waving his arms around. I came back as fast as I could."
To Leanne, Eliot looked like an avenging warrior, a knight in a blue suit, as he stood there breathing heavily, face shiny with perspiration, expression anxious, and she wanted to run to him. She had to forcibly remind herself that he was her patient, a mentally ill patient.
She nodded and rose on shaky legs, making herself go to Bruce, do her job. "It's all right now." She extended a hand, but he didn't seem to see or hear her.
"I'd better call his wife," she said to Eliot. "She may want to have him hospitalized again."
While they waited for the ambulance to arrive, Leanne tried to calm him, but the little man alternately sobbed and cursed, carrying on senseless conversations with invisible companions.
Eliot remained, hovering over her and never getting too far from Bruce. And she found herself unable to tell him he to leave. She should; the situation was under control...and she liked having him there entirely too much.
By the time the emergency services arrived, Bruce was calm enough to go with them voluntarily.
"Take him to Westwood General," she directed them. "I'll meet you over there and get him admitted."
Leanne turned to Eliot to thank him for coming to her aid, but the words caught in her throat. She was suddenly, excruciatingly, aware of being alone in the office with him—of the possible danger, of the unaccountable, inexplicable sense of herself as a woman and him as an attractive, desirable man.
Her skin tingled as she watched the same awareness flame in his eyes.
He took a step closer to her, and she turned, hurrying across the room, putting her desk between them, uncertain if she was running from fear of him or from her feelings for him.
"Well," she said, hoping her voice didn't sound as artificial to his ears as it did to hers, "it's been a long day. Thanks for coming to my rescue."
He studied her in silence for a moment, then nodded curtly. "Any time. Are you ready to leave? I'll go down with you."
She should tell him to go on without her, but that would be illogical. She had to leave immediately and get to the hospital. "Sure," she said. "Just let me grab my briefcase."
As they rode together in the elevator, even though they stood stiffly against opposing walls and Leanne kept her eyes trained carefully on the overhead numbers, she could feel Eliot's presence as distinctly as if they touched. And, God help her, she wanted to touch him...wanted him to touch her.
Leftover adrenaline, she told herself, adrenaline heightening her senses. That's all it was. A culmination of the excitement of the day. Everything finally hitting at once now that it was over and she could let her professional guard down.
Nevertheless, when they reached the first floor and the doors slid apart, she burst through the opening with a mingled sense of relief and regret.
The security guard was just coming on duty, and she waved to him. "Good night, Ken."
"Good night, Dr. Warner."
Dr. Warner . She was still Dr. Warner, the psychiatrist, not Leanne the woman, and she had to remember that. As long as a patient—Eliot—was with her, she was still a doctor, and she had to keep her strangely erratic emotions in line.
Yet when they reached the heavy glass doors of the building and he stepped determinedly in front to open the door for her, for a moment she stood motionless, transfixed by his gaze. The man outside her bedroom window the night before had paralyzed her with the force of his anger and hatred. Now those same eyes held her in place with the force of his desire.
He stood only inches away, so close she could feel the warmth of his breath, smell the scents of peppermint gum and expensive cologne...and feel the electricity arcing between their bodies.
Moving as if she were walking through water, Leanne forced her legs to obey the commands of her brain, not her heart, to walk through the door, into the parking lot and away from Eliot. Still she could feel his