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Chapter 34

Dayne pulled a loaf of bread and some jelly out of the refrigerator—she was too tired to cook anything more demanding than toast. While the bread browned, she punched the answer button on her answering machine. She'd forgotten to check it on Sunday, and she had a huge number of messages waiting.

She fast-forwarded through all the ones with her supervisor's voice. That took care of most of them.

"Good Lord, Dayne," her mother said in stunned tones. "What have you gotten yourself into? Call home as soon as you get in."

Dayne frowned. She understood her mother being concerned about her link to the Hellraised . . . but her mother's message didn't really seem appropriate. Certainly her lawn was still covered by sightseers and T-shirt sellers and fundamentalist picketers, and the police parked next to her drive still kept her Satanist supporters and her Christian supporters from ripping each other to bits, but the reporters were gone—and she didn't feel that she'd gotten herself into anything.

The next call was a hang-up, as was the one after it. The one following that was from Paige, who cleared her throat a few times before stammering, "Um . . . this is-is-is . . . not an emergency or anything, so . . . um, why don't you call me back when you can?"

Paige sounded bizarre.

Dayne shook her head. The next voice on the machine was deep and sexy. "Dayne, this is Adam." He was chuckling, and his voice sounded more bemused than anything. "If it isn't too much trouble, I'd like to stop over and see you tonight. . . ." Dayne's pulse picked up. She'd thought about Adam on and off during the day while she was working. He was obviously interested in her, a fact she found more than a little bit surprising—but delightful. Adam was the first person since Torry to give her goosebumps and butterflies; better yet, with Adam, she didn't have the endless nagging feeling that he was trouble waiting to happen. That gut instinct about her dead husband, proven right in the end, had warned her away from a number of otherwise nice men since. Its absence felt like a green light to Dayne.

Adam left his phone number and asked Dayne to call him back as soon as she could. Then he added, "I like the message," and Dayne groaned.

Suddenly her mother's enigmatic message, and Paige's nervousness, became clear. Dayne had forgotten to warn her family and friends about the strip-search-and-read-'em-their-rights machine message she'd left for the obscene phone caller.

She rewound that message to get Adam's phone number, then forwarded to the next. "Dayne? We haven't heard from you . . . but maybe next weekend won't be such a good time to stop by." That was her brother—with all the excitement, she'd forgotten he and his wife were hoping to come by, and worse, she'd forgotten she was supposed to get the weekend off if she could.

The next message was a hang-up.

So was the next.

On the following one, she heard a long silence, then softly, the whispered word "bitch" before the phone on the other end slammed down.

Her stomach lurched. Maybe that will be the last time he calls, she hoped. Maybe now he'll go away.

She took a deep breath and glared at her hands until they quit shaking. Then she called her mother, and explained that everything was fine; she called her brother and promised to try to get at least one day of the next weekend off. She called Paige, and explained her phone message, and that she couldn't come by because she had a date.

Then she called Adam.

"Satco, Executive Suite, this is Gwendolyn speaking."

The voice was beyond sexy. Dayne stared at the telephone for an instant, unnerved, then said, "Uh, yes . . . this is Dayne Kuttner. I'm returning Adam D'Agonostis' call."

"Oh, wow," the voice on the other end said, and most of the sexiness—and a good part of the femaleness—disappeared in an instant. "The Dayne Kuttner?"

That change and that sudden enthusiasm was even more unnerving to Dayne. "I suppose so," she said, then followed up that vague admission with a question which she hoped would effectively change the subject. "Is Adam in?"

"Oh. Yes, of course." The voice returned to its original form, and its owner put Dayne on hold.

A moment later, Adam picked up. "Hi, there. That's some message on your machine."

"I've been getting unpleasant phone calls," Dayne told him. "I decided I didn't want to get any more of them."

"That ought to do it." Adam laughed. "You'll be lucky to get many calls at all. Anyway, are you going to be home tonight?"

"Yes. I'd love to have you over."

"Good. Oh, by the way, I have some terrific news for you."

He sounded so cheerful—she smiled and leaned against the wall. "Really? Terrific news would be nice."

"I'm glad. I found an opening with Satco for an RN—if you're interested, I'll bring over an application for you to fill out."

Dayne considered the possibility of doing something that wasn't related to the ICU, and her smile grew broader. "I'm interested," she said. "Bring it over. You can tell me what you know about the job when you get here."

She hung up the phone and stared out of her kitchen window, considering Adam and wondering at her reaction to him. She couldn't blame it on being alone for too long; if that were the case, she would have been drawn to someone else long before this. Dr. Weist, who was handsome and considerate and intelligent, had been politely hinting he'd like to take her out, and his was only the most recent in a line of offers. Nor could she fool herself into thinking that Adam was right for her in a way no one else to that point had been—she was pragmatic enough to admit she didn't know anything like enough about him.

She smiled ruefully and watched the birds pulling berries off the dogwood tree in the backyard. She was pragmatic, but not so pragmatic that she hadn't fallen foolishly in love with a stranger.

"It isn't love," she muttered—but it was. She'd been in love only once before; and that one time she had fallen in love, it had been like this. She met Torry, she fell in love before she even knew him. . . .

"And look where that got me."

There were times when she wished she could fast-forward her life and look back at it the way biographers did on their subjects' lives; the biographers could always see what each choice meant. They could always see, from their lofty height, where their subjects were getting it wrong. Dayne, down in the thick of her life, had gone badly wrong with Torry. Moreover, while she could not believe that Adam was another version of Torry, the depth of her emotions and their suddenness unnerved her. Somehow, she feared, she was once again about to get it wrong.

Porthos jumped onto the counter and stared past her, his fur standing straight up. He hissed, and she felt the hair on the back of her own neck raise—atavistic response. She looked where the cat was looking, and caught only the briefest of flashes of blue from something that was moving in the apartment's tiny laundry room. She rose slowly, looking for a weapon. The baseball bat still leaned against the kitchen door. She grabbed that and stalked forward, silent and scared. She heard nothing from the laundry room . . . but the sense of presence was unmistakable. Porthos maintained his vigil on the counter, unwilling to move closer.

She took a deep breath as she reached the partly open door—then she kicked it open and jumped in, screaming, slamming the bat down at the same time in a short, vicious arc. . . .

Onto nothing. The tiny laundry room had only one door—the one through which she had come. It had no window, neither cabinets nor cubbyholes. She opened both the washer—empty—and the dryer—one still-damp pair of jeans and a few pairs of white cotton underwear. The intruder had neither a place to hide, nor a place to flee, yet he was not there. Rationally, she knew she should take that as proof that she had seen nothing, and that Porthos had been hissing at a phantom of his own imagining. She would have been happy to be rational.

The stink of rotten eggs, however, hung in the air.

The doorbell rang, and she jumped. Porthos yowled and fled from the kitchen—she could hear him thundering up the stairs as she walked to the front door.

She peeked out; Adam waited on the landing, a vase full of painted daisies and baby's breath in one hand, a folder in the other. He was staring back at the picketers and the T-shirt vendors, and the decreased but still fairly heavy traffic.

She opened the door, and he jumped a little and turned to smile at her—and she was struck again by how perfect his handsomeness was, and by how hard her heart began to beat just looking at him.

"Come on in."

He stepped inside and nodded back at the watching crowd. "Wonder how long it will take until they get bored with that."

Dayne, who had signed a few autographs on her way in from work, and who found the people on her doorstep interesting, just shrugged. "Big news is good for seven days," she told him. "By that rule of thumb, they'll all get tired and find something else to interest them by this Friday." She grinned. "Until then, I have to confess I'm enjoying the notoriety. I've never had anyone ask me for my autograph before. That's fun."

He looked genuinely surprised. "People find amusement in the strangest ways," he said, more to himself than to her.

"Has anyone ever asked for your autograph?"

He stood, staring down at his feet, studying his shoes and nibbling the corner of his lip for a long time. "No," he told her at last. "No one ever has."

"Then you don't know. I don't think it's at all strange to enjoy it."

"I'm not likely to find out." He changed the subject. "I brought you some flowers." He handed her the vase; the daisies were beautiful, pink and red and yellow and pale blue with bright yellow centers. The baby's breath filled in around them like a lacy cloud. "I hope you like flowers."

She grinned up at him. "Of course." She reached up to take the vase with her free hand, and Adam suddenly glanced down.

"Expecting reporters? Or was that for me?"

She realized she was still toting the baseball bat around. "Oh . . . no. I just thought I . . ." She shook her head. She had no desire to tell Adam about the intruder she couldn't be sure she'd had. She didn't want to sound silly. "Nothing," she told him. "I've just been kind of cautious lately."

He smiled down at her. "Very sensible."

She sighed. "That's me. Sensible." Her sensible-ness wasn't the trait she hoped Adam would pick up on, but then, he wasn't likely to see her standing in her hall, clutching the baseball bat she'd hoped to brain some intruder with, and say, "How sexy of you." She was going to have to make a point of being sexy if she wanted him to see her that way.

She led him back to the kitchen, and while she gave the daisies some extra water, listened to him rustling through the contents of his folder. She heard one of her kitchen chairs scrape along the floor—sounded like the one against the far wall . . . the one that would make it easiest for him to watch her. His gaze was a physical itch between her shoulderblades, and she felt—with some annoyance—the heat that rose in her cheeks in response. She was twenty-eight—far too old to feel like some infatuated twelve-year-old.

She turned to carry the vase to the table, and found, as she'd suspected, that he was watching her; more nerve-wracking, that the expression on his face hinted at an attraction as complete as what she felt.

Then she looked at her kitchen table, and was amazed at the sheer number of papers he'd brought.

"That's a job application?" she asked, and put the flowers down, and drew up a chair at right angles from his.

"It's a lot of things. Job application, permission form for Satco to access your records and add copies to our permanent files, disclosure statement, contract, job description for your job—a few other things. Mostly it's just a lot of red tape before Satco can hire you; we deal with a number of secret and sensitive things, and we have to be sure that you won't divulge any of our trade secrets."

"Why the contract?"

Adam smiled. "Because I know you'll get the job if you apply for it, so I'm saving a couple of days this way. It's selfishness on my part, I suppose, but since I met you, I haven't been able to think of much else. I like the idea of you working with me—and the sooner, the better." He leaned forward and rested his chin in his cupped hands and smiled at her—a smile that gave her goosebumps.

"I like the idea of working with you, too—but would I be? You haven't told me anything about the job, other than that it's for a nurse. And how would a corporation use my ICU skills?"

He sighed. "My knowledge of what the job entails is pretty limited—it isn't within my specialty, which is running things. I can tell you a little bit about it; you'd be working with our disease researchers. One small subdivision of Satco is heavily invested in cures for the major communicable diseases—and that area is a special interest of mine, so I try to find the best people for it. It's a pity you aren't a computer specialist, though. We don't have too much trouble finding qualified medical personnel, but, oh, man, we have top-level computer jobs going begging. We need system designers, hardware gurus, software geniuses . . ." He shook his head and chuckled. "But that doesn't apply to you, of course."

"No. Sadly. I wasn't kidding when I said I hated computers." Dayne leaned back in the chair and closed her eyes, considering the job she might get. Communicable disease research—that sounded pretty terrific. That might take her away from dealing one-on-one with all the loss and suffering eating her alive in the ICU. She considered. Research—in her mind, that word conjured up pictures of white lab coats and long, empty, echoing halls, little beakers of colored liquids and Petri dishes full of things to be studied under a microscope. An ivory-tower atmosphere, people who walked slowly and talked softly, air kept cool and always smelling of antiseptic and chemicals.

Realistically, the job of a research nurse was probably as messy and cluttered as that of a unit nurse—as full of memos and meetings and paperwork, yellow stick-up notes and petty frustrations and pain-in-the-neck doctors with God complexes.

Maybe, though—maybe it would be further from the pain. Dayne desperately needed some distance.

"Yeah," she said, opening her eyes. "Research sounds good. Let me see the job description."

She went over it carefully—it entailed drawing blood, patient evaluation (which Satco euphemistically referred to as "client follow-up"), lots of record-keeping, drug administration and documentation, treatment application, physical therapy . . . a lot of the usual nursing things. Care plans, of course—she loathed care plans. Everyone required them, but as carried out, they were the most worthless pieces of paper in the chart. She'd waged a big battle to revamp care plans into a working document not too long ago, and gotten stomped for it. Administration liked their paper the way they liked it.

Maybe Satco was better.

She said, "Well, it's worth looking into, anyway."

His smile got bigger. "Good. I'm so glad you feel that way." He started shoving papers across to her. "These are the important documents. Your records release . . . permission for background check . . . job history . . . contract . . . we'll start you at $24.50 an hour, and you'll get a raise at the end of six weeks if you work out, and evaluations every six months. The job has no limits—you can work your way to the very top if you're ambitious. And here's the application. This is the most vital document of all, because the people who evaluate me cannot have any reason to think I showed favoritism in hiring you."

"Are you?" Dayne raised an eyebrow.

He laughed. "Of course I am . . . but I also think you'll do extraordinarily well at the job. You're qualified. I did some preliminary checking just to make sure of that—I don't want to jeopardize my own career. From what I've heard so far—" he looked into her eyes and took one of her hands in both of his, "—hiring you will be the best thing I've ever done for my career."

Dayne heard the slightest tremor in his voice as he said that—his intensity and his sincerity amazed her. How had she gotten so lucky, to meet someone like him? She dug through her purse and found a pen, and tried to fill out the first of the forms. . . .

"This pen won't write," she muttered. She made circles on a piece of scrap paper and it worked just fine, but when she tried the forms again, nothing happened.

He'd stood up and dug through his pockets—he came out with a thick, bright red fountain pen. "I forgot—Satco's legal papers are specially treated to withstand a lot of adverse conditions. It takes a special kind of ink to write on them."

She took his pen and got to work. The application was long and tedious. When she finished it, she went through the disclosure form word by word before signing it. It was also long and tedious—and done in very small print. She went through three other sets of papers, reading each—it seemed to her that the wording got stuffier and more obtuse and the print smaller with every document she worked through. And when she got to the contract, she groaned. She flipped through the pages, counting them. "There are more than twenty pages in this thing—and I don't suppose you brought a magnifying glass with you, did you?"

"No." He smiled wryly. "Home office likes to cover every eventuality in its contracts. If you don't feel like wading through that whole thing, I can go over the main points with you—and when you're actually on staff, you'll get an employee handbook that has exactly the same thing in it, but in readable print."

Dayne had been through too many long days, and she was tired. She'd never in her life signed something without reading every word of it first—but those twenty-plus pages of micro-printed bureaucratese defeated her. "That sounds like a good idea. Just hit the high points. I'll go over the rest of it in the handbook."

He nodded, took the contract back, and pointed to the first section. "Responsibilities—that was in your job description."

"Skip it."

He nodded. "Rights."

"Skip them, too. Every company says the same old things in the same boring ways."

"Okay. Grievance procedures."

"That's included in the contract?" Dayne shook her head in disbelief.

"Everything is included in the contract." Adam made a face. "Home office likes to make sure everything is in writing."

"Do you like working for them?"

"Of course I do."

"Have you ever had any problems with them?"

"Sure. You know of anyone who hasn't had any problems at work?"

"No. But you're still with them. They must have resolved things pretty well. You ever work for anyone else?"

He nodded and, oddly, his smile vanished. "Yeah. Ages ago. But I only had one other employer—and I'm with Satco now, which tells you everything important about that."

Dayne said, "I've had a couple of those, too. Tell you what." She took the contract back from him. "I'm too tired to go through this right now, and I want to spend some time with you. I'll get the gist of things from the employee handbook." She sighed. "Where do I sign?"

One of his eyebrows slid slowly up, then down again. He shrugged. "The last page. Sign it, date it, and write the time."

Obviously he'd never signed a contract he hadn't read. Well, neither had she, but there was a first time for everything. She turned to the last page. It had a box for a notary seal, and a section of control numbers along the top. In the center was a long block of legalese that said she stated that she had read the contents of the contract and understood them, and agreed to them. Then came the line for her signature, and the place for the date and time—and a line for the signature of the "duly authorized representative of Satco."

She pressed the heavy red fountain pen to the paper, and felt the sharp bite of pain in her thumb—and looked down at her own blood dripping onto the signature line of the contract.

"Damn," she muttered. She grabbed a paper towel to wipe up the blood; the coating on the paper repelled ink. She hoped it would repel blood . . . but it didn't. Instead, it soaked it in, and capillary action drew it into a big, disgusting blot. "Damn, damn!" She sucked on her finger and stared at the mess.

"Just write through it," Adam told her. "I won't care."

But Dayne pulled the back sheet of the contract free, and muttered, "I would." She grabbed the sheet in both hands.

Adam yelled, "Don't—"

She ripped it in two.

"—tear it!"

The paper burst into flames and fell, burning, into Dayne's lap. She shrieked and jumped up; her chair fell over backward behind her. She patted at her stomach and thighs with her hands and ran for the sink—her blouse and jeans were smoking, though not burning. She sprayed water on herself with the sink hose, and with a hiss, the sparks burning in her clothes went out.

She turned to find Adam stepping on the last blazing scraps of paper.

He looked up at her and said, "Satco doesn't want its sensitive documents to end up in the shredder. The coating on the paper usually prevents that. Everybody in the company knows about it."

Dayne nodded, mute.

"I should have warned you beforehand . . . but it just never occurred to me that you might tear a sheet." He winced. "You're okay, aren't you?"

"Fine," she said. "A little singed, I think, and a lot shook up. And I'm not sure I want to work for a company that uses exploding paper for its legal documents."

"Oh, Dayne . . ." He looked at her woefully. "Please tell me you're joking. You wouldn't let a little thing like that stop you, would you?"

Feeling shaky inside, she said, "I'm joking . . . I think."

He looked at the stack of papers lying on the kitchen table. "I'll have to bring another contract around for you—in a day or so. The papers I have will allow me to start all the necessary background work." He stared off at nothing and murmured, "I'm forgetting something. I know I am." He snapped his fingers. "Right. You have to have bloodwork and a urine drug panel done before you can start to work. I'll have one of our lab guys draw it for you."

Dayne nodded. She was still upset, and Adam was babbling on like nothing had happened. His behavior was wrong—right at that moment, he didn't seem like the Adam she thought she knew.

Then he said, "But, hey—we'll worry about that another day. We both worked hard today. Let's relax and unwind."

They went into the living room and settled onto the couch. Dayne found the remote and flipped channels until Adam said, "That looks good." He'd picked a TBS movie—an old one that Dayne didn't recognize.

They settled back to watch it, and she rested her head on his shoulder. She felt him stiffen the tiniest bit, then relax again. Then, tentatively, he put an arm around her shoulder. He felt warm and strong, he smelled nice, and Dayne relished the feeling of being held; it had been so long since anyone had touched her. She sighed happily and closed her eyes.

Adam began stroking her shoulder, and he rested his cheek on the top of her head. She could feel his warm breath blowing her hair. He felt wonderful . . . perfect. And he had the warmest hands. She smiled.

"This is wonderful," she said.

He was quiet for a long while, and when he spoke, he sounded surprised. "It is," he said.

Two little words. She couldn't imagine how he managed to put such wonder and such uncertainty in them, or such delight. His hand slid up to stroke her hair, and he sighed.

"So soft," he whispered. "And so beautiful. I never realized—" He stopped himself, and buried his face in her hair, and wrapped both arms around her . . . holding her.

His touch was wonderful; Dayne thought she could stay right where she was forever. It seemed Adam thought the same. They sat there on the couch, ignoring the movie, and the one that followed it, not talking. Just touching.

That was all. It was enough.

Hours later, Dayne said, "I'm going to have to get to bed. I work first shift tomorrow."

She looked up at him, waiting to see his reaction. He nodded. "May I see you again tomorrow?"

"I'll be off work at seven if things go well, and home shortly after that."

He nodded. "I'll call before I come over."

They walked to the door holding hands. He looked down at her and smiled awkwardly. "Good night, Dayne."

"Good night, Adam."

He turned to leave, but she tightened her grip on his hand. He turned again, and the expression on his face was puzzled.

"Could I have a good-night kiss?" She tried to ask casually, but the quaver at the end of her question said more than she'd hoped to.

He nodded, though, and turned to her . . . and she saw that his upper lip trembled. She rested a hand on his chest, and felt his heart pounding as hard as if he'd run a marathon. He moved closer and bent down, and she went up on her toes to meet him. Their lips touched, uncertainly, gently.

The kiss deepened, and Adam's arms wrapped around her and lifted her off the floor. Her legs went around his waist, her arms around his neck, her fingers twined through his hair.

The kiss went on and on, until, gasping, they pulled apart. Dayne felt as if she and the world she'd been standing on had been turned upside down. The expression on Adam's face would have been at home on the face of a man who'd just seen a miracle.

She brushed his hair off his forehead, admiring the little peak of a cowlick that curled to the right. She kissed his forehead lightly.

"That was a good-night kiss?" he asked in awed tones.

"I was impressed."

He nodded and swallowed hard. "I have to go. I'll see you tomorrow." He gently but firmly put her on the ground, and backed out the door, edgy as a cat in a thunderstorm. Dayne watched, bemused, as he all but ran down the walk across the deserted yard and jumped into his car. The motor revved to life, he jerked and sputtered out into the street, missed his gear a couple of times, then finally found it and roared away—acting, Dayne thought, very much like a man who'd never before been kissed.

She chuckled and closed the door. If that was a sample of what kissing him was going to be like, she could as easily say she'd never been kissed either.

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Framed

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Chapter 34

Dayne pulled a loaf of bread and some jelly out of the refrigerator—she was too tired to cook anything more demanding than toast. While the bread browned, she punched the answer button on her answering machine. She'd forgotten to check it on Sunday, and she had a huge number of messages waiting.

She fast-forwarded through all the ones with her supervisor's voice. That took care of most of them.

"Good Lord, Dayne," her mother said in stunned tones. "What have you gotten yourself into? Call home as soon as you get in."

Dayne frowned. She understood her mother being concerned about her link to the Hellraised . . . but her mother's message didn't really seem appropriate. Certainly her lawn was still covered by sightseers and T-shirt sellers and fundamentalist picketers, and the police parked next to her drive still kept her Satanist supporters and her Christian supporters from ripping each other to bits, but the reporters were gone—and she didn't feel that she'd gotten herself into anything.

The next call was a hang-up, as was the one after it. The one following that was from Paige, who cleared her throat a few times before stammering, "Um . . . this is-is-is . . . not an emergency or anything, so . . . um, why don't you call me back when you can?"

Paige sounded bizarre.

Dayne shook her head. The next voice on the machine was deep and sexy. "Dayne, this is Adam." He was chuckling, and his voice sounded more bemused than anything. "If it isn't too much trouble, I'd like to stop over and see you tonight. . . ." Dayne's pulse picked up. She'd thought about Adam on and off during the day while she was working. He was obviously interested in her, a fact she found more than a little bit surprising—but delightful. Adam was the first person since Torry to give her goosebumps and butterflies; better yet, with Adam, she didn't have the endless nagging feeling that he was trouble waiting to happen. That gut instinct about her dead husband, proven right in the end, had warned her away from a number of otherwise nice men since. Its absence felt like a green light to Dayne.

Adam left his phone number and asked Dayne to call him back as soon as she could. Then he added, "I like the message," and Dayne groaned.

Suddenly her mother's enigmatic message, and Paige's nervousness, became clear. Dayne had forgotten to warn her family and friends about the strip-search-and-read-'em-their-rights machine message she'd left for the obscene phone caller.

She rewound that message to get Adam's phone number, then forwarded to the next. "Dayne? We haven't heard from you . . . but maybe next weekend won't be such a good time to stop by." That was her brother—with all the excitement, she'd forgotten he and his wife were hoping to come by, and worse, she'd forgotten she was supposed to get the weekend off if she could.

The next message was a hang-up.

So was the next.

On the following one, she heard a long silence, then softly, the whispered word "bitch" before the phone on the other end slammed down.

Her stomach lurched. Maybe that will be the last time he calls, she hoped. Maybe now he'll go away.

She took a deep breath and glared at her hands until they quit shaking. Then she called her mother, and explained that everything was fine; she called her brother and promised to try to get at least one day of the next weekend off. She called Paige, and explained her phone message, and that she couldn't come by because she had a date.

Then she called Adam.

"Satco, Executive Suite, this is Gwendolyn speaking."

The voice was beyond sexy. Dayne stared at the telephone for an instant, unnerved, then said, "Uh, yes . . . this is Dayne Kuttner. I'm returning Adam D'Agonostis' call."

"Oh, wow," the voice on the other end said, and most of the sexiness—and a good part of the femaleness—disappeared in an instant. "The Dayne Kuttner?"

That change and that sudden enthusiasm was even more unnerving to Dayne. "I suppose so," she said, then followed up that vague admission with a question which she hoped would effectively change the subject. "Is Adam in?"

"Oh. Yes, of course." The voice returned to its original form, and its owner put Dayne on hold.

A moment later, Adam picked up. "Hi, there. That's some message on your machine."

"I've been getting unpleasant phone calls," Dayne told him. "I decided I didn't want to get any more of them."

"That ought to do it." Adam laughed. "You'll be lucky to get many calls at all. Anyway, are you going to be home tonight?"

"Yes. I'd love to have you over."

"Good. Oh, by the way, I have some terrific news for you."

He sounded so cheerful—she smiled and leaned against the wall. "Really? Terrific news would be nice."

"I'm glad. I found an opening with Satco for an RN—if you're interested, I'll bring over an application for you to fill out."

Dayne considered the possibility of doing something that wasn't related to the ICU, and her smile grew broader. "I'm interested," she said. "Bring it over. You can tell me what you know about the job when you get here."

She hung up the phone and stared out of her kitchen window, considering Adam and wondering at her reaction to him. She couldn't blame it on being alone for too long; if that were the case, she would have been drawn to someone else long before this. Dr. Weist, who was handsome and considerate and intelligent, had been politely hinting he'd like to take her out, and his was only the most recent in a line of offers. Nor could she fool herself into thinking that Adam was right for her in a way no one else to that point had been—she was pragmatic enough to admit she didn't know anything like enough about him.

She smiled ruefully and watched the birds pulling berries off the dogwood tree in the backyard. She was pragmatic, but not so pragmatic that she hadn't fallen foolishly in love with a stranger.

"It isn't love," she muttered—but it was. She'd been in love only once before; and that one time she had fallen in love, it had been like this. She met Torry, she fell in love before she even knew him. . . .

"And look where that got me."

There were times when she wished she could fast-forward her life and look back at it the way biographers did on their subjects' lives; the biographers could always see what each choice meant. They could always see, from their lofty height, where their subjects were getting it wrong. Dayne, down in the thick of her life, had gone badly wrong with Torry. Moreover, while she could not believe that Adam was another version of Torry, the depth of her emotions and their suddenness unnerved her. Somehow, she feared, she was once again about to get it wrong.

Porthos jumped onto the counter and stared past her, his fur standing straight up. He hissed, and she felt the hair on the back of her own neck raise—atavistic response. She looked where the cat was looking, and caught only the briefest of flashes of blue from something that was moving in the apartment's tiny laundry room. She rose slowly, looking for a weapon. The baseball bat still leaned against the kitchen door. She grabbed that and stalked forward, silent and scared. She heard nothing from the laundry room . . . but the sense of presence was unmistakable. Porthos maintained his vigil on the counter, unwilling to move closer.

She took a deep breath as she reached the partly open door—then she kicked it open and jumped in, screaming, slamming the bat down at the same time in a short, vicious arc. . . .

Onto nothing. The tiny laundry room had only one door—the one through which she had come. It had no window, neither cabinets nor cubbyholes. She opened both the washer—empty—and the dryer—one still-damp pair of jeans and a few pairs of white cotton underwear. The intruder had neither a place to hide, nor a place to flee, yet he was not there. Rationally, she knew she should take that as proof that she had seen nothing, and that Porthos had been hissing at a phantom of his own imagining. She would have been happy to be rational.

The stink of rotten eggs, however, hung in the air.

The doorbell rang, and she jumped. Porthos yowled and fled from the kitchen—she could hear him thundering up the stairs as she walked to the front door.

She peeked out; Adam waited on the landing, a vase full of painted daisies and baby's breath in one hand, a folder in the other. He was staring back at the picketers and the T-shirt vendors, and the decreased but still fairly heavy traffic.

She opened the door, and he jumped a little and turned to smile at her—and she was struck again by how perfect his handsomeness was, and by how hard her heart began to beat just looking at him.

"Come on in."

He stepped inside and nodded back at the watching crowd. "Wonder how long it will take until they get bored with that."

Dayne, who had signed a few autographs on her way in from work, and who found the people on her doorstep interesting, just shrugged. "Big news is good for seven days," she told him. "By that rule of thumb, they'll all get tired and find something else to interest them by this Friday." She grinned. "Until then, I have to confess I'm enjoying the notoriety. I've never had anyone ask me for my autograph before. That's fun."

He looked genuinely surprised. "People find amusement in the strangest ways," he said, more to himself than to her.

"Has anyone ever asked for your autograph?"

He stood, staring down at his feet, studying his shoes and nibbling the corner of his lip for a long time. "No," he told her at last. "No one ever has."

"Then you don't know. I don't think it's at all strange to enjoy it."

"I'm not likely to find out." He changed the subject. "I brought you some flowers." He handed her the vase; the daisies were beautiful, pink and red and yellow and pale blue with bright yellow centers. The baby's breath filled in around them like a lacy cloud. "I hope you like flowers."

She grinned up at him. "Of course." She reached up to take the vase with her free hand, and Adam suddenly glanced down.

"Expecting reporters? Or was that for me?"

She realized she was still toting the baseball bat around. "Oh . . . no. I just thought I . . ." She shook her head. She had no desire to tell Adam about the intruder she couldn't be sure she'd had. She didn't want to sound silly. "Nothing," she told him. "I've just been kind of cautious lately."

He smiled down at her. "Very sensible."

She sighed. "That's me. Sensible." Her sensible-ness wasn't the trait she hoped Adam would pick up on, but then, he wasn't likely to see her standing in her hall, clutching the baseball bat she'd hoped to brain some intruder with, and say, "How sexy of you." She was going to have to make a point of being sexy if she wanted him to see her that way.

She led him back to the kitchen, and while she gave the daisies some extra water, listened to him rustling through the contents of his folder. She heard one of her kitchen chairs scrape along the floor—sounded like the one against the far wall . . . the one that would make it easiest for him to watch her. His gaze was a physical itch between her shoulderblades, and she felt—with some annoyance—the heat that rose in her cheeks in response. She was twenty-eight—far too old to feel like some infatuated twelve-year-old.

She turned to carry the vase to the table, and found, as she'd suspected, that he was watching her; more nerve-wracking, that the expression on his face hinted at an attraction as complete as what she felt.

Then she looked at her kitchen table, and was amazed at the sheer number of papers he'd brought.

"That's a job application?" she asked, and put the flowers down, and drew up a chair at right angles from his.

"It's a lot of things. Job application, permission form for Satco to access your records and add copies to our permanent files, disclosure statement, contract, job description for your job—a few other things. Mostly it's just a lot of red tape before Satco can hire you; we deal with a number of secret and sensitive things, and we have to be sure that you won't divulge any of our trade secrets."

"Why the contract?"

Adam smiled. "Because I know you'll get the job if you apply for it, so I'm saving a couple of days this way. It's selfishness on my part, I suppose, but since I met you, I haven't been able to think of much else. I like the idea of you working with me—and the sooner, the better." He leaned forward and rested his chin in his cupped hands and smiled at her—a smile that gave her goosebumps.

"I like the idea of working with you, too—but would I be? You haven't told me anything about the job, other than that it's for a nurse. And how would a corporation use my ICU skills?"

He sighed. "My knowledge of what the job entails is pretty limited—it isn't within my specialty, which is running things. I can tell you a little bit about it; you'd be working with our disease researchers. One small subdivision of Satco is heavily invested in cures for the major communicable diseases—and that area is a special interest of mine, so I try to find the best people for it. It's a pity you aren't a computer specialist, though. We don't have too much trouble finding qualified medical personnel, but, oh, man, we have top-level computer jobs going begging. We need system designers, hardware gurus, software geniuses . . ." He shook his head and chuckled. "But that doesn't apply to you, of course."

"No. Sadly. I wasn't kidding when I said I hated computers." Dayne leaned back in the chair and closed her eyes, considering the job she might get. Communicable disease research—that sounded pretty terrific. That might take her away from dealing one-on-one with all the loss and suffering eating her alive in the ICU. She considered. Research—in her mind, that word conjured up pictures of white lab coats and long, empty, echoing halls, little beakers of colored liquids and Petri dishes full of things to be studied under a microscope. An ivory-tower atmosphere, people who walked slowly and talked softly, air kept cool and always smelling of antiseptic and chemicals.

Realistically, the job of a research nurse was probably as messy and cluttered as that of a unit nurse—as full of memos and meetings and paperwork, yellow stick-up notes and petty frustrations and pain-in-the-neck doctors with God complexes.

Maybe, though—maybe it would be further from the pain. Dayne desperately needed some distance.

"Yeah," she said, opening her eyes. "Research sounds good. Let me see the job description."

She went over it carefully—it entailed drawing blood, patient evaluation (which Satco euphemistically referred to as "client follow-up"), lots of record-keeping, drug administration and documentation, treatment application, physical therapy . . . a lot of the usual nursing things. Care plans, of course—she loathed care plans. Everyone required them, but as carried out, they were the most worthless pieces of paper in the chart. She'd waged a big battle to revamp care plans into a working document not too long ago, and gotten stomped for it. Administration liked their paper the way they liked it.

Maybe Satco was better.

She said, "Well, it's worth looking into, anyway."

His smile got bigger. "Good. I'm so glad you feel that way." He started shoving papers across to her. "These are the important documents. Your records release . . . permission for background check . . . job history . . . contract . . . we'll start you at $24.50 an hour, and you'll get a raise at the end of six weeks if you work out, and evaluations every six months. The job has no limits—you can work your way to the very top if you're ambitious. And here's the application. This is the most vital document of all, because the people who evaluate me cannot have any reason to think I showed favoritism in hiring you."

"Are you?" Dayne raised an eyebrow.

He laughed. "Of course I am . . . but I also think you'll do extraordinarily well at the job. You're qualified. I did some preliminary checking just to make sure of that—I don't want to jeopardize my own career. From what I've heard so far—" he looked into her eyes and took one of her hands in both of his, "—hiring you will be the best thing I've ever done for my career."

Dayne heard the slightest tremor in his voice as he said that—his intensity and his sincerity amazed her. How had she gotten so lucky, to meet someone like him? She dug through her purse and found a pen, and tried to fill out the first of the forms. . . .

"This pen won't write," she muttered. She made circles on a piece of scrap paper and it worked just fine, but when she tried the forms again, nothing happened.

He'd stood up and dug through his pockets—he came out with a thick, bright red fountain pen. "I forgot—Satco's legal papers are specially treated to withstand a lot of adverse conditions. It takes a special kind of ink to write on them."

She took his pen and got to work. The application was long and tedious. When she finished it, she went through the disclosure form word by word before signing it. It was also long and tedious—and done in very small print. She went through three other sets of papers, reading each—it seemed to her that the wording got stuffier and more obtuse and the print smaller with every document she worked through. And when she got to the contract, she groaned. She flipped through the pages, counting them. "There are more than twenty pages in this thing—and I don't suppose you brought a magnifying glass with you, did you?"

"No." He smiled wryly. "Home office likes to cover every eventuality in its contracts. If you don't feel like wading through that whole thing, I can go over the main points with you—and when you're actually on staff, you'll get an employee handbook that has exactly the same thing in it, but in readable print."

Dayne had been through too many long days, and she was tired. She'd never in her life signed something without reading every word of it first—but those twenty-plus pages of micro-printed bureaucratese defeated her. "That sounds like a good idea. Just hit the high points. I'll go over the rest of it in the handbook."

He nodded, took the contract back, and pointed to the first section. "Responsibilities—that was in your job description."

"Skip it."

He nodded. "Rights."

"Skip them, too. Every company says the same old things in the same boring ways."

"Okay. Grievance procedures."

"That's included in the contract?" Dayne shook her head in disbelief.

"Everything is included in the contract." Adam made a face. "Home office likes to make sure everything is in writing."

"Do you like working for them?"

"Of course I do."

"Have you ever had any problems with them?"

"Sure. You know of anyone who hasn't had any problems at work?"

"No. But you're still with them. They must have resolved things pretty well. You ever work for anyone else?"

He nodded and, oddly, his smile vanished. "Yeah. Ages ago. But I only had one other employer—and I'm with Satco now, which tells you everything important about that."

Dayne said, "I've had a couple of those, too. Tell you what." She took the contract back from him. "I'm too tired to go through this right now, and I want to spend some time with you. I'll get the gist of things from the employee handbook." She sighed. "Where do I sign?"

One of his eyebrows slid slowly up, then down again. He shrugged. "The last page. Sign it, date it, and write the time."

Obviously he'd never signed a contract he hadn't read. Well, neither had she, but there was a first time for everything. She turned to the last page. It had a box for a notary seal, and a section of control numbers along the top. In the center was a long block of legalese that said she stated that she had read the contents of the contract and understood them, and agreed to them. Then came the line for her signature, and the place for the date and time—and a line for the signature of the "duly authorized representative of Satco."

She pressed the heavy red fountain pen to the paper, and felt the sharp bite of pain in her thumb—and looked down at her own blood dripping onto the signature line of the contract.

"Damn," she muttered. She grabbed a paper towel to wipe up the blood; the coating on the paper repelled ink. She hoped it would repel blood . . . but it didn't. Instead, it soaked it in, and capillary action drew it into a big, disgusting blot. "Damn, damn!" She sucked on her finger and stared at the mess.

"Just write through it," Adam told her. "I won't care."

But Dayne pulled the back sheet of the contract free, and muttered, "I would." She grabbed the sheet in both hands.

Adam yelled, "Don't—"

She ripped it in two.

"—tear it!"

The paper burst into flames and fell, burning, into Dayne's lap. She shrieked and jumped up; her chair fell over backward behind her. She patted at her stomach and thighs with her hands and ran for the sink—her blouse and jeans were smoking, though not burning. She sprayed water on herself with the sink hose, and with a hiss, the sparks burning in her clothes went out.

She turned to find Adam stepping on the last blazing scraps of paper.

He looked up at her and said, "Satco doesn't want its sensitive documents to end up in the shredder. The coating on the paper usually prevents that. Everybody in the company knows about it."

Dayne nodded, mute.

"I should have warned you beforehand . . . but it just never occurred to me that you might tear a sheet." He winced. "You're okay, aren't you?"

"Fine," she said. "A little singed, I think, and a lot shook up. And I'm not sure I want to work for a company that uses exploding paper for its legal documents."

"Oh, Dayne . . ." He looked at her woefully. "Please tell me you're joking. You wouldn't let a little thing like that stop you, would you?"

Feeling shaky inside, she said, "I'm joking . . . I think."

He looked at the stack of papers lying on the kitchen table. "I'll have to bring another contract around for you—in a day or so. The papers I have will allow me to start all the necessary background work." He stared off at nothing and murmured, "I'm forgetting something. I know I am." He snapped his fingers. "Right. You have to have bloodwork and a urine drug panel done before you can start to work. I'll have one of our lab guys draw it for you."

Dayne nodded. She was still upset, and Adam was babbling on like nothing had happened. His behavior was wrong—right at that moment, he didn't seem like the Adam she thought she knew.

Then he said, "But, hey—we'll worry about that another day. We both worked hard today. Let's relax and unwind."

They went into the living room and settled onto the couch. Dayne found the remote and flipped channels until Adam said, "That looks good." He'd picked a TBS movie—an old one that Dayne didn't recognize.

They settled back to watch it, and she rested her head on his shoulder. She felt him stiffen the tiniest bit, then relax again. Then, tentatively, he put an arm around her shoulder. He felt warm and strong, he smelled nice, and Dayne relished the feeling of being held; it had been so long since anyone had touched her. She sighed happily and closed her eyes.

Adam began stroking her shoulder, and he rested his cheek on the top of her head. She could feel his warm breath blowing her hair. He felt wonderful . . . perfect. And he had the warmest hands. She smiled.

"This is wonderful," she said.

He was quiet for a long while, and when he spoke, he sounded surprised. "It is," he said.

Two little words. She couldn't imagine how he managed to put such wonder and such uncertainty in them, or such delight. His hand slid up to stroke her hair, and he sighed.

"So soft," he whispered. "And so beautiful. I never realized—" He stopped himself, and buried his face in her hair, and wrapped both arms around her . . . holding her.

His touch was wonderful; Dayne thought she could stay right where she was forever. It seemed Adam thought the same. They sat there on the couch, ignoring the movie, and the one that followed it, not talking. Just touching.

That was all. It was enough.

Hours later, Dayne said, "I'm going to have to get to bed. I work first shift tomorrow."

She looked up at him, waiting to see his reaction. He nodded. "May I see you again tomorrow?"

"I'll be off work at seven if things go well, and home shortly after that."

He nodded. "I'll call before I come over."

They walked to the door holding hands. He looked down at her and smiled awkwardly. "Good night, Dayne."

"Good night, Adam."

He turned to leave, but she tightened her grip on his hand. He turned again, and the expression on his face was puzzled.

"Could I have a good-night kiss?" She tried to ask casually, but the quaver at the end of her question said more than she'd hoped to.

He nodded, though, and turned to her . . . and she saw that his upper lip trembled. She rested a hand on his chest, and felt his heart pounding as hard as if he'd run a marathon. He moved closer and bent down, and she went up on her toes to meet him. Their lips touched, uncertainly, gently.

The kiss deepened, and Adam's arms wrapped around her and lifted her off the floor. Her legs went around his waist, her arms around his neck, her fingers twined through his hair.

The kiss went on and on, until, gasping, they pulled apart. Dayne felt as if she and the world she'd been standing on had been turned upside down. The expression on Adam's face would have been at home on the face of a man who'd just seen a miracle.

She brushed his hair off his forehead, admiring the little peak of a cowlick that curled to the right. She kissed his forehead lightly.

"That was a good-night kiss?" he asked in awed tones.

"I was impressed."

He nodded and swallowed hard. "I have to go. I'll see you tomorrow." He gently but firmly put her on the ground, and backed out the door, edgy as a cat in a thunderstorm. Dayne watched, bemused, as he all but ran down the walk across the deserted yard and jumped into his car. The motor revved to life, he jerked and sputtered out into the street, missed his gear a couple of times, then finally found it and roared away—acting, Dayne thought, very much like a man who'd never before been kissed.

She chuckled and closed the door. If that was a sample of what kissing him was going to be like, she could as easily say she'd never been kissed either.

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Framed