Lori gasped, the first substantial reaction he'd heard from her all day. Who could blame her? This kid was a heartbreaker.
She stood, small and still, her navy cotton dress a size too big and drooping off one shoulder. A grubby Barbie poked from either end of her clenched grip. Magda met his gaze dead-on, her eyes flat. A living casualty of war.
He'd seen the look too often in his father's eyes, a look cultivated in a Vietnamese POW camp. A look the old man still carried in unguarded moments. Gray had long ago accepted he couldn't heal his father or his family any more than he could fix the real problem for these children. He could only bandage them up and pass them off to true healers like Lori.
Too many emotions churned within Gray. Complicated mishmashes of things he couldn't deal with now, didn't want to wade through ever again. Keep it simple. Give the kid a bandage and a smile. It was all he had to offer.
Lori heard the creak of Gray's chair as he shifted. She wanted to ask for his help with this child whose soulful eyes lashed at emotions already too bare after a draining day.
But she wouldn't. She could handle it on her own. Asking for help had never been her forte, anyway.
Gunfire grumbled outside. Not much time. Lori eased forward, no fast motions, and carefully picked up the little girl. She placed Magda on the gurney, then hitched up to sit beside her.
Gray pulled the stethoscope up to his ears. Magda cringed back. Lori encircled her shoulders and squeezed. "Shhhh. It's okay."
"Yeah, see." Gray held the stethoscope on his own chest.
Magda frowned. He grinned, put it on his forehead, his chin, his nose, like any mischievous kid except for that beard-stubbled jaw. Magda buried her face against Lori's shoulder.
"Ah, playing hard to get are we, little Magpie." Gray held up the stethoscope. "Look. Here's how it's done."
He reached toward Lori and paused, as if waiting for permission. She swallowed and nodded. The disk rested safely in the center of her chest, no accidental brushes. Good.
Except he would hear her heart tap dancing double time.
Heaven help her if he flashed that wicked grin of his her way, because she didn't think she could keep from blushing—or screaming.
He didn't look up.
Worse, his head bowed and he simply listened. Disk pressed against her chest, he listened without moving as if the sound of her racing heart might mean something to him. Lori stared down at that strong neck, his dark hair peeking from the edges of his red bandanna. Boyish, rugged, appealing.
Wrong.
She'd had enough of playing doctor with him for one day. For a lifetime.
Magda's hand untwined from Lori's shirt and inch by tentative inch snuck forward until she touched Gray's bandanna.
He jerked away. Magda winced. The tight lines around his eyes eased, and he tapped his head. "You like this? With that stylish 'do' you're sportin' little one, I can't say I blame you for wanting some head cover. I'd give you mine, Magpie, but it's probably soaked by now." His hand snaked into his thigh pocket. "How about this?"
Tugging free a blue bandanna, he waved it in front of her. Her brown eyes sparkled to life for the first time. Her fingers gripped the Barbie in an excited, tight fist.
Gray folded the fabric into a triangle and draped it over Magda's head. His total focus on his small patient riveted Lori. He knotted the three ends over Magda's butchered hair.
Leaning back, he smiled a full-out grin and gave the girl a thumbs-up. "Beauty."
Lori wanted to gut punch him.
How dare he be so … so … everything.
Her mind wandered angry paths as he warmed the stethoscope on his hand. Gray should have left her alone and let her work with Tag in his baggy flight suit. Or with happily married Lancelot. Or with Bronco, who was more like a big brother. A really big brother.
Instead Gray had to torment her with all those appealing ways that had rattled her world first time around. Except she would be smarter now, resist temptation. She would heed his warnings and the warnings of her own heart, a heart she had no intention of entrusting to Grayson Clark.
She wouldn't be fooled by his bandanna-bonding. This charming vagabond had zero interest in happily-ever-after, and she couldn't settle for less. "I think she's ready for you to check her out now."
"Okay, Miss Magpie, let's listen to those lungs." He rested the disk on her reed-thin chest, moved it around, frowned, moved it along her back, then front again, lingering longer than he had with the other children.
"Damn," he whispered, before draping the stethoscope around his neck while he used the otoscope to look up her nose and in her ears, his doctor-face smooth and expressionless.