Double Blind. Hannah Alexander

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       Double Blind

       Hannah Alexander

       www.millsandboon.co.uk

      MILLS & BOON

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      Contents

       Acknowledgments

       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

       Chapter Eighteen

       Chapter Nineteen

       Chapter Twenty

       Chapter Twenty-One

       Chapter Twenty-Two

       Chapter Twenty-Three

       Chapter Twenty-Four

       Chapter Twenty-Five

       Chapter Twenty-Six

       Chapter Twenty-Seven

       Chapter Twenty-Eight

       Chapter Twenty-Nine

       Chapter Thirty

       Chapter Thirty-One

       Chapter Thirty-Two

       Chapter Thirty-Three

       Chapter Thirty-Four

       Chapter Thirty-Five

       Chapter Thirty-Six

       Chapter Thirty-Seven

       Chapter Thirty-Eight

       Chapter Thirty-Nine

       Chapter Forty

       Chapter Forty-One

       Chapter Forty-Two

       Chapter Forty-Three

       Chapter Forty-Four

       Chapter Forty-Five

       Chapter Forty-Six

       Epilogue

      Acknowledgments

      We are always grateful to our editor, Joan Marlow Golan, and her wonderful staff and colleagues, Krista Stroever, Emily Rodmell, Lee Quarfoot, Megan Lorius, Maureen Stead, Amy Jones and Diane Mosher, for untiring editorial support, marketing and encouragement.

      Thanks to our agent, Karen Solem, for great direction and wisdom.

      Thanks, again, to Mom, Lorene Cook, for going far beyond the high calling of motherhood to help us in every sort of situation imaginable, whether it be reading, editing, publicity, cooking or catsitting. We love you.

      Thanks to Vera Overall, Mother, who always encourages us and shows her pride in her son.

      Thanks to Barbara Warren of the Blue Mountain Editorial Service for spotting problems before they become a part of the book.

      Thanks to Jerry and Mary Lou Baugher for their love and hospitality, whose experience serving in a Navajo school was a great benefit.

      Our deepest debt is to our Lord, who allows us to keep working at playing.

       Chapter One

       C urved, white wolf fangs gleamed against the blackness of Sheila Metcalf’s closed eyelids. She winced, eyes opening wide as a clipboard slipped from her fingers for the second time in less than an hour. It clattered onto the tile floor of the private patient room of Hideaway Hospital. As the sound reverberated into the hallway, her neck and shoulder muscles knotted with anxiety.

      She glanced at the bed, where her patient, Mrs. Mann, remained asleep. At least the commotion had not disturbed her. Sheila only wished she didn’t feel so disturbed this morning…so unsettled, with an old, haunting, long-suppressed nightmare threatening, more than once, to follow her into her waking hours.

      “Hey, girl, what’s up?” Jill Cooper, slender, dark haired and attractive, strode into the room at her usual brisk pace. She rescued the clipboard from the floor, glanced at it, then gave Sheila a look of concern. “Something wrong?”

      “Sorry,” Sheila said. “I’m fumble fingers this morning for some reason.”

      “Time for a break.” Jill’s voice was filled with the concern so evident in her gentle blue eyes. With her typical economy of movement, she set the clipboard on the nursing desk, then turned again to Sheila. “Why are you a fumble fingers?”

      “I’m just distracted. I promise I’m not usually like this.”

      “Think I don’t know that?” As nurse director of Hideaway Hospital, Jill had every right to question a substitute nurse’s bumbling mistakes, but her concern was warm and personal.

      Sheila tried to smile, and knew the result was more of a grimace. She and Jill had known each other since Sheila had fled here to Hideaway with her father twenty-four years ago. The older sister of one of Sheila’s best friends in school, Jill understood what it was like to live with specters from the past.

      Jill took a step closer. “So what’s the distraction?” she asked softly. “Want to talk about it?”

      Sheila thought about the shadows of memories that never quite materialized, questions that had returned to nag at her after all these years. The fangs. The terror.

      “Relax,” Jill said. “We don’t eat nurses for breakfast.”

      Sheila forced a smile. The confessions could wait until later. “Dr. Jackson tells me differently.”

      Jill chuckled. “Call her Karah Lee, and don’t listen to a thing she says. I picked on her a little when she first arrived, and she’ll never let me live it down.” Jill’s blue eyes turned serious again. “What is it?”

      “Just stuff. I’ll get it figured out, don’t worry.”

      “All the same, I think you need some downtime. A few minutes to regroup.” Jill reached into the pocket of her scrub top and pulled out a stethoscope. “Besides, Preston Black is in the building.”