The Tie That Binds

Maybe there’s hope, he reasoned, if a little touch like that draws that kind of response.

Damn, where did that thought come from? Hope for what? Seducing her? No, Lucas, don’t go there. Hell, he decided, you’d better find yourself a woman. It’s obviously been too long.

He rested his forehead against the cool glass of the window and closed his eyes, willing his thoughts in a less dangerous direction.

He’d never seen Rachel dressed like that—so professional, he decided. So composed and serene, although she’d always had those qualities. He contemplated her outfit: bright red, a color that suited her. Fitted, not hiding her curves but not emphasizing them, either.

What would her job be? He wondered, startled that he really didn’t know. She’d asked if he knew, but she hadn’t told him.

He shook his head, shoving his fists into the pockets of his custom-tailored pants, rocking back on the heels of his Italian-made shoes.

“At least now I know why she looked tired,” he spoke aloud. “God, she has a right to be.” The words hit him hard.

Guilt gnawed at him. He pushed it away. He didn’t want to think about what Rachel had gone through, facing their daughter’s illness. If he did, he had to justify to himself the fact that she’d been alone—as if he had no role in her unofficially single status. As if he had in no way contributed to her circumstances. That felt like an acknowledgment of responsibility toward someone else, and he didn’t like to think about that. After all, she’d been the one to leave. She’d brought her single status upon herself. As for him, well, his first responsibility was to himself. Wasn’t it? The mantra his parents had always fed to him didn’t work this time.

He knew helping this child was his responsibility. Even as he fought the knowledge, even as he had made his demand for medical proof, in his heart he knew the child was his. He knew it was their daughter, not Rachel’s daughter with some other man.

He knew Rachel well enough to know that she had too much honor, too much integrity, to have resorted to the sort of schemes he’d accused her of.

Yes, he had loved her. She was the only woman he’d ever met who had captured his attention, his mind, his spirit. She’d come from a different mold than any other woman he’d ever met. And he’d married her.

But he should have married someone who understood what his wife needed to be. Someone who had been prepared for the role. A woman who, unlike Rachel, was the right type. A woman who didn’t grab his heart the way Rachel had, the way she had from the very first moment he’d spotted her at the University Health Clinic, filling out forms for the required measles shots. Not that that was the most romantic way to meet a woman, Lucas conceded, but it was how he’d met Rachel.

Rachel, he had adored. Rachel had had depth, vitality. She was interested in everything. So curious, so smart, so real.

So unbelievably beautiful. Tall enough with full, gentle curves that had always taken his breath away. The amber eyes, the apricot skin. The miles and miles of thick brown hair that Lucas had always thought of as chocolate silk. How he had loved to bury his face in it, combing his fingers through its softness.

And her scent: she’d always smelled of vanilla. Vanilla and a little spice. Natural and sweet and warm. It stirred him to remember, to think of what had drawn him to her in the first place.

She’d been a bad choice for a wife, though. For him, anyway. His parents had warned him, over and over, but he hadn’t listened to them. He had fallen for her so hard, nothing else had mattered. But she hadn’t understood the requirements of society life. She hadn’t found them important or interesting. She hadn’t supported her husband as she should have.

Lucas’s parents had simply said she wasn’t capable of it. They had always pointed to her “background” as being the cause. Sometimes, when they felt bold, they actually mentioned her “ethnicity.” What they really meant was that she was Mexican-American, not “pure” American. That was simply unforgivable where they were concerned.

Privately Lucas had always found their prejudice ironic. After all, his family was only a couple of generations away from being working-class immigrants themselves. Lucas’s own colorings—his charcoal-gray eyes and inky black hair—looked more Hispanic than did Rachel’s.

Lucas had viewed his parents’ attitude as something he couldn’t change even if he didn’t agree with them. His parents belonged to a certain segment of society that stroked itself, reassured itself, with ethnic prejudice. That was not Lucas’s way. Still, what they had said about Rachel not fitting in with his family had had a certain ring of truth to it.

Several years later, reeling from his wife’s departure, Lucas had finally agreed with his parents.

His reverie was interrupted by a sudden whoosh of air, announcing the uninvited arrival of Alana Winston.

Gorgeous, glamorous Alana, with her silvery blond hair, her sky-blue eyes and the statuesque body she kept perfectly sculpted with the help of a personal trainer and, Lucas suspected, a plastic surgeon. He didn’t know for sure. Didn’t care that much.

And it didn’t matter anyway. Alana simply understood the value of her appearance, particularly when she was a man’s companion. She’d started working for Neuman Industries shortly before Lucas, just after she’d finished school. She still worked for Neuman Industries, although Lucas had asked himself more than once what it was, exactly, she did. His father always assured him that she “knew how to take care of people,” but had never been more specific than that.

Lucas glanced toward Alana again when he heard the unmistakable sound of her clicking the lock on the door.

“Oh, Luke, darling,” she gushed, approaching, wrapping her arms around his waist. “I just heard.”

“Heard what, Alana?”

She pressed her hips against him, linking her fingers through his belt loops. “Why, Luke, about her, of course! Trashy little Rachel showed up here today! Forced her way in to see you, until Arnold tossed her out!”

Impossibly long red acrylic fingernails locked around his waist, keeping his body tight against hers.

Grabbing her wrists, disconnecting her fingers from his pants, Lucas said, “Watch what you say, Alana. Watch your mouth.”

“Are you watching my mouth, Lucas?” she said, smiling suggestively, licking her lips. “I’m sure my mouth could provide you with some…distraction.” She pushed her body against him again, tipping her head back to look into his face, exposing her exquisite bare neck.

“Stop, Alana.” Lucas pulled away, wondering at some level if this was part of Alana’s official job description. She reached for him again, believing she knew exactly how to seduce him, how to change his reluctant mind and resistant body. She did, of course. That was Alana.

He extricated himself from her grasp again. “I said stop, Alana. I’m not interested.”

“Of course you are, darling,” she purred. “You’ve always been interested. You already know there is nothing I won’t do to soothe you. Let me help take your mind off all that unpleasantness.” She removed her blazer, tossing it carelessly onto the chair behind her. Her ivory silk blouse did nothing to conceal the black lacy bra she wore underneath—a fact of which she was perfectly aware. She stretched her arms over her head, arching her back, ruffling her cloud of ash-blond hair, knowing that the silk of her blouse would outline the hardened state of her nipples. Licking her lips again, she said, “Well, Luke? What’s it going to be?”

“Stop it, Alana, and get the hell out of my office.” He turned away, disgust rocketing through him.

His body apparently had other ideas—physically, a response was possible. She left nothing to the imagination, and he was feeling ragged after Rachel’s visit.

“You know, Lucas, you’ve been mad at the world for what seems like years now. Why is that, do you suppose?” From behind him, her arms curled around his waist, stroking slowly downward. She pressed her breasts into his back, the purr returning to her voice. “I bet I could make a guess, Lucas. You’ve been without a woman for too long, haven’t you? Quite a while, if the gossip is true. I could help you.” She whipped around him then, to stand in front of him, her arms still locked around his waist, her body pressed tight against his. “You’d like it, Lucas. What do you say?”

Hadn’t he just decided that he needed to be with a woman? What was there to stop him accepting Alana’s offer? The release might help.

Sex with Alana would be hot, and…a little dirty. That was part of the appeal, he knew.

And suddenly this moment lost all of its attraction for him. It was cheap and meaningless, and he didn’t need that. That was the reason he’d not been with a woman in so long. Sex, as an animal act or as a means of release, had no appeal for him. A mere physical coupling wasn’t the answer to his perpetual bad mood. While he wouldn’t contemplate what the answer might be, he knew it wasn’t tawdry sex.

Pushing Alana away from him, he straightened his clothes. “Dammit, Alana. Get away from me.” He glared at her, hoping he looked as repulsed as he felt. More calmly he continued, “Rachel had an appointment, Alana. She didn’t barge in. She left. Dad didn’t throw her out.”

He picked up the envelope Rachel had brought him, scooping the contents back inside.

“Do you want me to wait for you, Luke? Or go with you someplace else?”

“No, Alana, I do not. I don’t want you at all, in any way.”

“You could if you tried.” She stood with her breasts thrust forward, her hands on her hips, sure she could change his mind.

Lucas looked at her, taking in her undeniably sexy presentation, her blatant invitation. “No, I don’t want you, Alana. It has been a long time since I’ve had sex, but I certainly don’t want to be reinitiated by you.”

She laughed. “Right, Luke. Like I said, I’ll be ready when you are.” She was purring again. “Just keep thinking about it, Lucas. You’re a virile man. You can’t deny your physical needs forever. I’ll be ready whenever you are.”

“You’ll have a long wait.” His decision made, Lucas knew he spoke the truth. “I’ve had enough of you, Alana.”

So saying, he slipped into his jacket and left his office.

“Jennifer,” he said, stopping at the reception desk, “I’ll be out of the office for the rest of the day. I don’t have any other appointments for today, but I’ll be out tomorrow as well, so please reschedule whatever is listed then.”

He left the building, getting in his Lexus with no particular idea where he was going. Eventually, he found himself near Indian Bend Park, a man-made flood control area that cut through the city of Scottsdale. He parked the car, left his jacket behind and began strolling along the winding sidewalk. Suddenly he realized he was facing a playground. He listened to the squeals and shrieks of the children, punctuated by occasional bursts of laughter or bouts of crying. It was May, and the weather had been mild so far; the brutal sun of summer had not yet rendered the playground equipment too hot to touch. Lucas watched the children interact among themselves and with their parents. On this weekday, mothers were the primary parents in attendance.

Finding a bench, he sat down. He opened Rachel’s envelope, pulling the photo from it. He stared and stared, trying to come to terms with the face he saw reflected there. His eyes, his unruly hair. The hair he hated on himself, he found endearing on his daughter.

Rachel’s apricot skin, her delicate nose and mouth, the curve of her eyebrows—all were reflected in Michaela. But her dark eyes and hair, they came from her daddy.

Our daughter, he acknowledged silently. There was no other possibility and he knew it. He pulled out the birth certificate, seeking the date of birth. He did the quick calculations, counting back nine months, already knowing what he would discover, but needing to confirm it anyway.

Quickly he realized that Michaela would have been conceived in March or maybe even February—long before his ill-advised trip to Las Vegas. Long before May 18, the day the agreement to separate had gone into effect. The separation might have come anyway, of course, but he knew it had been a direct response to his time in Las Vegas the week before.

His mind whirled back to that murky time, five years ago, to what he had privately labeled “the end of the marriage”—the end even if they weren’t actually divorced, a time he rarely reflected upon. In fact, he rarely reflected on anything; introspection seemed a waste of time to him. He avoided reflection the same way he avoided scenes.

Still, today he’d had the past thrown in his face, in the shape of his wife and daughter. He couldn’t avoid thinking at the moment.

He took a deep breath, his eyebrows descending into a frown as he contemplated the end of his marriage to Rachel. He had been traveling a lot. It had been business, but it had been a lot of fun, too. If he was honest with himself, he had traveled more than necessary, every chance he got. He’d been eager to take advantage of what he called “opportunities.” He’d enjoyed spending time with his colleagues, establishing himself, not worrying about the limitations imposed by everyday life. Feeling like a professional in the business world.

Until that trip to Las Vegas. Las Vegas had been a colossal blunder on his part.

Yes, he knew why Rachel had not told him about her pregnancy when he returned from Las Vegas. As she said, they’d had a different sort of conversation to pursue. Back then, he would have made the same accusations he’d made today, even though he was perfectly aware that he had been the one pursuing external activities, not Rachel. Just as she had said.

Had Rachel somehow succeeded in telling him back then, would he have accepted the news? Very likely not. Very likely the scene, the breakup, would have simply been uglier. Regardless, he had lost the first four years of his daughter’s life.

Michaela, who’d spent her entire life without him. He’d never seen her, never even suspected her existence.

Well, that’s about to change, he told himself. I’m a father, and I’m going to be good at it. He felt a genuine smile tug at the corners of his mouth.

Lucas returned the photo to the safety of the envelope. He leaned back against the bench, raking his fingers through his hair in the way that had always suggested inner turmoil. He admitted to the tension he felt now, the sensation of ice-cold butterflies in the pit of his stomach.

Tense, yes, he was certainly tense. Poised for…something he couldn’t name.

How would my life be if I’d spent the last few years with Rachel, raising our daughter?

The question sideswiped him. I won’t think about that.

But he had a strong suspicion it would have been better than how he’d been living.

Chapter 3

Walking on legs of rubber, Rachel finally made it to her car. She tossed her briefcase onto the passenger seat and blindly reached for the bottle of drinking water she kept in the console between the front seats. A few deep drinks and a few deep breaths later, she started her car and pulled from the parking lot.

She was dismayed to notice the continuing tremor in her hands and the erratic pounding of her heart.

“Bueno, Rachel, what did you expect?” she spoke the words aloud, berating herself. “You haven’t seen him in years. It was bound to affect you.” She inhaled deeply, then blew out the breath, finding she was still inundated with Lucas’s scent. “And, yes, the person you knew, the man you fell in love with—he’s still there. He’s wearing many layers, but he’s still there.” She couldn’t deny that much.

Unfortunately, she also knew that the woman who had fallen in love with him all those years ago still lived in her somewhere. She, too, was deeply buried, but she had responded to Lucas nevertheless. Something she could not allow. The knowledge left her shaky and dangerously close to tears.

But Rachel Neuman never cried—she couldn’t afford to waste the energy. In any case, she would never show such weakness where anyone might see her.

Checking the time, Rachel decided to stop at home and see if she could manage lunch. She’d had merely a bagel and juice this morning, and that only because it had been forced on her by Linda Tafoya, the day supervisor.

Rachel Neuman, at twenty-seven years of age, was young to hold the position she held: head pediatric nurse at Phoenix Children’s Hospital. When she had accepted her first position at PCH five years ago, night shift had been offered and she had accepted it. After a while she’d found it suited her. These days, even though she was head of the department, she continued to work the night shift.

Initially her remarkable academic record had caught the attention of the higher-ups at the hospital when they had interviewed her, but she had gone on to demonstrate thorough professional competence and a warm personal touch—a combination much valued in a nurse. She was adept at handling multiple tasks, monitoring health-care issues as well as those that dealt more with comfort and happiness. She fit in with both the staff and the doctors at the hospital, not to mention patients and their parents. She graciously coped with the dreaded administrative duties and paperwork involved in the job, as well. In any case, no one begrudged Rachel her position.

The upshot of this was that she worked a very long day. Her shift ran officially from midnight to 8:00 a.m. However, she usually met with patients, patients’ parents and hospital administrators after that. Her bedtime was 4:00 p.m., so the intervening daytime hours were hers. To spend with her daughter.

Today, however, she’d had her meeting with Lucas at ten-thirty. She’d gone to her office promptly at the end of her shift, knowing she could use the personal quarters the hospital staff had set up for her there as a changing place.

It was a miniature home away from home, except for the absence of a kitchen. This was a factor in her recent weight loss, but not the only factor. Her hospital colleagues were aware of it, understood the reasons, but knew she couldn’t afford to stop taking care of herself. Hence, Linda shoving a bagel in her face.

As she maneuvered through the traffic, heading out of Scottsdale and into Phoenix, Rachel was disgusted to feel the sting of tears at the back of her eyes. Usually she was so successful at controlling things like tears.

She hadn’t allowed herself such a release during her final year with Lucas, nor during the breakup or its aftermath. She hadn’t cried as she struggled to become a single mother or as she had learned, in fact, how to be a single mother. She hadn’t even cried when Dr. Paul Graham, director of the Children’s Cancer Unit at the hospital, had told her Michaela’s test results.

After all, he was really only confirming what she’d already known. She’d seen the symptoms too many times before, as a nurse. She had recognized what she was seeing; she’d known it was more than the flu. That’s why she’d gone to Paul in the first place.

Dear sweet Paul, who’d been working at the hospital for nearly fifteen years before Rachel’s arrival. He’d become her mentor, a guiding hand when she’d needed one. They had become fast friends, in addition to working together, sharing one of those rare and profound friendships that occasionally bless a person’s life.

Rachel was utterly unaware of rumors that had their relationship heading in a different kind of intimate direction. Paul was old enough to be her father and Rachel viewed him in that light. He had helped restore her self-confidence when she had arrived, new to her career, newly pregnant and without a husband. He had helped her believe again, and she had secretly hoped he would help her believe this time, too—preferably by telling her that Michaela didn’t have leukemia after all. Of course, he hadn’t told her that. Rachel had known, really, that he wouldn’t.

That day Rachel had fainted for the first and only time in her life. Paul had taken care of her, never mentioning her moment of weakness to anyone. It was something else to add to the list of reasons she was grateful to him.

Rachel knew what leukemia would mean. She knew it meant granulocytes, a certain type of white cell, were causing the problem. She also knew that chemotherapy would be the initial form of treatment and that it would likely be a rough experience for her little girl. And for her.

It had been worse than she’d expected. Michaela had lost her hair almost immediately. Her nausea was intense and frequent. They could help her some with that, but it still left Michaela a very fragile, very weak little girl. Had Rachel not seen the procedure before, she would have found it hard to believe this state of being could in any way be connected to an improvement in Michaela’s health. When the chemotherapy took longer to work than they had expected, Rachel had faced it stoically, refusing to let herself shatter, turning her energies instead toward supporting her daughter in any way she could.

Rachel had known that a bone marrow transplant would be a likely next step, and that identifying a suitable donor was crucial to performing the procedure. As a matter of course, Rachel had had herself typed, assuming she’d be an acceptable match for her daughter. When that had not occurred, she had assumed someone in the family would be suitable. That failing, she had bravely pursued the next possibility: she had initiated the search to identify other potential donors. She had worked diligently on finding a match for several months, watching her daughter’s lurching progress through chemotherapy, when she had one day acknowledged that she had not succeeded.

She had also exhausted all of the obvious avenues for locating that donor, with one equally obvious exception. Lucas. Michaela’s father. The one blood relative who, under normal circumstances, would have been one of the first to be tested. But these weren’t normal circumstances.

By the time testing Lucas had occurred to Rachel, Michaela had been in the hospital for several months, undergoing all manner of treatment, and Rachel was living in her office. She had refused to take a leave of absence, knowing that she needed her work to help maintain a sense of normalcy in her life.

Once Michaela’s condition had become apparent and the hospital staff had understood that Rachel wouldn’t go home if it meant leaving Michaela at the hospital, they had called upon the administration to provide Rachel with a suitable refuge. No one debated Rachel’s need to be near her daughter; supporting families in this way had long been incorporated as an aspect of care. They would definitely take care of their own. Moving remarkably fast for a bureaucracy, the hospital had reshaped Rachel’s office. What had once been an area reasonably able to accommodate a desk, file cabinets and a few chairs had been converted into an acceptable, if small, living space.

Support was the thing, and everyone knew that.

No one had ever seen Rachel hit the breaking point, but they all suspected she was dangerously close. Except, of course, Dr. Paul Graham—who realized she had already hit her breaking point and was now running on empty.

Rachel had appreciated the renovation of her quarters. She had tried to let everyone know her feelings, but acknowledged that she wasn’t very good at accepting help from others. Her familia, of course, were different from other people. They knew her better, and were able to anticipate some of what she needed from them. They could offer to help before she had to ask for it—and asking for help was foreign to her. That’s why it had been so difficult to go to Lucas for help.

Part of the reason, anyway.

With Lucas it was something else again. Needing him was something Rachel had weaned herself away from. It was a survival technique that had developed slowly, but which had become firmly embedded in her way of life.

Turning to Lucas now was, quite simply, a violation of Rachel’s current code. Everything in her resisted opening herself up to the man, showing him anything of herself that might look like vulnerability. Rachel needed to protect herself.