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“If the shoe fits,” she retorted cheerfully, holding up one foot.
“Ha-ha.”
She eyed the wheelchair reluctantly. “Do I really need that?”
“Depends. Do you want to walk back to that grocery store parking lot or ride?”
Sighing melodramatically, she got up and plopped down in the wheelchair. “And you say I’m stubborn.”
“If the other shoe fits...”
“Well, we know you are no stand-up comedian,” she quipped.
He rolled her out of the room. As they moved through the area, Eva couldn’t help noticing that nurses rushed to open doors, move carts and just generally smooth the way, always flashing smiles and coy looks at the doctor. Eva could stand it just so long before waving her arms and singing at the top of her lungs, “Hel-lo! Patient coming through. Doctor Luscious is just half the parade.”
“Will you behave?” he growled. “Or can you not help yourself?”
“Why should I?”
Then again, why shouldn’t she? After all, what did she care if all the nurses in the hospital cast lures at the man? He was someone else’s problem. Poor woman. She probably didn’t have a moment’s peace. Of course there would be someone, probably several someones. A man as good-looking as he, and a doctor no less, could have his pick. He could even be married, though she had noticed no wedding ring—and hated that she had noticed. Apparently impending doom did not produce wisdom any more than did hard experience.
He wheeled her through a waiting room and then a pair of automatic glass doors onto a covered sidewalk. A luxury sedan sat waiting at the curb. A uniformed security guard, female, slid out from behind the steering wheel and walked around to take the chair after Eva vacated it. Leland opened the passenger door for Eva, kissed the security guard on the cheek, reducing the hefty woman to giggles, and rushed around the front of the car to the driver’s side, his overcoat flapping with the force of his strides.
Eva was buckling up when he dropped down behind the steering wheel. He followed suit, tossed a wave at the still-tittering security guard and put the car in gear. Eva shook her head.
“You have no shame, do you?”
“What on earth are you talking about?”
“You kissed the security guard! It’s not enough the nurses are all in love with you? You must have the security guard, too?”
He rolled his eyes. “For your information, she’s family.”
Eva blinked at that. “Oh. Well, in my defense, everyone’s wrong sometimes.”
Starting the engine, he shook his head. “She’s my late wife’s cousin, actually, and she’s married. And she has two grown children. And her husband is disabled.”
Those two words, late wife, rang inside Eva’s skull like a bell, reverberating repeatedly. Late wife, late wife, late wife...
“All right already,” Eva cried melodramatically. “I was wrong. So shoot me.”
“I’m just saying.” He hunched his shoulders.
Eva trained her gaze on the scenery passing by her window. Okay, she conceded silently, so he really was rather likable, when he wasn’t being all handsome and knowing and authoritative.
Several minutes passed before he spoke again. “And the nurses are not all in love with me. Actually, none of them are in love with me.”
She chanced a glance at him and found him scowling. “How do you know?”
“I just do.”
“O-kay.” A smile almost surprised her. She had to work at keeping it away. She got very interested in the scenery again.
A few minutes later he said, “You’ll need to have those stitches removed in about a week.”
“Will do.”
He pulled an envelope from inside his coat and tossed it into her lap. “Give that to the doctor who does it.”
She looked at the envelope but not at him. “All righty.”
Shifting in his seat, he added, “I suggest you get a good night’s sleep before you drive.”
Turning back to the window, she gave him a noncommittal answer. “Very well.”
After a few more blocks, he said, “Don’t throw that envelope away.”
“I won’t.”
“I mean it.”
She finally looked at him again. “I said I wouldn’t. What’s with you?”
“I tucked a few bucks in there, if that’s all right with you,” he snapped. Then, more mildly, he added, “You said you were broke.”
“Oh.” Surprised and truly chastened, she looked down at the envelope. “That’s very kind. Thank you.”
“No problem,” he muttered, staring straight ahead.
A few seconds later the comfortable car turned into the grocery store parking lot and stopped.
Eva looked around. So did Leland. Then they looked at each other.
“Uh-oh,” he said.
She chose a more colorful word. “Crud.”
Her van was gone.
Chapter Two
“There were only four payments left!” Eva Belle Russell squawked. “And I just had it repaired.”
Brooks dropped the small cell phone into his coat pocket, sighing deeply. “According to the police, you were four payments behind. They had no choice but to impound the vehicle.”
What a mess. At least he had learned her name and that the vehicle had been financed through a bank in the Kansas City area, though what good that information did him, he wasn’t sure, especially if she continued to refuse treatment.
“Well,” she drawled, employing that broad wit of hers, “my aunt always said I’d wind up a streetwalker. Looks like she was right. Literally.”
She reached for the door handle, but of course he couldn’t let her just get out and walk away, not in her condition. Objecting would undoubtedly cost him, though; in fact, he had to make himself do it. She actually got the door open and one foot out before he could speak.
“Eva, wait.”
She looked around at him. “Got my name, did you?”
“Eva Belle Russell.”
She wilted, sinking back into the seat as if defeated by the simple fact of being known. “What are you going to do?” she asked warily.
“Depends. How much trouble are you in?”
Some of her spunk returned. “My head’s cracked. I’m broke. I’m stranded. My car’s been repossessed! Is that enough for you?”
“Are you in legal trouble?” he demanded.
“No!” She folded her arms, muttering, “Other than the repossession thing. And I guess that’s taken care of now.”
“I mean, criminal trouble,” he clarified.
She gaped at him. “You think I’d be going without meals if I didn’t have scruples?”
That made a certain sense. A criminal would have simply shoplifted her next meal or walked out on an unpaid bill. He supposed the threat of repossession could be reason enough to want to keep her identity a secret, though with the original license plate hanging out there for all the world to see, such secrecy felt pointless. On the other hand, given her physical condition, who was to say that she was even thinking clearly? He wished she’d let him take the EEG. That, however, was not the immediate problem.
“Is there anyone you can call?” He knew she had a cell phone on her and that it contained no preprogrammed numbers and not one iota of personal information.
“No.”
“Where are you headed? Maybe I can take you there.”
She pulled in a deep breath. “Um, what’s the next town of any size down the road? Waco?”
Obviously she had no real destination in mind. The woman was a gypsy, a free spirit, peddling her artwork wherever she could. A free spirit with very real problems.
“I’ll take you back to the hospital.”
“Forget that.” She shook her head, rippling her blond locks and making her eyeballs roll with pain so that she clasped the bandage beneath her hair gingerly.
“Look,” he said, tiring of the game, the situation and the whole endless day. “I know about the brain tumor. We did a non-contrast CT while you were unconscious. It’s standard proce—”
She all but leaped out of the car. It was nearly dark and the middle of January, but the fool woman actually got out of the car and headed off as if she had someplace to go.
“Eva!”
“Thanks, Doc. I’ve had fun. So long, now.”
“Eva Belle Russell,” he hollered, at the end of his tether, “you get back in this car!”
She walked off toward the grocery store. Grinding his teeth, Brooks got out and went after her.
“Where do you think you’re going?”
“Where it’s warm.”
“You can’t sleep in the grocery store.”
She swirled in a circle, her scarves whirling around her, but she kept walking. “I’ll have you know that I once slept all night in a lawn chair. I’ll be fine.”
“The grocery store closes at ten.”
She lifted both hands. “You must have a homeless shelter around here somewhere.”
They did, but they wouldn’t take her with that bandage on the back of her head. She might sneak it past them, but he doubted it. Besides, she belonged in a hospital, at least until he knew exactly with what she was dealing.
“Have you ever spent the night in a homeless shelter?” he demanded, stopping in his tracks.
She stopped, too, and turned to face him. “I’m not going back to the hospital.”
“Do you even know what type of tumor it is?”
“Oligodendroglioma.”
Not good, but not necessarily fatal, and he noted that the medical term rolled off her tongue with the ease of familiarity.
“Temporal, obviously,” he noted to himself. “Grade?”
“Three.”
“For sure?”
“Sure enough.”
“Anaplastic?”
“I haven’t had a biopsy, but it’s assumed.”
“Other than the language issues, which are transient, and some impulse control, are you having any other symptoms? Seizures, perhaps?”
She shrugged.
Exasperated, he demanded, “How can you not know if you’re having seizures?”
She parked her hands at her waist. “Well, I haven’t exactly been eating regularly, as you’ve pointed out.”
The anger caught him entirely off guard. “In other words, you don’t know if you’ve been getting dizzy and passing out from hunger or from seizures?” She shrugged again, and it was all he could do not to shake her by her too slender shoulders. “You belong in a hospital.”
“I’m not going to the hospital,” she stated flatly. Then she added in a silly singsong, “and you can’t make me.” She actually stuck out her tongue.
He didn’t know whether to laugh or tear out his hair, so he did neither, instead saying with admirable coolness, “I won’t dignify that with a reply. Just tell me why you won’t go back to the hospital.”
She folded her arms. “I have my reasons. That’s all you need to know.”
He closed his eyes. God, why would You do this to me? But that didn’t really matter. He’d dealt with brain tumors before, quite a few of them. Besides, she was not his wife, and just because she was refusing treatment didn’t mean that her case was anything like Brigitte’s. He really had no choice about what to do with her, though.
“I’ll take you somewhere else.”
The thought had been hovering in the back of his mind since he’d realized her van was gone, but he knew that it would mean prolonged interaction with her, and he really didn’t want that. Yet, he was a doctor. He would do what he had to do to take care of her until she left his realm of influence.
“Where?” she asked, narrowing her eyes at him.
He had to make himself say it. “I know some older ladies who routinely open their home to those in need of a place to stay. It’s a large, antebellum mansion called Chatam House, so there’s plenty of room.”
“Antebellum,” she echoed. “That means pre–Civil War.”
“Yes.”
Interest kindled in her mottled-green eyes. “Cool. But what makes you so sure I can crash there?”
“They’re very generous. I’ve never known them to turn away anyone. Besides, they’re family friends.”
She tilted her head. “You’d do that for me? Ask family friends to take me in?”
“It wouldn’t be the first time I’ve asked the Chatam sisters to take in a pa—er—person.”
“No? What other patients have you asked these sisters to take in?” she asked, grinning at him.
Brooks looked her straight in the eye. “You know I cannot tell you that.” Though the Chatam sisters probably would. One of the patients had married their niece Kaylie. Morgan’s wife, Lyla Simone—whom he should have been sitting with at the dinner table just then—had been another.
Eva grinned and swayed toward him, scarves wafting, long pale hair glimmering. Even knowing about her medical and financial troubles, he had to admit that he’d never seen a more exotic, graceful, breathtaking sight. He prayed that she would refuse so he could wash his hands of her.
She did not.
“Okay. I guess I can stand a little antebellum mansion. Just until I can figure out what to do next.”
He gulped, disappointed and strangely, horrifyingly pleased. “Let’s say at least until your stitches come out, shall we?” he suggested, catching her by the arm as she made to walk past him.
After a moment more of consideration, she agreed. “That ought to do it.”
“Do I have your word on that?”
At least she didn’t give her word lightly; she actually thought it over before nodding. “You have my word.”
“Let’s go, then.” He walked her to the car, without releasing her arm, and handed her down into it.
“What about my things? My van is stuffed with my things.”
“We’ll have to get them tomorrow.”
She sat back with a huff, her plastic bag in her lap. He closed the door and walked around the rear of the car. On the way, he took out his phone and called Chatam House. He was bringing his best friend’s aunties another foundling, and he hoped that she wasn’t going to break all their hearts.
* * *
Homeless. She had gotten used to the idea of having no permanent address, no brick-and-mortar residence, but Eva couldn’t shake the feeling that she had truly hit bottom now that the van was gone. She’d felt strangely connected to home, if not particularly comfortable or safe—whatever that meant now—sleeping in the van. One of the reasons she’d decided to hit the road after her diagnosis was the ease with which she could customize the interior of the old minivan. She’d simply pulled out the rear seats and installed a cot, along with her art supplies and the little clothing that she owned. It didn’t take much wardrobe to work from home transcribing recorded medical notes, and when money was tight, why bother buying clothes no one would see?
For some reason, her homelessness felt particularly acute when she caught sight of Chatam House. The large, Greek Revival–style, white-painted brick house sat atop a slight rise at the apex of a long, looping drive. With a deep front porch, a fancy kind of carport on its western side, rose arbor and one of the tallest magnolia trees that Eva had ever seen, the place presented a kind of elegance and gentility that belonged to a past era. From the instant the sedan turned through the fat brick columns and drove past the ornate wrought iron gate at the bottom of the hill, Eva felt a sense of peace and serenity, something that had been in short supply in her life even before she’d received her diagnosis. She also felt out of place, disconnected.
“About my things. How can I be sure the bank won’t take the van before I can get my clothes and all my other stuff out of there?”
Sighing, Leland brought the car to a halt and pulled out his cell phone to make a phone call. She listened to his end of the conversation with some satisfaction and no little envy.
“Nothing like cl-out,” she quipped, giving the last word two syllables.
“The van will be there when we go to pick up your things tomorrow,” Leland assured her dryly.
“Thank you,” she returned crisply, turning her gaze to the side. “And you’re sure this is a private home? I mean, how many houses have names?”
He chuckled. “It’s a private home, occupied by four older people in their seventies. One of the triplets is married. They have a live-in staff of three as well, but they have quarters out back in the carriage house.”
“Triplets?” Eva echoed, laughing.
“Didn’t I say? The three sisters are triplets.”
“They aren’t identical, are they?”
He grinned. “Don’t worry. You’ll have no problem telling them apart.”
The car moved on up the hill and came to a stop in front of a red brick walkway. Leland killed the engine and got out, hurrying around the front of the car. The headlamps had not shut off yet, and Eva was struck again by the strength of the doctor’s physical attraction. Instinctively, she understood that he expected to get the door for her, and suddenly she dared not allow it. Yanking on the door handle, she literally bailed out—and nearly planted her face in his collar.
“Hang on,” he yelped as she slipped and slid in the deep gravel of the drive.
She found herself seized by the upper arms and steadied against the solid wall of his chest. The headlamps shut off abruptly, leaving them frozen, nose-to-nose, in the silent dark.
After a moment, his grip loosened, then he calmly asked, “Are you all right?”
“Fine,” she muttered. “Stupid shoes.” Nodding, he stepped away. “I have some smart ones in the van,” she quipped lightly.
He just turned toward the house, one hand fastened to her upper arm as if she couldn’t be trusted to find her own way. After escorting her up a trio of steps, he ushered her across the gray-painted floor of the porch to the bright yellow door. A fanlight of bubbly glass over the door offered a cheery glow. Leland knocked, and the door opened only moments later. A balding, roundish, middle-aged fellow wearing black slacks and a white shirt buttoned to the chin smiled in welcome.
“Doctor Brooks.”
“Chester. This is Ms. Russell. I believe the aunties are expecting us.”
“Yes, sir. I just left the tea tray with them in the front parlor. May I take your coat?”
“Thank you.”
“Tea tray?” Eva mused, as Leland divested himself of the overcoat and handed it over.
“Our hostesses enjoy a good cup of tea,” he informed her.
She lifted her eyebrows at that, glancing around the expansive foyer with its golden marble, red mahogany, sweeping staircase and...
“Oh, my. Will you look at that.” The ceiling had been painted in sunny shades of blue and yellow and white, a vision of billowing clouds and wafting feathers. “As if ducks have just collided out of sight.”
“Ducks colliding?” Leland asked, looking up. “That’s what you see?”
“Well, ducks are white,” she pointed out lamely. “Some ducks.” She had a comical picture of two clumsy ducks crashing together just out of sight and feathers fluttering down.
The doctor shook his head.
Chester cleared his throat. “May I take your, um, wraps, miss?”
“Miss. Oooh. I like it. Miss and young lady all in one day.” She folded her shawls tight. “No, thank you. I think I’ll hang on to these. In case I have to make a quick getaway.”
Chester’s eyebrows leaped all the way up to his nonexistent hairline. Sighing, the doctor clamped a hand around her elbow and tugged her toward a wide doorway.
“We’ll show ourselves in, Chester. Give my love to Hilda.”
The balding head nodded. Leland towed her into a large room filled with antiques and flowers. Eva glanced around. “Wow. It’s like a museum in here.”
“I’m afraid that includes the occupants, as well,” said an amused, cultured voice.
Eva turned her smile on the speaker, a silver-haired woman peering around the wing of a high-backed, gold-striped chair. The doctor rushed to make the introductions.
“Ladies and gentleman, allow me to present Eva Belle Russell. Eva, Miss Hypatia Kay Chatam.”
“Silk and pearls,” Eva said, nodding at the dignified lady with the silver chignon and sensible pumps.
“Miss Magnolia Faye Chatam,” Leland went on.
“Cardigans and penny loafers,” Eva announced, grinning at the wiry woman, her steel gray braid hanging over her shoulder.
“And this is their sister, Odelia May, or more properly, Mrs. Kent Monroe.”
Eva laughed aloud, taking in the flamboyant woman’s purple turban, fluffy white curls winging out beneath it, the carved parrots swinging from her earlobes and the colorful caftan that clashed so violently with the gold brocade of the love seat where she sat.
“Kindred spirit!” Eva exclaimed, whipping off her shawls and pointing at Odelia, who clapped and stood, holding out both arms to show off the caftan, which had been painted to look like a parrot’s chest and wings. “Turn around! Turn around!” Eva urged. Odelia did so, and sure enough, there was the parrot’s tail painted onto the silk. “I love it.”
Odelia and her husband laughed approvingly. He lumbered to his feet, showing off his pale yellow shirt, turquoise vest and dark purple suit. Beside her Brooks Leland pinched his temples between the thumb and pinky of one hand before saying, “And this, of course, is Mr. Kent Monroe.”
“Do me. Describe me,” urged Kent. “You’re very perspicacious. What do you see?”
Eva swept him with her gaze. Dared she say it? Of course she did. “An Easter egg in a suit.”
He and his wife gasped at each other then collapsed with laughter. “Very good! I almost wore a robin’s egg blue shirt with this, but as the darling wife pointed out, robins are not parrots.”
“And Easter eggs are?” Eva asked, puzzled.
“No, but they’re more colorful,” the missus said.
“So they are,” Eva agreed, winking. “Clever.”
“My word, there are two of them now,” observed Penny Loafers dryly from the armchair at the end of the low, oblong table before the love seat.
“Would you like a cup of tea, Miss Russell?” asked Silk-and-Pearls.
“Sure, why not?” she replied, taking a seat in one of a pair of armless chairs placed at the opposite end of the tea table from...Magnolia?
Silk-and-Pearls reached for the heavy silver teapot. “Brooks, dear?”
“Please,” he said, taking the chair beside Eva, “and thank you, Hypatia. I seem to have missed my dinner.”
“Hypatia,” Eva mused, “wasn’t she a Greek mathematician?”
“Why, yes,” the current Hypatia said, passing Eva a cup of tea, “as well as a philosopher and astronomer, though very few people seem to know it. How is it that you know about her?”
“Couldn’t tell you,” Eva admitted. “I remember some things and forget others.” She helped herself to several spoonfuls of sugar and looked to the wiry one. “Magnolia is self-explanatory, but I find that names often portend personality and outcomes, so what’s your story?”
“Oh, Magnolia grows things,” the flamboyant one supplied. “Flowers especially.”
“Really?” She waved a spoon at the large, colorful arrangement standing on a small table in the center of the room. “Did you do that?”
Magnolia inclined her head. “I do all the flowers around here.”
“Excellent balance and composition. I’m sort of an artist, I know these things.”
“Why, thank you.”
Eva sipped her tea, made a face and looked to the third sister. “Odelia means wealthy.”
“It does,” said Odelia, beaming wide enough to set the parrots swinging from her earlobes.
“And are you? Wealthy, I mean.”
Odelia glanced around helplessly for a moment, but then she blinked and said, “I think we’re all wealthy, really.”
Eva wagged a finger. “But you’re the real deal, aren’t you? You’re all quite comfortable, I imagine, but you...” She lifted an eyebrow at Kent. “You married deep pockets there, didn’t you? Eh? Mr. Money Bags?”
Hypatia and her sister gaped at the Easter egg, who flushed a deep red, cleared his throat and said, “I’ve made no secret of the fact that I’ve done quite well. I paid for the wedding, the remodeling of the upstairs, the pool...” He patted Odelia’s hand, where an enormous diamond rested. “Whatever my darling desires.”
Odelia giggled like a girl.