In His Protective Custody

“Me,” she confirmed. At least her breath was returning, she thought. Thank God for the small stuff. “Officer Calloway, I’d recognize that scowl anywhere,” she added, infusing a deliberate note of cheerfulness into her voice. And then she looked at the wound. “Let me guess. Someone decided that they weren’t thrilled with your attitude?”

Alyx pulled on her umpteenth pair of rubber gloves, gingerly removed the hastily applied blood-soaked towel and then swiftly examined the wound. “Looks like you’re carrying around a little bit of metal. The good news is, it looks like we can get it out without messing up an O.R.”

He didn’t want to waste any more time than he absolutely had to. He wanted to get back to the job. Five minutes ago. Nodding at his arm, he said, “Do your worst.”

She had a feeling that he only respected confidence. So she displayed it. “Have no fear, Officer. Even my ‘worst’ is damn good.”

Dear Reader,

I ran out of sisters to use in the last book dealing with the Pulaski girls. But there was this craving to revisit them and their parents that I eventually found impossible to ignore. By now, even if you are a part-time reader of my work, you must know that I have this problem letting go. The families I create become part of me and I love to revisit and watch as more layers are added.

So, here we are, becoming acquainted with the family of Josef Pulaski’s late younger brother, his wife and their four daughters. Did I mention they’re also doctors? First up is Aleksandra, who tries to come to the aid of an abused wife and winds up finding the man of her dreams instead.

I hope you like this newest chapter of The Doctors Pulaski saga. As ever, I thank you for reading my books and from the bottom of my heart, I wish you someone to love who loves you back.

Love,

Marie Ferrarella

In His Protective Custody

Marie Ferrarella

MARIE FERRARELLA

This USA TODAY bestselling and RITA® Award-winning author has written two hundred books for Silhouette and Harlequin Books, some under the name of Marie Nicole. Her romances are beloved by fans worldwide. Visit her website at www.marieferrarella.com.

To Nik, whom I loved and was proud of

from the first moment I laid eyes on him

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 1

Despite graduating from medical school in the top five percent of her class, which required endless hours of studying and hands-on experience, Dr. Aleksandra Pulaski didn’t think that the human body could sink to this level of exhaustion and still function.

Yet hers had and it still worked.

In her mind, her consciousness amounted to a modern-day miracle of minor proportions. Now, finally at the end of her endless day, she managed to put one foot in front of the other and drag herself from the underground parking structure to the elevator of the building she’d just moved into this month. The trip from the elevator to the front door of her apartment seemed twice as long as it should have been. Almost at journey’s end—every foot counted—she managed to get her key into the lock and get inside the incredibly spacious three-bedroom apartment without collapsing.

That was when the last of her energy evaporated. Even the fumes on which she’d been running were gone. Just like that, her knees gave out.

Fortunately, she was passing the sofa in the living room when they buckled. Angling, she landed on top of a cushion, utterly unable to move.

She took it as an omen. Mama was very big on omens and, although normally she’d pretended it was all just old-country nonsense whenever her mother, Paulina Pulaski, brought up the subject, a very tiny part of her was her mother’s daughter and believed in omens.

Right now, she would have believed in the existence of unicorns and pixies if it meant that she could just lie here for a few moments. Just long enough to gather her strength for the long trek from the living room to the second bedroom. That was the one she had claimed as her own once she stopped protesting that she couldn’t accept such a generous offer. The people making the offer were her cousins. They were the ones who actually lived here.

Or had lived here before all five had gotten married. The protest was composed of one part honor and two parts guilt, both sections fueled by the fact that no one would allow her to pay even a small portion of the lease on this perfectly located fifth-floor apartment.

Her cousins, doctors all, had said that she was doing them a favor, watching over the apartment when they weren’t around. Her fortuitous arrival in New York City had been the deciding factor that had them all agreeing to continue the lease on the apartment. At least, they would have somewhere to crash when they found themselves too tired to make the drive home to Queens or to the Island.

Alyx quickly discovered that they, Sasha, Natalya, Kady, Tania and Marja, were all one nicer than the other. They divided the cost of the lease among themselves, leaving her to reap the benefits of their generosity. All they required was that she live in the apartment and occasionally dust if she had the time.

She wished she and her three sisters had gotten to know her cousins better, like when they were all growing up. They would have, she was fairly confident, if Papa had lived.

But after that awful day when Papa was taken from them, Mama had pretended that Uncle Josef and his family didn’t exist. She absolutely refused to allow any one of them to even get in contact with this branch of the family—the only family they had outside of one another and their aunt Zofia. Mama had never explained why, but Alyx was certain that it had to do with Papa’s death. Mama had changed abruptly right after Papa had died in that freak accident. Someone—the police had never been able to find out who—had accidentally pushed Papa, a transit cop, onto the tracks as he waited for the train.

Horrified and heartbroken, Mama held everyone, including the City of New York and Uncle Josef who had initially sponsored Papa’s passage to America, accountable for his death. Five days after the funeral, Mama had uprooted all of them and moved to Chicago, where her sister, Aunt Zofia, lived.

She’d said it was because she needed help in raising four girls without a husband to support her. It had been an excuse to turn her back on her husband’s family. Her decision was final, and for close to twenty years, she refused to discuss it or even have that side of the family’s names mentioned. In return, her mother devoted herself to the four of them. When Aunt Zofia passed away from leukemia, she left her money to the four of them and Mama.

That was when she discovered that her secretive aunt held the title of a popular patent that had yielded a fortune, all of which was banked. Subsequently, a substantial amount of money, even in these dire times, was accrued. It turned out to be enough money to send all of them through college and whatever postgraduate school they chose to attend. They all picked medical school.

Or rather, it was picked for them. Mama would not hear of any of them being anything else. Fortunately, they all felt the calling. Or at least three of them did. It had taken Krystyna a bit longer to come around.

And still there had been no attempt on Mama’s part to seal the rift that she had created.

When Alyx told her mother that she’d been accepted by Patience Memorial Hospital to complete her residency, the older woman finally, grudgingly, came around enough to get in touch with Uncle Josef and Aunt Magda.

Luckily, when it came to grudges, her aunt and uncle were as different from her mother as night was day. One phone call later she had family here. Family that embraced her and made the scary transition from Illinois to New York so much easier. The ordeal she had envisioned for herself, living with five other roommates in some small, rundown apartment with hot and cold running roaches, was no longer a viable threat.

She’d been awestruck the first time she’d walked into the apartment her five cousins had lived in during their medical training. Her cousins had all laughed at her expression of wonder, but it wasn’t at her expense. There was a joyfulness to it that she quickly came to expect from these women whose blood was the same as hers. These women who were all on their way to becoming highly respected physicians in their chosen fields.

As quickly as she came to love them, she was still more than a little in awe. They were all admirable women.

Maybe that was why Mama had been so adamant about all four of them becoming doctors. Growing up, there had been no other course to follow, no other careers even to consider. Mama wouldn’t allow it. Her girls, she’d said time and again, were going to become doctors no matter what the cost. Thanks to Aunt Zofia, there was no amassed debt to face.

But even if Aunt Zofia had been a pauper, the course of their lives had been laid out. Mama had spoken.

Though she loved the woman dearly—they all did—Alyx knew, as did her sisters, that Mama had an obsessive, highly competitive side to her. And that competitiveness always involved the daughters of Papa’s older brother.

Her cousins, bless them, were nothing like she’d expected—and turned out to be everything that she needed. Instantly friendly, instantly warm, their combined support made her first day at Patience Memorial not utterly terrible. The latter condition was purely the results of the mentor she’d been assigned. Her first rotation was in the ER with a martinet who shouted rather than talked, put down rather than lifted up.

Rumor had it the woman wanted to get the very best out of her and the other residents assigned the ER rotation. That was the rumor. However, Alyx secretly felt that Dr. Gloria Furst enjoyed putting people down and trampling on their self-esteem.

Alyx refused to let the doctor demoralize her, but it was still an exhausting, draining experience. Four weeks into the rotation and Alyx caught herself praying that the chief of staff or someone else in power would come by unannounced to witness the woman’s M.O.

But prayer or no prayer, that was not about to happen. Dr. Furst had a network going for her comprised of residents who would do anything not to wash out of the program. Consequently, to cull her favor they clued her in when they heard anything and Dr. Furst always knew when someone of stature within the hospital’s hierarchy would be stopping by.

It was at that point that the woman went from being the maniacal Mr. Hyde to the kindly Dr. Jekyll. She became sweet enough to send any diabetic in a ten-mile radius into a coma.

This too shall pass, Alyx told herself as she stretched out on the sofa.

Two shifts. She’d endured two full, back-to-back shifts. How in heaven’s name did they think she could be at the top of her game in this life-or-death arena by the end of the second shift when her brain felt numb and the rest of her was on automatic pilot? She was lucky she hadn’t killed anyone, she thought with a huge, soul-felt sigh that seemed to all but deplete her.

She was running on empty.

Alyx realized that her eyes were closed.

Two minutes, she promised herself. Two minutes and then she’d get up. That’s all she needed, just two little…

Her eyes flew open a second before she found solace in sleep.

She strained to listen. Maybe she’d imagined it. Maybe it was just part of the haze that was descending on her brain—

Get back here, you damn bitch! Don’t turn your back on me when I’m talking to you! You hear me?

No, definitely not part of her dream, Alyx thought, swinging her legs off the sofa and sitting up. Her brain didn’t create scenarios like that, even when it had the freedom of sleep.

The yelling came from her next-door neighbors. Or rather, from her next-door neighbor. A married couple lived there and what she was hearing was only the man’s voice. Hearing it as clearly as if he were in standing in the room with her.

God forbid, Alyx thought with a shiver. Although he was tall and good-looking in a showy kind of way, Harry McBride gave her the creeps.

Harry was shouting at his wife, Abby. Again. As far as she could find out from talking to the doorman, Harry and his wife were new to the building. They had moved in just as Marja had moved out to live with her fiancé—now her husband.

Silence.

Alyx listened for a moment, clinging to the momentary spate of quiet and hoping that it would continue, signaling an end to the abrupt outburst.

Maybe it had just been some kind of heated difference of—

The crash Alyx heard two seconds later followed by a volley of cursing and yelling ushered in a death knell to her sliver of hope. The heart-wrenching, high-pitched yelp of distress was almost too much to bear. She couldn’t quite make out what Abby was saying, but the cadence told her that the woman was pleading.

Alyx felt herself growing angry.

Ordinarily, she didn’t meddle in other people’s lives. Had the noise been generated by an untimely party, she would have put cotton in her ears and gone to her bedroom. She had nothing against people having fun, even the noisy kind.

But this didn’t sound like fun. This was a woman in distress.

She’d be distressed, too, living with this Neanderthal. She remembered her first encounter with Harry McBride. It was on the elevator, shortly after she’d moved in. He’d actually hit on her. His wife, Abby, a meek, mousey little thing who seemed almost afraid to raise her all but lifeless eyes from the floor, had been right there, a witness to the encounter. Abby had pretended not to hear.

But she’d heard all right. Alyx would have sworn to it. The woman’s face was flushed with embarrassment—all except for one cheekbone which, despite the heavy layer of foundation appeared bluish. As if there was a bruise beneath the coating of makeup, healing.

The yelling continued, the volume swelling.

Alyx shook her head as she walked out into the hallway. The apartment on the other side of the McBrides was vacant so she was the only one privy to this “Punching Judy” show.

Alyx knocked on the door once, then again, harder this time to be heard above Harry’s voice. She raised her own as she called out, “Abby, is everything all right in there?”

Instead of Abby, it was her husband who answered the question, punctuating his words with what sounded like a snarl.

“Everything’s just fine. Now why don’t you mind your own damn business?”

She was a doctor. Alyx thought, struggling to rein in her anger. As far as she was concerned, humanity was her business. And this surly neighbor had just crossed the line with her.

But angry as she was, Alyx had no desire to become the man’s next punching bag. So instead of demanding entrance to their apartment, she went into her own, closed the door and waited.

She didn’t have long to wait.

The shouting and noise started up within less than five minutes. Round two was even worse and more vitriolic. Whatever had incurred the man’s wrath the first time around was still there. And growing.

Alyx dialed 911.

“Hey, Calloway,” Sgt. Stubbs called out. “You just caught one.”

Officer Zane Calloway—all six foot two of him—kept on walking toward the front door. He knew he couldn’t pretend not to hear, but it was worth a shot. Sarge just shouted louder.

“I’m off duty,” Zane called back to the desk sergeant.

“Not for another seven minutes,” the desk sergeant countered, pointing to the large clock that hung on the wall behind him. “C’mon back, Calloway. I don’t want to have to put you on report for failing to obey a higher-ranking authority.”

Zane didn’t bother suppressing a sigh as he turned around. The white-haired sergeant had earned the right to pull rank. For the most part, Stubbs was a decent, fair man. But Zane was tired and he just wanted to go home and get something to eat.

Or maybe to drink to wash away the taste of the day. He’d had a kid die on him today, a fifteen-year-old who had everything to live for and no reason to die except that he’d been in the wrong place at the wrong time when an inebriated driver had lost control of his vehicle. Zane was in no mood to be accommodating.

“Have a heart, Sarge. I pulled a double shift because Martinez’s wife had her baby three days early. Technically, I was off duty hours ago.”

The sergeant looked at him over the rim of his reading glasses. It was that “no-nonsense” look he gave the rookies. It hadn’t intimidated Zane then, and it didn’t now.

“I don’t deal in ‘technically,’ Calloway. I deal in phone calls. In good citizens who call in because they need us.”

Returning to the desk, Zane rolled his eyes. “Spare me the violins, please.”

Stubbs chuckled under his breath. Zane had never known anyone who actually chuckled before, but the sergeant did.

“Don’t know what you’re missing, Calloway.” Stubbs tore off the page on which he’d written both the complaint and the name and address of the person calling in making the compliant and held it out to him. “Here. This is on your way home. A domestic violence case. Neighbor called it in. A Dr. Pul-lass-key,” he added, drawing out the name to get it right.

Zane took the piece of paper with the information on it and frowned as he scanned it. Alleged domestic violence cases rubbed him the wrong way, but not for the reason most people would have expected.

“Another neighbor with her ear pressed against the door, trying to hear what’s going on,” he commented under his breath.

The sergeant heard him. Wide, squat shoulders rose and fell beneath the navy blue shirt in a careless, dismissive gesture. “We get a call, we’re obligated to check it out, no matter who it’s from.”

Zane tucked the piece of paper into his pocket. He glanced at the desk sergeant’s craggy face. His work on the streets and four divorces had made Jacob Stubbs look older than his years.

“Easy for you to say,” Zane told him, “sitting behind that desk.”

Stubbs looked down his Roman nose at him. “That’s ’cause I’m the desk sergeant and you’re just a lowly officer.”

“Not after I pass my exam,” Zane reminded him. It had been Stubbs who’d given him the heads up—and the books—about the exams, saying he was too damn smart to spend his days patrolling a beat. After a while, Zane had decided he had nothing to lose by studying. If he didn’t feel ready, no one was holding a gun to his head to take the exam.

Never hurt to keep his options open.

“Yeah, the exam,” Stubbs echoed with a laugh, knowing nothing goaded the young policeman on more than being dismissed. “I’ll believe it when I see it. Until then—” He let his voice trail off as he motioned Zane out the front entrance, his meaning clear.

“Right.” Turning on his heel, Zane headed for the door one more time. “Waste of time, you know. Probably just another false alarm.”

“Then it won’t take long,” the sergeant called after him.

Taking out the paper again once he was outside the precinct, Zane glanced at the address. The sergeant was right. It was on his way home and wasn’t all that far away, about a mile from Patience Memorial, as he recalled.

Of course, a mile in Manhattan wasn’t equal to a mile anywhere else, except maybe in Los Angeles, where the traffic was equally as maddening at any given time, night or day.

Zane headed for the parking structure where he’d left his car.

He’d probably make better time walking, even at this time of night, he reasoned darkly. But he had no intentions of doubling back to the precinct to get his car once he took down the neighbor’s report and talked to the couple who were supposedly fighting. No, once he checked this out, he was going to “check out” himself for at least the next eight hours and recharge some very badly depleted batteries.

He’d left his vehicle on the third level. Once he located it, he got in and drove down the serpentine path to the street level. He was impatient to have this behind him.

The traffic gods were kind to him this evening. Vehicles flowed at an even pace and he got to the address the sergeant had handed him in less than half an hour. He parked his car directly before the entrance, much to the apparent displeasure of the doorman, who attempted to point him in the direction of the building’s underground parking.

“Won’t be here long enough to need underground parking,” Zane informed him in his no-nonsense, baritone voice. Deep and resonant, it didn’t leave any room for argument from anyone except the most foolish and reckless. Neither of which A.J. Green, the doorman, was. He stepped back as Zane entered the building. “Elevator’s on your right, Officer,” A.J. called after him.

“I kind of figured that out,” Zane commented as he pushed the up button with his thumb.

A minute and a half later he was knocking on the door of apartment 5E. The hall, he noted as he’d walked up to the door, was as silent as a tomb. There was no sound of an argument, heated or otherwise.

Just as he’d expected.

“Who is it?” a soft voice on the other side of the door wanted to know.

“Officer Calloway,” he announced. “NYPD.” He stepped back two steps so that the woman could verify the information for herself if she looked through the door’s peephole. “We received a call from someone reporting some kind of domestic disturbance going on in this building.” Try as he might, he couldn’t quite manage to keep the annoyance out of his voice. “Was that you?”

Alyx opened the door, expecting to see, given the man’s tone, a slightly down at the mouth, scowling police officer. Most likely somewhat paunchy. Definitely not friendly.

What she saw, instead, could have best been described as the answer to every woman under the age of a hundred’s fantasy dream man. At the very least, the man for whom the phrase “tall, dark and gorgeous” had been coined.

Because he was.

He was also scowling fit to kill.

Chapter 2

Something about the officer’s tone put Alyx on the defensive. She studied his face attentively as she answered his question. “I made the call, yes.”

He gestured impatiently around the well-lit hallway with its alabaster walls. “So where is this alleged disturbance?” he asked.

“It was—” she emphasized the word because there was nothing but silence in the hallway now “—coming from the apartment next door. 5F,” she added in case his sense of direction took him to the apartment on the other side of hers.

He turned his head toward 5F and remained quiet for a moment, straining to listen. Nothing but silence met his ear.

“Sure it wasn’t just the television you heard?” he suggested. “Some of the programs on the cable channels can get pretty loud and violent.” Obviously, he thought this was the source of the commotion. But Alyx knew what she’d heard and she intended to stand by it, even if Mr. Drop-Dead-Gorgeous-Policeman was smirking at her.

“It was the man next door,” she told him firmly, then added for good measure, “and he was shouting at his wife.”

All right, maybe she had heard raised voices, Zane allowed. But that didn’t automatically mean that there had to be violence or abuse involved. “Some guys get a little hot under the collar and they don’t realize how loud they sound when they shout.”