials that spending time and money to train officers on advanced strategies to deal with the mentally ill would be worth it in the long run. The police chief hadn’t disputed the training could make a difference for the suspects, but thought it would likely jeopardize his men more than it would help them.
“My men are trained to use force only when it’s absolutely necessary to protect themselves or others. They don’t need to be second-guessing themselves by considering the mental health complexities of the suspect in question. That’s something that becomes relevant once the suspect has been contained and any threat he poses diminished. In the moment, it doesn’t matter why someone’s acting dangerous, only that he is,” he’d said.
Nina had heard the same argument again and again. And in all fairness, it had some validity. But protecting police was only one aspect to be considered. Those same cops had to make distinctions between the suspects they apprehended all the time. They handled men and women and children differently. They approached things differently if someone was elderly, had an established record, or had never been in trouble with the law a day in his life. They considered how someone was dressed, how they walked, how they talked. An understanding of someone’s mental condition was another aspect that should be considered when entering a situation, and glossing over it was the easy answer.
Bottom line, however, was most cops hated the idea of coddling a criminal and were resistant to seeing one in a compassionate light. Maybe it was because it made it harder for them to do their job. But that was no excuse for ignorance.
She looked once more at the gorgeous guy in the waiting room. “Too bad I don’t do cops,” she murmured only half-jokingly.
Sandy laughed. “You don’t do anyone, Nina. Good thing I do.”
Smiling, Nina straightened. She’d leave the flirting to the receptionist. As sexy as Simon Granger was, he was still a cop. One who obviously disdained what she did for a living. “I’ll be on the geriatric floor.”
“Ms. Horowitz still there?”
Nina pictured the elderly woman who’d gifted her with the DVD Simon Granger had seen and who had a penchant for Old Hollywood lingerie, even when she was hospitalized. “For a little while longer, I think. Then the family will likely call hospice.”
“It’s hard to imagine a life as vibrant as hers coming to an end.”
Nina frowned. She tried, she really tried to hold back the dual images, the first of her sister as she lay in her coffin, and the second of a teenage girl with a pink ribbon tied around her neck, but it was impossible. It had been exactly three years since Beth Davenport had hung herself, but Nina knew no amount of time would make her forget the horror of finding her body.
Just like it wouldn’t erase the horror of finding her sister’s.
She swallowed hard, speaking only when she was sure her voice would be steady. “The end of any life is hard to imagine. But there are far worse ways to go. Ms. Horowitz will be surrounded by people who love her when her time comes. That’s really all any of us can ask.”
“I’d rather fall asleep and never wake up without ever having to deal with a deteriorating body or mind.”
“Most dementia patients aren’t aware of the infliction,” Nina reminded her.
“But we are. And we pity them. That’s enough. I never want to be pitied.”
Nor do I,
Nina thought.
But sometimes circumstances just lend themselves toward pity.
Without her permission, her gaze once again wandered to the big man now pacing in the waiting room. The set of his shoulders and his energy-driven stride told her he wouldn’t want to be pitied. Would likely deplore such sentiments more than most. Yet she’d seen the shadows in his eyes. Knew he grieved, if not another person, then some loss of self that had happened a long time ago. Her instinctive desire to soothe and heal him wasn’t surprising, but the renewed surge of chemical attraction was. Her mind wanted to get to know Simon Granger better, but so did her body. Nina turned back to Sandy, who was also staring at the man. “I’m heading back to my office. Want me to see what’s keeping Kyle so you can stay and enjoy the view?”
Sandy didn’t take her gaze off him. “You don’t mind? I’ll be your slave for life.”
Nina laughed. Before she left, she couldn’t resist one last glance at him. He looked up, and through the Plexiglas partition, his gaze immediately collided with hers. For tense seconds, they stared at one another. Then he glanced away, leaving her to simultaneously savor and curse the sizzle of desire that once again coursed through her.
She obviously needed to get out more. Find someone fun, have herself a little frolic and stop drooling over the patients. Problem was, she rarely socialized so finding someone fun to frolic with was a little difficult.
As she approached Kyle’s office, an athletic young man with curly blond hair was just leaving. He wore a short-sleeved T-shirt that revealed brilliantly colored tattoo sleeves. A particularly gruesome tattoo caught Nina’s attention—a skull with a unicorn in its mouth. Philosophical statement? Evidence of personal frustration over bipolar tendencies? Or both?
She almost rolled her eyes at her mental questioning.
Sometimes a tattoo was just a tattoo.
The man was saying goodbye to Kyle. “I’ll check out the clinic you told me about. Thanks, Dr. Shepard,” he said before turning and catching sight of Nina. He smiled before walking away.
In spite of his disturbing tattoo, he seemed...carefree. Happy.
Which was good, of course, but a little unusual for one of Kyle’s patients. Kyle specialized in PTSD, and his clients typically had the same brooding quality as the man pacing restlessly in the waiting room.
Kyle stepped into the hallway. “How’s it going, Nina?”
“Good. Sandy sent me to check on you. Your next patient’s getting a little restless.”
He nodded. “Thanks.”
When Nina got to her own office, she noted that her in-box was still empty and checked her watch. Looked like she and the police officer in the waiting room were both being a little impatient. If she’d read him accurately, he was obviously waiting to be seen by a doctor he had no respect for. Not uncommon with cops who were reluctant to show weakness or reach out for help, even though doing so was key to their continuing ability to do their jobs.
And she? She was waiting for her annual present from Lester Davenport, of course. The deliberate reminder of his daughter’s death and the part Nina had played in it.
Nina didn’t need the reminder. She knew the significance of today’s date.
And she blamed herself enough as it was.
Still, ten minutes later, when the mail finally arrived, Nina’s hands were shaking. When she saw the envelope with the familiar handwriting on it, her breath stuttered in her chest.
And when she opened up the envelope and withdrew the card inside, she closed her eyes and thought,
No.
She obviously hadn’t blamed herself enough. Like always, Davenport’s note caused pain to run through her like a thousand razor blades, but this time, there was something else added to the mix.
Fear.
Because Beth’s father wasn’t content with angry words anymore. This time, he’d included threats.
Several of them.
But all of them amounted to the same thing.
His daughter was dead.
And he wanted Nina dead, too.
CHAPTER FIVE
S
IMON FIGURED
D
R.
K
YLE
Shepard was a middle-aged man’s version of Little Orphan Annie. It wasn’t a particularly attractive combination, but it probably lulled most people into a false sense of security. They’d be too distracted by the doc’s garish red hair to pay any attention to how he was trying to siphon out their most private thoughts.
Not Simon.
His guard was up and would stay that way. He wasn’t taking any chances when it came to his job, but he didn’t need some stranger prying around in his head, either.
“So, Detective Granger, you’re here because you’re a trauma survivor.”
It wasn’t a question, but given the way the doctor paused, he clearly expected Simon to respond.
“I’m here because my superiors ordered me to be,” he drawled.
“And how do you feel about that?”
He smirked. He couldn’t help it. Why the hell did shrinks always lead with that damn question? What the hell difference did it make how he
felt
about a situation he couldn’t change? “I don’t feel anything about it. I’m here. I’ll cooperate. All I want is to get back to work.”
“All you want? But that isn’t true, is it? You want Lana Hudson to be alive, don’t you?”
Simon stared at the redhead, thinking he’d underestimated him. Shepard had gone in for the kill mighty fast. Faster than Simon had expected. “What I want and what is possible are two different things. What I want is irrelevant.”
Dr. Shepard nodded. “With respect to Lana, or with respect to your life in general?”
The temper that had been simmering below the surface suddenly flashed. Simon leaned forward in his chair. “Am I here for full psychoanalysis? Because, frankly, I thought I was here for grief counseling given a serial killer tortured and killed my girlfriend.”
“Ex-girlfriend,” Dr. Shepard said mildly. “Wasn’t she?”
Simon sat back. “She’s dead. Can’t get any more ‘ex’ than that.”
“Why had you two broken up?”
He’d known that question was coming, and he didn’t pull any punches or try to hide the ball. He knew perfectly well why Lana had broken up with him and he’d made his decisions knowing it would happen. “She didn’t like the fact I’d gone back to work the streets after taking a management position. She didn’t want to be involved with someone with a death wish, not when she’d already lost her husband to the war.”
“Do you have a death wish?”
He gazed steadily at the doctor. “I’m not afraid of death.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
Simon said precisely, “I don’t wish to be dead.”
“Have you ever? As a teenager? When you were in the military?”
Dr. Shepard stared at him with an intensity that, if Simon didn’t know better, implied he knew his deepest, darkest secrets. Instinctively, he slammed every defensive wall he possessed in place. “No.”
“Then what do you wish for?”
He forgot about why he was there—to safeguard his job—and blurted out the first thing that came to mind. “Right now, I’m wishing this appointment was over and I was back at work.”
Several tense seconds of silence followed his response. Great, Simon thought. Now he’d gone and pissed the guy off. But damn it, he didn’t want to be here. He shouldn’t have to be. He—
“Work is important to you. Why?”
Simon pinched the bridge of his nose. Why was this guy asking questions when the answers were so damn obvious? But fine, Simon thought. The sooner he gave the doc the answers he wanted, the sooner he could get out of here. “I make a difference there. I like to think I keep the bad guys on their toes. I delay them a bit.”
“Delay but not stop them completely?”
“No one can stop them. Not all of them.”
“Can they be healed? Some of them?”
Dr. Shepard’s question automatically made Simon think of the doctor.
Nina Whitaker.
She’d reminded him of Lana in more ways than her cool blond looks. She’d had that same watchful gaze, intense yet filled with compassion, as if she could see every scar that lay underneath his skin and she wanted to kiss them all. Make them better. The idea of her kissing him anywhere made him shift in his seat and wrestle with the attraction that had tried to pull him closer even as he’d mentally sneered at her chosen profession. He ran a hand through his hair, painfully aware that he hadn’t answered Dr. Shepard’s question. And that he didn’t want to. “Why are you asking me that?”