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  “Mr. Keller, please—” the other woman began, but Keller was already sitting up and throwing off his sheet.

  “No, that’s it—I’m leaving.” He stood up, completely healed. But the fact that he was also completely naked seemed to distract the nurses from noticing that his injuries were gone. “Bring me some clothes,” he demanded imperiously.

  “Mr. Keller, please—you can’t just leave!” pleaded the nice nurse, as he was beginning to think of the woman who wasn’t Nurse Janice. “You’ve been injured. You just had surgery!”

  “And now I feel perfectly fine. Do I look injured to you?” Taking a step forward, he let the nurses look him up and down, examining his long, muscular torso, where not even a scar of the previous night’s surgery remained.

  “But . . . but it’s not possible!” Nurse Janice gasped, her eyes still wide and wild. “You had a cast . . . an incision . . .”

  “It’s at least as possible as seeing a prehistoric beast in the middle of the ICU,” Keller remarked coolly, raising an eyebrow at her.

  “But there are tests to run,” the nice nurse protested. “The doctors will have to clear you—”

  “Bring me some clothes right now or you’ll be hearing from my lawyers!” Keller growled. “I could buy and sell this place, and I will if you don’t let me out of here immediately.”

  He had uttered the magic words. Before he knew it he was being given clothes—well, if you could call the ridiculous hospital scrubs clothing—and access to a phone.

  Keller arranged for a car to be sent and left the hospital before the Lady Moon had even reached her zenith. The car took him straight to the airport where he kept his private jet. He always had a change of clothes on hand in the jet, so much to his relief, he was able to change into something decent—and fashionable—before takeoff.

  His fastidious Cat nature satisfied at last, he settled into his seat.

  I’m coming, Samantha, he thought as he buckled himself in and looked out the jet’s window at Lady Moon. I’ll protect you whether you want me to or not.

  Chapter 4

  “Doctor Becker? Samantha Becker?”

  Samantha turned in the direction of the vaguely familiar voice and found herself face to face with a man whose name she could not for the life of her remember.

  “Oh, uh . . .” She smiled to cover her confusion. She’d slept poorly the night before due to more bizarre dreams and the fact that she was in a hotel room instead of her comfortable bed at home. Her brain still felt foggy.

  “Eddie,” the man supplied helpfully. “Eddie Lounds. Drug rep for Pfizer—I got you some free samples for your patients, remember?”

  “Oh yes—Eddie! Of course.” Samantha held out a hand to him and her smile widened, though, to tell the truth, she didn’t really care much for the drug rep, who had been popping up at her home base of Tampa General Hospital for the last few years.

  It wasn’t that Eddie Lounds wasn’t nice—he was almost too nice, in fact. Every time he saw her he offered her free drug samples, tickets to various sports franchises in Tampa, all-expenses-paid dinner cruises, and the like.

  Of course it was nothing new for a drug rep to try and sweeten the deal to get a doctor to switch to their company’s latest drug, but there was just something about Lounds that Samantha didn’t trust. Maybe it was his narrow, weasely face, or the superskinny black mustache that rode just above his thin upper lip. With his slicked-back hair and weird facial hair he looked more like a villain in an old movie than a drug rep—like someone who ought to be tying damsels in distress to the railroad tracks rather than offering free samples of the latest anticlotting agent.

  Still, at least Eddie Lounds was a familiar face in a room full of strangers. Though she’d already attended two lectures that morning, Samantha had yet to see anyone else she recognized. She hoped that would change when she gave her own lecture that afternoon.

  “So how are you?” he asked, reaching for the hand she was holding out. “Enjoying the conference?”

  “Very much. I just sat through a lecture on abdominal vascular trauma—the speaker was—”

  Her words ended in a gasp as Lounds’s hand enclosed her own. The minute his skin touched hers, she got a jolt—much like the one she’d had when her fingers had briefly touched Keller’s bare skin the day before. Only when she’d touched Keller, her whole body had come alive—a bolt of pleasure so intense it had felt like a miniorgasm had arced through her, shocking her with its intensity. Keller had called it a “telling sign,” but to Samantha, it was just plain weird.

  The touch of Eddie Lounds’s hand also gave her a sensation. It was just as intense as the jolt she’d gotten from Keller, but with an entirely different feeling attached. Instead of feeling electrocuted by pleasure, Samantha felt as though she’d suddenly been drenched in slime. It was as though thousands of slugs with cold, slippery bodies were crawling all over her body at once.

  Disgusting!

  She ripped her hand out of Lounds’s grip instinctively, and the sensation ended at once. But then she was left standing there awkwardly, with no rational explanation to give as to why she’d pulled out of their handshake so abruptly.

  “Um, excuse me,” she said, trying to think of a way to explain. “My hand—”

  “Of course, as a surgeon you have to take care of your hands.” Lounds smiled widely, his skinny mustache stretching like a hairy rubber band over his upper lip.

  “Oh yes. Of . . . of course.” Samantha cleared her throat. “Well . . .”

  “I was just going down to the casino to kill some time between lectures,” he said. “It’s just a small one, but it’s still nice. Would you like to come?”

  There was nothing Samantha wanted to do less than spend time with the creepy drug rep whose touch gave her such a feeling of disgust, but she’d already been rude to him once.

  “Maybe just for a few minutes,” she said reluctantly. “I really can’t take long, though—I have to prepare for the lecture I’m giving in an hour or two.”

  “Well, playing a few slots or a round or two of blackjack won’t hurt.” Lounds smiled at her and began leading in the direction of the elevators. “Might even clear your head.”

  “I don’t know if anything can do that.” Samantha sighed as she got into the elevator beside him. “I really didn’t sleep well last night. The hotel lost my reservation and I ended up in a dinky little room with a really lumpy mattress.” She sighed and rubbed the base of her skull. “I still have a crick in my neck.”

  “Maybe I can massage it away for you.”

  Lounds reached for her, but just then the elevator dinged and the doors opened, allowing Samantha to skitter out of the reach of his long, skinny hands.

  “Oh, no thank you,” she said quickly. “I just popped two ibuprofen a minute ago—I’m sure that will do the trick.”

  He shrugged his narrow shoulders. “Suit yourself. But I give a mean neck massage if you change your mind.”

  “Thank you.” Samantha was feeling more and more uncomfortable by the minute. As they walked out onto the casino floor, with its flashing slot machines and low-lit gaming tables, she wondered why she’d allowed herself to be talked into coming down here with Lounds in the first place. She promised herself she’d just play one or two slots and then plead a headache and leave.

  The one good thing about the small casino was that Samantha didn’t have to put up with secondhand cigarette smoke, which she hated. The Mandarin Oriental, where the trauma conference was being held, was a completely smoke-free hotel, so the small casino attached was also smoke free.

  The minute they stepped onto the floor, a girl in her twenties wearing a skimpy waitress outfit with a vaguely Asian theme came up and asked their room numbers and names.

  “Just need to be sure you’re cleared to be here,” she chirped when Samantha asked why she needed to know. “We like to keep this area strictly for the guests of the Mandarin.”

  Samantha didn’t like giving up he