To Save His Baby Read online

  Jerking the afghan from the sofa, Valerie wrapped it around herself like a toga

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Books by Judi Lind

  Title Page

  Dedication

  CAST OF CHARACTERS

  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

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Epilogue

  Copyright

  Jerking the afghan from the sofa, Valerie wrapped it around herself like a toga

  “Aw, Doc, you didn’t have to get dressed on my account,” Gil drawled.

  “What are you doing in my house?” she demanded.

  “Why did you run away again? How did you get in here?”

  “One, I didn’t know where else to go. Two, if that hit man was still hanging around the hospital, I didn’t want him to see us leaving together. Three, the spare key you leave under the barrel cactus. And four, although it wasn’t a question, we’re both in a lot of trouble, and frankly, I don’t expect the cavalry to come charging up to save our hides.”

  “I have over two dozen potted plants on the patio. How did you know the house key was under the barrel cactus? Has your ‘amnesia’ been miraculously cured?”

  Gil frowned. Now that he thought about it, he realized that he hadn’t consciously searched for her spare key.

  The faintest flicker of a memory danced through his mind. He’d flopped into that soft denim easy chair before. A memory of Valerie curled up at his feet, her golden hair loose and flowing across his knees. Then, like a watercolor dissolving in the rain, the image melted away and he was left with that black nothingness. “Bits and pieces, Doc. Just bits and pieces...”

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  The wide-open spaces of the desert Southwest have always fascinated Judi Lind. When her daughter, Valerie, announced on Mother’s Day that she was going to have a baby, inspiration struck.

  What better place to set a romantic medical thriller than in the magical desert atmosphere of Phoenix, Arizona?

  In fact, Judi and her husband, Larry, are so enraptured with the sun-drenched openness of the Southwest that they recently moved from Southern California to a forty-two acre “ranch” in the high desert area of Arizona’s White Mountain region. Judi’s convinced the area will provide plenty of material for lots of Intrigue novels over the next few years.

  Judi loves to hear from her readers. You can write to her at P.O. Box 877, Snowflake, AZ 85937-0877. A self-addressed stamped envelope would be appreciated.

  Books by Judi Lind

  HARLEQUIN INTRIGUE

  260—WITHOUT A PAST

  310—VEIL OF FEAR

  355—UNDERCOVER VOWS

  433—STORM WARNINGS

  504—JACKSON’S WOMAN

  Don’t miss any of our special offers. Write to us at the following address for information on our newest releases.

  Harlequin Reader Service

  U.S.: 3010 Walden Ave., P.O. Box 1325, Buffalo, NY 14269

  Canadian: P.O. Box 609, Fort Erie, Ont. L2A 5X3

  To Save His Baby

  Judi Lind

  TORONTO • NEW YORK • LONDON

  AMSTERDAM • PARIS • SYDNEY • HAMBURG

  STOCKHOLM • ATHENS • TOKYO • MILAN • MADRID

  PRAGUE • WARSAW • BUDAPEST • AUCKLAND

  For my own special daughter,

  Valerie, and the beautiful baby she and her hero

  have brought into the world.

  CAST OF CHARACTERS

  Dr. Valerie Murphy—She was pregnant with Gil Branton’s child. But he didn’t remember her—or who was trying to kill them both.

  Gil Branton—He’d been lied to, beaten and run off the road. Was there anyone he could trust?

  Emily “Fierce” Pierce—She had a reputation of being hard to get along with. But her bristly personality did keep questions at bay.

  Ed Grant—Everyone said he was too smart to be a mere orderly. Was there a reason he kept such a low profile?

  Dr. Sid Weingold—The handsome doctor was deeply in debt and paying entirely too much attention to Valerie.

  Monica Giesen—The sophisticated nurse was Valerie’s trusted assistant. But her tastes were too expensive for a nurse’s salary.

  Martin Abel—The administrator had his finger on the pulse of the hospital. Was he just plain nosy or was he hiding a deeper motive?

  Dr. Carl Bender—The arrogant young physician turned everyone off. The better to keep people from asking questions?

  Marsha Ainslee—Her job offered access to all the records while providing the perfect cover-up. Why was she so helpful?

  Ferdy Sanchez—The detective was everywhere. Was his investigation getting too close for comfort?

  Chapter One

  Tossing the single utilitarian blond braid over her shoulder, Valerie Murphy flopped into the battered avocadogreen easy chair and lifted her feet onto the even more battered matching ottoman. Ohh. Relief shuddered through her weary body. This was the first time she’d been off her feet in what—seven hours?

  Fortunately the Lundquist birth had been simple and swift because the Diaz delivery had been touch-and-go for a while, draining Valerie’s physical and mental strength. Bringing a healthy and much-wanted baby into the world was euphoric, but tending to a pair of mothers in labor at the same time had nearly wiped her out.

  She offered a quick but sincere prayer that the city of Phoenix would remain baby-free long enough for her to down a revitalizing dose of coffee. Fingers mentally crossed, she raised the steaming mug to her lips.

  The doctors’ lounge door swung open and the charge nurse stepped in, her broad face flushed. “Oh, thank God you’re still here!”

  “I’m not.” Valerie shook her head. “You don’t see me. I’m gone.”

  “Sorry, Doctor, but we have a situation. Twelve serious and twenty non-life threatening injuries on their way. All available MDs needed in ER.”

  Valerie groaned. A “situation” was the hospital code word for a disaster. “What happened?”

  “Sandstorm. Eighty-car pileup on Interstate 10. Gotta round up the others.” The door swung closed behind the nurse’s ample backside.

  An eighty-car collision? The number was staggering. Rogue windstorms were legendary in the Phoenix area. Sudden swirling gusts swept across the desert, ushering in a blinding curtain of sand. Valerie had seen cars that had been caught in windstorms, their paint scoured down to bare metal by the whipping sand.

  She shuddered, imagining the carnage that might result when drivers hurtling down the freeway were suddenly blinded by that opaque wall of raging desert sand.

  Valerie gulped the scalding brew, hoping the caffeine would kick in by the time she reached the emergency ward. Instinctively brushing her hand across the surgical scrubs that used to bag around her middle, she sighed in resignation. It was going to be a long night. She rose to her feet and rubbed the small of her aching back.

  As she made her way from the physicians’ lounge to the elevator, her own natural adrenaline took command and she was fully alert when she bumped open the stainless-steel door to the emergency department.

  The white-tiled space looked like the staging area for a major battle. Pink-, blue- and green-uniformed staff choked the hallways. Nurses stocked supplementary crash carts while orderlies shoved additional beds and gurneys into every available no
ok and cranny.

  Snapping on a pair of sterile latex gloves, Valerie reported to the head nurse who was directing medical personnel into the appropriate cubicles.

  “What have we got?” she shouted over the din.

  Emily Pierce, night charge nurse of the ER and known throughout the hospital as Fierce Pierce, shoved a chart in Val’s hand and led her into treatment room six. “You tell me, Doc. Ambulances are on the way with most of the collision victims. In the meantime, we just received a John Doe, probably homeless, approximately thirty-five to forty, although who can tell with all that fur growing on his face?”

  Valerie ignored the nurse’s aside and waited for her to continue. Fierce Pierce might be flippant, irreverent and even disdainful of some of the physicians who rotated through the ward, but she was the best triage nurse in the hospital, maybe even the city.

  Without skipping a beat, Nurse Pierce rattled off the unknown patient’s vital statistics. Valerie glanced at the bloody, inert man lying on the gurney. His features were obscured by a three-day growth of beard and a tangle of darker hair around his face. His clothing, blue T-shirt and jeans, were caked with filth and torn or slashed in several places. Dark-red blood oozed from every rent in the fabric.

  “You say he wasn’t involved in the pileup?” Valerie asked.

  Pierce shook her mop of unkempt red hair. “Nope. He was found by a beat cop in the alley behind Frisco’s.” Frisco’s was a notorious biker bar on the outskirts of town. “Unconscious, dehydrated and in shock. Mr. Doe apparently ticked off one or more of the bikers, resulting in massive trauma to the head and torso, probably the result of a tire iron.”

  Approaching the gurney, Valerie flicked on her penlight and raised the patient’s eyelids. His pupils were equal and reactive; still, because the victim had lost consciousness, she couldn’t rule out concussion. “Call neuro, tell them to get somebody down here for a consult.”

  Pierce noted the orders on the patient’s chart while another nurse picked up the intercom phone and made the request.

  Assessing the most obvious wounds on the cruelly beaten man, Valerie ordered X rays, then cut open his shirt to palpate his abdomen. Although bruises were already coloring the mystery man’s stomach, there was no evidence of internal bleeding.

  In fact, his well-defined stomach muscles were exceptionally supple. But his entire torso was splotched with ugly red welts and abrasions.

  Her previous rotation in the trauma unit had been a deciding factor in Valerie’s decision to specialize in obstetrics. She’d found it nearly impossible to separate herself from the incredible brutalities human beings inflicted on one another. Where was the sport in a gang of roughnecks, armed with chains, knives and tire irons, nearly beating the life out of a helpless and unarmed man?

  Her heart ached for the stranger lying unconscious on the gurney.

  She raised her stethoscope to his chest and was pleased to find his heartbeat strong and steady, despite the severity of his injuries. Her trained eye scanned his chest, with its mat of dark hair. His flesh was firm, his biceps and pectorals taut and developed. This man didn’t live on the streets. The shape he was in was excellent. A robbery victim?

  “Any ID?” she asked.

  Fierce Pierce shook her head. “Not that we’ve found. Maybe the responding officers found something. Grant, go check with those two cops out front. Or the paramedics if they’re still around. See if anyone found any personal effects for our John Doe.”

  The orderly nodded and hurried to do her bidding. She’d worked with him before when he’d been assigned to obstetrics. In Valerie’s opinion, Ed Grant was too sharp and too intuitive to waste his talents as an orderly. She made a mental note to talk to him again about applying for nursing school.

  Reaching for John Doe’s wrist, she took his pulse again, satisfied that he was stabilized and out of immediate danger. Until the two specialists she’d requested arrived, and X rays were taken and read, there wasn’t much Valerie could do except treat his cuts and bruises.

  While the nurse fetched gauze and antiseptic, Valerie continued to stare at her patient, feeling an eerie kinship with him. The slope of his wide shoulders seemed almost familiar. Since she knew precious few men who weren’t on the hospital staff, and John Doe certainly wasn’t someone she encountered frequently, she wondered if he might be the husband of one of the nurses. No wedding ring adorned his long slender finger, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t married.

  There was no way to tell how long he’d been lying unconscious in that alley, but surely someone was looking for him.

  “Is something wrong, Doctor?” Fierce Pierce stood at her elbow, holding a basin filled with sterile cleansing solution.

  Valerie jerked free of her daydream, aware of her encroaching feelings of attachment to this nameless man. Stay detached, Doctor, she warned herself. She shouldn’t have to be reminded that emotional detachment was the key to survival.

  But his medical background could be vitally important to his treatment, she rationalized. Except for his unkempt appearance, she might have thought he was a businessman who’d been mugged. She shook her head, dismissing her first impression. He was too lean, too exceptionally muscular for a sedentary businessman.

  One bruise, high on the left side of his chest, almost at his left shoulder, was more deeply colored than the others. Valerie dabbed a piece of antiseptic gauze with alcohol and gently rubbed the area. Most of the discoloration was oil and tar residue from the alley, but something was hidden by the grime. A birthmark? Tattoo? She continued wiping until the marking on his skin was readily apparent.

  A tattoo. The small all-too-familiar tattoo of a hawk’s head—the noble symbol of strength and perseverance. Her hand stilled and a curious dryness scourged her throat. No...it couldn’t be. Not him. Her gaze flew to his face, his features suddenly completely recognizable beneath the dirt and heavy stubble.

  As the realization began to sink in, Valerie’s mouth watered and her stomach clenched in protest. She was going to be sick.

  A pink-uniformed technician rattled into the room, pulling a portable X ray machine behind him. “Make way, folks. The king of cameras, the baron of bones, is here to photograph the body parts of Mr.—” He broke off and glanced at a paper he’d had tucked under his arm. “Mr. Doe, is it? Well, Mr. Doe, we’re gonna make you famous.”

  Normally Valerie enjoyed the man’s perpetual good mood and harmless banter. Not today. She barely noted his presence.

  As Valerie instinctively backed away from the patient so the technician could position the film plates, Fierce Pierce touched her shoulder. “You never said—do we wait for the attending neuro or find a backup?”

  Valerie stared at the nurse as if seeing her for the first time. “Wh-what? What did you say?”

  “Are you okay, Doc? You look kinda pale.”

  Valerie waved aside her comment. The nausea was rising in her gorge, blocking her voice.

  Taking her silence as a denial, Pierce waved the patient chart like a flag. “Yoo-hoo, Dr. Murphy. The patient—John Doe? What do you want me to do about a neurological consult since the attending is delayed for another twenty minutes?”

  Valerie stared at the unconscious man lying in his own blood. She peeled off the sterile gloves with a loud snap and dropped them into the hazardous-waste container. Her stomach roiled with acid and she feared she might faint. Turning on her heel, she ran for the hall, pausing in the open doorway. “You can let the bastard die for all I care.”

  STOPPING AT THE WATER COOLER, Valerie gulped three cups of cool liquid in a futile attempt to quench the fire in her stomach. Why now? After nearly four months, why had Gil Branton returned to Phoenix? And why did he have to end up in her treatment room?

  Valerie’s head jerked upright. Yeah, Doctor, your treatment room. Your responsibility. A chill of shame washed over her for fleeing from her patient, even though he’d been stabilized. Because no matter how she felt about Gil Branton, and there’d been times she�
�d wished she could beat him senseless herself, it was her sworn duty to treat his injuries and watch out for his well-being as long as he was under her care.

  So where’s that famous objectivity, Dr. Murphy?

  She crumpled the paper cup and dropped it into the trash receptacle. Straightening her back, she drew in a deep breath for courage and laid a calming hand across her stomach. Calling on her medical training to see her through this ordeal, she willed the memory of Gil Branton and what he’d done to her back into the hidden recesses of her mind. Back into the box where she’d kept those painful images hidden for the past four months.

  Pasting a smile on her face, she flipped her braid over her shoulder and marched back into the treatment room.

  THE HAZY RED CURTAIN of pain lifted slightly and Gil risked opening one eye. The dazzling white from the tiled walls and floor almost blinded him and he closed the eye in defense. That brief peek had been enough, though. That white light wasn’t the welcoming glow of heaven. He wasn’t dead. He was lying on a gurney in a hospital. An emergency room, he guessed, judging from the movement around him.

  He wondered briefly if he was going to die. Seemed kind of a shame to give in now after what he’d been through these past months. Still, thoughts of a pain-free peace of death weren’t altogether disheartening. There wasn’t much in his life left to look forward to, he thought, except more pain.

  There wasn’t much in his life, period. What he could recall of it, anyway. For the thousandth time in the past four months, Gil clenched his eyes and tried to will a fragment of memory into his consciousness. He knew who he was—but only because others had told him. Just as they’d informed him of his occupation and the fact that he was a loner, with no family and few friends.