Page 108 of Wife Number One

But my gaze slid past him to the triage area at his back, and I froze.

The triage nurse, Teri, was battling to get a blood pressure cuff on a blond-haired girl of about five, who clearly wasn’t having it. But it was the two adults with her that had my muscles locking into place.

The man was familiar, and his jacket gave away why.

A Slayers MC patch sat proudly over his chest, and though he was preoccupied with getting the little girl to cooperate, I remembered him from the night at the morgue.

When he’d been protecting a woman I hadn’t been able to stop worrying about since.

Kara.

She stood beside him now, unshed tears glistening in her eyes as she watched on. She said something to the man, and he shot something back at her, but she was insistent, and when he eventually gave a nod, she hurried from the room, disappearing down the hallway.

Without even thinking about it, I followed.

“Gray!” Harriet called. “Where are you going?”

I blinked and turned back.

She had confusion written all over her expression.

The patient looked equally baffled. “Should I sit back down or…”

I was here to do a job. These people, especially these people who couldn’t afford insurance, needed me to be on my A game.

Normally, I was. I was one of the best. I wasn’t arrogant, it was just the truth.

But I couldn’t do my job when she was here. I glanced back at the hallway she’d disappeared down, the sense of urgency to follow her completely overwhelming.

“Just…wait,” I told the patient. “Wait in the cubicle. I’ll be back, I promise. I’ll be back.”

I apologized as I walked backward, until my ass hit Harriet’s desk. She squinted at me with questioning eyes, and I told her the same thing. “I just need a minute. Don’t send anyone home. Just…wait.”

I spun around and sprinted down the hallway.

She couldn’t have gone far.

I glanced at the man and the girl as I passed. He’d pulled her onto his lap and was holding her tight, keeping her calm while the nurse performed the initial basic tests.

That was good. I didn’t feel like getting into a fight with him today. We’d come damn close that night at the morgue, and fighting there would have been one thing.

But here, in the hospital I worked at, where I was supposed to protect my patients, would have been completely unacceptable.

I rounded the corner and stopped in the empty hallway. It was long and had an unobstructed view from where I stood with my heart pounding. If she’d run up there, I’d see her, surely. She was half a foot shorter than I was. There was no way she could be that fast on short legs.

Plus if that child back there was hers, instinct told me she wouldn’t have gone too far.

I opened the nearest door and stuck my head inside. “Hello?”

A sharp gasp from the corner and big brown eyes, wet with tears, locked on mine. Her gaze slid down my face to my white doctor’s coat, and she moved for the doorway I was blocking.

“I’m so sorry,” she mumbled. “I know I’m not supposed to be in here.”

But I was standing in the doorway, blocking it completely.

And I couldn’t move for staring at her.

She was pretty, all that dark-brown hair, pulled back in a simple ponytail that tendrils had escaped. They framed her soft face, kissing her temples and jaw.

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