Reese took the seat that the ambassador indicated, waiting. The man, Reese thought, seemed to make himself far more at home in Jenkins’s office than Jenkins ever did.
“You might be wondering about the bodyguard detail,” Merriweather began genially.
It was more than a detail, it was a major intrusion. He’d managed to get Jenkins to send away the other members of the ambassador’s entourage, but Wallace and the other two men on his team were a fixture.
“It did raise a question in my mind.”
Merriweather folded his long, aristocratic hands before him, his tone confidential and intimate. It was a trick he employed successfully in his negotiations.
“Two years ago, the daughter of the ambassador to Chile was kidnapped.” His expression was appropriately somber when he said, “They found her body in a shallow grave three months later. Several other daughters of various ambassadors received threatening letters after that—”
“Did your daughter?” Reese interrupted.
Merriweather was honest with him. He’d already sized Reese up as a man who wouldn’t react well to being lied to or misled.
“I don’t know. She wouldn’t tell me if she did. London is very much her own person.” He shook his head. There were so many ways in which she reminded him of Anne. “Perhaps too much so. She grew up early.” He allowed himself a half smile. “My late wife, Anne, used to say that London was born old.” He looked at Reese. “I’d like to see her get to that state in reality. That’s why the bodyguards are posted.”
Reese could understand the other man’s concern. But he could also see how the situation made London feel. She’d told him that she just wanted to have her own space for a little while. In his opinion, being shadowed and protected could get old very quickly.
“But you can’t keep that up indefinitely.”
Merriweather didn’t quite get the response he was hoping for. “I can while I’m part of the diplomatic corps.”
Reese was nothing if not practical. “Have there been any more kidnappings or threats recently?”
Merriweather sensed where he was going with this. Where London had gone when she’d made her appeal to terminate the detail.
Until the other thing had begun.
But there was no reason to share that piece of information with the doctor.
“No, but that’s not to say that there won’t be. I’m telling you this because I think you deserve an explanation and because I don’t want you to become a tool for her to use in eluding the bodyguards, Doctor. Mr. Jenkins told me that you were quite annoyed at having the detail on the floor.”
He made no apologies for his actions. “They do get in the way.”
“I’m willing to pay to compensate for any inconvenience that it might cause you or the hospital.” He took out his checkbook to show he was serious and tossed it on the desk beside him. “My daughter is very precious to me.”
Reese didn’t care for the implication—that his cooperation could be bought. “You might try telling her that.”
The ambassador’s eyes narrowed. He had the sensation of butting heads with a ram. He was accustomed to being listened to. “I’m quite capable of conducting my own private affairs.”
“I’m sure you are,” Reese said politely. He rose to his feet. “I have patients to see, Ambassador. So, if there is nothing else—”
Merriweather stood up as well. His look pinned Reese to the wall. “Stay on my side, Dr. Bendenetti and you won’t be sorry.”
It was a threat, uttered in a silken voice, placed on a silver tray. But it was a threat nonetheless. “I don’t take sides, Ambassador. All I do is try to make my patients well.”
With that, he left the office. On his way out, he passed a worried-looking Jenkins, who was out in the hall looking like a displaced person.
“Don’t worry, Seymour, your contributions are still all safe,” was all Reese said as he kept on walking.
He heard a relieved sigh in his wake.
Chapter 7
Passing the nurses’ station, Reese walked toward London’s suite.
The chair outside the door was vacant. Absently he wondered where the man who was usually posted outside her door had gone.
According to the head nurse, there were three bodyguards in all, and they worked in shifts. Pleasant enough, they tried to remain as unobtrusive as three six-foot-plus linebackers could be.
But this linebacker was missing. Reese smiled to himself as he entered the suite. Grant was probably going to have the other man’s head when he heard the bodyguard was “missing” from his post.
The first thing Reese noticed were the two suitcases packed and ready by the door. The lady didn’t travel lightly, even to the hospital. He’d seen Grant carrying in various items that had been deemed indispensable during the past seven days. Somehow he figured there’d be more to pack.
London sat perched on her bed, looking lovelier than should have been legally allowed.
Crossing to her, Reese remembered to pick up the chart. He didn’t remember to flip it open. Instead he just stood for a moment, looking at her.
When she turned toward him, Reese finally found his tongue.
“Big day today.”
He noticed she was wearing high heels and stockings. And a snug, light-blue skirt.
“Yes, I get ‘sprung.’”
“You could have left two days ago,” he reminded her. He’d offered then to discharge her early because of the rapid progress she’d made over the course of the past four days. Had she been a patient on one of the lower floors with the usual medical coverage, London would have been sent home within three or four days at the most. Beds were needed and insurance only went so far. Unless there was a major reversal in the patient’s recovery, they didn’t stay long in the hospital no matter what kind of surgery they had.
But above the drone of the common and the ordinary was the world of the privileged, the world whose populace could afford these inordinately expensive hospital suites without blinking an eye.
The final bill in this case was to be sent to London’s father at his insistence. He’d left instructions with the chief hospital administrator that his daughter was to remain in the hospital suite for as long as it was thought necessary and until she was truly ready to go home. Since there was currently only one other patient on the tower floor, a film star, the hospital administration was not in a hurry to release London if she chose to remain.
She chose to remain.
The fact that she did made Reese wonder, considering what she’d told him previously about her feelings regarding hospitals.
“I wanted to be sure I was well enough to be on my own—” She thought of Wallace and Kelly and Andrews, the two other bodyguards. On her own. Now there was a joke. She was never really alone, not anymore. “In a manner of speaking.”
“I thought you said you hated hospitals.”
“I do.” She looked around the large room. The rug here was more plush than that found in the rest of the hospital, and the walls had been done with Wedgwood-blue-and-white wallpaper. “This was more like being in a resort. Without the cabana boys,” she added, a smile curving her lips as she raised her eyes to his.
He took her pulse in self-preservation, then went on to measure her blood pressure. It gave his hands something to do, as well as something to occupy his mind. He didn’t like where it was going of its own volition.
Finished, he remembered to make the notations on her chart, then flipped the cover closed. He handed her a pink piece of paper he’d just finished signing.
“A pink slip?” Her smile widened, becoming positively dazzling as she turned the paper around in her hand, studying it. “Are you firing me, Dr. Bendenetti?”
She was still emphasizing his title, as if somehow it was a private joke between the two of them. Except that he wasn’t exactly sure what they were laughing at. “From the hospital, yes.” He tapped the paper. “Those are your discharge orders.”
Lon
don placed the slip on top of the purse she’d had Wallace bring her from her apartment. “Kind of like a ‘get out of jail’ card in Monopoly.” She made her way over to Reese until they were standing within a breath of each other. Or closer.
“If you like.” He inclined his head. “Now, I want you—” He faltered a moment as he realized just how close he and London were actually standing.
She turned her face up to his, encouragement in her eyes. She liked the way that phrase sounded, all by itself, without any adornments. He wanted her. “Yes?”
If she were standing any closer to him, she would have had to take up residency in his lab pocket. And her breathy question brought home to him what he was wrestling with. He did want her. There was no sense in lying to himself.
Every visit to her room at the hospital, no matter how much he tried to keep a tight rein on his thoughts, made him acutely aware of that desire.
Had they met under different circumstances, London Merriweather might just have been the woman to cause him to find that small island of time that wasn’t taken up by patients, responsibilities and duties and then share it with her.
To what end? he demanded silently.
London represented the top of Mt. Everest, and he was just one of the low-lying villages at the base of the peak. They had nothing in common other than existing on the same planet, in the same hemisphere.
He was lucky he couldn’t start anything that promised only to end disastrously.
Clearing his throat, he tried to clear his thoughts at the same time. “I want you to come see me in my office in a week.”
Her eyes held his. “You want to let a whole week go by?”
They were having two very different conversations here, using the same words. Even in a simple skirt and blouse, she made a tempting seductress, he thought. He was willing to bet that she was a force to be reckoned with at an embassy ball.
He laughed at himself silently. The only kind of ball he was acquainted with was the kind that periodically went by home plate. Their worlds were as different as different could be.
Reese did his best to maintain the boundaries he knew were proper. “That is the customary length of time between discharge and follow-up visit in this kind of case. Of course, if you experience any pain or have any of these symptoms—” he handed her a list of the various things she needed to watch out for and be aware of “—don’t hesitate to call me right away.”
Taking the paper he gave her, London folded it slowly and then tucked it into her purse. Her eyes remained on him the entire time. A smile curved her mouth. “I’ll be sure to do that.”
“Otherwise, call my office to arrange for an appointment.” As an afterthought, he reached into his shirt pocket beneath the lab coat and took out one of his cards, then handed that to her, as well.
His duty done, he knew he should be leaving. Glancing toward the door, he lingered. “Your father coming by to take you home?”
She shook her head. There had been no long visit, no clearing of the air between them the way she always secretly hoped there might be. Try as she might not to be disappointed when it didn’t come about, she always was and called herself a fool because of it.
“Dad’s back in Madrid, making the world safe for flamenco music.” And then, hearing her own words, London flushed. He was an outsider, a stranger, he shouldn’t be subjected to the civilized feud that was being waged between her and her father. “I’m sorry, did that sound very bitter?”
There was something soft about her, something vulnerable when she apologized. Even offhandedly, the way she did now.
“Maybe not bitter,” he allowed generously, “but pretty sarcastic.”
He was letting her off easy. Another yes man? No, she didn’t think so. Unless she was mistaken, Dr. Reese Bendenetti was his own man and no one else’s. It might be mildly interesting to dawdle with him for a while.
His mouth had been tempting her ever since she could focus her eyes.
“I don’t know what I expected,” she admitted honestly. “You’d think at my age it wouldn’t matter anymore. Parental bonding,” she added, when she realized that she was rambling.
There was sympathy in his eyes. That threw her. “It matters at any age. For what it’s worth, he told me that you were very precious to him.”
She looked at him in surprise. That didn’t sound like Mason Merriweather. “You didn’t strike me as the kind of man who lied.”
“I don’t.”
Everyone lied, she thought. Everyone said things they didn’t mean to get things they wanted. Men said they loved you just to get you into their beds. But she was immune to all that because she was prepared for lies, expected lies.
But this great big medicine man seemed almost unshakably honest.
It was a great facade, she thought. “Not even little white lies to help patients along?”
He actually considered the question for a moment. “Maybe if you had two minutes to live, I might let you think you had more by not putting a number on it, but as far as I’m concerned, lies do a disservice to the liar and the li-ee.”
“Li-ee?” she echoed, laughing.
Her eyes sparkled when she laughed like that. It made her look softer. Not quite the girl next door—he doubted if anything could transform her into that—but definitely softer. “Sometimes there isn’t a word to fit the occasion, so I make one up.”
“A surgeon and a lexicographer, very impressive.” Amusement highlighted her features as she studied his face. “What else can you do, Dr. Bendenetti?”
“My rounds.”
Reese began to back away—before he couldn’t. He had an uneasy feeling that if he didn’t put some space between himself and London, there wouldn’t be any in a few minutes. Because more than anything else he wanted to kiss this woman who was sorely tempting him and threatening everything he’d always believed in, every rule he’d ever set down for himself.
He paused right before the door. “You’ll be all right? There’s someone to take you home?”
The amusement didn’t abate. It made him wonder if she was able to read his mind. Probably. Very savvy ladies could do anything they set their minds to.
“Two very different questions, Dr. Bendenetti. But to answer your last question first, yes, there’s someone to take me home. As for my being all right…” She shrugged philosophically. “Que sera, sera.”
She’d hit upon one of his mother’s favorite songs, and a saying she quoted often enough to become a family logo on their coat of arms, if they had such a thing. “That only worked for Doris Day in The Man Who Knew Too Much.”
She was clearly impressed. “Wait, you didn’t tell me you were a film buff—”
Hungry for anything American while being shuttled from one country to another when she was a child, and then during her long stay at the boarding school in Switzerland, London had watched any old American movie she could find.
“I’m not,” he confessed. “My mother is. She liked to keep the television set on at all times whenever she was home. I kind of absorbed a great deal of the trivia by osmosis.” It was time to leave. He couldn’t allow himself to be distracted any longer. “No more racing, London,” he warned as he began to open the door. And then he added one final instruction. “Be good to yourself.”
“Maybe I need someone to show me how.”
When he turned around to look at her before leaving, there was that same flippant smile on her face, but her eyes, her eyes didn’t have that know-it-all look. They weren’t flippant. There was something in them, a sadness that spoke to him for an instant.
And then it was gone.
She hadn’t meant to get so serious. It was just that, during off-guard moments, there was something about this doctor who had saved her. Something she couldn’t put her finger on. In an odd way, whenever he entered the room, he made her feel safe, as if everything was going to be all right. As if he was going to take care of her.
As if.
She knew it was
ridiculous to feel that way. Outside of the follow-up visit, she’d probably never see him again. They clearly existed in two very different worlds. Unless she became involved in some kind of a fund-raiser for the hospital, there wasn’t a chance in hell that they would stumble across each other again.
Besides, London reminded herself abruptly, she’d made a career of not getting involved with anyone. That included men with soulful eyes, an easy smile and a bedside manner that made it almost worthwhile being in an accident. You never knew when the next abandonment was waiting for you, and she for one wasn’t going to be caught by surprise ever again.
Not ever.
There it was again, that electricity. He could feel it crackling all the way from across the room. Trying to console himself that it was only extreme static electricity, nothing more, he nodded toward the door he held ajar. “Should I send in your bodyguard?”
She would rather have him take her home, but she’d laid enough groundwork today. Being overly pushy wasn’t her style. She lifted her shoulders and then let them drop carelessly. It was time to get back to business as usual.
“Might as well.”
Reese didn’t even have to look around when he opened the door. Wallace had reappeared and was taking up all the available space in the doorway. Because of the hour, the man’s appearance on the scene surprised him. “I thought Kelly had this shift.”
“You’ve been paying attention, Doc,” Wallace approved with a mild smile. “Ms. Merriweather’s more comfortable with me, so I volunteered to be the one to take her back home.”
Made sense. Maybe. Despite the fact that she’d tried to get away from him, she and this hulk were really friends in a strange sort of way. Wallace seemed to be less on London’s level than even he was.
Reese took the opportunity to ask the man to verify something for him. “She said her father was back in Madrid.”
Wallace was impatient to get back to his charge, but he nodded. “Left three days ago. Why? Is there something you have to tell him?” He didn’t add that he wanted to know if it was about London. If it was, he’d find out soon enough.
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