Free A Forbidden Taking by Kathi S. Barton Page A

for nonpayment of rent. She leaned down and
looked at the photo album that had been one of the things she’d gotten on her
first trip there.
    Megan
hadn’t opened it yet. She didn’t know if she ever would. Her family must miss
her; she certainly missed them. She had gone to see them the first few nights
after she’d finally figured out what she was. Even then she didn’t tell them. She
simply told them that she was going away for awhile, that she needed a long
rest after so much school. They believed her, had even given her some money to
take with her. “An early graduation gift,” her daddy had told her. That, too,
still lay near the album.
    Pulling
on a pair of jeans and a shirt and shoes she left Beau’s shirt in the cave and
made her way to her job. It wasn’t a great job, but she got to be in a hospital
even if it wasn’t being a doctor. Her hours were from three in the morning
until five-thirty. When she got there a little before two Thomas let her start
to work.
    Thomas
Reilly was a vampire. He was a nice man and he seemed to love what he was
doing. But he was overworked and as far as she knew, was doing an excellent job
of putting wolves and other creatures together. All Megan got to do was clean
up after each surgery. He was sitting in one of the high-back swivel chairs
when Megan went in a room to mop up. She nearly turned and left, but he
motioned her to come in.
    “I’m
about done here. Come in and talk to me a minute or two while you clean up.” He
turned in the chair and looked at her. “You gonna ever tell me your real name?”
    When
she had come by to apply for the job she’d told the office that her name was
“Jane Doe.” No one had said anything and had even hired her. Well, after she’d
made a pest of herself over the next several weeks.
    She
shrugged. “Nope. It wasn’t important when you hired me, it’s not now either.” She
squeezed out the water from the mop and set it near the counter. “Besides, why
do you care? I’m doing a good job, aren’t I?”
    “Yes.
Yes, you are. But I can’t help but think you might be a little over qualified
for this job. You smell different tonight. Something you wanna tell me?”
    “Nope.”
After she got all the towels and other paraphernalia cleaned up she moved the
bed and the equipment to one side and began to sweep up. After that she dipped
the mop in the bucket and after getting it good and saturated, she began to
mop.
    “I
thought so. I have a case I’m having problems with. I’m going to bounce the
situation off you. You can just listen. I do better when I can do that. I have
a woman whose hubby, for lack of a better term, is trying to impregnate her. He’s
not having any luck, mind you, but he keeps trying. I’m thinking he’s shooting
blanks. Can’t be sure about that because he won’t come in for testing. I’ve
thought about having her bring in a sample, but that…well, that just sounds
deceitful to me.”
    Megan
answered before she thought. “He needs to have no sex and wait for her to
become fertile. It’ll build up a more viable spermatozoon count.” As soon as
the words left her mouth she knew she’d been trapped. Dropping the mop she
turned to look at the doctor. He didn’t laugh at her, nor did he crack a smile.
He just stared at her.
    “I
thought you were a nurse. But you’re a doctor.” Thomas crossed his arms over
his chest. “I had my suspicions that first week when you told the nurse that
she needed to gather blood gases for that heart attack patient. Then two days
ago you helped a nurse out when she was trying to remember the type of surgery
that had been performed on her brother. Thoracotomy isn’t a common word, nor is
it a common procedure you heard here, especially when weres and vamps don’t get
any disease that would cause the removal of a cancer to the lung.”
    Megan
looked at the door and then back to the man. She was torn. Leave and not have a
job or stay and maybe have to explain herself? She