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nonsense, really…Forget what you saw. Promise me you’ll forget all of it…
    Except it was inside Maddie now. The darkness trickling out, no matter how hard she resisted. Phyllis had lost her husband and one of her daughters. She’d been slowly losing touch with reality since Maddie was a child. Sarah had gone completely insane. And now Maddie’s mind was slipping…
    “My sister’s gone,” she repeated, the sound of a storming wind roaring through her mind. She turned and got the stupid door to open. “Sarah has nothing to do with my world now, and you’re damn straight I’ll do whatever it takes to keep it that way.”
    Temple was losing it .
    Jarred watched Maddie from across the frantic ER and wished Yates’s report to the hospital board had been wrong. But wishing in Jarred’s line of work did as much good as bashing your head against a wall and hoping it wouldn’t hurt. When a nurse brushed past Maddie and the waif-thin resident bit her lip to hold herself together, his jaw clenched.
    She’s a liability the hospital can’t carry any longer, the administration had concluded. And on paper they wereright. But that hadn’t stopped Jarred from battling into this mess on Maddie’s behalf, even though he had nothing to offer professionally beyond what Yates had done. Nothing but months of watching Maddie’s every move, while telling himself that a casual relationship was all he wanted. It was all he’d wanted with any woman since his marriage ended.
    Jarred realized he was rubbing the sore throat he’d had since their session and stopped. More than casual wasn’t something he’d done well since he was a child—hence his divorce from a woman he still considered a good friend. And Maddie had made it abundantly clear for months that whatever they’d started during their few dates was off. Period. Just when she’d clearly needed the kind of professional help he could give her.
    Coincidence? The scientist in Jarred didn’t believe in coincidences. Maddie looked utterly exhausted. Three months ago she’d reluctantly admitted to having strange dreams. Nightmares she wouldn’t discuss. She’d even told him a time or two, before she stopped talking to him altogether, that unexplained things were happening. To the point that he’d wondered if sleep deprivation was messing with her short-term memory. After that, she’d shut Jarred out of whatever was troubling her. Right before she was put on an administrative plan that required weekly analysis of her condition.
    He should have walked away and been glad to have dodged a bullet.
    But Jarred hadn’t known how to let go. Not of Maddie or the way being with her, even with her growing problems, had made him feel. Like he could breathe deeper. Relax into who he was. It had been the same, even during their disastrous meeting that morning.
    She’s the most magnificent thing I’ve ever seen.
    Caramel brown hair. Pale skin. Petite. All curves and intelligence and inner fire. She was a vulnerable pocket Venus he couldn’t tear his gaze away from. The compulsion to be near her, to talk with her and hear her voice in return, never let up. Watching her work was a turn-on all its own. Maddie Temple, all twenty-six years of her, was the purest healer he’d ever known.
    Pain spread across her face while she fought to diagnose her patient. Jarred’s own heart beat faster.
    “He’s bleeding out…” she whispered. She cleared her throat. Glared behind her. Found no one there. “Get a surgical consult over here!”
    Everyone but Jarred ignored the striking picture she made working over the groaning man. She smoothed shaking fingers across her unconscious patient’s forehead. Jarred’s skin tingled in the same spot. ER staff swarmed around him, immersed in saving the rest of the family of four that had been cut from the aftermath of SUV-vs.-semi. Naturally, the semi had won. The mother and children were most critical. The father, triaged as stable, was the least of