Tamed By Her Army Doc's Touch

She frowned and put her ear at his mouth. “I think I felt something,” she murmured, searching for a pulse again.

“Keep breathing,” the big guy ordered sharply, without breaking rhythm. “And don’t stop until his pulse is steady and strong.” Of course Lilah wasn’t about to give up. She hadn’t spent long minutes submerged in a cold, dark nightmare, thinking she was going to join Trent in a watery grave, to give up now.

They again fell into a grim, silent rhythm until she finally felt the tiniest muscle contraction beneath her hand. She reared back just as Trent’s body jerked once, twice and then water began spewing from his lungs in huge spasmodic bursts. Applause and cheering broke the tense silence as she and her companion exchanged a brief glance of shared relief. Trent might not be out of the woods yet, but he was back.

Sucking in a deep breath, Lilah felt her body sag. Thank God, she thought as the boy coughed and wheezed. That breathing—ragged and painful as it appeared—was the most beautiful sound in the world … as was the distant wail of sirens.

Pushing back the kid’s wet hair to check his head wound, Lilah was unaware she was shaking until a large warm hand encased her trembling fingers. Instant heat and electricity shot up her arm, making her skin buzz. Startled, her gaze flew up and she got caught in eyes as deep and green and calm as the lake waters in summer.

Crinkles appeared at the corners and Lilah’s heart gave a slow lazy tumble in her chest that she quickly blamed on the recent crisis.

“You did great,” he said in a rough, dark bedroom voice. His darkened gaze dropped briefly to her mouth before lifting once more to lock with hers. His mouth kicked up at one corner. “It was obviously the kiss that did it. He’s a lucky guy.”

Feeling her face heat, Lilah slid her hand from his and focused her attention on examining the boy. “You just didn’t want people to know you kissed a guy,” she snorted softly and reached for a black T-shirt nearby, pressing it to the bleeding head wound. His deep chuckle vibrated the space between them and made her breath catch in her chest. Or maybe that was just because she was finally coming down off the adrenalin high.

“I can’t imagine him liking it any more than I would.” He was silent a moment before his large hand reached out to squeeze her shoulder. “Seriously, they’re lucky you saw them.”

Lilah stilled beneath his disturbing touch and his words. “Someone else would have helped.” She looked up briefly as he rose. “You did.”

“Couldn’t let you have all the fun,” he said, and something heavy dropped around her shoulders. Lilah was instantly enveloped in the warm, clean smell of virile man.

Without lifting her head, she snuggled into the garment and checked her patient’s pupil reaction. “Do you know where you are?” she asked.

Trent opened his mouth and “Wha-a-at?” emerged on a ragged breath, as though his throat had been scraped raw.

“Stay still a moment,” she said, gently soothing him when he made to sit up. “The paramedics are on their way.”

He frowned and blinked. “Paramedics?” he rasped, his bewildered gaze clinging to hers, as though he was afraid she would vanish if he blinked.

“Do you know where you are?” she asked, just as someone cried, “Trent?” and the next thing the young coed was dropping down beside him. He turned to blink up at her for a couple of beats and Lilah held her breath. He croaked, “Tiff?” and the girl fell against him, laughing and crying.

Lilah exhaled with noisy relief. If he remembered his girlfriend’s name, his head injury wasn’t too serious. She heard someone say the paramedics had arrived and rose to give the lovebirds a few moments of privacy. Within minutes Trent was being hooked up to a portable IV and loaded onto a stretcher.

“Is this really necessary?” he demanded weakly, as Lilah rattled off instructions to the ambulance crew.

“Yes,” she said, giving his arm a reassuring squeeze. “But it should only be overnight. Depending on that head wound and the results of the CT scan.”

“My head hurts.” He frowned. “What happened?”

“You don’t remember?” the big guy asked, as he appeared beside them.

Trent thought for a minute. “No. The last thing I remember was dancing with Tiff and then … and then people around us were jumping into the lake.”

The rest of his answer was drowned out by the arrival of a group of tipsy women noisily pushing through the crowd. Before Lilah could question Trent further she was being enthusiastically hugged by her friends and peppered with demands about what had happened.

“You were with us one minute, the next you were flying out the window,” Angie, a colleague from ER, laughed as she squeezed Lilah. “Heck, if we’d known you were planning a public striptease of your own, we’d have been there to cheer you on instead of that sleazy toy boy.”

“And thank God you’re wearing your good underwear,” Jenna Richards, obstetrician and bride-to-be, added. “Imagine if you’d been prancing around in laundry-day undies?”

“Oh, horror,” Angie gasped, and everyone laughed, clearly still buzzed from the evening’s festivities.

Lilah pushed a hank of wet hair from her forehead and shoved first one arm then the other through the bomber jacket’s sleeves. Now that the emergency was over, she was very conscious of the fact that she was practically naked beneath the butter-soft leather.

A cool breeze brushed her bare legs, raising an army of goose bumps and she burrowed deeper into the voluminous folds. She was freezing.

“Let’s go,” she said, pushing her way through the group, suddenly eager to get somewhere private—and maybe order a couple of brandies. For medicinal purposes, of course.

Sensing no one was following her, Lilah looked over her shoulder and found thirteen pairs of eyes studying her with an array of expressions varying from curiosity to narrow-eyed speculation.

“What?”

“Do you two know each other?” Jenna demanded, craning her neck to look through the crowd of bystanders.

Lilah frowned. “Who? Trent?”

There was general confusion but it was Angie who demanded, “Trent? Who’s Trent?”

“The boy I—”

“We’re talking about Lucky Luke,” Jenna interrupted, gesturing wildly to the people crowding around the big guy whose gaze was locked on Lilah. Her breath caught beneath that intense gaze but she must have looked baffled because Jenna’s mouth dropped open to a chorus of gasps.

“You don’t know?” She looked shocked.

“Know what?”

“And the lucky girl just happened to see Dr. Hunk of the Decade in his skivvies,” another voice drawled. “Did you know his father’s a cyber-tech billionaire?”

Lilah followed the direction of the woman’s predatory look. “Dr who?”

“Sullivan,” Jenna prodded. “You know? The assistant director of medicine Sullivan?”

It was Lilah’s turn to look shocked. “But … but … I thought the ADM was a … woman?”

“Honey,” Angie said, her face lighting up with a wicked grin, “Harriet Sullivan is a woman. You just got an up-close-and-personal view of her nephew, Dr. Tall, Dark and Buff, practically in the … well, the buff.”

CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_7c508ee0-d4b4-5aa9-b5fe-d5bdf4d9d618)

LUKE CHECKED HIS side mirror, flicked on the indicator and turned his motorbike into the hospital visitors’ parking. The sixteen-hundred cc engine rumbled beneath him like a large, hungry predator and responded to the merest flick of his wrist.

He’d been back in Spruce Ridge a few months and still couldn’t believe he was here at all. But, then, Spruce Ridge had been the spawning grounds of the Sullivan boys’ greatest summer adventures, despite—or maybe in spite of—their parents’ widely publicized and bitter divorce.

His aunt and uncle had taken in three bewildered little boys and provided a firm hand and a ton of homemade cookies, along with unconditional love. Looking back, Luke sometimes wondered where he’d be if it hadn’t been for summers spent here.

His mouth twisted into a self-deprecating grin as he recalled the wild scrapes he and his brothers had got into, partly in a bid for their parents’ attention but mostly because they had been budding delinquents. And punishing his parents had been the main reason he’d joined the army after med school, instead of doing his residency at the hospital his mother pulled strings to get him into.

He’d loved every minute of being in the Rangers—right up until eight months ago when his helicopter had been shot down over enemy territory. The crash had taken the lives of six marines, two rangers, the hostage they’d been sent in to retrieve and Luke’s passion for flying.

He and the rest of his team had held off hostiles for fourteen hours before help had finally arrived. Luke didn’t remember the rescue. He’d woken up in hospital two days later feeling damn lucky to be alive. He’d also woken up realizing it was just a matter of time before his luck ran out, so he’d signed his release papers and hopped on the first flight home.