"I shouldn't have woken you up. I just— Never mind."
"Lori—"
"Go back to sleep, Gray. I'll call her pediatrician."
"Lori!"
"What?"
"I'm on my way."
Her sigh shuddered through the phone. "Thank you."
Gray whipped on a pair of shorts and a threadbare Eagles concert T-shirt. He slipped on deck shoes without socks, tucked his medical bag under his arm and sprinted for the door. He told himself there was nothing to worry about. He'd checked Magda thoroughly before she'd been released from the hospital. The kid was okay.
Lori wasn't, though. Her trembling voice reverberated through his mind.
Damn it, he should have insisted on staying. He'd let his pride shove him out the door when she'd needed him.
He slid into his car and revved the engine. Tires squealing, he tore out of the parking lot.
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.