Free Dance with the Doctor by Cindi Myers

last time she’d seen him—had jerked her back to that moment of horror.
    And now she’d run away from him and from his happy family. No, he and Melissa were no longer married, but they had a child they both clearly loved. A happy, but fragile child who took handfuls of pills multiple times a day and who was one bad cold away from ending up back in the hospital, hooked up to those awful machines. Darcy shuddered at the thought. She wasn’t ready for that. No matter how much she was attracted to a man, she would never be ready for that again.



CHAPTER FIVE
    M IKE HATED the weekends Taylor spent with her mother. He tried to fill the hours with work, but more often than not dealing with other sick children only heightened his worry over Taylor. Not that he didn’t trust Melissa to look after their daughter, but she wasn’t a medical professional. She might not realize something was wrong until it was too late.
    This was the weekend of the long-awaited Disney On Ice spectacular. “I’m really too old for this,” Taylor had confided to Mike as she’d packed for the weekend away. “I mean, I’d rather go to a concert or something. Hannah Montana’s coming to town.”
    “Is that a hint?” he asked.
    She grinned. “Maybe. Anyway, Mom wants to go to this, so I guess it will be all right.”
    Mike knew she was secretly excited about the show, with all its glitter and glamour and exaltation of everything princess. She wore her purple boots and, at the last minute, had added a sparkling tiara someone had given her in the hospital.
    The hospital made him think of Brent. The boy had been back in the office this afternoon. Mike had changed his medication and ordered a blood workup, but he was worried. Every sick child was a potential Taylor. Mike didn’t want to make the same mistake with others he’d made with her. Was he missing something that might turn out worse because of his oversight? Should he send the boy to a specialist, and if so, which one?
    He continued to ponder this as he made his rounds at the hospital Friday evening. He only had two patients to see: a girl recovering from pneumonia and a boy who’d crashed his dirt bike at a racetrack. Both were doing well and Mike left the hospital in a good mood.
    Usually on nights when Mike had the house to himself, he indulged in takeout and beer while watching a ball game or a movie on TV. But there was no game on tonight, and no movie he wanted to see.
    Maybe he’d go out to eat. Someplace nice. The kind of place he’d take a date, if he dated.
    As he drove away from the hospital, he kept an eye out for a likely looking restaurant. He’d order a good steak, and one glass of red wine. Then a red neon sign caught his eye and he tapped the brake. Arabica. The restaurant where Darcy danced. Not giving himself time to change his mind, he put on his blinker and turned into the parking lot.
    He asked for a table near the small space at the front of the room that served as a stage. He ordered lamb kebabs and a Scotch and water and waited until the lights dimmed. The sounds of flutes and drums and a woman singing in Arabic filled the room.
    Darcy arrived in a swirl of purple and gold, sparkling with sequins and jewels. A many-paneled skirt hung low on her hips, framed by a jeweled, fringed girdle. A jewel glinted at her navel and more fringe trimmed the bra from which the tops of her breasts spilled. Mike had a flash of memory of the first time he’d seen her dance, that day in her studio, when the air around him had seemed charged and he’d realized how empty his life was of all things sexual.
    As the music rose now she began to shimmy, the fringe and sequins shuddering, her flesh quivering, mesmerizing him. She moved in time with the music, first fast, then slow, tracing arcs and circles in the air with her hips, then her breasts, making the fringe jump and dance along with her. She undulated with snakelike grace, then pranced across the stage, hips bouncing