The Ugly Duckling

by Iris Johansen

  “The hell I’m not.” He wearily shook his head. “And don’t give me that bull about her being responsible because she was dealing with Gardeaux. I don’t think she did.”

  “Then why did he want to take her out?”

  “I don’t know. None of it makes sense. There has to be some reason.” He paused. “She and the kid were both stabbed, when a bullet would have been quicker and more efficient.”

  “Maritz?”

  “Probably. He was a Seal and he’s the only one of Gardeaux’s men who’s in love with a knife. Nell Calder must have been his sole target. Her husband and the others were killed in the ballroom, but he stalked her.”

  “Prime target.” Jamie nodded. “Which makes your innocent-bystander premise distinctly suspect.”

  “Then prove me wrong. It would make me happy as hell to find out she was working for Gardeaux. If you’re going to trace any connection, we’ll need more information than the dossier Conner’s compiled on her. I want to know what she had for breakfast when she was six years old.”

  “And when do you want me to start?” He held up his hand. “Never mind. After dinner, right?”

  “I can get someone else. It’s donkey work, and I’m not sure it will bring us any closer to Gardeaux.”

  “Well, the pub’s a bit slow right now. I might as well do it myself. Anything else?”

  “A guard on her hospital room. Gardeaux might not like the fact that she’s still alive.” He made a face. “Better make him unobtrusive, or Joel will have a cow.”

  “Not easy. Those medical types are very territorial.” He thought about it. “Maybe a male nurse. I could call Phil Johnson in Chicago.”

  “Whatever. Just have him in place by tomorrow morning.”

  “What about tonight?”

  “I’ll be with her tonight.”

  “You didn’t sleep on the plane.”

  “And I won’t sleep tonight. I’m not going to make another mistake.”

  Tanek again.

  He looked different, and for a moment Nell couldn’t realize why.

  The green sweater. He wasn’t wearing a tuxedo. And he no longer looked angry and tense, only tired.

  She could understand that. She was tired too. So tired she could barely hold her eyes open. She seemed to be floating.…

  That’s right, she was dying. If this was what it was like, it wasn’t so bad.

  She must have whispered, because he leaned forward. “You’re not dying. You’re fine.” He grimaced. “Well, not fine, but you’re not going to die. You’re in a hospital back in the States. You have quite a few broken bones but nothing we can’t fix.”

  She felt vaguely comforted. No, there was nothing he couldn’t fix. She had known that the first time she had seen him.

  “Go back to sleep.”

  But she couldn’t go back to sleep. There was something wrong. Something to do with that dark horror before she fell. Something she had to ask. “Jill …”

  His expression didn’t change, but she felt a ripple of panic. Yes, something was wrong.

  “Go to sleep.”

  She quickly closed her eyes. Darkness. She could hide there, hide from the hideous truth she sensed behind Tanek’s impassive face.

  She let the darkness carry her away.

  “You do not eat my soup,” Tania said as she sat down at the table. “Perhaps you think it unworthy of you?”

  Joel Lieber scowled. “Don’t start that. I’m not hungry.”

  “You work from dawn to dusk and your secretary says you seldom have lunch. You must be hungry.” She calmly met his gaze. “Which means you think my soup unworthy. But I don’t see how that can be, when you haven’t tasted it.”

  He took up his spoon, dipped it into the soup, and brought the spoon to his mouth. “Delicious,” he growled.

  “Now the rest. Hurry. Before my roast gets cold.”

  He put his spoon down. “Stop giving me orders in my own home.”

  “Why? It’s the only place you will take orders. You’re a very arrogant man.” She sipped delicately at the soup. “But you can be forgiven your arrogance in the operating room, since you probably know best. Here, I know best.”

  “About everything under the sun. You’ve made my life a torment since you moved in with me.”

  She smiled serenely. “You lie, you’ve never been so contented. I give you fine food, a motherly shoulder to lean on, and a clean house. You would be lost if I left you.”

  Yes, he would. “Your shoulders aren’t at all motherly.” They were straight and square and always looked as if she were going forth into battle. Sadly, she was accustomed to battle. She had been born and raised in the hell Sarajevo had become. Nicholas had brought her to him four years before, half starved, wounded, and scarred from shrapnel. Eighteen years of age, with the eyes of an old woman. “And I got along very well without you for a number of years.”

  She snorted. “So well, Donna divorced you because she never saw you. A man must have a home as well as a career. It’s good I came in time to save you.” She took another sip of soup. “Donna thinks so too. She thinks I’m the best thing that ever happened to you.”

  “I don’t appreciate you conspiring with my ex-wife.”

  “I don’t conspire. I talk to her. Is that conspiring?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m here alone all day. I need to practice my English, so I talk on the phone.” She said with satisfaction, “My English is getting much better. Soon I will be ready to go to the university.”

  He went still. “You will?”

  “But don’t be frightened. I will still stay with you. I’m very happy here.”

  “I’m not frightened.” He glowered at her. “I’d be glad to be rid of you. You’re the one who marched into my house and took over.”

  “I could do nothing else,” she said simply. “You would have grown old and sour as an unripe olive if I hadn’t come to you.”

  “And you’re here to keep me young and sweet?”

  “Yes.” She smiled. “Young, I can do. Sweet is a greater challenge.”

  She had a wonderful smile. Her face was angular and strong, with wide, mobile lips and deepset eyes. It was not a pretty face until she smiled, and then Joel felt as if she had given him a special gift. He had taken away the scars, but God had given her that smile.

  She said calmly, “Though it would help if you would take me to your bed.”

  He looked down and hastily took a sip of soup. “I told you, I don’t jump into the sack with teenagers.”

  “I’m twenty-two now.”

  “And I’m almost forty-one. Too old for you.”

  “Age means nothing. People don’t think that way anymore.”

  “I do.”

  “I know, you make it very difficult for me. But we won’t argue about it now.” She rose to her feet. “You’re already upset and you’ll blame the indigestion on my soup. We’ll finish dinner and then you can tell me what’s wrong over coffee in the library.”

  “Nothing’s wrong.”

  “You know you’ll feel better talking about it. I’ll get the roast.”

  She disappeared into the kitchen.

  “Drink your coffee.” Tania curled up across from him in the big Chesterfield, tucking her long legs beneath her. “I put a little cinnamon in it. You’ll like it.”

  “I don’t like sweet coffee.”

  “Spice isn’t sweet. Besides, how do you know? I bet you’ve not had anything but vile black brew since medical school.”

  “It’s not vile.” He added, “And you don’t let me have caffeine anymore.”

  “You still have it at the hospital.”

  “I suppose your spies report back to you? I’ll drink what I please.” He deliberately set his cup on the table beside him. “And I don’t want to have any coffee at all now. I have to get back to the hospital and check on a patient.”

  “The patient you’re so worried about that you can’t eat?”

  �
�I’m not worried.”

  “Then why are you going back to the hospital? Is it one of the children?”

  “No, it’s a woman.”

  She said nothing, only waited.

  “Nicholas brought her,” he added reluctantly.

  “Nicholas?” She sat upright in the chair.

  “I thought that would pique your interest,” he said sourly. “But it doesn’t make any difference. You can’t persuade me to take this case just because Nicholas wants me to do it. The breakage is too severe to reconstruct her face exactly the way it was. I’ll turn her over to Samplin.”

  “I wouldn’t try to persuade you. I owe a debt to Nicholas and it’s mine alone to pay.” She frowned. “Who is the woman?”

  “Nell Calder. She was one of the victims at the Kavinski massacre.”

  “No, who is she to Nicholas?”

  “You needn’t be jealous. I think he barely knows her.”

  “Why would I be jealous?”

  Her surprise was genuine, and Joel felt a ripple of relief. He tried to shrug casually. “The two of you are close as peas in a pod.”

  “He saved my life and he brought me to you.” She gazed at him thoughtfully. “Nicholas and I want nothing from each other except friendship.”

  “Nicholas seldom does anything for nothing.”

  “Why are you talking like this about Nicholas? You like him.”

  He did like him. He was also jealous as hell of the bastard. He had a sudden memory of a scene in Casablanca when Ingrid Bergman stared wistfully after Humphrey Bogart while Paul Henreid looked noble and boring in the background. It hadn’t mattered to her that Henreid was a heroic resistance fighter; black sheep were always more interesting.

  “You don’t understand him,” Tania said. “He’s not as hard as he seems. He’s on the other side now.”

  “Other side?”

  “He’s led a rough life. Things happen to scar and twist you until you think you’ll never believe in anything, that there’s no evil you couldn’t commit to survive. Then you go beyond it.” She looked down into her coffee cup. “And you become human again.”

  She was not only talking about Nicholas. She had been through that hell and come out on the other side too. He wanted to reach out and comfort her, to tell her he’d care for her and treasure her always.

  He picked up the coffee cup and took a drink. “It’s good,” he lied.

  Great, Joel. Nicholas saves her life and you compliment her coffee.

  She smiled brilliantly. “I told you so.”

  “You’re always telling me so. It’s very irritating.”

  “So why does Nicholas want you to help this woman?”

  He shrugged. “I think he believes he’s partially responsible. So he brings her to me to absolve his guilt. I’m not buying it.”

  “I think you are. You feel sorry for this woman.”

  “I told you, I can’t give her back what she’s lost.”

  “You can’t put her face back exactly the way it was,” she said. “But you can give her a new face, right?”

  “I thought you weren’t going to try to persuade me.”

  “I’m not. It’s entirely your decision. But, since you’ll probably do it anyway, I think you should give yourself a challenge to make it more interesting.” She smiled teasingly. “Have you never wanted to experiment with your own Galatea?”

  “No,” he said flatly. “That’s not plastic surgery. It’s fairy tales.”

  “Ah, but you need fairy tales, Joel. No one needs them more than you.” She stood up and took his cup away from him. “You hated this coffee, didn’t you?”

  “No, I thought it—” He met her gaze. “Yes.”

  “But you did it for me.” She brushed his forehead with her lips. “I thank you.”

  She carried the tray out of the library.

  The room seemed suddenly dimmer without her vibrant presence.

  She had said the debt to Nicholas was hers alone.

  It wasn’t true.

  Nicholas had brought Tania into his life. It was a debt he would never be able to repay even if the bastard continued bringing him his wounded strays for the rest of his life.

  “Oh, what the hell.”

  Think Galatea.

  “What are you doing here?”

  Nicholas looked up as Joel came into the hospital room. “I could ask the same of you,” Nicholas said.

  “I belong here.”

  “Plastic surgeons don’t make rounds at eleven o’clock at night.”

  Joel was glancing at the chart. “Did she wake?”

  “For a minute or two. She thought she was dying.” He paused. “She asked for her daughter.”

  “She doesn’t know her husband and daughter are dead?”

  “Not yet. I thought she had enough to contend with.”

  “Too much. Surgery and the psychological adjustment.” He grimaced. “And then you mix in traumatic loss. It can trigger a breakdown if she’s not strong enough. What kind of woman is she?”

  “She’s no powerhouse.” He had a sudden memory of Nell Calder’s face when she had left her daughter’s room. “Soft, gentle. She was crazy about the kid. You could see her world revolved around her daughter.”

  “Great.” Joel wearily ran his fingers through his curly brown hair. “Does she have any other family?”

  “No.”

  “A career?”

  “No.”

  “Shit.”

  “She studied art during her first three years at William and Mary. Then she transferred to Greenbriar and switched to education. She met Richard Calder, who was studying for his master’s in economics at Greenbriar. It appears he was a prime catch—brilliant, charismatic, and ambitious. She married him three weeks after she moved back home and quit college. She had Jill a year later.”

  “Why did she drop art?”

  Nicholas shook his head. “I don’t know. I’ll try to fill in the blanks later.”

  “It’s not going to be easy.”

  “But you’re going to take her on?”

  “You may wish I hadn’t. The work I did on Tania is child’s play compared to the surgery required here. I think you may pay for my new lake house.”

  He grimaced. “That steep.”

  “She must suspect something’s wrong, and we can’t keep putting off telling her. You’ll have to break it to her that she no longer has a family.”

  “Why do I have the honor?”

  “I don’t want her identifying me with it. I have to represent hope and a new life. Tell her and then walk away. She won’t want to see you again in the foreseeable future.”

  “Bad cop, good cop?”

  His brow rose. “You’d know more about police procedure than I would, but you’ve got the general idea.” Joel was becoming more cheerful by the minute. “We can’t have Superman’s cloak tarnished. Tomorrow I’ll lessen the sedation so that she’s alert enough to understand and you can talk to her.”

  “Thanks.”

  Joel’s smile faded. “Be gentle, Nicholas. It’s going to be a hell of a shock.”

  Did he think he was going to try to hurt her? Nicholas thought. He nodded curtly. “Not that it will do any good. She won’t care if I’m gentle as Jesus Christ once she realizes what I’m telling her.”

  “I’ll come in later and give her a sedative.”

  “And take away the pain?”

  “That’s what the good guy does. That’s why I became a doctor. Ugliness and deformity can bring a lifetime of pain. I can change that.” He turned and headed for the door. “Of course, the big bucks don’t hurt.” He gave Nicholas a sly smile over his shoulder. “Well, maybe they’ll hurt you. Yes, I believe I’ll make sure your wallet cries out for mercy.”

  Nicholas heard him begin to whistle as he strolled down the corridor.

  “Go to bed.” Tania stood in the doorway of the library.

  “Soon,” Joel said absently. He studied the measurements he had scrawled on th
e oval diagram on the pad. He always liked to work on the pad first before transferring the image into the computer.

  “Now.” Tania strode forward and stopped at the desk. She was barefoot and wearing only one of his old T-shirts. Why did women look so damn sexy in men’s clothes?

  “It’s after midnight,” she said. “You can’t operate tomorrow if you don’t sleep.”

  “I don’t operate until tomorrow afternoon.” He wearily shook his head. “And then I have to go and tell Nell Calder that for the next few weeks she’s going to have to lie in bed with a minimum of movement. Nice, huh? She’ll have plenty of time to think of her husband and kid.”

  She looked down at the oval. “This is her face?”

  “I’m checking the measurements to see what’s possible. I need to have something to tell her. Everything else has been taken away. She needs something to hold on to.”

  “You’ll give it to her.” She put her hand on his shoulder and added softly, “You’re a good man, Joel Lieber.”

  He leaned forward and fastened his gaze on the pad. He said gruffly, “Then go to bed and stop bothering me. I have work to do.”

  “Two hours.” She stepped back, and her hand dropped away from him. “And then I’m coming back to get you.”

  His gaze lifted to watch her stride toward the door. She never strolled, she always looked as if she knew exactly where she was going.

  “I have nice legs, yes?” She smiled at him over her shoulder. “That is lucky. Donna said you were a leg man.”

  “Actually, I’m not. I told Donna that only because she had breasts like a boy.”

  She clucked reprovingly. “You lie now, not then.”

  She left the study.

  Joel forced himself to look back at the pad. She would be back in two hours and he must not be here. She deserved more than a workaholic twice her age who had already failed at one marriage. He must not think of those long legs or that smile.

  Yeah, sure.

  Well, he had to try.

  Think Galatea.

  The face was not Tanek’s this time.

  A young face, broad cheekbones, a nose that had once been broken, blue eyes, blond crew cut. “Hi, I’m Phil Johnson, Mrs. Calder.”

  “Who?”

  “I’m your nurse.”

  He looked more like a linebacker, she thought. The white hospital tunic stretched over shoulders that rippled with muscle.