Contents

      Chapter One

      Chapter Two

      Chapter Three

      Chapter Four

      Chapter Five

      Chapter Six

      Chapter Seven

      Chapter Eight

      Chapter Nine

      Chapter Ten

      Chapter Eleven

      Chapter Twelve

      Chapter Thirteen

      One

      Everything looked just the same, she thought.

      Caitlyn Matthews stopped her car at Mission Creek Memorial Hospital and looked around. The automobiles and SUVs stacked side by side in the employees’ parking area were the same ones that had been here last Tuesday. The American flag still snapped to attention with each hot gust of south-Texas wind. The original hospital building looked strong and impressive, but the windows of the new maternity wing looked a little shinier than the others. Maybe that was her imagination. If the wing already harbored nasty memories, then, Cait thought whimsically, it had the air of a haughty celebrity who was not about to reveal the skeletons in her closets.

      She had worked at the hospital for the past four years now. The sight of it should have filled her with a sense of normalcy, of hope. Instead, she realized that it was entirely possible she was about to throw up.

      She unclenched one hand from the steering wheel to press her fingers against her lips. What’s wrong with me? I can’t be like this. It’s just not acceptable. Cait took her hand away from her mouth with a jerky motion and laughed aloud at the thought. A lot of things she would never have allowed before had been creeping into her life lately.

      Her life was a shambles, a disaster. It was in sharp little shards at her feet, and she had no idea what to do about it. But she did know that having her life torn apart and tossed about for a few short days was not going to undo her permanently. She would just have to pick up the pieces and put them all back together again. What frightened her was that she was starting to think she might not be able to put them back in the same order they’d been in before.

      “Give it time,” Cait told herself. She had a plan. But first she had to force herself to simply step into the hospital again.

      She got out of her dark-blue Ford compact and locked the door behind her, then jiggled the handle to make sure it was secure. She pivoted to the hospital and began to walk before she realized she’d better be absolutely positive her vehicle was locked. She went back and tested the handle again.

      “Fine,” she said. “It’s fine.” Of course it was. The car was locked up tight and in fine shape. In its two years she’d taken it in for service at three thousand, six thousand, twelve and eighteen thousand miles, almost right on the dot each time. It was steady, reliable.

      She was the one falling off her rocker lately.

      Cait turned away from the car like a marine drill sergeant. She made it through the front doors of the hospital just fine. But as it turned out, that was the easy part. The man she’d suddenly decided to give her virginity to after twenty-five otherwise chaste and uneventful years was right there in the lobby, staring at her.

      It was unconventional, but Dr. Sam Walters prided himself on marching to a different drummer. He stepped off the elevator with a mission, towing the boy behind him by one hand.

      Gilbert Travalini was nine years old, scared out of his mind and, in all likelihood, he was dying, though Sam had yet to give up the fight to turn that particular tide. New marrow would be transplanted into his bones at seven o’clock tomorrow morning. The match wasn’t as close as Sam would have liked and there was a chance the boy’s body would reject it, but until that happened, Gilbert was still a motor head and Sam happened to own one very fine, candy-apple-red Maserati. Said Maserati was currently parked outside.

      “Let’s go,” he said, tugging the boy into the lobby. “If all that stuff about speed was just some macho bluff on your part, better cough up the truth now before you wet your pants.”

      “You’re going to let me ride