“No. Please don’t.”

There must have been something in the tremble of her voice that struck him. Or maybe it was another moment of that suddenly rare lucidity. Whatever it was, he looked up into her eyes and read the fear and conflict there and it made him do her bidding. He stopped, releasing his hold on her shirt and moving his hand to the neutral territory of the sheet beside her shoulder.

“Are ye teasing me, lass?”

“Not intentionally,” she said meekly. “The kiss wasn’t my idea.”

He seemed to think about that a moment, then with a scoff of breath he rolled off her. “Go!” he commanded her. “And doona come back until you’re ready tae do something about this!” He grabbed his erection in his hand, running his fist down the length of it. “You’re far too bonny tae resist. Remember that before you come tae tease me again!”

Katrina scrambled for her freedom, falling to the floor from the bed then struggling up to her feet. She hastened from the bedroom with all speed.

CHAPTER FIVE

She needed to do something. She couldn’t just leave him in there to fester with fever and then die. Any medical professional past or present and worth their degree would know this.

Decision made, she grabbed up her car keys and ventured out into the storm. The storm was already brutal and this was an absolute act of suicide. She knew that it was. But desperate times called for desperate measures. Luckily, the nearest doctor was only a mile and a half down the mountain. Equally lucky was that the storm was obliterating daylight.

Kat was bundled up tight to protect herself, but still it was bitter cold when she stumbled out of her car and banged on the doctor’s door. Michael Sloan opened the door with a harsh yank and looked at her as though she’d lost her ever-lovin’ mind. Which, she figured, she obviously had.

“Urinary tract infection!” she said by way of greeting. “I’m sorry, but I’m dying and I had no choice. They said the storm was going to last days …”

“No, I understand,” the man said, ushering her in. Dr. Sloan was in his late forties, but looked incredibly good for his age. So handsome, in fact, that he was thought of as quite a catch by the busybodies in their small town who were forever endeavoring to marry him off. They had focused on Kat more than once as a prospective bride for the single doctor, but she had managed to dodge their efforts thus far. She had squelched them every time as best she could. God knew the last thing she needed was the complication of a man in her life.

She might have found the present irony in that funny if she weren’t so bent on her task of the moment.

“I know all the signs, and the pain is tremendous,” she said, fisting her hand against her innocent bladder and doing the wee-wee dance for effect. “I need some Cipro.”

“Cipro? Don’t you think that’s a bit strong for—?”

“Trust me, it’s a bad infection,” she cut him off hastily.

He stood there and seemed to brood about it for a moment. “Of course I trust you,” he said then. “Of all my self-diagnosing patients, at least I can rest assured you know what you’re talking about.”

“None of your self-diagnosing patients were a physician’s assistant.”

“True,” he said with a chuckle. “Let’s do a urinalysis and I can get you the Cipro.”

“Dr. Sloan.” She cast a meaningful look outside. “I barely made it down here. With my shy bladder a urinary test could take forever. Please, I have to get back.”

“Right! Of course.” He hurried back to the rear of his house. There was no pharmacy in town, so he kept his own supply of medications on hand. He filled a bottle with the required pills and she paid for them hastily. “I’ll just note your chart and we won’t tell anyone we skipped a few steps. After all, it’s an antibiotic, not an opiate.”

“That’s right,” she said with a smile. “I better go!”

“You better be careful. You should never have—”

“I know! See you, Doc!”

As she skidded on the steep slope from the doctor’s porch to her car she muttered a constant litany of “This is crazy. This is crazy. This is so crazy!” And even a little of “You could have told him. You just had to open your mouth and say, ‘Hey. There’s this guy at my house who can turn to stone, right? Oh, and he’s wounded and probably going to die of infection. But before that happens he’s probably going to …’ ”

She couldn’t leap to the word “rape.” He had done nothing to make her think for a minute he was the raping sort. He was just … lusty. Yes, that was a good word for it. He was full of lust. Fevered lust. As if all his barriers and filters had evaporated and this was who he would be if all the clutter and nonsense of life were cleaned away. He was something of a throwback. As though he’d dropped in on her from a different time.

Oh great. Not enough for you that he’s made of stone half the time, you have to make him a time traveler, too? You’ve been reading far too many trashy romance novels, Kat! After all, a real woman wouldn’t just accept half the shit that goes on in those novels.

She stopped and thought about that for a moment, applying it to her present circumstances. Well, shoot. Could she help it if she’d seen crazier shit in an ER than a man who could turn to stone? After all, it was rather a benign thing overall …

Katrina shivered her way into her car and, throwing the truck into four-wheel drive, began the treacherous trip back up the mountain. She was inching along, grateful that the snow had shifted from driving pellets of snow and ice to a thick blanketing fall of soft, fat, white flakes. It made it easier for her to see, although she couldn’t see more than a few feet in front of her because it was, after all, still a heavy snowfall.

The thickened snow also provided a little more traction, which she desperately needed. At the midpoint to her house she was so tight with tension from creeping up the deadly mountain road that her neck, her arms, and her entire back were hurting. She shrugged her shoulders, trying to work it out, trying to alleviate the pain of it, even though she barely noticed it on a conscious level because all her attention was focused forward.

And at some point she stopped worrying about getting home and started worrying that a man’s life might hang in the balance and she was the only means of swaying the odds in his favor. It was a weighty responsibility, one she realized she was glad to take on. If not, why would she ever have taken part in this madness? She could only suppose that instinctively she knew there was something good about him, something worth saving, worth risking her own life for. Then again, she probably would have done the same for even the lowest of men … only she would have made sure to call in the cavalry.