Praise for Time Rider 

Excerpt

        They stumbled into the clinic, Kristen staggering under the weight of the barely conscious man. "Bill, get Walt out of the exam room!" she snapped.
        "What the hell . . . "
        "Go! I can't hold him up much longer."
        "Let me . . . "
        She shook her head. "No! Just clear out the room." She urged the man in her arms to take just a few more steps, to make it just a little farther. He muttered something that sounded like "little general," his head lolling drunkenly on his neck.
        Walt came out of the exam room squinting against the bright flourescent lights, cursing and snorting. "Can't even get a good night's sleep anymore!" he grumbled, shrugging into a decrepit coat.
        "Get out of here, you old reprobate," Bill laughed. "You've slept all day long. Just because you're too cheap to get a hotel room when *your wife* kicks you out for drinking. Go home!"
        Bill helped Kristen get her vagrant settled on the exam table.  "Where'd you find this one? Was he attacked by aliens?" he asked, peering into the man's eye.
        She made a face at him. "That only happened one time, and you know that poor guy was diagnosed as schizophrenic."
        Bill chuckled as he checked the other eye. "Concussion. Nasty bump."
        She nodded, her own head aching. She rubbed her temples and examined the cut on his forehead. It wasn't bad, but Kristen felt the torn skin, the bruised flesh, as if it were her own.
        Bill slit the jacket with a scalpel and slid it off the man's arms. "Look at this, it's filthy. No, it's beyond filthy! We'll find him something from the stash. Whew!"  Bill dropped the offensive garment in the trash can.
        "Think he's got any broken ribs?" Kristen said, but Bill interrupted her.
        "Kristen, you're going to have to stop bringing in these bums. One of these days you're going to pick up somebody dangerous."
        She glanced at him irritably. "Trust me. Like I've told you before, I can spot them. They won't hurt me." She probed delicately around the man's rib cage, still marveling at his physical condition. A monstrous dark blue bruise marred his pale skin. She probed it gently, eliciting a ragged groan, although he didn't wake up.
        "I can't feel any breaks. Could be he's cracked a couple. Hard to tell without X-Rays," she said shortly, tamping down the well of sympathy and pity that were overwhelming her. Her emotions were rampant, out of control. What was the matter with her?
        "Yeah, look at the contusions," Bill remarked. "He's black and blue all over. Did he get hit by a truck?"
        Kristen shrugged. "That or he ran into a very angry mugger," she muttered.
        "Where'd you find this guy?" Bill's voice was tinged with suspicion and awe. "This is no homeless derelict. Look at that muscle tone. He's been working out, or he's in the service. Never saw this kind of physical conditioning outside of sports or the military." He grinned at her. "Going to take him home to live with your other tom cat?"
        "Bill! Don't be crude. He is strange, isn't he? He's starving, you can smell it, but with his lack of fat stores, it wouldn't take but a couple of days for his body to start digesting protein. Maybe somebody dumped him there in the alley."
        "Any ID on him?"
        Kristen shrugged again. "He said he didn't have any."
        "Yeah, right," Bill snorted. "Take a look."
        The thought of searching his pockets made her face grow hot. She couldn't believe she was acting like a schoolgirl about this guy's body.  Bill must be right, she thought, her brain latching onto a logical reason why the thought of touching a man . . .  no, a patient . . . would stir her so. It must be the perfection of his form that fascinated her. That was all. Determinedly she thrust her hands into his pockets, her eyes closed, her mind deliberately blank.
         The bell rang out front.
        "I'd better wait on that customer," Bill said wryly. "Let me know if you find anything interesting in there!" He leered at her as he left. She made a face at him, humiliated that he'd noticed her reaction to the man.
        Kristen didn't find anything in his pockets, so she turned her attention back to his injuries. It was a relief, him being unconscious, because when he was awake she could hardly think. She worked quickly, trying to finish before he woke up. She cleaned the cut on his head and quickly closed the ragged edges with sterile strips, then bathed his face where sweat and blood and dust had mingled.
        His features were cleanly sculpted and strikingly beautiful except for the grim, set lips and the furrowed brow. He looked to be about thirty-five or so. It was hard to tell because of his youthful body, but his face looked old and jaded, deep lines running from his nose to the edges of his mouth, deep creases at the corners of his eyes. She didn't think those creases were from laughter.
        She traced a finger down one of the lines, a finger that trembled as it smoothed the skin across his gaunt cheek.    She was amazed at her sudden boldness and at the depth of feelings he evoked in her. She would have never touched him so gently, so intimately, had he been awake. In fact, she'd never really touched a man at all, not like this. Her entire experience with men had been the few kisses and dates she'd endured in high school before she'd decided she wasn't cut out for romance. Her empath's brain had never been able to endure the duplicity of the boys who'd touched her and whispered sweet words while, inside, they churned with single-minded lust.
        As her thoughts wandered, her finger traced the deep creases at the corners of his mouth. Unless she was very much mistaken, those were lines of pain. She'd even seen them in children on the cancer ward.
        Her heart filled to bursting with compassion. The pain etched into his face wasn't the brief trauma of cracked ribs or bruises. It was old pain, deep pain. Pain no one should have to bear.
        Blinking hard, and chagrined at her reaction, she distracted herself with familiar, professional acts. She took her Penlight® from her pocket and lifted his eyelid. Yes, he was concussed. She flashed the light in his eye, then away, then back, watching the response of the pupils.
        You could tell a lot from eyes. Hypertension and diabetes both left their marks on the eyes, as did half a dozen other ailments. Not to mention grief, joy, anguish. Kristen touched the lines around his eyes, smoothing the tender skin. Yes. You could tell a lot.
        She jerked her hand away, once again dismayed by her unprofessional reaction. Taking a deep breath and blinking slowly, she turned her attention back to her examination. She shined the light through the pupil, leaning closer to look at the back of his eye. Something . . . .
        Suddenly alert and intrigued, she didn't have to force herself into professional reaction. Some odd sort of scar tissue shone from the depths of his eye, back toward the retinal wall. Could he have had a detached retina repaired? She looked in his other eye. It was clear. She looked back at the right eye, searching its depths. There was something else, too. Something opaque, foreign-looking. She moved the light so it shone from different angles. The object looked like a minuscule cube, and when the light hit it just right, it reflected, as if at least part of it were made of glass.
        She blinked and rubbed her eyes. She was too tired to figure it out. When he woke, she would ask him.
        Right now, though, she needed to get him undressed and examine him for further injuries. The filthy jeans molded his legs like the hands of a sculptor, the buttons strained across the front. She started to call Bill in to undress him, but if she did that she'd never hear the end of it.
        Her face burned as she reached for the buttons. They were some kind of molded plastic, with a logo she'd never seen before. She had undone all but the last one when his hard hand grabbed her wrist.
        "No!"
        Astonished that she hadn't known he was awake, she jerked against his grip as anger pummeled her through his touch. His fingernails were broken and bloody, his knuckles scraped, as if he'd tried to claw his way out of some dark prison. Looking at them, she could feel the burning pain on her own knuckles. She had an astounding urge to kiss the knuckles and the broken nails, to hold him and tell him he was safe now. What was it about him that stirred these feelings?
        She looked at his face. His eyes were like shards of cobalt glass cutting her. Could he tell what she'd been thinking?
        His fear streaked through her, wrenching her thoughts back to her job. She twisted her wrist against his steely grip. "Is the word no the extent of your vocabulary, Mr. . . . "
        "No."
        She stared. Was that his caustic sense of humor surfacing again? His hand on her wrist sent flashes of pain up her arm. She couldn't tell whose pain it was, his or hers.
        "If you think you can sit up, I need to clean you up and wrap your ribs."
        His expression remained unchanged.
        "It'll help you breathe. Also, I need to get these filthy clothes off you."
        "No."
        "Look, Mister!" She said, straining against his grip. "I don't have time to stand here and listen to your limited discourse for hours. I've already put in a full day and I'm ready to go home. But I found you, and I feel responsible for you, and I'll be damned if I'm going to leave a job half done. So, you've got two choices. You can get up and walk out of here, or you can let me get your ribs wrapped and give you something to eat so you can rest for a while. I don't really care which!"
        Something flickered in his wary eyes which might have been amusement, although it never reached his lips. He turned over on his side and hoisted himself up using his shoulders and hands. He grunted once. By the time he sat up his breath was shallow and fast, and sweat beaded his brow.
        "I'll -- take -- number one," he whispered and tried to stand. He gasped and stared at her, shock and fury on his face, then his eyes glazed and he collapsed like an abandoned marionette back onto the table.
        "So, Mister," Kristen whispered, pushing his hair back from his forehead. "You made your choice." She gently turned him onto his back and strapped his arms down, thankful he had passed out. She couldn't concentrate on her job when he was awake, transmitting his every emotion to her through his touch and piercing blue eyes. It was hard enough to concentrate even when he was unconscious.
        She probed his muscled wrist for a good vein and slipped a needle in, then hung an IV of dextrose 10% with normal saline.
        "Have some lunch," she muttered as she strapped his legs and his middle. "You need it." A queer pity quivered through her at his defenselessness. She was sure he wasn't used to being helpless. Her fingers lingered on the band she'd tightened around his diaphragm. When they began to curl against his muscled abdomen, she jerked her hand away and quickly prepared a syringe of meperidine and promethazine.
        "Dessert." She smiled at her joke. The narcotic and the antinauseant would let him sleep for a while and would relieve some of the pain from his bruised ribs. Later when he woke, maybe she could find out some information about him -- who he was, how he'd been hurt, why he was so afraid.
        She sat down in the chair beside him and dozed.

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