Dear Reader,

I really can’t express how flattered I am and also how grateful I am to Harlequin Books for releasing this collection of my published works. It came as a great surprise. I never think of myself as writing books that are collectible. In fact, there are days when I forget that writing is work at all. What I do for a living is so much fun that it never seems like a job. And since I reside in a small community, and my daily life is confined to such mundane things as feeding the wild birds and looking after my herb patch in the backyard, I feel rather unconnected from what many would think of as a glamorous profession.

But when I read my email, or when I get letters from readers, or when I go on signing trips to bookstores to meet all of you, I feel truly blessed. Over the past thirty years, I have made lasting friendships with many of you. And quite frankly, most of you are like part of my family. You can’t imagine how much you enrich my life. Thank you so much.

I also need to extend thanks to my family (my husband, James, son, Blayne, daughter-in-law, Christina, and granddaughter, Selena Marie), to my best friend, Ann, to my readers, booksellers and the wonderful people at Harlequin Books—from my editor of many years, Tara, to all the other fine and talented people who make up our publishing house. Thanks to all of you for making this job and my private life so worth living.

Thank you for this tribute, Harlequin, and for putting up with me for thirty long years! Love to all of you.

Diana Palmer

DIANA PALMER

The prolific author of more than one hundred books, Diana Palmer got her start as a newspaper reporter. A multi–New York Times bestselling author and one of the top ten romance writers in America, she has a gift for telling the most sensual tales with charm and humor. Diana lives with her family in Cornelia, Georgia.

Visit her website at www.DianaPalmer.com.

The Patient Nurse
Diana Palmer

www.millsandboon.co.uk

To doctors and nurses and hospitals everywhere.

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter One

He heard the whispered, amused comments as he walked down the hall toward the cardiac care unit of St. Mary’s Hospital, and it was hard work not to grin. He’d just been interviewed on local television that morning about his habits in the operating room. The interviewer had elicited the information that Dr. Ramon Cortero liked to listen to the rock group Desperado while he performed the open-heart surgery that he was world-famous for. The nurses and technicians in the cardiac ward where he worked had teased him about it affectionately all day. They were a team, he and these hardworking people, so he didn’t take offense at the teasing. In fact, some of them were fans of the Wyoming-based group Desperado, as well.

His black eyes danced in a lean and darkly handsome face as he strode along in his surgical greens, scouting for the wife of a patient in whom he’d just replaced a malfunctioning heart valve.

The woman wasn’t where she was supposed to be—in the surgical waiting room on the second floor. The CCU nurse had inadvertently sent her down to the main lobby waiting room, and when he’d phoned down there, she was missing. She was a middle-aged woman whose husband had survived against the odds, having been brought in with a leaky prosthetic valve complicated by pneumonia. It had taken all Ramon’s skill, and a few prayers, to bring the man through it. Now he had good news for this woman, if he could find her.

The elevator doors opened nearby, and when he turned, there she was, surrounded by her teenage son, in a long black coat, several members of her husband’s family, and one of the female chaplains who’d rarely left her side since the ordeal began forty-eight hours earlier. She looked her age. Her eyes were red and puffy from much crying, and there was a desperate plea in them.

Ramon smiled, answering the question she seemed afraid to ask. “He came through just fine,” he said without preamble. “He has a strong heart.”

“Oh, thank God,” she whispered, and hugged her son. “Thank God! And thank you, Doctor.” She extended a hand and shook his hand.

“De nada,” Ramon said with a gentle smile. “I’m glad we could help him.”

The cardiologist, a debonair African-American, grinned from his stance near the heart surgeon. It was he who had met the woman and her son at the door as they arrived in the critical care unit and explained the heart catherization procedure as well as the valve replacement surgery to them. It was he who’d offered comfort and a glimmer of hope. The woman shook hands with him and smiled broadly, adding her thanks to him, as well.

Dr. Ben Copeland only shrugged. “That’s what we’re here for,” he said, and smiled back. “Your husband is in the intensive care unit just down this hall. There’s a room next to it where you can wait until he’s hooked up to the monitors, and then you can see him.”

There were more thanks, more tears. A nurse came along and was dispatched to show the relieved family where they could wait until they were allowed to see the patient.

Ben joined Ramon. “Sometimes,” he said, “we have miracles. I wouldn’t have bet a cup of coffee on that man’s chances when he was brought in.”

“Neither would I,” Ramon agreed grimly. “But sometimes we get very lucky indeed.” He sighed and stretched. “I could sleep for a week, but I’m still on call. I guess you get to go home.”

Ben grinned.

“Lucky devil.” He shook his head and left the other man with a wave of his hand as he went to check on the other two surgical patients he’d managed, with God’s help, to pull back from the abyss. There had been three emergency surgeries on this otherwise quiet Sunday when he was on call. He was stiff and sore and very tired. But it was a good sort of tired. He paused at a window to gaze with quiet satisfaction at the huge lighted cross on the main hospital wall. Prayers were often answered. His had been tonight.

He checked his patients, wrote out the orders, dressed and went over to O’Keefe City Hospital across the street to visit three other new patients on whom he’d performed surgery. He also had to go to Emory University Hospital in Decatur on the way home to check a patient there who was ready to be dismissed. All his rounds made, he went home.

Alone.

His apartment was spacious, but not outwardly the home of a wealthy man. He preferred simplicity, a holdover from his childhood in Havana, in the barrio. He picked up a copy of Pio Baroja’s Cuentos and smiled sadly. There was an inscription just inside the cover that he knew by heart. “To Ramon from Isadora, with all my love.” His wife, who had died of pneumonia, of all things, only two years before. She had died while he was abroad performing complicated bypass surgery on a very important diplomat. She had died because of neglect, because her cousin had left her alone all night and the fluid in her lungs, combined with a desperately high fever, had killed her.

It was ironic, he thought, that he hadn’t been home the one time he was truly needed. He’d left Isadora with her young cousin, Noreen, a registered nurse. He’d thought he could trust Noreen to take care of her. But she’d left Isadora, and when Ramon came home from overseas, it was to find her already gone, already beyond the reach of his arms. He’d blamed, still blamed, Noreen for her neglect. She’d tried desperately to explain, but he’d refused to listen. Wasn’t her sin apparent to everyone, even to her aunt and uncle, who had blamed her as vehemently as he had?

He put the book down, running his fingers lovingly over the cover. Baroja, a famous Spanish novelist of the early twentieth century, had been a physician as well as an author. He was Ramon’s favorite. The stories in this collection were full of Baroja’s life in the barrio of Madrid before antibiotics were discovered. They were stories of pain and tragedy and loneliness, and through it all, hope. Hope was his stock-in-trade. When all else failed, there was still faith in a higher power, hope that a miracle could occur. One had occurred tonight, for that lady whose husband was in ICU. He was glad, because it was a good marriage and those people were in love, as he and Isadora had been. At the beginning, at least…

He sighed and turned toward the kitchen. He opened the refrigerator.

“Ay, ay, ay,” he murmured softly to himself as he surveyed the contents. “You’re a world-famous cardiac surgeon, Señor Cortero, and tonight for your supper you will feast on a frozen dinner of rubber chicken and undercooked broccoli. How the mighty have fallen!”

The sudden ringing of the telephone brought his head, and his eyebrows, up. He was still technically on call until midnight, and he might be needed.

He lifted the receiver. “Cortero,” he said at once.

There was a pause. “Ramon?”

His face hardened. He knew the voice so well that only two syllables gave away its identity over the telephone.

“Yes, Noreen,” he said coldly. “What do you want?”

There was a hesitation, also familiar. “My aunt wants to know if you’re coming to my uncle’s birthday party.” How stilted those words. She and her aunt and uncle weren’t close. They never had been, but the distance was especially noticeable since Isadora’s death.

“When is it?”

“You know when.”

He sighed angrily. “If I’m not on call next Sunday, I’ll come.” He toyed with a slip of paper on the spotless glass-topped telephone table. “Are you going to be there?” he added darkly.

“No,” she said without any trace of feeling in her voice. “I took his present over today. They’ll be out of town until the weekend, so they asked me to call you.”

“All right.”

There was another pause. “I’ll tell my aunt that you’re coming.” She hung up.

He put the receiver down and pressed it there. It felt cold under his fingers, cold like the inside of his heart where Isadora was. He could never separate the memory of her death from Noreen, who could have saved her if she’d been at home. It was unreasonable, this anger. He realized that, on some level. But he’d harbored his grudge, fed it on hate, fanned the flames to thwart the pain of losing Isadora in such a way. He made himself forget that Noreen had loved Isadora, that her grief had been every bit as genuine as his own. He hated her and couldn’t hide it. Hating Noreen was his solace, his comfort, his security.

To give her credit, she never accused him of being unjust or unreasonable. She simply kept out of his way. She worked in O’Keefe City Hospital across the street from St. Mary’s, where he performed most of his surgeries. She was one of two registered nurses who alternated night duty on a critical care ward. Sometimes he had patients in her unit, whom he had to visit on rounds. But he treated her even there as a nuisance. She had a university degree in nursing science. She had the talent and intelligence to become a doctor, but for some reason, she’d never pursued such a career. She’d never married, either. She was twenty-five now, mature and levelheaded, but there were no men in Noreen’s life. Just as there were no women in Ramon’s.

He went back into the kitchen and made himself a pot of coffee. He required very little sleep, and his work was his life. He wondered what he would have done without it since losing Isadora.

He smiled, remembering with sad poignancy her elegant blond beauty, those vivid blue eyes that could smile so warmly. Noreen was a poor carbon copy of her, with dishwater blond hair and gray eyes and no real looks to speak of. Isadora had been beautiful, a debutante with exquisite poise and manners. The family was very wealthy. Noreen shouldn’t have to work at all, because she was the only surviving heir to the Kensington fortune. But she had apparently little use for money, because even when she was off duty, she seemed to dress down. She had an apartment and never asked her aunt and uncle for a penny to help support her. He wondered what their response would have been if she had asked, and was amazed that he concerned himself with her at all.

Noreen had been a puzzle since he’d met Isadora, six years before. Isadora was outgoing and gregarious, always flirting and fun to be with. Noreen had been very quiet, rarely exerting herself. She’d had no social life to speak of. She was studious and reserved back then, a nurse in training, and her profession seemed to be paramount in her life.

Ramon frowned. Odd, he thought, how a woman so wrapped up in nursing could have been so negligent with her own cousin. Noreen was so conscientious on the ward that she was often reprimanded for questioning medicine orders that seemed unacceptable to her.

Perhaps she’d been jealous of Isadora. Still, why would she have gone so far as to leave a critically ill woman alone in an apartment for almost two nights?

One of his colleagues had mentioned Noreen to him shortly after the funeral, and remarked how tragic the whole business was, especially Noreen’s condition. He’d snapped that Noreen was no concern of his and walked off. Now he wondered what the man had meant. It was a long time ago, of course. The colleague had long since moved to New York City.

He dismissed the thought from his mind. God knew, he had more important things to think about than Noreen.

That Sunday afternoon, since he wasn’t on call, he did go to see Hal Kensington, Isadora’s father, bearing a birthday present—a gold watch. Mary Kensington met him at the door, soignée in a leopard-striped silk caftan with her platinum blond hair, so much like Isadora’s, in a neat bun atop her head.

“Ramon, how sweet of you to come,” she said enthusiastically, taking his arm. She made a face. “I’m sorry I had to ask Noreen to phone you about today. I knew I’d never have time to run you down, with all my charity work, you know.”

“It’s all right,” he said automatically.

She sighed. “Noreen is a cross that we must all bear, I’m afraid. Fortunately we don’t see her except at Christmas and Easter, and only then at church.”

He glanced down at her curiously. “You raised her.”

“And I should feel something for her, you think.” Mary laughed without humor. “She was Hal’s only brother’s child, so we were obligated to take her in when her parents died. But it wasn’t from choice. She was always in the way. She’s going to be an old maid, you know. She dresses like someone out of the local shelter and as for parties, my dear, I never invite her for them, she’s so depressing! She was always like that, even as a child. Isadora was so different, so sweet, so loving. She was our whole world from the minute she was born. Of course, Noreen stayed with my mother a great deal of the time, until her death.” She glowered. “Noreen was a burden. She still is.”

How strange that he should feel a twinge of pity for the sad little girl who came to live with people who didn’t want her.

“Don’t you love Noreen?” he asked bluntly.

“My dear, who could love such a pale shadow of a woman?” she asked indifferently. “I suppose I’m fond of her, but I can never forget that she cost us our Isadora. As I’m sure you can’t,” she added, patting his arm comfortingly. “We all miss her so much.”

“Yes,” he said.

Hal was sprawled in his favorite easy chair, his bald head reflecting the light from the crystal chandelier overhead. He looked up from the yachting magazine he was reading as the other two joined him.

“Ramon! So glad you could come!” He put the magazine aside and stood up to shake hands warmly with his son-in-law.

“I brought you a little something,” he said, handing Hal the elegantly wrapped package.

“How kind.” Hal beamed. He opened it and enthused over the watch. “Just what I wanted,” he said. “I have a sport watch, but I can wear this one to the yacht club. Thanks!”

Ramon waved the thanks away. “I’m glad you like it.”

“Noreen gave him a wallet,” Mary said disparagingly.

“Eel skin,” Hal added, shaking his head. “The girl has no imagination.”

Ramon remembered where Noreen lived, the clothes she wore off duty. She apparently had little money, since she asked for nothing from her aunt and uncle, and eel skin wallets were expensive. He wondered what she might have gone without to buy her uncle that present, about which he was so cavalier. Ramon knew what it was to be poor. He was grateful for any gift he received, however meager.

He recalled that Noreen had chosen a small crystal bud vase for Isadora as a wedding gift when they married. Isadora had tossed it aside without a care, much more enthusiastic about the Irish linen tablecloth that a girlfriend had brought her. Noreen hadn’t said a word, but a male nurse who had accompanied her to the engagement shower remarked loudly that Noreen had gone without a badly needed coat to buy that elegant trifle for her unappreciative cousin. Isadora had heard him, red-faced, and immediately picked up the bud vase and made a fuss over it. But it was too late. Noreen had held her head up proudly, never shed a tear. But her eyes had been so sad…

“Are you listening, Ramon?” Hal murmured. “I said, we’ll have to go sailing one weekend.”

“I’d like that, when I have time,” Ramon replied, but without enthusiasm. He was uncomfortable with these people. They picked their friends by their bank balances and social position. Ramon had been acceptable because he was famous and well-to-do. But the Ramon Cortero who had escaped from Cuba with his parents at the age of ten wouldn’t have been welcomed as a prospective in-law. He knew it, now more vividly than ever. Odd, these disjointed thoughts that plagued him lately.

He stayed only long enough for cake and coffee, served on the finest china, and then excused himself. Outside, he looked back at the large brick mansion with no real feeling at all. The house was as bland and indifferent as the people who lived inside it. He wondered what was happening to him to make him feel so uncomfortable with Isadora’s parents, who had been so kind to him after her death.

He drove himself back to his apartment in the silver Mercedes that was his pride and joy. He couldn’t remember feeling so empty since the funeral. Probably he was overtired and needed a vacation. He should take a week off, just for himself, and go away. He could fly down to the Bahamas and laze on the beach for a few days. That might perk him up.

He glanced around him at the beautiful city skyline, ablaze with colorful lights, and remembered how that elegant glitter used to remind him of beautiful Isadora. She was sweetness itself to him, but he remembered vividly walking in on her once when she was cursing Noreen like a sailor for not putting her sweaters in the right drawer. Noreen hadn’t said a word in her own defense. She’d rearranged the clothes and left the room, not quite meeting Ramon’s eyes.

Isadora had laughed self-consciously and murmured that good help was just so hard to find. He’d thought it a cold remark for a woman to make about her own cousin, and he’d said so. Isadora had laughed it off. But he’d watched, then, more closely. Isadora and her parents treated Noreen much more like a servant than like a member of the family. She was always fetching and carrying for someone, making telephone calls, arranging caterers and bands for parties, writing out invitations. Even when she was studying for exams, the demands from her family went on without pause.

Ramon had remarked once that exams called for a lot of study, and the other three Kensingtons had looked at him with blank faces. None of them had ever gone to college and had no idea what he was talking about. Noreen’s duties continued without mercy. It wasn’t until she left home, just after Isadora’s marriage, that the Kensingtons hired a full-time housekeeper.

He went back to his apartment and made himself a cup of coffee. It disturbed him that he should think of Noreen so much, and especially on her uncle’s birthday. There had been parties for Hal, and Mary Kensington before, but Noreen had rarely been included in the celebrations. It was as if her presence in the family was forgotten until something needed doing that only she could do, such as nursing Isadora through flu and colds and nuisance ailments.

That reminded him of Isadora’s pneumonia and Noreen’s neglect, and he grew angry all over again. Despite his wife’s faults, he’d loved her terribly. Even though Noreen had been badly treated by her aunt and uncle and cousin, it was no excuse to let Isadora die. He might feel pity for her lack of love, but he still felt only contempt when he remembered that Isadora had died because of her.

He spent six days in the Bahamas, alone, enjoying the solitude of the remote island where he had a room in a bed-and-breakfast inn. He’d walked along the beach and remembered painfully the happy days he’d spent here with Isadora on their honeymoon. He still missed her, despite their turbulent relationship.

He noticed gray hairs now and felt his age as never before. He should remarry; he should have a son. Isadora hadn’t wanted children and he hadn’t pressed her about it. There had been plenty of time. Or so he thought.

The sunset was particularly vivid, as if it were a canvas worked by a madman in fiery colors with black highlights, slicing down to the horizon like a bloody knife. He sighed as he stared at it and listened to the sweet watery whisper of the surf near his bare feet. How poignant, to hold such sights in the heart and have no one to share them with. He was alone. How he longed for a loving wife and plenty of children playing around him on the beach. Perhaps it was time he started thinking of the future instead of the past. Two years was surely long enough to mourn.

He went back to work with a vengeance, taking on a bigger workload than ever before as time passed. He was operating on a private patient at O’Keefe City Hospital, across the street from St. Mary’s. It was just after a particularly rough operation that he was called to the cardiac care ward to check a patient the night nurse wasn’t too happy about. He had three patients in this hospital, in addition to patients at St. Mary’s and Emory.

He wasn’t happy when he discovered who the night nurse was. Noreen, in her usual white slacks and colorful long jacket, with a stethoscope around her neck, her hair in a bun, gave him a cool look as he paused at the circular nurses’ station.

“I didn’t think this was the night you worked at O’Keefe,” he said shortly, still in his surgical greens.

“I work whenever I have to, and what are you doing at O’Keefe?” she asked.

“I had a patient who requested that his surgery be performed here. I’m on staff at three hospitals. This is one of them,” he replied, equally coldly.

“I remember,” she said. Her hands went into the pockets of her patterned jacket. “Your Mr. Harris is throwing up. He can’t keep his medicine down.”

“Where’s his chart?”

She went to the doorway of the patient’s room and produced it from the wire basket on the wall, handing it to him.

He scowled. “This nausea started on the last shift. Why wasn’t something done about it then?” he demanded.

“Some of the nurses are working twelve hour shifts,” she reminded him. “And there were four new cases added to the ward this afternoon, all critical.”

“That’s no excuse.”

“Yes, sir,” she said automatically, handing him a pen. “Could you do something about it now?”

He scribbled new orders, and then went in to check the man, who was pale from his ordeal.

He came out scowling. “The catheter was taken out last night and put back in this morning. Why?”

“He didn’t void for eight hours. It’s standard procedure…”

He stared her down. “He’s been throwing up and not drinking very many fluids. The longer that catheter stays in, the more risk there is of infection. I want it taken out and left out until and if he complains of discomfort. Is that clear?”

“Yes, sir,” she said.

“Who had the catheter taken out?” he asked abruptly.

She only smiled at him.

“Never mind,” he said heavily, knowing that torture wouldn’t drag a name out of her. His eyes went over her oval face. Her cheeks were red but the rest of her face was pale and rather puffy. He scowled. He’d never noticed that before. It was the sort of look he often found in heart patients.

She put the chart back up. “The technicians are run off their feet on this shift. I wish we had someone staying with him who could give him cracked ice. That would stay down.”

“Hasn’t he any family?” he asked, touched by her concern.

“A son, in Utah,” she replied. “He’s on his way here, but he won’t arrive until tomorrow.”

“Tough.”

“Very.”

He glanced toward one of the patient’s wives who was trotting down the hall with a foam cup and a plastic pitcher. “Where’s she going?” he asked.

Noreen actually smiled, her eyes lighting up. “The Jamaican technician, Mrs. Hawk, told her where the ice machine and the coffee machine were. She’s been saving everyone steps ever since. She even gets towels and washcloths and blankets when she needs them, instead of asking anyone.”

“This is unusual?”

“Well, there are three other women who come to the door and ask us to give their husbands water when they’re thirsty—about every five minutes, after they’re brought in here after surgery.”

“Nurses used to do those things,” he reminded her.

“Nurses used to have more time, fewer patients, less paperwork and not as many lawsuits to worry about,” she returned, and sighed.

He searched her face and the frown came back. “Do you feel all right?” he asked with evident reluctance.

Her face closed up. “I’m a little tired, like everyone else on this shift. Thank you for seeing about Mr. Harris, sir.”

He shrugged. “Let me know if he has any further bouts of nausea.”

“Yes, sir.” She was polite, but cool, remote.

His dark eyes narrowed as they met her gray ones. “You don’t like me at all, do you?” he asked bluntly, as if he’d only just realized it.

She laughed without humor. “Isn’t that my line?”

She turned without meeting his gaze and went back to work, apparently dismissing him from her mind.

He left the ward, but something was nagging at the back of his mind, something he couldn’t quite put his finger on. He was uneasy, and he didn’t know why. Vacations, he thought, were supposed to relax people. His seemed to have had an opposite effect.

Behind him, Noreen was trying to calm her renegade heartbeat, forcing herself not to look after the tall, dark man to whom she’d secretly given her heart so long ago. He’d never known, and he never would. Isadora had brought the tall man home and Noreen’s heart had broken in two. Not for her, the dark warm eyes, the sensuous smiles. Isadora, the pretty one, the flirting one, married the man Noreen would have died just to kiss. She’d kept her painful secret for six long years, through the four years of Ramon’s marriage, through the past two searing years of accusation and persecution. Her heart should have worn out by now, but it kept beating, despite its imperfection that grew worse daily.

The time would come when she might not have time to get to a doctor. Not that it mattered. Her life was one of sacrifice and duty. There had been no love in it since the death of her parents. She’d felt lost going to the big, lonely house that accepted her only reluctantly. She’d been Isadora’s private servant, her aunt’s social secretary, her uncle’s gofer. She’d been alone and lonely most of her adult life, hopelessly in love with her cousin’s husband and too proud to ever let it show.

He hated her now, blamed her for something that wasn’t really her fault. Even in death, he still belonged to beautiful Isadora. Noreen turned her mind back to her chores, shutting him out, shutting out the past and the pain. She accepted her lot, as she always had, and went about her work.

Chapter Two

Noreen went home to her lonely apartment and wished, not for the first time, that she had a cat or a dog or something to keep her company. But the apartment house had strict rules about pets. None were allowed, period. It was a lovely old Southern home, two story, with antiquated plumbing and peeling paint on the walls. But its four residents considered it home, and it boasted a small garage maintained just behind it for the residents who drove.

Fortunately Noreen and a medical student seemed to be the only people in residence who owned cars. There was a MARTA bus stop on the corner, and here in midtown, everything was accessible. Noreen, however, liked the freedom her car gave her. It was small and old, but it managed to keep going, thanks to the mechanic down the block who charged only a tiny fee to tinker with it when necessary. While she made a good salary at the hospital, Noreen still had to cut corners to make ends meet.

She’d never lacked for material things when she lived with her aunt and uncle and Isadora, but her life had been emotionally empty. Here, with her few possessions around her, she was at least independent. And if she lacked for love and companionship, that was nothing new. She wondered occasionally if her aunt had minded having to hire a housekeeper and social secretary after Noreen’s expulsion from the family home. She’d never had to pay her niece for these services. It would never have occurred to her.

Ramon had moved to a new apartment, she recalled, after Isadora’s tragic death. He hadn’t been able to face going home to the scene of his beloved wife’s last hours, for which he still blamed Noreen. She’d tried and tried to make him listen to the truth, just after it happened. But, maddened with grief and pain, he’d refused to let her speak. Perhaps he preferred the heartless image he’d endowed her with since their first meeting. God knew, he’d never really looked at her anyway.

She recalled with pain her first sight of him, getting out of a stately Jaguar in front of her aunt and uncle’s huge, sprawling mansion. His black hair had shone in the sun. His tall, athletic form in a staid gray suit had made him seem leaner, more imposing. As he entered the house, the impact of his liquid, coal black eyes in a handsome, blemishless dark face had caused Noreen’s heart to stop dead for an instant. She’d never known such sensations in her life. She’d flushed and stammered, and Ramon had smiled almost mockingly at her momentary weakness. It had been, she recalled painfully, as if he knew that her knees had gone weak in that instant. He was worldly, so perhaps her reaction was one to which he’d become accustomed. But God knew, amusement had been his only expression. He’d turned right away from Noreen after the quick, indifferent introduction, right back to his beautiful Isadora.

“Don’t think that he noticed you at all,” Isadora had said mockingly that evening, “despite the calf’s eyes you were making at him. Imagine a man like that looking twice at you!” she’d added, laughing.

Noreen hadn’t been able to meet those demeaning blue eyes. “I know he belongs to you, Isadora,” she’d said quietly, tidying up after her cousin.

“Just remember it,” came the curt reply. “I’m going to marry him.”

“Does he know?” Noreen couldn’t resist asking the dry question.

“Of course not,” her cousin murmured absently. “But I’m going to, just the same.”

And she had, only two months later, with her aunt as matron of honor and one of her set as bridesmaid.

Ramon, courteous to a fault even to strangers, had puzzled over the selection. Two days before the wedding, while Isadora enthused over her bridal gown with her mother, Ramon had paused in the doorway of the kitchen, where Noreen was taking tiny tea cakes out of the oven, to ask why she wasn’t participating in the wedding.

“Me?” Noreen had asked, sweating from the heat of the kitchen, where she’d been sent to make pastries for afternoon coffee.

He’d frowned at her appearance. “Do you never wear anything except jeans and those—” he waved an expressive dark hand “—sweatshirts?”

She’d averted her eyes. “They’re comfortable for working around the house,” she’d replied.

She could feel him watching her while she slid the cakes onto a china plate and placed the cookie sheet into the stainless-steel sink for washing.

“Isadora doesn’t like to cook,” he murmured.

“I imagine you won’t mind having someone else do it,” she replied uncomfortably. She hated having him even this close, she was so afraid of giving herself away. “Anyway, Isadora’s much too pretty to waste time on domestic chores.”

“Are you jealous of her,” he’d asked, “because she’s pretty and you aren’t?”

The mocking tone of the question had brought her pale gray eyes up flashing. She almost never talked back, but he seemed to bring out latent temper in her that she hadn’t realized she possessed.

She remembered standing up straight, glaring at him from a face flushed with heat and temper, her dark blond hair hanging in limp ringlets from the bun atop her head. “Thank you so much for reminding me of the qualities I lack. I don’t suppose it would occur to you that I’m capable of looking in a mirror?”

His eyes had sparkled, for the first time, at her. His eyelids had come down over that glitter and he’d stared at her until her unruly heart had gone crazy in her chest.

“So you’re not quite a doormat, then?” he’d prompted.

“No, no soy,” she replied in the perfect Spanish she’d been taught in school, “y usted, señor, no es ningún caballero.”

His eyebrows had gone up with her assertion that he was no gentleman. “Que sorpresa eres,” he murmured, making her flush again with the intimacy of the familiar tense—only used between close friends or relatives—when she’d used the formal. What a surprise you are! he’d said.

“Why, because I can speak Spanish?” she asked in English.

He smiled, for once without sarcasm. “Isadora can’t. Not yet, at least. I intend to teach her the most necessary words. Of course, those aren’t used in public.”

From a distance of years, she looked back with faint curiosity at the way he’d taunted her with his feelings for Isadora. It had been that way from the beginning. It grew much worse as the couple celebrated their first anniversary.

Noreen hadn’t ever been sure why she was invited to the party. She hadn’t planned to go, either, but Ramon had sent a car for her.

Hal and Mary Kensington welcomed her enthusiastically in front of their guests, and then ignored her. Isadora seemed furious to see her there and had pulled her to one side during Ramon’s brief absence, with curling fingers whose nails had almost broken the surface of her skin.

“What are you doing here?” she’d demanded furiously. “I didn’t invite you to my anniversary celebration!”

“Ramon insisted,” Noreen said through her teeth. “He sent a car.”

The other woman’s delicate blond brows arched. “I see,” she murmured. She dropped her cousin’s arm abruptly. “He’s getting even,” she added with a harsh laugh. “Just because I had Larry over to dinner while he was away operating in New York.” She shifted abruptly. “Well, he’s never home, what does he expect me to do, sit on my hands?” Her eyes ran over Noreen angrily. “Don’t imagine that he sees stars when he looks at you, sweetie,” she continued hotly. “He only made you come so that he could make me jealous.”

Noreen had caught her breath. “But, that’s crazy,” she’d said, choking. “For heaven’s sake, Isadora, he doesn’t even like me! He cuts at me all the time!”

The other woman’s deep blue eyes had narrowed. “You don’t understand at all, do you?” she’d asked absently. “You’re such a child, Norie.”

“Understand what?”

Ramon had come into the kitchen then, his face hard. “Why are you hiding in here?” he asked Isadora. “We have guests.”

“Yes, don’t we?” she replied with a pointed look at Noreen. “I should have asked Larry,” she added.

Ramon’s eyes had flashed furiously. Isadora darted under his arm and back to her guests, leaving Ramon with only Noreen to take his burst of temper out on.

And he had.

“The charlady, in person,” he’d commented coldly, glaring at her eternal jeans and sweatshirt. “You couldn’t wear a dress for the occasion?”

“I didn’t want to come,” she replied furiously. “You made me!”

“God knows why,” he returned with another cold survey of her person.

She couldn’t think of anything to say to him. She felt and looked out of place.

He’d moved closer and she’d backed away. The expression on his face had been priceless. Sadly, her instinctive action had led to something even worse.

“Do I repulse you?” he’d murmured, coming closer until she was backed to the sink. “Amazing, that such a shadow of a woman would refuse any semblance of ardent notice on the part of a man, even a repulsive man.”

She’d shivered at his tone and crossed her arms across her sweatshirt defensively. “A married man.” She’d hurled the words at him.

His hands had clenched by his side, although the words had the desired effect. He made no more movements toward her. His eyes had searched hers, demanding answers she couldn’t give.

“Maid of all work,” he’d taunted, “cook and housekeeper and doer of small tasks. Don’t you ever get tired of sainthood?”

She’d swallowed. “I’d like to go now, please.”

His chest had risen sharply. “Where would you like to go? Away from me?”

“You’re married to my cousin,” she’d said through her teeth, fighting down an attraction that made her sick all over.

“Of course I am, house sparrow,” he’d replied. “That beautiful, charming woman with the saintly face and body is all mine. Other men are sick with jealousy of what I have. Isadora, bright and beautiful, with my ring on her finger.”

“Yes, she is…lovely.” She’d choked.

His fury had been a little intimidating. Those black eyes were like swords, cutting at her. He hated her, and she knew it. Only she didn’t know why. She’d never hurt him.

He’d moved aside then, with that innate courtesy and formality that was part of him.

“I grew up in a barrio in Havana,” he murmured quietly. “My parents struggled to get through college, to educate themselves enough to get out of the poverty. When we came to the States, we rose in position and wealth, but I haven’t forgotten my beginnings. Part of me has nothing but contempt for those people in there—” he jerked his head toward the living room “—content in their pure country-club environment, ignorant of the ways poverty can twist a soul.”

“Why are you talking to me like this?” she’d asked.

His face had softened, just a little. “Because you’ve known poverty,” he replied, surprising her. She hadn’t realized he knew anything about her. “Your parents were farmers, weren’t they?”

She nodded. “They didn’t get along very well with Aunt Mary and Uncle Hal,” she confided. “Except for public opinion, I’d have gone to an orphanage when they were killed.”

He knew what she meant. “And would an orphanage have been so much worse?”

The question had taunted her, then and now. It was as if he knew what her life had been like with the Kensingtons, her father’s brother and sister-in-law, and beautiful Isadora. Ridiculous, of course, to think that he understood.

On the other hand, she wondered if Isadora had ever understood him, or how his childhood had shaped him into the adult he was now. He never refused an indigent patient, or turned his back on anyone who needed help. He was the most generous man she’d ever know.

Isadora hated that facet of his personality.

“He gives money away to people on the street, can you believe it?” Isadora had asked at Christmas the second year of her marriage. “We had an unholy row about it. They’re the flotsam of the earth. You don’t give money to people like that!”

Noreen didn’t say a word. She frequently contributed what little she could spare to a food fund for the homeless, even volunteering during holidays to help serve it.

One day during the holidays, to her amazement, she’d found Ramon putting on an apron over his suit to join her at the serving line.

“Don’t look so shocked,” he’d said at her expression. “Half the staff sneaks down here at one time or another to do what they can.”

She’d ladled soup at his side for an hour in the crowded confines, sick with gratitude for her own meager income and a roof over her head as the hopeless poor of the city crowded into the warmth of the hall for a hot meal. Tears had stung her eyes as a woman with two small children had smiled and thanked them for their one meal of the day.

Ramon’s hand had come up into hers with a handkerchief. “No ¡hagas!” he’d whispered in Spanish. Don’t do that.

“I don’t imagine you ever shed tears,” she’d muttered as she wiped her eyes unobtrusively with the spotless white handkerchief that smelled of exotic spices.

He’d laughed softly. “No?”

She glanced at him curiously.

“I care about my patients,” he told her quietly. “I’m not made of stone, when I lose one.”

She averted her eyes to the soup and concentrated on putting it into the bowls. “Latins are passionate about everything, they say,” she’d murmured without thinking.

“About everything,” he’d replied in a tone that made her shiver inexplicably.

She’d tried to give him back the handkerchief, but he’d refused it at first.

His eyes had been cruel as they met hers over it. “Put it under your pillow,” he’d chided. “Perhaps the dreams it inspires will make up for the emptiness in your life.”

Her gasp of shock had seemed to bring him to his senses.

“I beg your pardon,” he’d replied stiffly. And, taking the handkerchief back, he’d shoved it into his slacks pocket as if the sight of it angered him.

Over the years there had been other incidents. Once she’d been summoned by Isadora to drive her downtown when Ramon had refused to let her use the Jaguar.

She’d barely been admitted by the flustered maid when she heard the furious voices coming from the living room.

“I’ll spend what I like!” Isadora was yelling at her husband. “God knows, I deserve a few luxuries, since I don’t have a husband! You spend every waking hour at the office or in the hospital! We never have meals together! We don’t even sleep together…!”

“Isadora!” Noreen had called, to alert her cousin to her appearance before the argument got any hotter.

“What’s she doing here?” Noreen heard Ramon ask furiously as she walked toward the living room, hesitating for a second at the open door.

“She’s driving me to the mall,” Isadora had told him hatefully, “since you won’t!” She glanced toward Noreen. “Well, come in, come in,” she called angrily. “Don’t stand out there like a shadow!”

Ramon’s hot glance told her what he thought of her and her usual, off-duty attire. She was the soul of neatness on the job, in her ward, but she still dressed like a farm girl when she was off duty.

“Honestly, Norie, haven’t you got any other clothes?” Isadora asked angrily.

“I don’t need any others,” she replied, refusing to supply her relative with the information that her salary barely covered her apartment rent and gas for the car, much less fancy clothes.

“How economical you are,” Ramon purred.

Isadora had glared at him, jerking up her purse and cashmere sweater. “You should have married her!” She threw the words at him. “She can cook and clean and she dresses like a street person! She probably even likes children!”

Noreen had colored, remembering being with Ramon in the soup kitchen downtown at Christmas.

“How would you know how street people dress?” Ramon asked his wife coolly. “You won’t even look at them.”

“God forbid,” she shuddered. “They should round them all up and put them in jail!”

Noreen, remembering the woman and two little children who’d accepted their meal with such gratitude, felt sick to her stomach and turned away, biting her tongue to keep it silent.

“Spend what the hell you like,” Ramon told his wife.

Isadora’s eyebrows had risen an inch. “Such language!” she’d chided. “You never used to curse at all.”

“I never used to have reason to.”

Isadora made a sound in her throat and stalked out, motioning curtly to Noreen to follow her.

Just a week before Isadora died, she was taken with a mild bronchitis. Ramon had promised to accompany a fellow surgeon to Paris for an important international conference on new techniques in open-heart surgery. Isadora had pleaded to go, and Ramon had refused, reminding her that flying in a pressurized cabin on an airplane could be very dangerous for someone with even a mild lung infection.

Typically Isadora had pouted and fumed, but Ramon hadn’t listened. He’d stopped by Noreen’s station in the cardiac unit at O’Keefe’s and asked her to stay with Isadora in their apartment and take care of her in his absence.

“She’ll find a way to get even, if she can,” he’d said, curiously grim. “Watch her like a hawk. Promise me you won’t leave her if she takes a turn for the worse.”

“I promise,” she’d said.

“And get her to a hospital if there’s any deterioration at all. She has damaged lungs from all that smoking she used to do, and she’s very nearly asthmatic,” he’d added. “Pneumonia could be fatal.”

“I’ll look after her,” she’d said again.

His dark eyes had searched hers relentlessly. “You’re nothing like her,” he’d said quietly.

Her face had gone taut. “Thanks for reminding me. Are there any other insults you’d like to add, before you go?”

He’d looked shocked. “It wasn’t meant as a insult.”

“Of course not,” she’d replied dryly. She’d turned back to her work. “I know you can’t stand the sight of me, Ramon, but I do care about my cousin, whether you believe it or not. I’ll take good care of her.”

“You’re an excellent nurse.”

“No need to butter me up,” she said wearily, having grown used to the technique over the years. “I’ve already said I’ll stay with her.”

His hand, surprisingly, had caught her arm and jerked her around. His eyes were blazing.

“I don’t use flattery to get what I want,” he said curtly. “Least of all with you.”

“All right,” she’d agreed, trying to loosen his painful grip.

He seemed not to realize how tight he was holding her arm. He even shook it, having totally lost his self-control for the first time in recent memory. “Make her understand why she can’t go on the plane. She won’t listen to me.”

“I will. But you should be pleased that she wants your company so much.”

His grip tightened. “One of the men who will be at the conference is her lover,” he said with a short laugh. “That’s why she’s so eager to go.”

Noreen’s face was a study in shock.

“You didn’t know?” he asked very softly. “I can’t satisfy her,” he added bluntly. “No matter how long I take, whatever I do. She needs more than one man a night, and I’m worn to the bone when I get home from the hospital.”

“Please,” she’d whispered, embarrassed, “you shouldn’t be telling me this…!”

“Why not?” he’d asked irritably. “Who else can I tell? I have no close friends, my parents are dead, I have no siblings. There isn’t a human being on earth who’s ever managed to get close to me, until now.” He searched her face with eyes that hated it. “Damn you, Noreen,” he whispered fervently. “Damn you!”

He dropped her arm and stalked off the ward, leaving her shaken and white with shock. He really hated her. That was when the mask had come down and she’d seen it in his eyes, in his face. She didn’t know why he hated her. Perhaps because Isadora had said something to him…

She’d gone to their apartment that night, confident that Ramon had already left, to find the maid hysterical and Isadora sitting out on the balcony in a filmy nightgown, in the icy cold February rain.

She’d been out there, the poor maid cried, ever since her husband had left the apartment. She didn’t know what had been said between them, but she’d heard the voices, loud and unsettling, in their bedroom. There had been a furious argument, and just after the doctor had gone, the madam had taken off her robe and gone to sit in the rain. Nothing would induce her to come inside. She was coughing furiously already and she had a high fever that she’d forbidden the maid to tell the doctor about.

Noreen had gone at once to the balcony and with the maid’s help, had dragged Isadora back inside.

They’d changed her clothing, but the effort had made Noreen’s heart, always frail, beat erratically.

While she was catching her breath, the maid announced that her husband had already phoned twice and was furious. She had to leave.

Noreen was reluctant to let her go, feeling sick already, but the poor girl was in tears. She gave permission for her to leave, and then went to listen to Isadora’s chest.

Her cousin was breathing strangely. She wasn’t conscious, and her fever was furiously high.

She had to get an ambulance, she decided, and went to phone for one. But when she lifted the receiver, there was a strange sound and no dial tone.

Furious, she started out into the hall to ask a neighbor to phone for her. Suddenly everything went pitch-black.

She was really frightened now, and her heart was acting crazily.

She moved down the hall, feeling for the elevators, but they weren’t working. There was the staircase. They were only four flights up. It wouldn’t be too far. She had a terrible feeling that Isadora’s lung had collapsed. She could die…

Making a terrific effort, she pushed into the stairwell and started down and down, holding on to the rail for support as her breathing began to change and her heartbeat hurt.

She never really remembered afterward what happened, except that she suddenly lost her footing, and consciousness, at the same time.

She came to in the hospital, trying to explain to a white-coated stranger that she must get back to her cousin. But the man only patted her arm and gave her an injection.

It was the next day before she was able to get out of the hospital and go back to Ramon’s apartment. But by that time, the maid had found Isadora dead, and worst of all, Ramon had come home before she was moved.

Noreen had arrived at the door just as the ambulance attendants came out with Isadora’s body.

Ramon had seen Noreen and lapsed into gutter Spanish that questioned everything from Noreen’s parentage to her immediate future, eloquently.

“Oh, please, let me explain!” she’d pleaded, in tears as she realized what must have happened to Isadora, poor Isadora, all alone and desperately ill. “Please, it wasn’t my fault! Let me tell you…!”

“Get out of my apartment!” Ramon had raged, in English now that he’d exhausted himself of insults. “I’ll hate you until I die for this, Noreen. I’ll never forgive you as long as I live! You let her die!”

She’d stood there, numb with shock and weakness, as he strode out behind the ambulance, his face white and drawn.

Later, at the funeral home, Noreen had tried to talk to her aunt and uncle, but her aunt had slapped her and her uncle had refused to even look at her. Ramon had demanded that she be removed from the premises and not allowed to return.

She hadn’t been allowed at the service, either. She was an outcast from that moment until just recently, when inexplicably, her aunt and uncle had invited her for coffee just before her uncle’s birthday. Ramon’s attitude had been one of unyielding hatred.

Her feelings of guilt were only magnified by the attitude of Isadora’s husband and parents. Eventually she realized that nothing was going to excuse her part in what had happened, and she’d accepted her guilt as if she deserved it. Her work had become her life. She never asked for anything from her relatives again. Not even for forgiveness.

Chapter Three

It had been a long morning and Ramon was worn to the bone. He’d already done one meticulous bypass operation and a valve was scheduled first thing after lunch. It should have been his day off, but he was covering at O’Keefe for one of the other surgeons who was sick with a bad case of the flu.

He carried his tray into the cafeteria dining room and looked around the crowded area, hoping for an empty table, but there wasn’t one. The only empty spot he glimpsed was at a table occupied by Noreen. He glared at her over his salad plate and coffee.

Noreen dropped her eyes back to her plate, furious with herself for flushing when he looked at her. He’d take his salad out to the small canteen adjoining the cafeteria and sit on the floor before he’d join her, and she knew it. If only she could outrun her own hated feelings for the horrible man. If only it didn’t matter what he thought of her.

She almost dropped her fork when, without asking, he put his coffee and plate down on the table across from her, pulled out a chair and sat down.

He saw her surprise and was almost amused by it. He spread his napkin in his lap, took the plastic lid from his salad plate and picked up his own fork.

“Would sitting on the floor have been too obvious?” she asked in a faintly dry tone.

His dark gaze pinned hers for an instant before he bent his head toward a forkful of tuna salad.

“You do that so well,” she remarked.

“Do what?” he asked.

She finished a mouthful of fruit and sat back in her chair. “Snub me,” she said. “I suppose I irritated you from the day we met, just by being alive.”

“Don’t talk nonsense,” he murmured deeply, and sipped his coffee. He glanced at the clock. “I thought you went to lunch at half-past noon.”

She crossed her long legs in their white knit slacks. “I usually do. But you weren’t supposed to be operating at O’Keefe today,” she explained.

His black eyes twinkled a little. “You avoid me, then?”

“Of course I avoid you,” she replied tersely. “That’s what you want me to do. You don’t even have to say it.” She stared into her black coffee, idly noting that he took his coffee black, too.

His gaze ran over her averted profile. She wasn’t pretty, as Isadora had been. But she was slender and had a nice shape, even though her features were ordinary. Her hair was neither blond nor light brown, but somewhere in between. Her eyes were more gray than blue. She never wore makeup. In fact, she seemed not to care how she looked, although she was always clean and neat in appearance. She might be quite attractive with the right hairstyle and clothes. His eyes narrowed on the thick bun at her nape. He’d never seen her with her hair down. He’d wondered for a long time what it would look like, loosened.

She caught his speculative glance and her cheeks colored. “I feel like a moth on a pin,” she murmured. “Could you stop staring at me? I know you think I’m the nearest thing to an ax-murderess, but you don’t have to make it so obvious in public, do you?”

He scowled. “I haven’t said a word.”

She laughed, but it had a hollow sound. Her gray eyes were full of disillusionment and loneliness. “No,” she agreed. “You never have. You may be Latin, but you don’t act it anymore. You never explode in rage, or throw things, or curse at the top of your lungs. You can get further with a look than most doctors can with arm-waving fury. You don’t have to say anything. Your eyes say it for you.”

His dark eyes narrowed. “And what are they telling you?”

“That you blame me for Isadora,” she said quietly. “That you hate me. That you wake up every morning wishing it had been me instead of her in that casket.”

His jaw clenched, to keep the words back. His eyes glittered, just the same.

“You might not believe it,” she added heavily, “but there are times when I wish I could have taken her place. None of you seemed to realize that I loved her, too. I grew up with Isadora. She could be cruel, but she could be kind when she liked. I miss her.”

He tried unsuccessfully to bite back the cold words. “What an odd way you had of showing your concern,” he muttered curtly. “Leaving her alone in an apartment to die.” The minute the words were out, he regretted them deeply, but it was already too late.

Noreen’s eyes closed. She felt faint, as she did so often these days. Her breath came in short little shallow breaths. She clenched her hands in her lap and fought to stay calm, so that she wouldn’t betray herself. Ramon was an excellent surgeon. She wouldn’t be able to hide her condition if he looked too closely. He might say something to administration…

She lifted her head seconds later, pale but more stable. “I have to go,” she said, and slowly, carefully, got out of her chair, holding on to it for support.

“Have you had any sleep?” he asked suddenly.

“You mean, does my guilty conscience keep me awake?” she said for him, smiling coolly. “Yes, if you want to know, it does. I would have saved Isadora if I’d been able to.”

She was fine-drawn, as if she didn’t eat or sleep. “You never told me exactly what happened,” he said.

The statement surprised her. “I tried to,” she reminded him. “I tried to tell all of you. But nobody wanted my side of the story.”

“Maybe I want it now,” he replied.

“Two years too late,” she told him. She picked up her tray. “I would gladly have told you then. But I won’t bother now. It doesn’t matter anymore.” Her eyes were empty of all feeling as her gaze met his, betraying nothing of the turmoil he kindled inside her. “It doesn’t matter at all what any of you think of me.”

She turned away and went slowly to the automatic tray return to deposit her dishes. She didn’t look back as she went out the door toward the staff elevators.

Ramon’s dark eyes followed her with bitter regret. He couldn’t seem to stop hurting her. It was the last thing she needed. She moved more slowly these days. She didn’t seem to have an interest in anything beyond her work. The hospital grapevine was fairly dependable about romances and breakups, but he’d never heard Noreen’s name coupled with that of any of the hospital staff. She didn’t date. Even when she was living at home with Isadora’s family, she was forever walking around with her nose stuck in a medical book, studying for tests and final exams. She’d graduated nurses’ training with highest honors, he recalled, and no wonder.

He sipped his coffee, remembering his first glimpse of her. He’d met Isadora at a charity dinner, and they’d had an instant rapport. Isadora’s date had been appropriated by his boss for a late sales meeting, and Ramon had offered to drive the beautiful blonde home. She’d accepted at once.

She lived in a huge Georgian mansion on the outskirts of Atlanta, in a fashionable neighborhood. Her parents had been in the living room watching the late news when she’d introduced Ramon to them. They were standoffish at first, until Isadora told them what he did for a living and how famous he was becoming.

Noreen had been at home. She was curled up in a big armchair by the fireplace with an anatomy book in her hands, a pair of big-rimmed reading glasses perched on her nose. He remembered even now the look in her eyes when he and Isadora had approached her. Those soft gray eyes had kindled with a kind of gentle fire, huge and luminous and full of warm secrets. He’d made an instant impression on her; he saw it in her radiant face, felt it in the slight tremor of her small hand when they were introduced. But he had eyes only for Isadora, and it was apparent. Noreen had withdrawn with an odd little smile.

And in the weeks that followed, while he courted Isadora, Noreen was conspicuous by her absence. She hadn’t been invited to be part of the wedding. Later, it shamed him to remember how insulting Isadora had been about her cousin. She hadn’t wanted to include Noreen among her entourage. Isadora had been viciously jealous of her cousin. She seemed to delight in looking for ways to put Noreen down, to make her feel unwelcome or inferior.

Isadora had been beautiful, socially acceptable, poised and talented. But she was empty inside, as Noreen wasn’t. That jealousy had led to a bitter argument before Ramon’s trip to Paris just before Isadora’s death. He closed his eyes and shuddered inside, remembering what had been said. He’d blamed Noreen for everything, even for that, when the blame was equally his.

The movement of people at the next table brought him back from his musings. He glanced at his watch and hurriedly finished his lunch. It was time to go back to work.

Noreen was anxious to get back to her apartment after she finished her day’s work. She was feeling weaker by the minute, breathless and faintly nauseous, and her heartbeat was so irregular that it bothered her.

She got into bed and lay down. She was asleep before she realized it, too tired to even bother with so much as a bowl of cereal for supper.

But by morning, she felt better and her pulse seemed less erratic. She had to continue working. If she lost her job, she could lose her medical insurance, and she had to depend on it for the valve surgery she needed. It was an expensive operation, but without it she might not live a great deal longer. She knew that the damaged valve was leaking, the specialist had told her so. But she also knew that people could live a long time with a leaky valve, depending on the amount of leakage there was and the level of medical care and supervision she had. Until now, she’d had very few problems since Isadora’s death.

She sipped orange juice and grimaced as she recalled how sick Isadora had been and how desperate she’d been to get help. Ramon wanted to know all about it now, and that was tragic, because she wasn’t going to tell him a thing. She had no place in his life at all, nor did she want one. She’d paid too high a price for her feelings already. She wasn’t going to fall back into the trap of loving him. Loneliness was safer.

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.