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  Her stomach rumbled at the mere suggestion of a proper meal. Vat-brewed proteins and algae broth were nutritious, but their flavors were somewhere between bland and disgusting. The only thing remotely palatable was the fruit-flavored gelatin desserts, and even that had lost its appeal. “If you bring me a sandwich, you’ll have my undying devotion.”

  Dane grinned, making him look years younger. “And what do I get if I bring you something better than a sandwich?”

  “You want more than my undying devotion?”

  He tapped his rank insignia and winked. “I didn’t get to be director by settling for anyone’s first offer.”

  “Of course not, you’re Alliance, and the Alliance never settles for anything less than everything,” she teased and winked back.

  Dane simply chuckled. “Oh yeah, you’re cut from the same cloth as Alayna. No wonder you two are friends. I’ll be back later with food.”

  “What’ll it cost me?” she asked.

  “No cost. Consider it a get-well gift. Shi—stars, we really do need to get going, sweet pea.”

  Ciara snickered. “Annie’s going to have an impressive vocabulary of half-curses at the rate you’re going.”

  “You’re telling me.” Dane was finding it hard to leave. When Vance had told him about his rebel patient, he’d mentioned that she was brave, but had somehow forgotten to mention the fact she was beautiful. Even with her face marred by bruises and wearing nothing but the standard-issue med-center bedclothes, Dane found himself drawn to her, and he hadn’t been interested in any woman since their chosen, Christine, had died.

  “Hungry, Daddy,” Annie announced.

  That was his cue to go, but not for long. He had a few questions for Vance, and then he was coming back here to spend more time with Ciara. It wasn’t the way he’d planned on spending his day off, but enjoying time with someone new and interesting seemed a lot more fun than hanging out with only Annie for company.

  “Annie, we’re going to eat now. Ciara, we’ll be back in a while. Until then, try not to get too bored.”

  “I’ll do my best, but I can’t make any promises.” She waggled her fingers at Annie one last time. “Bye, little one.”

  “Bu-bye!”

  Dane left, settling Annie more firmly on his hip once they were out in the hallway. When they were out of earshot, he glanced down at his daughter and asked, “Did you like Ciara?”

  Annie nodded, sending her dark waves of hair bouncing around her face. “She nice.”

  Dane found himself agreeing with her assessment. “I think so, too.”

  * * * *

  Alone again, Ciara left her bed and carefully made her way to the bathroom. One look in the mirror had her groaning in dismay. If she was going to convince anyone she was healing up well and ready to be released, she was going to need to clean up, get her hair untangled, and see if she could talk someone into bringing her something to wear that actually fit. Preferably before Dane came back, or Vance dropped by to see how she was doing. Not that they had anything to do with her sudden need to make herself presentable. Her only motivation was to get out of this place as fast as possible.

  At least, it was the only motive she was willing to admit to.

  * * * *

  An hour later, Vance and Dane arrived at Ciara’s private room with a tray full of food. Neither of them was sure what she would want to eat, so they’d opted to grab a little of everything and let her decide what she wanted. Vance had vetoed a few of the items as being too spicy or hard to digest, but otherwise, he wasn’t too worried about her diet. Ciara was recovering incredibly well for someone without any enhancements. Of course, some of that was inherited from her enhanced parents, the first small steps of the human race toward the next phase of their evolution. In her case, though, Vance suspected most of it was pure willpower. He’d never met anyone as determined as Ciara Fanning.

  Dane rapped lightly on the door while Annie took a more direct approach. “See-ar-ah. We here!”

  Ciara’s voice filtered through the heavy door, her words lilting with laughter. “So you are. Come in, Annie, and bring your daddy with you.”

  Vance hung back for a second, giving Dane and Annie time to enter before joining them. “I came along, too. I heard you had convinced Dane and my daughter to smuggle you in some real food. Tired of algae broth already?”

  Ciara looked up from her seat near the window and gave them all a dazzling smile that hit him like a runaway rocket.

  Holy nova, she’s beautiful.

  The thought surprised him, but not as much as the transformation Ciara had undergone since he’d seen her on his rounds the night before. Her hair tumbled around her shoulders in a riot of gleaming red curls, and she’d swapped her ill-fitting gown for a pale green cotton robe and matching pajamas.

  “You brought me food! Real food. Thank you. If I had to face one more bowl of green slime, I might have lost the will to live.” She got to her feet with care, and Vance was pleased to note that despite her improved appearance, she wasn’t pushing herself too hard. It would be a while yet before she was fully healed. He had seen far too many patients set back their recoveries by trying to do too much, too soon.

  Dane set Annie down on the floor, making sure that the door was firmly closed so she couldn’t make an escape. “We did. We got you a little of everything, at least the stuff Doc approved for you.”

  Ciara swept in and scooped the tray out of Dane’s hands with a gleeful laugh. “I’ll take it. Thank you both so much. Hey, Annie, do you want to help me decide what to eat first? It all looks so good!”

  “Pie first,” Annie declared without even looking at the tray.

  “I knew I liked you, kid. You know what’s important in life.” Ciara retreated to the bed and gestured for the two men to take a seat.

  Dane sat down, but Vance moved over to the bed and deposited Annie at the foot before retreating slightly to lean against the nearest wall.

  “How are you feeling, today?” Vance asked.

  Vance was having trouble remembering that he was here in an official capacity. There was something about Ciara that made him want to relax and simply enjoy her company. He didn’t want to talk about her recovery. He wanted to know about her. How did someone born and raised in Light City wind up in the badlands, working as a medic for the rebels? There were no answers to be found in her medical file. It was over a decade out of date, the last entries appearing just before Ciara turned twenty-one. After that, it was as if she’d vanished off the face of the planet.

  She held her fork over her plate while deciding what to eat first. “I’m healing. My ribs still ache and the incision’s tender, but that’s all. So long as I don’t try any sudden moves, nothing hurts, so I’m calling it an improvement. The boys were by earlier. They’re both bouncing back amazingly fast, all things considered. Losing their mom is hurting them more than anything else right now.”

  “There are some pains only time can heal,” Dane said, and Vance found himself nodding in agreement.

  “Their father, Tanner, is going to take the Alliance’s offer and move to Fort Saken. I can’t blame him, but Black Springs is going to be hard pressed to rebuild without Tanner’s experience. His family were farmers for generations. He knows more about hydroponics than anyone else there.” She speared a morsel of baked apple and popped it into her mouth with obvious enjoyment.

  Her low moan of appreciation was barely more than a hum, but it was enough to make Vance’s pulse quicken. He’d never been attracted to a patient before, but there was no denying that was what he was feeling. Too bad he couldn’t do anything about it. Not while she was under his care, anyway.

  “Is that what Black Springs was? A hydroponics station?” Dane asked.

  “More of a small, general farming community. Hydroponics is the easiest way to grow things out in the badlands. The soil’s too toxic to farm, but solar and wind power are plentiful, and the town was named for a natura
l spring that provided enough water.”

  “If the soil is still toxic, wouldn’t the water be, too?” Vance asked.

  “It’s a lot easier to purify water than dirt. At least, that’s what they told me.” Ciara shrugged. “I’m a medic, not a horticulturalist. I specialize in people, not plants. I do know that they were growing enough food to be able to trade with other towns. If they don’t rebuild, the others will need to find another way to get the produce they need.”

  “I thought that the Alliance was shipping food supplies to the badlands to help the ones still living out there. Isn’t that enough?” Vance was intrigued by what he was hearing. His only trip to the badlands had been the rescue mission that resulted in him meeting Ciara. So far, he hadn’t been able to learn much about what really went on out there.

  Ciara devoured the last bits of her pie before gesturing vaguely toward the room’s only window. “Too many people live out there. If they relied purely on the Alliance handouts, they’d starve to death. There are villages and communes scattered all across the badlands, and a number of nomads who don’t stay in one place too long. Alayna was one of those, always on the move. Some years, I’d only see her a couple of times unless she was hurt and needed to be patched up.”

  “Alayna’s one tough woman. Almost as tough as another rebel I’ve recently met,” Vance said, looking pointedly at Ciara. To his amazement, she blushed.

  She kept her eyes on her food as she started eating a bit of this and that. “I’m nothing special. Out there, you have to be tough, or you won’t last long. And I’m not really a rebel. I don’t take sides. I help anyone who needs it.”

  Dane asked the question Vance had been itching to. “You said you’re a medic. Can I ask where you lived and how you ended up working out in the badlands? Not many people would leave Alliance lands the way you have. ”

  Ciara glanced at Vance. “You didn’t tell him?”

  He shook his head. “It wasn’t my place. What I saw in your records was confidential, and I was looking at the medical stuff. I was trying to save your life at the time. Your personal history wasn’t what I needed to know.”

  Ciara was stunned. Vance would have to have seen her files by now. He was her doctor after all. It never occurred to her that he’d keep her secrets for her. “Thank you. That was…decent of you.”

  Annie yawned and curled up like a kitten at Ciara’s feet, and Ciara reached out to stroke her brown curls, coaxing the child to relax even further.

  “Okay, now I’m curious as hell. What didn’t Vance tell me? What am I missing?” Dane asked, keeping his voice low.

  “I’m not a certified medic. Stars, I’m not a certified anything. I wasn’t finished with my training when I left Light City. I’m self-taught, picking up one or two courses along the way. I gathered up a few textbooks and training vids over the years, too.” She sighed in regret as she remembered she’d lost her meager library in the collapse of the clinic. “I guess I’m going to need to find a way to replace those.”

  Dane was staring at her. “You’re self-taught? How’s that even possible? Vance was in school for-fucking-ever learning how to be a doctor.”

  She shrugged. “Yeah, well, he knows a lot more than I do, and he gets to do his work in a nice, clean med-bay. Me? I worked in a clinic about the same size as this room with dirt floors, black market meds, and the knowledge that I was the only chance most of my patients had. Necessity may be the mother of invention, but having someone’s life in your hands is the grandmother of all incentives for not fucking up.”

  Both men laughed, then hushed themselves as Annie stirred, stretched and then nodded off again.

  “Will you go back out there once you’re healed up?” Dane asked.

  “I’ll go where I’m needed. I doubt anyone around here needs my skills. They have the real thing to call on.”

  Vance cleared his throat. “You could be the real thing, too, Ciara. I mean, you could finish studying to be a paramedic. You had the grades to be good at it. This place is growing, and they’re going to need a civilian med-center soon.”

  She arched a brow in the handsome doctor’s direction. “So you did read more of my file than just my medical records.”

  His mouth opened, closed, and opened again. “Uh—yes? Damn it, you caught me. I snooped.”

  Dane clapped a hand over his mouth to muffle his laughter, and Ciara couldn’t help but grin at Vance’s distress. The big man really was likeable, and both men had managed to get past the walls she usually kept up when around anyone she didn’t know. She knew part of that was because she trusted her friend’s judgment. If Alayna thought they were unsavory types, she wouldn’t be friends with them. She certainly wouldn’t talk about them during every visit.

  “I was training to be a paramedic before I had to leave home suddenly,” she explained to Dane. “My parents didn’t approve of what I was studying, but they really didn’t approve of anything I did. Once I was old enough that they weren’t in charge of my life anymore, I did what I wanted to, not what they expected of me. Then…things happened, and I eventually ended up out here. This wasn’t the life I had envisioned for myself, but it’s the one I got.”

  “Your family. Do they have any idea where you are, or what you do?” Vance asked.

  She could tell by his expression he already knew the answer. One of the last things Ciara had done before leaving for the badlands was to have her files flagged so that her family wouldn’t be contacted in case of emergency. Vance had to have seen that.

  “They don’t know, and they don’t care.” She touched the star mark on her face. “They stopped caring the day I got this. As far as they’re concerned, they only had three kids. My sister the scroll and my two brothers, both of whom are ‘leets, like you.”

  Dane looked down at his sleeping daughter with a smitten expression on his handsome face. “If your brothers let your parents turn their backs on you because you aren’t a scroll, then they’re nothing like us. When Annie’s testing day comes, we’ll face it as a family. When it’s over, it won’t matter what the results are. She’s always going to be our baby girl, and nothing will change that.”

  “Then she’s a lucky little girl.” Ciara hadn’t stopped stroking the child’s hair as they talked. It wasn’t often she got to spend time with a child when they weren’t sick or in pain, and Annie’s sweet presence had brightened an otherwise boring day. Knowing she could never have children of her own made Ciara appreciate them all the more. They were a precious gift, and seeing Dane and Vance dote on their little girl made it easy to like them.

  * * * *

  Dane was still trying to wrap his head around the transformation that had taken place in the hour or so he’d been gone. He’d thought Ciara was attractive before, but now—damn. She really did clean up well. Vance had been surprised by the change, too. Dane had noticed his reaction, and the fact Vance had reacted at all was telling. Vance hadn’t so much as looked at another woman since Christine’s death.

  Realizing all three of them had lapsed into silence, Dane restarted the conversation. He wasn’t ready to leave yet. He wanted to spend more time getting to know Ciara, and he suspected Vance did, too. “Would you ever consider going back to school and finishing your certification? Vance is right, this place is booming. You’d be able to find work here easily enough.”

  The light in her eyes dimmed a little. “I don’t even have a place to stay, yet. If I stuck around, I’d have to do something else for work to pay the bills while I was training. If I go back to the badlands, I can trade my skills for room and board until I get back on my feet again. To be honest, I like to be needed. I want to make a difference. I’m not sure I can do that here in Fort Saken.”

  Vance nodded. “It wouldn’t be easy. Giving up helping people, even for a while. I wouldn’t like that option if someone suggested it to me, either. But, I hope you think about it. You have to start over no matter what. Long term, I think you could make
a real difference here.”

  Dane watched the conversation with interest. Vance was definitely interested in the pretty redhead, even if he was doing his best to hide it. They’d been friends since their Academy days. There was no way Dane could miss the signs, especially not when he was feeling the same way. The question was, what were they going to do about it? They hadn’t talked about their future plans, yet. They’d both been focusing on making it day to day. Dating hadn’t even come up. But maybe it was time they talked about it. And while they were thinking about the future, there would be time to get to know Ciara better.

  Ciara tried to stifle a yawn and failed. Between the food, and the effort it had taken to get herself cleaned up, she was exhausted again. As much as it pained her to admit it, she needed more time to heal. “I was going to try and convince you to let me out of here soon, Doc, but I’m betting the yawn screwed my chances, huh?”

  Vance gave her an amused look. “Even if you hadn’t yawned, I have no intention of releasing you yet. I might consider early next week, though, if you keep healing the way you are.”

  A few more days meant she’d be out a week earlier than the two weeks he had predicted she’d need when she first arrived. “I guess I could survive a few more days of abject boredom and bad food.”

  Vance glanced down at her wrist and frowned. “Why don’t you have a wrist unit? That way you could watch vids, read, or at least contact people.”

  “My wrist unit didn’t survive the earthquake, or if it did, no one was able to find it in the rubble. Alayna’s offered to buy me a new one, but I don’t want her spending credits on me. I’ll make do.”

  “I’m sorry. I keep forgetting you lost damned near everything.” Vance looked thoughtful for a moment, then nodded to himself. “Tell you what, I’ll gather up some reading material tonight, and tomorrow, I’ll come by and bring you another lunch of real food.”