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“Afraid not.” Kendal gave his hand a light slap.
He laughed. Then he quirked a smug grin at her, digging around under the cling wrap anyway, and she gave him a wry little smile in return.
“I’d be all too delighted if you’d eat with us,” she said, “since you’re the real reason I’m here.”
“You’re interested in little old me?” He took a bite of a roll.
She smiled at his flirting. “No. Only in your business. Allow me to introduce my latest miracle drug.” She swept an arm toward the easel.
He chewed as he squinted at the giant poster promoting Paroveen. “Always the latest miracle drug,” he muttered.
“But mine really is miraculous. I’m only asking you to give it a try.” She handed him a brochure, then reached around him and slid the box of pastries off the counter. “I’d better get these set out before the staff gets in here.” She often found it prudent to give the docs a moment to read her materials uninterrupted.
But to her disappointment, he didn’t even look at the brochure. Instead, he folded his arms over his chest and watched her. “I’d rather hear what you have to say about it.”
She was aware of his eyes following her as she quickly arranged the food on the table. “Okay. I’d love to.”
She spouted a few startling scientific statistics about Paroveen while she pulled out paper plates, forks and napkins stamped with the Merrill Jackson logo from her rolling cart.
When she was finished her spiel, he stuffed the brochure in the pocket of his leather jacket, sauntered over and proceeded to pile food onto a plate. “I’m afraid I’ve got to get back down to surgery, so—” he popped in a grape, then reached for cubed ham “—maybe we can get together some other time to finish discussing your wonder drug.”
Kendal wasn’t sure, but her instincts warned that The Wolf was interested in more than the drug. Maybe it was the way his teeth flashed in that cocky smile right before he bit into a cube of ham.
But she couldn’t pass up the chance to push her product. “Anytime.” She’d worry about his motives after she got his business. For now, she knew she’d only have his ear for as long as it took for him to gobble down that last piece of ham. She had to talk and talk fast.
“You understand that I don’t like switching drugs,” he said.
“I understand, but our studies indicate that every doctor that upgrades to Paroveen gets an eighty percent reduction in edema in half the time. Plus our physician education and support services are outstanding,” she finished in a rush.
“Samples?”
“All you want,” Kendal bargained.
“You’ll personally provide technical support?” He wiped his hands on his napkin and gave her that eager smile again, as if she might make a nice little dessert right now.
“Absolutely. I’ll be available to you twenty-four, seven.” Shoot! Why’d she say it like that?
He smirked. “Day and night? My, my. You are the dedicated one.”
Kendal was about to say something to show that she was totally professional, something that might put this handsome dog in his place, when the door swung open.
“Hello!” As if the smell of food had summoned them, Kathy Martinez and two other nurses, a tall one wearing surgical scrubs and a paper cap and a smaller girl, came waltzing up to the table.
“Hi, doc!” The nurse in scrubs winked at Jason Bridges. “Didn’t expect to see you up here, what with no patients out front.”
“I’m headed down to surgery in a sec.”
“We’ve got a bilateral resection of inflamed parotids,” the nurse in scrubs explained to the shorter one.
“Oh, I forgot about that,” the smaller office nurse said.
Kendal had heard about the complex microsurgery that could take up to three hours. It was exactly the kind of procedure where Paroveen would be a benefit.
“We’re doing the deed right after I have another one of these little muffins. Man. These are good, Miss…tell me your name again?” He popped in a muffin, chewed and frowned at Kendal.
Was he being intentionally obtuse? After all, Kendal was wearing a big purple name tag. She pressed her fingers to it and smiled. “Collins. Kendal Collins.”
“Kendal,” he said, and swallowed.
“Help yourselves,” Kendal told the nurses as she swept an arm over the food trays.
“Kendal—” Kathy started the introductions as the women filled their plates “—this is Mary Smith and Ruth Nichols. Mary’s one of the office nurses. And Ruth is Dr. Bridges’s scrub nurse.”
Mary, nibbling a strawberry, reminded Kendal of an anxious little mouse. She was short, wearing a faded scrub jacket stamped in a teddy bear pattern, had cropped nondescript brown hair and rimless glasses crammed tightly against the bridge of her button nose.
The one named Ruth was exactly the opposite. Even in the baggy surgical scrubs, her tall body exhibited the svelte lines of a supermodel. Even the ugly paper surgical cap did not detract from her beauty. The dusty blue color seemed to merely emphasize the flawlessness of her ivory skin.
“My extra set of hands.” Bridges winked at the attractive young woman. “And my eyes. And my ears. And some days even my sense of smell.”
“Just call me the doctor’s scrub nose.” Ruth giggled and actually tapped a fingertip to Jason Bridges’s handsome nose.
Everyone but Kendal laughed. Apparently this was some sort of inside joke.
“I hope I brought enough food.” Kendal turned to the table, feeling strangely uncomfortable with the couple’s flirting. “How many more people are we expecting?”
“Four more from the office.” Kathy smiled. “This food looks fabulous, by the way.”
“Too bad you just started that nasty old diet.” Dr. Bridges teased his chubby head nurse.
Kathy whapped him on the shoulder and popped a glazed doughnut hole into her mouth.
When Kathy swallowed the treat, Kendal noticed the older lady leaning over toward Dr. Bridges, mumbling something.
From across the table the last of it sounded like, “…about the Spanish.”
Bridges shot Kendal a look bright with interest. In that split second when their gazes locked, Kendal began to understand how The Wolf might have gotten his nickname.
He stepped around the table to her. “Kathy tells me you speak Spanish?”
“Yes.”
“Fluently?”
“Yes.” Kendal frowned.
“Mexican dialects?”
“Yes.” Kendal was not at all sure she liked the way he was looking at her.
“Ever been there?”
“Where?”
“Mexico. Chiapas, specifically. You ever been down there?”
There was that weird question again. “I’ve been to the Yucatan Peninsula a couple of times. To Cancún.”
“Did you go out into the jungle or just lie on the beach?”
“I went to some Mayan ruins…in the jungle. Some remote ones.” Why was Kendal explaining herself to him? But his eyes were boring into hers with such intensity that she could hardly make herself look away, and her answers just seemed to fall out of her mouth.
“I assume you have some medical background?”
“Of course. Anatomy. Physiology. I specialize in surgical physiology and pharmacology.”
“Great! Wanna run away to Mexico with me?”
Behind him, she thought she heard the mousy nurse twitter.
“Not particularly.” Kendal didn’t get it. Run away to Mexico?
“You don’t care for Mexico?”
“Love it. Can’t wait to go back. But…” she trailed off, leaving him to fill in that the idea of going with him was the impediment.
“But not with a guy like me.” His blue eyes flashed with amusement.
Another twitter from the nurse entourage.
“Not even if it was for a good cause?”
“What is this about?” Kendal leaned around his broad form to get a look at the nurses, who obviously knew what the doctor was getting at.
But he leaned imperceptibly also, blocking her view. “I have a proposition for you, Kendal.”
Kendal wanted to say something sarcastic like Be still my beating heart because when a man like The Wolf used a word like “proposition,” her urge to resort to sarcasm was strong. “I hope this has something to do with Paroveen.”
“It does.”
That surprised her. His attitude had been so flippant that she wasn’t prepared for this conversation to lead anywhere serious.
“I’m listening.”
“For three weeks out of the year, every year, I go to Chiapas, Mexico, to work with the local peasants. I do as much surgery as I can on as many patients as I can for those three weeks. You’ve heard of Doctors Without Borders?”
Kendal had. The international relief effort manned by idealistic young doctors had originated in France. They brought medical care to the poor in Third World countries around the globe. Their efforts on behalf of children had always appealed to Kendal’s altruistic side. “I have. The work they do sounds wonderful.”
“My mission is similar. How would you like to be part of that mission?”
“Me? How?”
“Because you speak the Mexican dialects. Because I’ll promise to give Paroveen a thorough clinical trial down there. You can bring a case of the stuff with you. You can keep your own records. Merrill Jackson will love it. They should even get some great PR out of the deal.”
Behind him, Kendal now noticed, Kathy Martinez was smiling broadly, encouraging her. The nurse named Ruth was smiling, too, but with a kind of uncertainty.
“You’re saying you need an interpreter?”
“Absolutely. I speak a little Spanish, of course, and so does Ruth—” he motioned to the beautiful nurse “—but not fluently. The patients are hurting, frightened. They talk fast and the dialect is tricky. A good interpreter is crucial. What do you say? Will you consider it?”
“When?”
“Next week.”
“Next week?”
“Sorry. My regular interpreter got sick. I just found out yesterday.” He shot Kathy Martinez a meaningful glance.
“Isn’t that pretty short notice for getting me on board for a trip to Mexico?”
“You said you’d been there. I assume your passport is still current.”
“Well…yeah, but—”
“The other arrangements won’t be a big deal. Every year, I choose my own team, fly my own plane. We take our own security guard, Ben Schulman from the hospital. All of these nurses have gone down there at one time or another.”
The trio behind him nodded in affirmation.
“Ask them how fulfilling it is to help the poor, to change lives for the better. It will be a perfect opportunity to demonstrate the effectiveness of your new drug in a setting where it is desperately needed. Maybe Merrill Jackson would donate some immunizations, too.”
Kendal didn’t know how the conversation had taken this radical turn from slightly flirtatious to genuinely idealistic, but it had.
“I see. I…I’ll have to check my schedule. And I’ll have to get approval from my company.” But that wouldn’t be a problem, she was sure. Her boss had been very clear—do whatever you have to do.
“Of course.”
“We’d better get downstairs,” the willowy Ruth interjected. She stepped up beside Bridges.
But Jason Bridges stepped toward Kendal, facing her squarely, moving in close with his palm outstretched. “Give me one of your cards,” he said. “I’ll call you and we’ll set up a time to get together and discuss this. I’ll also have to teach you a bit about the types of surgery we do. You’ll end up answering a lot of questions for the patients and families. We’ll have a lot of preparation to do in a week’s time.”
“Okay. I’ll think about it.” But while she was handing him one of her cards Kendal was thinking, He can’t be serious. Me? On a medical mission to Mexico? In only a week?
He took the card. He glanced at it, then smiled into her eyes again. And again Kendal thought of The Wolf and how thoroughly dangerous it felt to be the object of this man’s attention. Like he could talk you into almost anything. She felt her cheeks heating up and was glad when he turned back to Ruth.
He stuffed Kendal’s card in the pocket of his leather jacket with the brochure, then said to his scrub nurse, “The patient is elderly. Very fragile. No room for screwups. I’d like you to be the one to set up downstairs, not one of those O.R. nurses.”
“Already done.” Ruth favored her boss with a cover model smile and a look of supreme confidence.
“Great. Remind me to give you a big old Christmas bonus.” Jason put a guiding hand to the small of his nurse’s back, and as the two of them hurried out the door his flashing eyes fixed on Kendal one last time. “I’ll talk to you soon, Kendal.”
CHAPTER FOUR
“PARDON ME?” Kendal tapped the security guard’s huge shoulder, which felt like it was carved out of marble. “You’re Ben Schulman, right?”
He turned, and Kendal looked up into the kindly handsome face that went with the killer body. The name tag on his massive chest read SCHULMAN, so of course this had to be the Gentle Ben that the nurses all talked about. Usually their talk bemoaned the fact that this fabulous hunk of male was not interested in women.
“Yes, ma’am.”
Kendal always greeted the younger man when she came into the hospital early in the mornings, when she was trying to catch up with the surgeons before they got too busy. He was always polite, always calling her “ma’am.”
Covering the night shift, Ben Schulman made for an imposing presence at the front entrance of the hospital. He was a six-foot-four blond wunderkind with a body builder’s physique and a choirboy’s face. The endless, swirling hospital rumors had painted Ben with a pretty broad brush. Religious fanatic. But a not-so-latent homosexual. But Kendal’s impression of him was that he was totally professional. Stoic, polite, nice. Approachable, should one need help. Aggressive, should one be up to no good. Definitely idealistic. A real “serve and protect” kind of guy.
“I’m Kendal Collins.” She extended her hand and he gently shook it. “I understand you accompany Dr. Bridges on his Doctors Without Borders missions to Mexico.”
His face broke into a boyish smile. “We’re not associated with Doctors Without Borders, per se. But yes, this will be my third trip to Chiapas.”
“Could I ask you a few questions about that? When you have a minute?”
He frowned. “Why? Are you a reporter or connected to the hospital PR department or something? I was under the impression you did sales of some kind.”
“I do.” She handed him the card she had at the ready. “I’m in sales for Merrill Jackson. But Dr. Bridges has asked me to accompany him on the Chiapas trip as an interpreter. I thought we should meet, and I’d like to find out a little more about what I’d be getting myself into.”
Ben studied the card, then her. His expression was carefully neutral, not surprising considering his job, but even so, Kendal could see that he was uncomfortable about something. “Working with Dr. Bridges is quite an experience. But I’ll be happy to tell you everything I know.” He checked his watch. “I get off in twenty minutes.”
“Meet me at the Daylight Deli then. I’ll buy breakfast.”
DAYLIGHT DELI was situated in the middle of the hospital concourse that connected four enormous buildings. It faced an open courtyard and had the kind of atmosphere desperately needed in a place where people were suffering and worrying and working too hard. An atmosphere that said, “Peace. Relax. We’ll feed you.”
The food was excellent, and the place was often packed with hospital personnel in lab coats and scrubs, business-suited executives, casually dressed visitors, exhausted relatives and even the occasional patient. It was especially busy at eight o’clock in the morning. Everybody was hustling for a mug of the deli’s gourmet coffee, a cup of fragrant herbal tea, a fresh-baked muffin or one of its infamous sticky buns.
Kendal felt fortunate when two lab techs vacated a small table that was out of the way by the windows. She rolled her cart into the nearby corner, sat down and waited, thinking about what she should ask the security guard.
Before long Ben came in. From behind the counter the owner looked up. The man wore an earring and a kerchief on his head and called most of his customers “sweetie.” He hollered, “Ben!” and Ben answered, “Hey, Nolan!”
When Ben spotted Kendal in the corner, she waved at him.
“What can I get for you?” Kendal offered as Ben approached the table.
“A strawberry banana smoothie would be great, thanks.”
The owner winked at her when Kendal and Ben walked up to the counter. He was already making the smoothie. “He always has the same thing. What can I get for you, sweetie?”
Kendal craved a sticky bun in the worst way, but she ordered a small serving of fruit salad instead. This kind of discipline was second nature to her by now, but it was never easy.
Once he got the smoothie whirring in the blender, the owner said, “You guys know each other?” while looking back and forth from Ben to Kendal.
“Kendal Collins. Nolan Nelson. Kendal’s a pharmaceutical sales rep around here.”
“Didn’t I fill a big order for you a few days ago?”
“Yes. For Dr. Bridges’s office. The quiche was excellent.”
“Kendal wants to ask me some questions about the Chiapas trip,” Ben said. “Dr. Bridges has asked her to go along.”
The owner’s eyebrows shot right up to the edge of his kerchief. “Bridges asked you to go to Mexico? Don’t do it, sweetie! That man’ll break your heart.”
The man’s tone left no doubt about what he was implying. Kendal felt her cheeks flush to a neon red. “I—”
“Nolan,” Ben intoned with undisguised impatience as he looked around the crowded space. “The doc asked her to go along as an interpreter.”
Nolan looked abashed, but even so, he said, “Oh, right. That’s what he claims.” He turned to dish up Kendal’s fruit salad.
While she dug in her purse for the money, the caterer studied her with open skepticism. “He sure picked himself a pretty little interpreter. What happened to Kathy?”
“She’s sick and can’t go,” Ben supplied. Apparently Ben had an inside track on events in Bridges’s office.
“Nothing serious, I hope.” The smoothie was done and Nolan poured it into a glass.
“Gallbladder.” Ben took the glass.
“You take care, sweetie,” Nolan said as Kendal picked up the fruit salad.
As they walked away Kendal was still feeling her cheeks burn at the caterer’s implication that she might be accompanying Jason Bridges to Mexico as some sort of paramour. She wasn’t like that. Not at all. In fact, she’d suffered in stubborn celibacy this whole year since Phillip had left. A few men had asked her out, but she wasn’t attracted to them. She was beginning to wonder if she’d ever feel real passion again, or if Phillip’s betrayal had killed that part of her for good.
“Don’t mind Nolan,” Ben said quietly when they got back to their table. “He doesn’t like Dr. Bridges. Thinks he’s a player.”
“Is he?”
“How should I know? Nolan’s just bitter. His sister’s a nurse down in surgery. She dated Dr. Bridges for a while, went all gaga over him, baking him banana nut bread and stuff. Just because it didn’t work out, that doesn’t make Jason a bad guy.” Ben didn’t elaborate further, but Kendal could fill in the blanks. The relationship between the doctor and Nolan’s sister had probably ended with a broken heart—hers—and The Wolf had moved on to his next conquest. But Ben wasn’t about to criticize this doctor, who he obviously admired.
“You like Dr. Bridges?”
“Jason’s a stand-up guy.”
A small cross shone dully from the open collar of Ben’s shirt, and Kendal wondered what “stand-up guy” meant to someone with Ben’s convictions. Someone who serves mankind under the worst of conditions? Someone who plays around but apparently thinks he’s exempt from breaking hearts because everybody understands that he’s The Wolf? “What do you mean?”
“You’ll find out what Jason’s like soon enough if you go down to Chiapas with him.”
“You mean that he’s a good surgeon?”
“He is that, but it goes deeper. He’s put himself in some tight spots helping those people.”
“Like what?”
“Like there are factions down there that want to force the government to get involved and bring those people into the twenty-first century, and there are other factions that want the area to stay isolated. Jason has been caught between them a time or two, right along with the poor people he’s trying to help.”
“That’s why Dr. Bridges handpicked you? For security?”
Ben’s handsome face looked abashed. “I can use a gun—and my fists—if I have to, but the truth is, I’m really more like Jason’s pack animal,” Ben smiled. “Actually, I like to go because Dr. Bridges pays all my expenses and he gives me time off to visit the missions around San Cristóbal de las Casas. That’s what I really want to do someday—missionary work.”
“That’s wonderful! Tell me what it’s like in Chiapas.”
Ben’s descriptions of Chiapas were romanticized, but graphic. He told her about the fascinating culture, of the superstitions that persisted among the descendants of the Maya. About the beautiful waterfalls, lakes and rain forests. He didn’t pull any punches as he described the intense heat, the altitude sickness, the man-eating mosquitoes and the inevitable onset of Montezuma’s revenge.
“Turista, the locals call it. Thought I’d die the first time it hit me. The cramps! Never had such a bad case of diarrh—” He noticed the revolted look on Kendal’s face and stopped. “Sorry.”
He sipped his smoothie while he eyed her impeccable manicure and silk power suit. “Are you sure you’re up to this trip?” he asked. “No offense, but you seem like more of an indoor type gal.”
“I’ve had my share of adventures,” Kendal asserted. Which was at the least misleading and at the worst an all-out lie. Her “adventures” consisted of skiing down a double diamond slope at a fancy resort or finding her way on the Metro line in Washington D.C. “I’ve been to Mexico before,” she added for good measure, leaving out the fact that her trips had mostly been confined to the Miami-style resort areas of Cancún.
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