Nightwing by Lynn Michaels Page A

ligaments, he touched her mind, slipping past the conscious level to her autonomic nervous system. All is well here. He spoke to the nerves and ganglia that innervated her blood vessels, to the blood itself pooling around the injury. Return to your proper path.
    “Naturally, stay off it for a couple of days,” he added, though he knew she wouldn’t need to, that in the morning she’d be amazed at her quick recovery. “I can prescribe something for pain, if you’d like.”
    “Thank you, no. I don’t do drugs, only regular-strength Tylenol.”
    “If you change your mind, call me. Here or at home. You have my number.” Raven picked up the clipboard and signed off on her chart. “I’ll stop by tomorrow evening and have another look.”
    “That isn’t necessary. I know my way here.”
    “I’m a doctor, Miss Evans. You’re my patient.” He looked at her when he was finished writing. “Don’t take it personally.”
    She flushed and glanced at her hands knotted in her lap. She’d chewed a hangnail on her thumb. A wafer-thin line of blood seeped along the cuticle. Raven’s mouth watered.
    “Thank you, by the way,” she said, “for the roses.”
    It galled her to say it; he could hear it in her voice, sense it in her thoughts. She didn’t want to owe him anything or be beholden to him. It amused him almost as much as her physical attraction to him repulsed him.
    “Enjoy them, Miss Evans. I’ll see you tomorrow evening.”
    He was gone, the curtain yanked shut behind him before Willie could open her mouth. She ground her teeth in frustration as a nurse pushed her in a wheelchair with a squeaky rubber tire down the hall to the waiting room. Frank looked up and put down the month-old issue of Time he was reading, and went to get the Jeep.
    “Want me to stay over?” he asked as he helped her hop into the house, through the dining room French doors where there were no steps.
    “No,” Willie said, and meant it. She’d never been afraid to stay alone at Beaches, and she wasn’t going to let whatever she’d seen in her bedroom—or thought she’d seen—frighten her. Not again. Once was enough. “Just help me do this contrast-bath thing.”
    It took an hour, first with a bucket of cold water, then hot, then cold again. Frank made tea, nuked them each another plateful of moo goo gai pan, then washed the wok, loaded the dishwasher and turned it on.
    While Willie changed into a pair of blue cotton pajamas, crinkled from lying in the dryer for two days, Frank went upstairs for her toothbrush, a quilt and three pillows. When Willie was settled on the couch, he doubled one pillow under her foot, tucked two behind her head, covered her and sat down on the coffee table.
    “I kicked the thermostat up,” he said. “Don’t want you turning into a Popsicle overnight. Want the lamp on?”
    “No. Just leave the light on over the stove in case I have to go to the bathroom.”
    “Okay. See you in the morning.” He leaned over, kissed the top of her head and turned off the lamp on the table next to the couch. “I’ll make you breakfast.”
    When the locks clicked behind him, Willie sighed and shut her eyes. Her ankle wasn’t throbbing anymore, just pulsing dully. Callie jumped on her stomach, startling her for a moment. Then she smiled, scratched the cat’s ears, yawned and let her eyes drift shut.
    The dishwasher droned and the refrigerator gurgled. A loose shutter and the French doors rattled in a gust of wind. The porch swing squeaked. Common every night noises in an old house. Callie was a warm deadweight—half purring, half snoring—on top of her. The sea murmured faintly, fitfully, beyond the dunes. With her left hand cupped around the cat’s round, full stomach, Willie fell asleep—too tired to think anymore, too exhausted, she hoped, to dream.
    Neither Willie nor Callie stirred when the man in knee boots and breeches, the brown leather vest and billowy-sleeved white shirt sat down on the coffee table