Intellectually, he knew guilting himself out was bunk. Children went home from the hospital every day without an in-house doctor to pull baby-sitting duties. Parents managed.
But Lori never asked for help.
Gray accelerated through a yellow light and made the half-hour drive downtown in under twenty minutes.
Taking her stairs two at a time, he charged toward Lori's apartment. With each pounding step he told himself to get a grip. In a couple of weeks he would be three thousand miles away from Lori and Magda. He wouldn't be here for late-night panic calls. He needed to settle them in and cut ties.
Lori tore the door open before he could knock. His fist paused in midair.
Not that he could find much air.
Lori stood before him, dressed for bed. Flowered women's boxers hung low on her hips as if the lightest tug would pull them free. A white tank top plunged too low for his comfort level. Tiny roses dotted the neckline, magnetizing his attention where it had no business straying.
Forget hankering for her in silk or satin, he had the hots for cotton, especially when it clung to Lori's gentle curves. Her hair tangled in a wild disarray around her shoulders. He'd seen the look before. Only, he'd been the one to put it there with his hands.
His gaze settled on her eyes. Her panicked eyes. Heat fell away.
"Thank God you're here." Lori shoved a harried hand through her hair. "She's back in her room."
Childish sniffles, followed by a hacking cough echoed down the hallway. Not the rumbling cough he'd expected. Gray frowned. "Lead on."
He followed Lori as her bare feet padded along the hardwood floors, then over Oriental runners. Each twitch of her hips taunted him, those baggy boxers defying gravity by staying in place.
Lori rushed ahead to Magda's bed and perched on the edge beside her, smoothing a hand along the little girl's back. The door creaked shut behind him.
A cool-mist vaporizer hummed on the bedside table. It wafted a hazy sheen around Lori, like that fuzzy lighting used to illuminate heroines in the movies.
Gray ripped his gaze away. Time to slip into doctor mode, fast, best for everyone.
Magda lay curled on her side, coughing until she gagged. She stared at Gray, hostility replaced by pleading. Fix me.
He'd seen that same message in the eyes of countless patients. Please, fix me.
It never failed to thump him somewhere around what a woman might have called his heart.
However, the plea in those two tiny brown eyes, echoed in Lori's larger set of matching ones, leveled him. Like an upper cut right to the solar plexus.
He'd wanted to be needed. No doubt about it, Lori and Magda needed him now, so much so that he didn't think three thousand miles would be far enough away to make him forget their pleading eyes.
Lori didn't want to ponder overlong on why she'd needed to call Gray. Surely calling the pediatrician would have made more sense. But hearing Gray's voice on the other end of the phone had shaved the edge off her panic. His arrival had pared it down further to an almost manageable level.
Almost.
Magda hacked her way through another choking cough, and Lori's panic returned full force. She always managed, always. This vulnerability scared her to the roots of her hair.
Like a fool she'd called the last man she should have. The only face she could envision through her claustrophobic fear. For Magda's sake, Lori would lean on him. For the moment.
Gray sat on the opposite side of the bed from Lori and pulled out his stethoscope. Gently he lifted Magda from under the covers. "Cool to the touch. No spiked fever to worry about."
Lori pressed her trembling hands to her shaking knees. "That's really good. Right?"
"Absolutely." Shoving aside the shoulder on Magda's Winnie the Pooh nightgown, he listened to her chest and back. "No rattling breath sounds to indicate a relapse. But something's going on with that cough."
Magda whimpered, and Lori almost groaned in time with frustration.
Gray scrubbed the knuckles of his fist over his chin. "If she could just tell me where it hurts."
Lori straightened, inspiration lighting now that her fear had eased to a more manageable level. "She can. Sign language, remember?"