“It is an emergency.”
May looked him over. His breathing was even. No tremor. No pallor. He appeared just as healthy as ever. “You don’t seem to be in distress.”
“Like I said, it’s a matter I can’t wait to discuss with my real doctor, and it could be an issue.” He cast what could only be called an apologetic glance at Ivy. “It’s very personal. If you don’t mind.”
Ivy waited, watching May, her expression both curious and intense. Definitely loyal.
Silence ticked around the room for a moment. The clinic walls were thin, the winter wind scratching faintly at the windows. Somewhere down the hall a heater clicked and then sighed.
May knew Kyle. He wouldn’t leave. Sure, she could get Ace to toss his ass out. The thought of Ace stiffened her spine. She had backup if she needed it. If she so much as squawked, Ace would be in that room in a hot minute. Oh, he had all sorts of issues, but she trusted him on that level. “Fine. It’s okay, Ivy. Please go make sure Ace isn’t bleeding all over my waiting room.” Hopefully he’d stuck around.
“Sure. I guess I could give him a bandage,” Ivy said.
May chuckled, the sound lighter than she felt. “Actually, that’s not a bad idea. He’s being stubborn. Go ahead and put some gauze on him. In fact, if you want, you could apply the butterfly bandage.” She hadn’t even thought to turn Ace over to her nurse. Interesting.
“Okay.” Ivy brightened, already pivoting toward the door.
May watched her go. What was that about? Ivy seemed way too excited to slap a bandage on Ace. Not that she could blame the younger woman. To be truthful, the guy was hot. The door swung shut with a soft thud, and silence pooled in its wake, thick and uneasy.
May cleared her throat. “All right, Kyle, what’s your emergency?”
He just stared at her for a moment.
“Kyle?” she repeated, eyebrows lifting. Maybe it was his heart. She hadn’t thought he had one.
“Did you really think I wouldn’t find you, even if you fled to the middle of nowhere?” he asked.
Ah. It was this discussion. “I honestly didn’t think you’d look.”
“I searched for you for quite some time.”
“Yeah. Well, here I am. Do you have a medical emergency or do you not?”
His jaw hardened.
May took an automatic step back. She wasn’t stupid. The overhead lights cast hard shadows along his cheekbones, turning his expression into something carved and cold.
“You alone here very often, May?” he asked softly.
“Kyle, do you have a medical emergency or do you not?” she asked, every inch of her going on high alert.
His expression turned to the fake and compassionate one she wanted to wipe off his face. “We’re going to have a nice long discussion while I’m in town.”
She would not panic. “Is that why you’re in town? You came to this tiny alcove in Alaska just to find me?”
“I thought we had something.”
“We didn’t have shit.”
His eyes flashed. “Nice language you’ve learned out here in the bush.”
“It’s more mountainous than bush,” she muttered. “What do you want?”
“I’m here on my reelection tour, as I’m sure you know.”
Actually, she’d had no clue. She stopped paying attention to politics the minute she left D.C. The world beyond Knife’s Edge had gone pleasantly fuzzy, like static she could finally mute.
“I do have to wonder, though.” He tilted his head. “When you left D.C., you could’ve gone to any state in the world, and you came to mine.”
