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A pearl stud gleamed on her earlobe. Simple. Understated.
Her profile was as elegant as a cameo.
Alexandra Larson looked nothing like someone who would replace hips and knees and piece together broken bodies for a living. With her delicate features and doe-soft brown eyes, she looked more like some advertiser’s idea of a kindergarten teacher. Or a dancer. He’d always been under the impression that orthopedic surgery required a little muscle. If he had to guess, there wasn’t a whole lot beneath the narrow white coat covering her scrubs.
He had no problem with her not looking like his idea of a doctor. He had no problem with her being female. His problem was with needing a doctor in the first place—especially one who seemed to think she knew his body better than he did.
Shelving that little annoyance, he settled back, mentally whimpering as he carefully let his body relax against the mattress he was certain had been constructed of concrete. As sore as he was, the surface felt as hard as a slab and was just about as comfortable. He tried to overlook that, too.
What he couldn’t overlook was how he could so easily recall her from last night. He’d been too drugged to fully comprehend much of anything beyond the pain and the need to get to a phone. But, somehow, he could still remember the soothing tones of her surprisingly sultry voice and feeling strangely calm when she’d rested her hand on his shoulder.
That feeling completely eluded him now. As she continued her examination, his thoughts flashed to the accident that had landed him on her operating table. A couple of seconds one way or the other and he wouldn’t have been in the intersection when that idiot had blown the red light. If he’d called to confirm his appointment from the airport rather than heading straight for his meeting, it wouldn’t have happened. If he’d taken an earlier flight instead of eking every possible minute out of the afternoon, he would already have been at the hotel.
The accident hadn’t been his fault, but that didn’t stop him from being angry with himself for not preventing it. He knew he’d been preoccupied. He’d been thinking of the two men he was to meet in the hotel’s lounge, worrying about what he would think of them. Or, more importantly, what they would think of him. He had no idea how he’d be received and the uncertainty had him feeling more unsettled and uneasy than he’d felt in his entire life.
He was thinking he’d give up half of everything he owned just to get that meeting over with when he felt his doctor’s hand rest on his bare calf. Small and soft, its warmth penetrated his skin, mercifully drawing his attention from his thoughts and focusing it on the one part of his anatomy that hadn’t been throbbing until he caught her scent and felt her touch when she’d checked his shoulder.
He’d had no idea that surgical soap could smell so appealing. He didn’t know either what she wore with it that made it so seductive. Or, how she could lower his blood pressure even as she raised it.
“I understand you’re from Seattle. If you’ll give me the name of your personal physician, I can start arranging a transfer to a hospital there, if you’d like.”
“I’m not leaving Honeygrove until I’ve done what I came to do.”
She hesitated. “Fine,” she said, again, when he was pretty sure what she actually thought was “great.” “We’ll just keep you here, then.”
“I need a fax machine.”
Something like resignation washed over her delicate features. Or maybe it was annoyance. The way she schooled her features as she crossed her arms made it hard to tell for sure.
For some reason he couldn’t begin to identify, her forced calm annoyed the daylights out of him.
“I heard,” she informed him, all business. “Unfortunately, we’re not equipped to set up an office in a hospital room. If you need something sent, I’m sure Mrs. Driscoll would be happy to take care of it for you.”
“I’m not asking to use your personnel or your equipment.” Curbing the quick flash of exasperation, he closed his eyes, fighting for the calm she seemed to manage with such exasperating ease. “I’ve already explained that.”
“You haven’t explained it to me.”
She had a point. She also actually looked willing to listen, which was more than anyone else had done so far. “I’ll buy a machine if someone will just get me a phone book so I can have one delivered and set up. I have a meeting in Chicago on Tuesday and I’d planned to finish the contracts this weekend. The drafts are in my briefcase, which no one can seem to locate,” he pointed out, trying hard to hold back his frustration but pretty sure he wasn’t succeeding. “If I had them, I could work on them instead of lying here doing nothing. Since I don’t, I’ll have my attorney fax me a copy. I’d have my secretary do it, but she’s at her son’s wedding this weekend.
“I know I won’t be going to Chicago myself,” he countered, sharp claws of frustration gripping hard when she pointedly glanced at his leg. “My attorney will represent me. That’s what I pay him to do.”
His terseness caused the soft wing of her eyebrow to jerk up. Looking a little cooler than she had a moment ago, she picked up the chart she’d dropped on the end of his bed. “I’ll get you the number for the fax at the nurses’ station,” she said, sounding as if she were willing to be reasonable even if he wasn’t. “You can have them sent there.”
“That won’t work.” There were changes he needed to send to his attorney and his attorney would have to send the documents back once the changes were made. Aside from the fact that he’d prefer his business dealings to remain confidential, he had other projects he needed to stay on top of, and he knew as sure as stocks rose and fell that the hassle with the head nurse wouldn’t be worth the trouble. “Attila out there has already pointed out that the nurses aren’t secretaries—”
“It’s General Sherman…I mean Kay,” his suddenly fatigued-looking doctor hastily corrected. “The woman’s name is Kay.”
“Fine. I’m sure General Kay isn’t going to like having her precious routine interrupted. I can do everything myself if someone will just get me a phone book.” His voice was low, partly because he had no intention of losing control to the point where he raised it; mostly because his throat felt as if he’d swallowed sandpaper.
That frustrated him even more.
“I also need to have the meeting I missed last night,” he muttered. “But that’s something I can’t do until you let me out of here.”
And that’s what bothered him most, he thought, and shoved his fingers through his hair.
Alex saw him wince, then heard him hiss a breath when the suddenness of his movement caught up with him and pain radiated from his shoulder. She didn’t doubt for a moment that his agitation had only increased the pain in his head. Strain dulled his eyes. Except for his bruises, the sheets now had more color than his face. She didn’t know if he was the most stoic man she’d ever encountered, or the most masochistic. She would concede that he was the most driven.
She truly didn’t care about his wheeling and dealing. Her concern was getting him well and keeping him comfortable while she was doing it.
“I realize you have obligations,” she conceded, certain he wasn’t coping with the pain anywhere near as well as he wanted her to believe. “But I don’t think you appreciate how much trauma your body has sustained. I’ll have your nurse bring you a phone book and I’ll change your pain medication to something that will take the edge off and leave your head clear. But you might as well call whoever handles your schedule and have them cancel everything for the next couple of weeks.”
She turned to avoid his scowl and headed for the door. “Oh, yes. One more thing. Your condition right now is, officially, stable. Do you want that released to the press, or do you want no comment.”
“I already gave my statement to the woman from the administrator’s office.”
“And you overstated your condition and understated the accident.”
For a moment, he said nothing. He just watched her with his brow furrowed while frustration warred with the pain that undoubtedly frustrated him, too. “I’m not going to argue with you, Doctor. Go with your call on the condition, but leave my estimate of the accident alone.”
He’d been there. She hadn’t.
He didn’t say as much, but that was the message she got as challenge slipped once more into those disturbingly blue eyes.
“Good enough,” she told him, wondering why he couldn’t have piled up his car when someone else had been on call. “Get some rest.”
She stepped into the wide hall, feeling more as if she’d escaped the room rather than merely left it. She’d dealt with demanding type-As, the chauvinism prevalent among some of her male colleagues and her son’s terrible twos. All of which, she felt, qualified her as something of an expert when it came to handling difficult men.
But a woman didn’t handle Chase Harrington. She worked around him. Still, she hadn’t lost her cool when he’d lost his patience. Or when he’d so cavalierly informed her of how she could handle his leg and his medication. And she thought she’d done a commendable job of ignoring the way his glance kept moving to her mouth as she spoke. All he’d done was make her forget to ask if he had any more questions about his condition, which was something she rarely failed to do with a patient.
Irritated with herself for letting him get to her, refusing to go back and let him do it again, she headed for her next patient intent, for the moment, on putting the man from her mind.
Her intentions were honorable. But Brent Chalmers axed them within ten seconds of her walking into his card-and-mylar-balloon-filled room. The gangly blond teenager with the shy smile had heard that Chase was there.
He’d never actually heard of Chase before. Until a few weeks ago when his throwing arm had been mangled in a thresher, the boy’s life had centered around sports, a car he was saving to buy and the little farming community of Sylo a hundred miles away. If he’d ever read the business section of a newspaper, it was only because he’d been required to write a report on it for class. He’d just overheard the nurses whispering about some rich guy who’d climbed Mt. McKinley and his ears had perked up.
Brent was usually serious and quiet, and whenever he saw Alex he worried aloud about his ability to ever use his arm. Today, though, as she examined his nicely healing wounds all he wanted to talk about was how awesome it must feel to reach the top of the world.
“Man,” he mused. “Can you imagine the shape he must be in to do something like that?”
The question was rhetorical, but she could easily have answered it. Even as she marveled at the boy’s excitement, a mental picture of a beautifully muscled male intent on conquering a mighty mountain flashed in her mind. She couldn’t begin to imagine the determination, the endurance, the sheer strength of will such a challenge required. But Chase apparently went after what he wanted, claimed it, then moved on.
The thought disturbed her, almost as much as the odd jolt she’d felt when she’d first met his eyes.
What disturbed her more was that he’d distracted her from her patient.
“Do you, Dr. Larson?” Brent asked, shaking his stick-straight blond hair out of his eyes.
“I’m sorry.” Pulling the top of his gown back up over the muscles developing in his bony shoulders, she blinked at his narrow, expectant face. “Do I what?”
“Think you could ask him how long he had to train before he made his climb. And maybe you could ask how long it took. I mean, that would be so cool. Climbing like that, I mean. Wouldn’t it?”
“Actually, I can think of about eight hundred things I’d rather do than struggle for oxygen while I freeze my backside over a mile-high drop-off.” Smiling easily at his unbridled interest, she nodded to the nurse to replace his elastic bandage and sling. “Tell you what. Now wouldn’t be a good time, but if you’d like, I’ll ask Mr. Harrington if he feels up to having company tomorrow. If he does, you can talk to him about the mountain yourself before I release you on Monday.”
The mix of emotions flushing his face was fascinating. “Oh, don’t do that,” he begged. “I couldn’t talk to him. I mean not, like, to his face,” he explained, sounding as if she’d just suggested a personal audience with the Pope. “But, thanks. Yeah, really.” The onslaught of discomfort gave way to a smile. “I’m getting out of here?”
“You sure are. There’s something I haven’t told you, though. I haven’t had a chance to redo the room you’ll be staying in since I bought my house. It’s sort of pink.” Wendy, the pregnant teenager who’d lived with her until she’d delivered and moved out last month, had called it rose. It reminded Alex more of antacid. “And you have to share a bathroom with my four-year-old.”
His expression suddenly shifted, concern moving into features sharpening with the first angles of budding manhood. “I don’t mind, ma’am,” he murmured, his voice cracking. “I’m used to my little brothers and sisters.”
She hadn’t meant for him to go shy on her. But that’s how Brent usually was. It had only been the prospect of the extraordinary that had breached the adolescent self-consciousness and quiet manners she normally saw.
“I know you are,” she told him, rather wishing she could see that enthusiasm again. He was such a neat kid. And his family was salt of the earth. She’d met all four of his brothers and sisters. They and his parents had held vigil while she and a team of vascular surgeons had reconstructed his arm. Their prayers and his doctors’ skills had brought him this far, but it would take months of daily physical therapy for him to regain use of the limb. The problem was his parents’ insurance. It wouldn’t cover a live-in rehab facility and his family’s circumstances and distance from town made outpatient treatment impossible.
Alex had figured that two more weeks of intensive therapy would give him enough of a start to continue on his own at home. His beleaguered parents had been thrilled, and embarrassingly grateful, when she’d offered to have him stay with her during that time. Since she was used to having someone borrow her spare room, she told them, it wouldn’t be an inconvenience at all.
Alex left Brent a few moments later to move on to her next patient. But as she headed for elderly Maria and her shiny new knee, she couldn’t help wondering if Chase had ever known what it was like to truly need something and not be able to get it.
She was thinking about him again. Irritated with herself for not being able to get him out of her mind, she started down the hall, deliberately humming a repetitive tune from one of Tyler’s tapes. Once that melody got started in her head, she knew it would take forever to get it out. It drove her positively nuts. But she figured even that was better than wondering what it was that drove the compound femur in three-fifty-four.
Chapter Three
The mind-numbing melody had been replaced by the theme from Tarzan by the time Alex and Tyler arrived at Granetti’s for dinner at six o’clock that evening. Parking her sedate silver Saturn in her spot at the hospital, since the restaurant they were going to was across the street, she explained to her son for the third time that she wasn’t going to work, that they were going to dinner and, no, they couldn’t go to Pizza Pete’s.
“But I want pizza.”
“You can have pizza here. Or spaghetti,” she told him, which reminded her to grab a handful of wet-wipes from the glove box to stuff into her purse. “You like spaghetti better, anyway.”
Alex stifled a sigh as she watched her little boy scrunch his nose. The tiny golden freckles scattered over it seemed to merge as he considered her observation. Sometime in the last twenty-four hours, his baby-fine blond hair had managed to grow to below his eyebrows. He now needed a haircut as badly as he needed new tennies.
She supposed she should see if Brent wanted a haircut, too. The boy was beginning to look like a sheep dog.
Tyler’s frown suddenly changed quality. She could practically see the mental gears shifting behind his dark brown eyes as he unbuckled his seat belt and opened his door.
“How fast will a Viper go?”
“A viper?” she repeated, doing a little mental shifting of her own. She had no idea how he’d gone from pizza to reptiles. “I don’t know, honey. Is that the kind of snake that goes sideways?”
“It’s not a snake.” he informed her, as if she should have somehow known that. “It’s a car.”
“It is?”
“Yeah. And they go really fast. Does it go as fast as a Cobra?”
That, she knew, was definitely a car. Her next door neighbor’s son-in-law drove one. Tyler loved that thing. Especially when its tires squealed.
“It sure sounds like it should.” Checking her purse to make sure she had her pager, she looped the strap over her shoulder while Tyler scrambled out. She truly had no idea how his mind worked. The challenge was simply to keep up with him.
“Can we get a video with a Viper in it?” Tyler hollered, running around the back of the car.
Absently straightening the skirt of her sleeveless shift as she stood, Alex patiently told her forty-pound bundle of energy she didn’t know if they made Viper videos, then tucked the back of Tyler’s favorite T-shirt—a blue one sporting a green lizard—into the waistband of his cargo pants before she reached for his hand.
He was still talking as they crossed the street, informing her now that Tom, their cat, could watch the video with him, which somehow reminded him that he’d forgotten to feed his gerbil. With the low sun slanting its warm rays against her face and her precious, precocious little boy chattering away beside her, she should have been enjoying the moment.
Instead, she was trying to figure out what it was about Chase Harrington that disturbed her most. The way she’d seemed to absorb his agitation or the fact that she couldn’t seem to get him out of her mind.
The afternoon had been blessedly uneventful—if she discounted the fact that she’d discovered a new leak in her washing machine. After she’d finished rounds, she’d picked up Tyler at the hospital day-care center and headed for home. The guest room now had fresh sheets, the washing of which had revealed the leak, there was milk in her refrigerator and she and Tyler were on their way to a relatively quiet, uninterrupted dinner with her two closest friends and their families. There was no reason for her to be thinking of Chase now. She wouldn’t have to deal with him again until tomorrow.
Grasping that thought, she pushed open Granetti’s brass-trimmed door. The homey Irish-Italian pub-cum-restaurant was a comfortable, neighborhood sort of place that felt like a home away from home. On this particular evening, the atmosphere was even more welcoming.
Under the lattice-and-faux-grape-leaf-covered-ceiling and the Guinness beers signs on the back wall, a wide swath of black paper shouted Happy XXXII, Alex in bilious green. Neon-pink balloons hovered over the chairs.
Below the banner, tables had been pushed into a long line to accommodate the thirty-odd people who greeted her with a deafening “Surprise!” when she walked in holding Tyler’s hand.
“Wow! It’s a party, Mom!”
Stunned, Alex let his hand slide from hers. Before she could blink, her wide-eyed little boy had darted for the dark-haired preschooler dashing toward him. When he reached Griffin, his “very best” friend, they slugged each other and grinned.
“It’s about time you caught up with us. I hate it when you’re younger.” Kelly Hall wrapped Alex in a quick hug. Her honey-blond hair was plaited in its usual French braid and her hazel eyes were laughing. “Happy belated birthday.”
“We’d planned to do this yesterday, but you got called in.” Ronni Powers-Malone, Ryan Malone’s new wife and a good friend, moved in with a hug of her own. “Hi, Alex. Happy Birthday.”
“I can’t believe this.” Feeling her smile spread, Alex hugged her friends back and took in the banner once more. “I feel like I’m a superbowl.”
“The Roman numerals were the guys’ idea. Ronni and I would have preferred to give you a quiet dinner with a gorgeous male at Le Petit Cinq,” Kelly confided. “But we knew you were on call and it wouldn’t be worth the arm-twisting to get you to go if you’d just get called away anyhow. It was either this or Pizza Pete’s.”
Petite and pregnant, pediatrician Ronni tugged her toward the tables. “We figured this was better, since it was closer to the hospital.”
“And they have garlic-cheese bread. Ronni’s been craving it,” Kelly explained. “We’re also fresh out of gorgeous males. We got the last of ’em.”
“The lady has impeccable taste.” The hug this time came with the scent of aftershave. Tanner Malone, Kelly’s dark-haired, impressively built fiancé flashed a hint of his dynamite smile. “Hey there, Alex.”
“Hey yourself, Tanner.” Beyond them, the music of laughter and conversation underscored the strains of an Irish ballad. Wonderful aromas scented the air. “Where’s the baby?”
Alex fully expected Tanner to tease her, to express some sort of feigned exasperation over having fought his way through the crowd to get to her only to have her ask about his child. Instead, looking unusually subdued, he simply murmured, “She’s over there with Ryan and the nurses.”
Despite his oddly reticent manner, pride lit his eyes as he nodded toward the people collectively cooing over his adorable infant daughter. Alex and Tanner had a lot in common. He’d been a single parent himself, until Kelly had rescued him, and he was intimately familiar with trying to manage parental responsibility and a demanding career. He owned the construction company building the hospital’s new wing.
The thought of asking him if he could recommend anyone to fix her washing-machine leak was cancelled by the greetings of her colleagues from the clinic and the hospital as she was coaxed farther into the room. Ryan motioned to her from the knot of women cooing over the newest addition to the Malone clan, then pointed down to indicate that Tyler was with him and his kids and gave her an okay sign to let her know she didn’t have to worry about him.
A little overwhelmed by what her friends had done for her, and what wonderful friends she had, she waved back. Anyone looking at Ryan and Tanner could tell they were related. Both brothers had thick, dark hair, and the same chiseled jaw. But their eyes were what truly gave them away. Rimmed with dark lashes, they were the bluest shade of blue Alex had ever seen. A woman didn’t forget a man with eyes like that.
Rather like she couldn’t forget the patient in room three-fifty-four.
“Whatever it is you’re frowning about, forget it for now,” Ronni insisted, handing her a frosty glass of iced tea. She clicked her own glass of the same against the rim. “I’ve seen enough long faces today.”
“Me, too.” Kelly lifted her wine before glancing sympathetically toward her fiancé. The concern in her expression was too apparent to hide, though her attempt was commendable. “This is a party.”
If there was anything Alex could spot, it was strain. Now that the shock of surprise had worn off, she could see it clearly in her friends’ faces.
“What’s going on?” she asked, her glance bouncing between the petite redhead and the tall blonde. “I thought Tanner seemed a little quiet tonight. Is everything all right?”
Kelly and Ronni exchanged a glance. As if reaching some tacit agreement, they shifted closer, locking the circle so their voices wouldn’t carry.
“Do you remember that phone call Ryan received during our engagement party?” Kelly asked Alex, her voice low. “From the man who said he was their brother, Andrew Malone?”
“Of course I do. We were talking about who had the most unique engagement surprise, remember? You two with that phone call, or Ryan and Ronni with that huge anonymous cashier’s check for the new wing.”
“We never have figured out where that came from,” Ronni muttered. “But that was a good thing. This turned out awful. They were supposed to meet him last night,” she said, in a near-whisper. “But he never showed up. You can’t believe how disappointed Ryan is.”