So that was where this was headed. Amused, Reese shook his head. “You’re too young.”
Rachel rose to her feet. “True,” she allowed, her eyes sparkling. “But you’re not.”
He’d never taken a real vacation, nothing beyond a couple of days off here and there. The week he’d been off when he’d had that miserable strain of flu didn’t count. Vacations held no allure for him. He liked his work. But to placate his mother he said, “I’ll think about taking some time off after I discharge London Merriweather.”
About to pick up her plate and take it to the sink, Rachel paused, thinking.
“Where have I heard that name before?” And then, before he could tell her, she suddenly looked at Reese sharply as it came back to her. “The newspaper. I just read about an accident—” Her eyes widened considerably. “You don’t mean that the ambassador’s daughter is—”
Not his mother, too, he thought, nodding in response. “My patient. They brought her in on my shift.”
Without saying another word, Rachel hurried into the next room, which was officially the small, formal dining room. It was also where she kept all the previous days’ newspapers until they were picked up for recycling once a week.
Reese heard her searching through the pile. Triumphant, she returned a minute later, a four-day-old A section of the L.A. Times in her hand.
“This ambassador’s daughter?” Rachel pointed to the article at the bottom of the first page.
“That ambassador’s daughter,” he acknowledged.
Taking the paper from her, Reese glanced at the article. It was the morning edition, and it carried an old photograph of London. She’d worn her hair differently then, he noted, and the photo was grainy. But even the newsprint couldn’t detract from the sparkle that seemed to be in her eyes. It was there even when she was angry, the way she’d been when her father had descended on her.
Funny how some things just stuck with you, he thought, handing the paper back to his mother.
Rachel folded it and left the section on the table. “And she’s your patient.”
A deaf man would have picked up on the wonder in his mother’s voice. What was it about these people that caused others to be in awe of them?
“We just established that, Mom.” He raised a brow. “Or should I take you in for short-term memory-loss testing?”
With an exasperated squeal, Rachel swatted at him, then looked thoughtfully down at the photograph. “Very pretty girl.” She glanced up at Reese. “Article doesn’t say anything about a fiancé.”
He knew that look. It meant his mother was delving further. It also meant he should get going.
“Far as I know there isn’t one. At least, none that I’ve seen or heard her mention.” Because he knew he probably wasn’t going to get a chance to stop for lunch, he picked up his glass of orange juice and finished it off. Putting the glass down again, he gave his mother a warning look. “Drop it, Mom.”
She couldn’t have looked more innocent if she’d been created five minutes ago. “Drop what, dear, the paper?”
The paper was already on the table. And her meaning was out in the air. “The thought.”
Her eyes widened further, though it was hard to keep her lips from curving and giving her completely away. “What thought?”
He tapped her forehead with his fingertip. “The one I can see forming in your mind.” They’d always been close, he and his mother, and he almost always knew what she was thinking. And right now she was being a very typical mother. “She’s my patient.”
Rachel grinned. It was an expression that succeeded in transforming her into someone who looked as if she was far too young to have a son as old as Reese. “Exactly.”
He took out his car keys. “And there’s such a thing as ethics—”
But Rachel was way ahead of him on that score. “She won’t always be your patient. That’s the beauty of your being a surgeon. You operate, you check, you release.” Rachel dusted off her hands. “And then she’s not your patient anymore.” She looked back at the thumbnail-size photograph again and smiled. “Really lovely girl. Needs a strong hand, though, according to what I read in the article. Just a little too headstrong.” Rachel looked up at her son. “Is that true?”
He thought of London’s standoff with her father and the way she tried to maintain her own space within the fishbowl existence that she’d had. You could call that headstrong, he thought. Or you could call it determined to be her own person. Either way, he had no desire to get into that kind of a discussion with his mother right now. Given an inch, he knew she’d be trying to invite the woman over for dinner.
“Don’t believe everything you read,” was all he said. He began to head for the door. “Gotta go, Mom. Thanks for breakfast.”
Placing his dish beside hers on the counter, Rachel turned and accompanied him to the front door. “Maybe what she needs is a good home-cooked meal.”
Reese nearly laughed. He’d seen it coming a mile away, he thought. “Maybe.”
His mother looked at him brightly. “I cook. At home,” she added.
Crossing through the small living room, Reese opened the door. “Hence a home-cooked meal, yes, I know.” He made an elaborate show of looking at his watch. “Gotta go, really. It’s getting late.”
It was not even 7:00 a.m., but she knew he had rounds to make before he went to his office and he was nothing if not conscientious.
Still, she didn’t want to give up on this totally. She had a feeling about it. Or maybe she just wanted to have a feeling. “I don’t need much notice,” she persisted.
“Yes, I know. Ready for anything, that’s you.”
Opening the door, Reese stopped, realizing that must have sounded flippant. He knew how much this woman had given up so that he could pursue his own dreams. His mother could have remarried, could have been assured of security years before he’d grown up and been able to give it to her. Joe Abernathy had asked her to marry him twelve years ago. Reese knew that she’d loved the man. But Joe had not wanted to be saddled with a child and had wanted her to send him off to a good military school. He could have afforded the best.
She hadn’t even taken any time to think it over. She’d refused, and she and Joe had eventually come to a parting of the ways. She’d continued to hold down two jobs so that he would never lack for anything, not even her. Looking back, he didn’t think she’d slept much in ten years. His mother was his first experience with a superwoman.
Impulsively, even though he wasn’t given to being demonstrative, Reese hugged her to him.
“Thanks, Mom.”
Surprised, delighted, it took Rachel a second to collect herself and return the embrace. She felt tears betraying her as they sprang to her eyes. She loved him dearly and, more than anything in the world, she wanted him to be happy.
“Don’t be such a stranger,” she said as her son released her. “I make other things than breakfast, you know.”
Shaking his head, Reese laughed as he walked away. “Yes, I know.”
Rachel Bendenetti stood watching her son as he got into his car and drove away. Mentally she crossed her fingers and offered up a few prayers to any saint in the immediate vicinity who had the time to work a miracle or two. She wasn’t partial to a particular saint; she appealed to them all. The only thing that interested her at the moment was the end result.
“He’s a good boy,” she said out loud, although she knew there was no need. There were tallies of these things somewhere. Every good deed was noted and remembered. She figured that her son had a huge volume with his name on it. “It’s time he had something more than his medical books to curl up with. See to it,” she instructed as she walked back into the house.
She had every hope that she wasn’t going to be ignored. After all, it wasn’t as if she was always asking for things.
It seemed to Reese that each time he walked into her room, London Merriweather looked a little better, a little more attractive.
The spa
rk in her eyes was the first thing to return, then the color in her cheeks.
Four days into her stay, she’d done something with her hair. At first he’d thought that maybe her father had sent in a hairdresser for her. Under the circumstances, it wouldn’t have surprised him. But Betty at the nurses’ station on this floor had said that one of the nurses had helped London into the shower and to blow-dry her hair.
The end result was that when he walked in this morning, it took him a moment to remember just what he was supposed to be doing here. He blamed it on his mother, on some kind of posthypnotic suggestion she had probably planted in his brain.
But he still had trouble drawing his eyes away…still had to remind himself that London was his patient and that was all.
London was sitting up in bed, reading, looking like a vision.
She had on an ivory peignoir with lace trim around a scooped-out neckline that flatteringly emphasized her breasts. Her shoulder-length golden-blond hair formed a cloud around her and seemed to sparkle in the morning sunlight that came in through the windows.
The moment he walked in, she raised her head. The preoccupied look on her face faded, to be replaced with a warm, inviting smile.
She closed her book and let it fall on her lap. “Enter, Daniel.”
He remember that he was supposed to be able to walk and crossed to her bed. He looked at the title of the book. The words were in red letters, but didn’t register. “Daniel?”
Amusement entered her eyes as she slowly nodded her head. The woman knew exactly the kind of power she had and how to wield it, he thought.
“The man who bearded the lion in his den and lived to tell about it.”
He forced himself to mentally take a few giant steps back—and to remember that she was his patient and only that. He picked up her chart, though he didn’t open it. “You consider yourself a lion?”
London laughed. Tigress, maybe. But not a lion. “Not me, my father.” She studied him for a moment. Definitely good lines. She wondered if he was the least bit impressed with her. Or was he one of those equality advocates who was put off by wealthy, powerful people? She didn’t blame him. She felt a little that way herself, even though she’d grown up with them all around her. “He respects you, you know.”
Reese remembered the way her father had glared at him, and the warning he’d issued. He figured that London was fabricating things. “How can you tell?”
She indicated the bed and the room. “Because I’m still here.”
He took no credit for that. Because he found himself in danger of staring into her liquid green eyes and getting lost there, he looked down at her chart and flipped it open to the last page.
Reese allowed himself a mild smile. “I thought that had more to do with your refusal to leave.”
“The ambassador doesn’t listen to me and no one tells him what to do unless he is inclined to do it, anyway.” She debated keeping the next thing to herself, and then decided to tell him to see his reaction. You could tell a lot of things about a person by his reaction to having his privacy invaded. “He’s had you checked out, you know.”
Reese didn’t care for that, but there was nothing he could do about it. He made an entry in her chart. “I never doubted it.”
Because she was curious herself, she’d made Wallace give her that report. The bodyguard hadn’t seemed comfortable about releasing the information to her, but she’d overruled him. Wallace was a pussycat. “You graduated at the top of your class.”
Reese spared a single glance in her direction. “It was a dirty job, but someone had to do it.” With that he placed her chart back in its slot at the foot of her bed. Suite or no suite, some things remained the same.
London cocked her head, looking more closely at the man who she’d dreamed about last night. A very hot, erotic dream that had made her look at him more closely now. It seemed that her subconscious was way ahead of the game. And right on target.
She also noted something else. “You look tired.”
The comment surprised him and then he laughed quietly. “My mother said the same thing this morning.”
It was still early, that meant he’d had to have come from there. “You live with your mother?” He didn’t seem the type.
Was she trying to pigeonhole him, he wondered. “No. Stopped by for breakfast.”
“A good son,” she approved mockingly, then her tone faded as a question entered her mind, ushered in by a wave of sadness and longing. “What’s it like?”
He wasn’t following her. Looking at her, he saw that the flippant expression was gone. He couldn’t quite fathom the one he saw. “What’s what like?”
She supposed he’d probably think she was a loon, but he’d brought it up in the first place. “Having breakfast with your mother?”
Reese remembered she’d said that her mother had died in a hospital. “A lot like this—toast mixed with interrogation. Except that we had French toast.”
“Your favorite?”
There was a small shrug. “She likes to make it, I like to eat it.”
Noncommittal, she thought. Like most of the people who drifted through her life. She made sure of that. With people who were noncommittal, there was never the danger of wanting to commit to them. You knew where you were at all times. There was no fear of being abandoned, of being left behind. That you would part was a given to begin with.
London laughed, but he could hear a sad echo within the sound.
He came closer to her. “How old were you when your mother died?”
She raised her eyes to his, surprised at the personal question. He didn’t strike her as the type to ask. Part of her was happy he did. “Eight.”
Reese nodded, taking the information in. He could visualize her, the girl she’d been. Something tugged on his heart. “Rough. I was ten when my father left.”
“Left?” She hadn’t thought of him having anything but a perfect background, a perfect family. A mother who made breakfast for her busy, successful son and a father who liked to brag about him to his friends, whose chest puffed up at the mention of his son’s name. To find out otherwise was surprising.
He’d divorced himself a long time ago from any pain associated with the incident. Even when his father had been there, he hadn’t really felt like a father. Just a man who lived with them. Who lost himself in a bottle whenever the whim hit.
“Just like that,” he told her. “One morning he decided he didn’t want to be a family man anymore. Didn’t want the responsibility of taking care of a wife and son, not that he really did much of that, anyway,” he said more to himself than to her.
His words replayed themselves in his head, surprising him. He generally didn’t talk about personal matters, not to the small circle of people he considered his friends, and certainly not to strangers. Maybe it had been the look in London’s eyes that had prompted him to share this darker side of his life. She looked as if she needed comforting, even though her mother’s death had happened so far back in her past.
London curbed the impulse to place her hand over his. “I’m sorry.”
He shrugged. “Nothing to be sorry about. I think in the long run we got along better without him, although my mother had to take on two jobs to make ends meet.”
Earning his own way had made him strong. She should have realized that. It had done the same for her father. Except it had worn away any kindness he might have possessed.
“We never had that problem,” she told him honestly. “Ours was bigger.”
The bewildered expression on his face urged her to explain.
“Your father’s leaving brought you and your mother closer together. My mother’s ‘leaving,’” she said, using a euphemism, “drove my father and me farther apart. He sent me off to boarding school right after the funeral.”
Just the way Joe had wanted to do with him, Reese thought. The empathy was immediate, but because it made him feel slightly uncomfortable, he said, “He was probably doing what he thought
was best.”
“Yes, for him.” There was a trace of resentment in her eyes when she looked up at him. “You see, even then I looked like my mother.”
“She must have been a beautiful woman.” The words came out before he could stop them.
London looked at him in surprise and then smiled. “Why, Doctor, is that a compliment?”
Her smile was seductive, there was no other word for it. Any more than there was a way to immunize himself against its effects.
Still Reese tried to make his voice sound cool, distant. “I don’t give compliments as a rule. I make observations.”
She laughed lightly. She’d embarrassed him; she could see that. “What a lovely observation, then.” Making up her mind, she scooted to the edge of the bed, then dangled her legs over the side. She winced a little as she did so.
No pain, no gain.
Reese was at her side immediately, taking her hand. “What are you trying to do?”
She wiggled down a little more, trying to get her feet to touch the floor. Getting out of bed now was a far cry from the bouncing exit she was accustomed to.
“I’m supposed to get out of bed and walk a little before breakfast.” She looked at him deliberately. “Doctor’s orders.”
Yes, he knew. They were standard orders. He hesitated a moment. “You could wait until after breakfast.”
But London was already wrapping her fingers around his hand tightly as she continued to slowly draw herself out of bed. Her legs felt incredibly wobbly. Just as wobbly as they had the night before when she had attempted a constitutional with the night nurse.
But the sooner she was moving, she thought, the sooner she would return to her life. It was important to her to take back control—what control she’d had—of her life.
M.D. Most Wanted Page 6