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This time, there was no hesitation. He’d gotten through to the boy. “Uh-huh.”
“Okay.” Mac didn’t believe in putting off unpleasantries. He might as well get this over with now. “Tell you what, let me talk to your dad now.”
“Can’t,” Tommy told him solemnly. “He went out.”
“Are you by yourself?” If Tommy was alone, he was going to go over and wait until the boy’s stepfather returned—to have him hauled in for child negligence the way he should have last week.
“No, Mrs. Peabody’s here. She’s the lady down the block,” Tommy explained, then added, “My stepdad pays her to watch me when he goes out.”
Well, at least the man had some decency, Mac thought. Either that, or, more likely, he was worried about running afoul of the law.
There was no sense in trying to get a hold of him tonight. He had no way of knowing when the man would return home. “Do you know what time your stepdad usually gets home from work?”
The answer was prompt. Tommy had already struck him as an intelligent little boy. “Five.”
“Great, tell him I’ll be calling him tomorrow after five. We’ll working things out about your surgery. I promise.”
This time, the small voice on the other end sounded eager and hopeful. “Okay.”
Mac spent several more minutes on the phone with the boy, reinforcing that hopefulness. By the time Mac said goodbye, Tommy seemed relatively calm.
Hell of a thing for a little boy to be going through by himself, Mac thought as he flipped the phone shut and tucked it back into his pocket.
“Once more with feeling,” he murmured under his breath as he buckled up again.
This time, there were no further interruptions as he started his car. Moving carefully, he pulled his vehicle out of the near-flooded parking lot.
No danger of a drought this year. Now the county was on the alert for mud slides. Mac shook his head. Always something. Still, he wouldn’t want to live any other place.
Coming down the steep hill that led from the hospital onto the main road, Mac saw something pulled over to the side. At first, all he could make out were the flashing taillights. Coming closer, he recognized the make as one that was similar to Jolene’s.
And then he saw someone getting out. The umbrella that preceded her instantly became fair game for the wind that had picked up. The umbrella was turned inside out and then back again before the driver had a chance to fully emerge out of the vehicle.
Jolene.
Stopping his car beside hers, Mac pressed the button that rolled down his front passenger window and leaned over the seat to look out. “Jolene?”
Under any other conditions, she probably would have simply ignored him, or sent him on his way, opting to wait by the side of the road until someone else came along. After all, it wasn’t as if this was a deserted part of town. But the wind had already shown her who was boss by rendering her umbrella useless. She was getting soaked. Besides, she was already late.
Thinking that somewhere along the line, she must have crossed some invisible line she wasn’t aware of, offending a deity with a strange sense of humor, Jolene sighed and made her way over to the car. She pushed her wet hair out of her face.
“What?” she snapped.
The woman certainly wasn’t friendlier wet than she was dry, Mac thought. He gestured toward the car. “What’s wrong?”
“My car decided to take a nap—what does it look like?” Jolene could feel her temper becoming precariously frayed.
He addressed her in terms he’d heard his sister use when any of her kids were particularly acting up. “It looks like someone needs a time-out.”
Jolene’s eyes widened, and she opened her mouth to utter a retort that bordered on scathing. But then she shut it again. She despised being criticized—especially when she knew the criticism was warranted. She didn’t need anyone to point out that she was being waspish, but she’d had a rough day tacked on top of a rough night. She was close to running on empty.
“You’re right. I’m sorry.” In her present mood, it cost her to admit this.
Mac cocked his head, as if honing in on a strange surprise. “Wow, did you hear that?”
“Hear what?” All she heard was the howl of the wind as another gust came in, plastering her skirt against her legs.
“I swear that’s the sound of frost forming in hell.” Mac grinned broadly at her from the confines of his warm vehicle. “Boy, talk about a long reach—”
Her eyes blazed as if someone had set a fire within her. Mac could feel himself getting singed…and intrigued.
She didn’t know why she was wasting her time talking to him. “Look, my baby’s sick, my car’s sick and I think I’m getting sick. I don’t need this.”
Leaning over as far as he could, Mac twisted the latch on the passenger door and pushed it open. “No, you don’t. Get in.”
She looked back at her offending vehicle. It had been giving her trouble in one way or another since the day she’d bought it, but she wasn’t in a position to buy a new one right now. “I can’t just leave my car.”
“Nobody’s telling you to.” He looked at her meaningfully. “You do have enough sense to get in out of the rain, don’t you?”
More than anything, she wanted to give this hotshot surgeon a piece of her mind. But since discretion was the better part of valor, she held her tongue. If she was being fair, Jolene figured she had that one coming. But only that one. “Yes.”
Mac looked at her expectantly. She wasn’t moving. “Well?”
Blowing out a breath, Jolene opened the door farther and got in. And began dripping all over her side of the vehicle.
“Boy, you are wet, aren’t you?” Pressing the control panel on his armrest, Mac rolled up the window on her side quickly. He reached behind him and got the towel he’d forgotten to take out of the back seat the last time he’d been to the gym. He offered it to her. “It’s really coming down, isn’t it?”
Jolene used the towel to rub the water from her hair and then her face. Stopping abruptly, she sniffed the towel and gave him a curious look.
“I used it at the gym.” He saw her drop the towel as if it was contaminated. “Don’t worry, I just had it draped around my neck when I finished my workout. This doesn’t mean our sweat glands are bonding or anything.”
Still, she folded the towel, finished, then sighed. “I think I shrank an inch just standing there.”
Belated, he turned off the engine. The windows were beginning to fog up, creating an impression that they were sealed off from the rest of the world. He forced his mind back on the topic at hand before he let it drift with that image.
“Do you know what’s wrong with your car?”
Yes, she knew what was wrong with it. It was a lemon. It happened even with the most reliable of makes. Just her luck.
“Same thing that’s been wrong with it the last three times. The distributor cap malfunctioned.”
She didn’t look like a woman who would know a distributor cap from a baseball cap. The woman was one surprise after another.
Mac looked at her with renewed respect. “I’m impressed, Nurse DeLuca. All I know how to do is jump-start.” The startled, wary look that came into her eyes had him biting his tongue not to laugh. He figured that wouldn’t go over very well right now. “A car,” he added. “Jump-start a car.”
The smile on his lips was nothing short of sensual, she thought, and it was telegraphing strange electrical impulses all through her. God, she really was coming down with Amanda’s fever, wasn’t she? Jolene squelched the urge to feel her forehead.
“Since you probably don’t carry a spare distributor cap in your purse,” he began jokingly, although if she’d pulled one out, at this point he wouldn’t have been all that surprised, “have you called a tow truck?”
Jolene shook her head. Several drops went flying, one hitting him in the eye. “My battery’s dead.”
Taking out a handkerchief, Mac dabbed his eye. He gave her the once-over with his good one and commented, “Not from where I’m sitting.”
Jolene realized she was clenching her teeth. “My cell phone battery. I forgot to charge it last night.” She’d started to, but then Amanda had started crying again and she’d left the charger connected to the cell phone, but unplugged.
“Ah.” Nodding his head, he unbuckled his seat belt and leaned forward, digging into his back pocket. He noticed that Jolene was watching his every move as if she expected him to either jump on her bones, or turn into a vampire—possibly both. “Relax, there’s no need to be so tense. I’m just getting my cell phone out.”
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