Dr. Mom And The Millionaire

Chapter Two

“I’d appreciate it enormously if you’d see him and get back to me as soon as you can, Doctor. He’s not cooperating with me and I’ve been getting calls all morning from reporters and wire services wanting to know his condition and what he’s doing in Honeygrove. I simply can’t release the statement he gave me,” Mary Driscoll, the dedicated assistant to the hospital’s administrator, implored Alex over the top of her silver-rimmed half glasses.

Dressed in a dove-gray business suit with slashes of black that somehow managed to match her bobbed hair, Mary looked perfectly coordinated, as always, and enormously capable of handling the myriad crises she intercepted for her boss. Alex knew the administrator, Ryan Malone, personally. The dashing and diplomatic man who’d gone out of his way to make her feel welcome at Memorial had just married one of her friends. And she knew he trusted Mary’s judgment implicitly.

If Mary was finding Chase Harrington difficult, Alex thought uneasily, then he was definitely presenting a challenge.

“What did he tell you to say?” she asked, her voice low so it wouldn’t carry beyond the corner of the hallway Mary had cornered her in.

“He told me to say nothing about him other than that he’s in excellent condition following a minor accident.”

“Excellent?” Alex repeated, stifling the urge to laugh. “I don’t think so.”

“My point exactly.”

“I wouldn’t call it a minor accident, either.”

Looking vindicated, Mary murmured, “Thank you, Doctor. I tried to tell him that it’s hospital policy to issue the truth about a patient’s condition, even if it’s just a statement like ‘guarded’ or ‘stable.’ Or we could go with ‘no comment.’ His response was that rules are bent all the time. That was when I offered to let him discuss the matter with Mr. Malone,” she continued, as Alex’s eyebrows arched, “but he informed me that he’d already given me his statement, and that the hospital administrator was the last person he wanted to see. He doesn’t want anyone in his room other than necessary medical staff.”

The murmur of voices drifted toward them when the wide doors of the surgical department swung open. Stepping back so the gowned attendants could bring out a patient on a gurney, Alex could practically feel the weight Ryan’s assistant carried shift to her own shoulders. It was something in the woman’s eyes. The encroaching relief, probably.

“If that’s what he wants, we’ll do our best to maintain his privacy,” Mary said confidently. “I just need something I can give the press. You’ll call me after you’ve seen him to give me his official condition?”

Alex had been on her way to the med-surg floor to do her rounds when Mary had intercepted her. Mentioning that, she then assured her she’d call as soon as she could and started down the beige-walled hall.

She hadn’t made it a dozen steps when Mary paused at the stairwell door.

“I almost forgot,” she began, looking apologetic now. “He asked for a fax machine. A plain-paper one. Not the kind with thermal paper. He said he doesn’t like fighting the curling sheets. Anyway,” she continued, having dispensed with the details, “I told him I’d have to defer to you on whether or not he could have one. Since we have no specific policy regarding office equipment in patients’ rooms, I believe that decision would be entirely up to the physician.”

Alex thought the woman looked entirely too cheerful as she opened the door and disappeared. But then, she’d just unburdened herself of any further dealings with the man Alex was now on her way to see.

The med-surg unit was on the opposite side of the floor from the surgical suites. Working her way through the labyrinth of halls with her lab coat thrown on over her scrubs, Alex could hear the whine of a saw grow louder the closer she came to her destination.

A small crew was framing a doorway near the third-floor elevators, presumably to lead to the roof garden on the new wing presently under construction. The noise was awful but unavoidable, and undoubtedly contributed to the agitation of the nurse who bore down on her the moment she stepped through the unit’s doors.

Everyone knew Kay Applewhite. And everyone knew the irascible nurse hated disruption. When she was on duty, she ran the floor as tightly as any sea captain ever ran a ship, and she didn’t tolerate anything that upset hospital routine or her patients. Despite her grandmotherly appearance, she was a stickler for schedules, did everything by the book and had little compassion for whiners, slackers or malcontents. With her family grown and gone, her work was her life and she didn’t hesitate to let everyone know that forty years of nursing had taught her that those who helped themselves, providing they were capable, healed far faster than those who were coddled.

The nurses called her General Sherman behind her back.

She took it as a compliment.

Figuring she was about to get a reminder to shut out the noise, Alex leaned against the heavy door to get it to close faster while Kay, her gunmetal-gray curls permed too tightly to move and elbows pumping, kept coming down the wide, door-lined hall. Below the cuffs of her white scrub pants, her orthopedic shoes squeaked like a pack of chattering mice.

“I’m so glad you’re here, Dr. Larson.” Lowering her voice when she reached Alex, she turned with a squeak to accompany her to the nurses’ station. “I need to talk to you about the compound femur that came through Emergency last night,” she muttered, referring to the patient by injury the way staff often did. “But before I forget, Mr. Malone’s assistant has been looking for you. She needs to talk to you about him, too. That woman’s the epitome of patience and tact,” Kay said, speaking of Mary Driscoll, “but when she came out of his room, I could tell he even has her exasperated.”

“We’ve already spoken.” Looking as unruffled as she sounded, Alex stopped at the nurses’ station with its computers and banks of files. “What kind of trouble is he giving you?” she asked, watching the short, stout woman slip behind the long white counter and hand over a chart.

“Beside the fact that he’s demanding and uncooperative,” the woman said, her tone as flat as the metal cover of the chart Alex had just opened, “he’s now refusing his pain medication. He was due for it over an hour ago.”

Alex’s head came up.

“He says he doesn’t want anything but aspirin,” Kay continued, seeming gratified by Alex’s swift frown. “We tried to explain that he needs something stronger, and that even if we wanted, we can’t give him anything his doctor hasn’t ordered.” Her expression pruned. “He also wants some financial newpaper I’ve never heard of and a fax machine for his room.”

Ah, yes, Alex thought, the fax machine. “I heard about that,” she murmured, not sure which feeling was stronger, displeasure or dread. “What room is he in?”

“Three-fifty-four.”

“How are his vitals?”

“Better than they should be. I took them myself. Blood pressure’s a little high, though.”

A rueful smile touched Alex’s mouth. “Now there’s a surprise. I’ll take care of him,” she promised, feeling her guard go up even as she stood there. She hated confrontations. Especially when her reserves were low. And they were now. She’d managed exactly five hours of sleep between Harrington’s compound femur and an impacted radius and ulna. Some idiot had actually tried to catch a safe his accomplice had dropped from a second-story window.

“I also need to see Brent Chalmers and Maria Lombardi. And Dr. Castleman’s and Dr. McGraw’s patients, too,” she added, pulling a slip of paper from her pocket on which she’d written their patients’ names. Castleman and McGraw were the other two doctors in the orthopedic clinic that Alex had joined two years ago. Whoever was on weekend call from the clinic checked on all the clinic’s patients.

“I’ll pull their charts for you right now,” Kay assured her. “I know you’re anxious to get out of here today. I heard you and Dr. Hall talking in the cafeteria yesterday,” she explained when Alex, clearly puzzled by her comment, glanced back at her. “You were telling her how you hoped things would be quiet this weekend because the Chalmers boy will be staying with you while he goes through his therapy and you need to clean your guest room.

“I know it’s none of my business,” she continued, her keen hazel eyes softening, “and I won’t say a word about what you’re doing if you don’t want me to, but I think it’s really nice the way you take in some of these kids. That Brent’s a sweet boy,” she pronounced, speaking of a shy sixteen-year-old Alex had operated on two weeks ago. “He deserves a break.”

The sharp ping of a patient call light echoed over the clatter of a lunch cart being wheeled by and a page for an orderly to report to Three G.

“I can’t say the same for that man, though,” she muttered, noting on the panel behind her that the light for room three-fifty-four was lit.

Alex didn’t bother telling Kay not to repeat what she’d overheard in the cafeteria. Her plans for Brent were hardly confidential and if Kay had overheard her talking with Kelly, her obstetrician friend who’d talked her into taking her last houseguest, someone else had probably overheard, too. But finding time to put sheets on the guest bed wasn’t the only reason Alex hoped the rest of the weekend passed quietly. She and Tyler had plans with friends for an early dinner that evening. And tomorrow, she needed to take him to the mall for new shoes.

“Give me a minute with Mr. Harrington,” Alex said, wanting the nurse to hold off answering the light as she headed for his room herself. She wasn’t going to be any more rested when she finished her rounds, so she might as well face the showdown now.

The image of a long hot bath flashed, unbidden, into her consciousness.

Practically groaning at the delicious thought of it, she paused outside his door, indulging herself a full two seconds before drawing a breath that pulled her five feet, five inches into the perfect posture she’d learned from Miss Lowe’s School of Tap and Classical Ballet. Releasing it the way she’d learned in Lamaze class, knowing a person could get through anything if she just kept breathing, she walked into the room.

Her first thought was that the man had no concept of the word rest. The ceiling-mounted television was on, the volume muted. Stock quotes ran in a continuous ribbon beneath a talking head.

Her patient wasn’t watching the television, though. The head of his bed was partially raised and the upper half of his body was hidden by an open newspaper.

Walking past the empty bed by the door, her glance skimmed from the metal external fixation device stabilizing the breaks in his elevated leg, over a long expanse of sheet and settled on the headlines of the Wall Street Journal.

He didn’t move, but it was apparent he knew someone was there. Presumably, the nurse he’d rung for.

“I just need the blinds adjusted. If you don’t mind,” he expanded with far more civility than she’d expected. “It’s too bright in here to focus.”

His deep voice still held a rasp from the airway, but there was strength to it now and the smoky undertones sounded as if they belonged there.

“You can’t focus because you’re barely twelve hours out of surgery and your eyes are still affected by the sedatives. Give it time.”

Her tone was conversational, her manner deliberately relaxed as she walked over to the window and dimmed the buttery glow of the mid-June sun filling the room. She itched to get outside in all that warmth and brightness. Cloudless days were a rarity in Honeygrove. “How are you feeling this morning?”

She’d heard the faint crackle of newsprint as he slowly lowered the paper, but her focus wasn’t on his face as she turned from the window. It was on the round metal rods above his knee that formed a double H on either side of his leg and the four pins that went through it. At least, that was what had her attention until his silence drew her glance and she met his impossibly blue eyes.

Last night, she remembered thinking the color breathtaking. The observation had been purely factual, rather like the way a person would describe velvet as soft and rock as hard. Now, she actually felt her breath stall in her lungs. The phenomenon was disconcerting enough. What made it downright unnerving was the unabashed way he held her glance before his own moved slowly, boldly over her face.

The man was cut, broken and battered. He looked every bit as tired as he undoubtedly felt, and he needed a shave. His dark hair was rumpled and the burgundy bruise along his high cheekbone had bloomed to contrast sharply with the stark white bandage and his faint pallor. Yet, even looking as if he’d come out on the losing end of a bar fight and stripped of any trapping that might indicate status or power, the aura of masculine command surrounding him was unmistakable.

So was the sensual tug low in her stomach before his glance settled on the embroidered Alexandra Larson, M.D. on her pristine white lab coat.

It didn’t matter that she’d seen him before. Until the moment his eyes locked on hers, he’d been more procedure than patient, more media myth than man. Before that moment, too, she hadn’t been the subject of his attention. Being the sole subject of it now, unnerved by the fact that she hadn’t moved, Alex forcibly reminded herself he was on her turf and held out her hand.

“I’m Dr. Larson,” she said, jerking her professional composure into a subdued smile. “When we met last night, you were pretty groggy. I’m your surgeon.”

She rather expected him to go a little chauvinistic on her. With his reputation and considering what she’d heard of his attitude so far, a little alpha-male behavior wouldn’t have surprised her at all. Or so she was thinking when his hand engulfed hers and the heat singing up her arm made her feel more female than physician.

“I remember your voice.” His glance narrowed as it fell to their clasped hands. A hint of memory glimmered in his expression, as if he might have recalled the feel of her hand in his, too. “I’m sorry, but I don’t remember what we talked about.”

Feeling strangely disadvantaged, Alex pulled back, letting her hand slide from his firm grip. “Mostly we discussed whether or not you were in any shape to make a phone call,” she replied, deliberately ignoring the tingling in her palm as she slipped her hands into her pockets. “I assume you’ve placed it by now,” she added, since a phone was within convenient reach on his bed table. “It was about a meeting last night that seemed rather important to you.”

Hesitation slashed his features. “Yeah,” he murmured. “I made it. Thanks.” Looking uneasy and not at all comfortable with the feeling, he nodded toward the bed. “So what’s the deal with the leg?”

It was as clear as his water glass that something about his business still disturbed him. It was equally clear that he wanted to change the subject.

“My question first,” she countered, more curious about his reaction than whatever his call had been about. “How do you feel?”

“Like I was hit by a Mack truck.” Moving gingerly, he set aside the paper someone had obviously gotten for him. Just as carefully, he eased back against the pillows. “Actually,” he muttered, looking paler from the movement, “I think it was a Ford.”

She’d expected antagonism from him. She’d been braced for bluster. She hadn’t anticipated raw sensuality or a dry humor that had somehow managed to survive obvious discomfort.

Feeling her guard drop, she eyed the wicked bruise edged beneath the left sleeve of his gown. She knew there was also one on his left hip. His thigh would be rainbow-hued for weeks. “I understand you’re refusing pain medication,” she said, reaching for the edge of his gown to lower it from his shoulder. “Why?”

“Because I don’t like the way it makes me feel.”

“You’d rather be in pain?” she asked mildly.

“I’d rather be able to think.” He hitched a breath when her fingers moved over the tender joint. “I just want my mind clear. I have things to do and I can’t do them if I can’t concentrate.”

Trying to concentrate herself, she made a mental note to have the nurses ice his beautifully muscled shoulder, then clinically ran her hand over his rock-solid trapezius muscle to the strong cords of his neck. The tension she felt there could easily have been a normal state of affairs for him. Her neck was definitely where she tended to carry her stress. But the impact would have strained his muscles, too.

“You’re going to be sore everywhere for a while,” she told him, frowning at the way the heat of his skin seemed to linger on her hands as she slipped the gown back in place.

“I was the last time, too.”

“You’ve done this before?”

“Not this way.” There was an edge in his voice that hadn’t been there a moment ago, a heavy hint of frustration that almost overrode the discomfort. “I broke my other leg skiing a couple of years ago. It’s an inconvenience, but it isn’t anything I can’t function with if I’m not taking anything that messes up my head. And as long as I can move around,” he pointedly added. “So let’s get rid of that scaffolding and just put a cast on it. I need to get out of here.”

“I’m afraid that’s not possible.”

Looking at her as if she couldn’t possibly have said what he thought he’d heard, he muttered, “Why not? All you have to do is take that thing off and wrap my leg in plaster of paris. It’ll probably take a couple of days to dry completely, but I don’t have to stay in the hospital for that.”

He was rubbing his temple. The one without the bandage. She didn’t doubt for a moment that he had a headache. She was also beginning to see why he seemed to be giving everyone else one, too. Especially Kay with her regimented routine and Mrs. Driscoll with her hospital regs. She seriously doubted that any man who’d accomplished what he had followed other people’s rules. He did things his way.

That was how he wanted them done now.

Unfortunately for him, he wasn’t in a position to call the shots.

Unfortunately for her, she was.

“You may have had a broken leg before,” she patiently allowed, still more concerned with the way he winced when he moved than with his obstinance, “but there are different kinds of breaks and this particular one can’t be casted. At least not yet. Your mobility is a priority but not our first one. The bone penetrated the skin and our biggest concern is infection. You’ll be able to get around with the scaffolding,” she assured him, referring as he had to the external fixation device. “But right now, you need a three-day course of IV antibiotics. As for letting you out of here, we’ll talk in a few days about how long you need to be hospitalized.”

“A few days isn’t acceptable. If I can get around on this thing, you can give me a prescription for whatever I need to take and I can get out of here now. I need to reschedule a meeting and I can’t hold it here.”

The man was clearly under the impression that it would take more than a speeding truck to slow him down. He also seemed to think her medical opinion of his treatment was negotiable, which, given his injuries, it was not. He held her glance, his carved features set and the furrows in his forehead speaking as much of pain as of impatience. He had work to do and he clearly intended to do it.

He seemed to overlook the fact that, at the moment, he couldn’t make it from the bed to the bathroom without help.

“You don’t seem to understand,” she said, every bit as determined to get her point across. She didn’t doubt for a moment that the man had a few dozen irons in the fire and that any number of them needed tending. Especially the meeting he was obsessing over. She understood career pressure. She was intimately acquainted with job stress. But she also knew that people in pain could be irritable, unreasonable.

“What you need right now are antibiotics. If you don’t get them, you could get an infection and, trust me, that’s the last thing you want. If you do get one, we’re talking six weeks of IV therapy. If that doesn’t work, you could lose your leg. It gets bad enough and we can’t control it, you could lose your life.”

He didn’t seem nearly as impressed as he should have been with the consequences. “Scare tactics, Doctor?”

“I’d be happy to bring you a few case histories to back up my conclusion.”

“I’d rather have a copy of the Financial Times.”

“Fine. You can cooperate and be back on your feet in a few months, or do it your way and have it take longer. And by the way,” she added, in that same velvet-over-steel voice, “you might not be acting like a wounded bear if you’d take what I prescribe. The pain is only going to get worse. Especially when they get you up in a few minutes so you can move around. I guarantee you’re not going to want to stand up without it.”

Pulling a small, rubber-tipped reflex hammer from her pocket, she swallowed her irritation at the deliberate challenge in his eyes and moved to the end of the bed. “Can you feel this?” she asked, refusing to let him bait her any farther as she ran the instrument over the top of his foot.

The relief Chase felt at the faint tickling sensation was buried as promptly as the fear he’d denied when he’d first seen the metal pins protruding from the bandages on his leg. Aching everywhere, trying desperately not to think about it, he purposely waited until his doctor glanced toward him before he acknowledged her.

“I feel it,” he finally said, trying to decide if he was impressed with her aplomb or just plain annoyed by it.

He did know he was intrigued.

With her attention on her exam, his glance skimmed the feathered sweep of her hair. It was too short for his taste, barely enough for a man to gather in his hands. But the color was incredible. Shades of ruby and garnet gleamed like lines of fire in rich, dark cinnamon. And it looked amazingly soft. Almost as soft as the skin of her long, graceful neck and the delicate shell of her ear.