“There’s this restaurant, Malone’s, where I used to go to celebrate while I was in medical school.”
She smiled. “I’d like that.” She wanted to get to know the man he’d been, as well as the man he was. “Who did you celebrate with when you celebrated?”
If he didn’t know better, he would have said she was probing for information. Just small talk, he told himself. “Friends.”
Friends. London decided to leave it at that for the time being. It was a nice, neutral term that could mean anything, include any gender.
Maybe he just meant hoisting a few with the boys. She wasn’t averse to going to a place like that. A quiet little bar would certainly be a change of pace. Wallace might have a canary, but she was determined to enjoy herself.
Without realizing it, she wrapped her arm a little tighter through Reese’s.
She might not have realized it, but Reese did.
The moment they stepped out of the elevator and walked through the lobby, the red-liveried doorman snapped to attention. Tipping his cap, he hurried ahead of London to get to the door and open it. Barely a couple of inches taller than she, the man beamed at her with approval.
“You’re looking exceptionally lovely tonight, Ms. Merriweather.”
London took the compliment in stride, neither preening nor looking down at the man. Instead she smiled graciously. “Thank you, John.”
“Fan club?” Reese whispered against her ear as they walked through the door the man held open for them.
His breath against the shell of her ear created a downdraft that zipped along her spine. The reaction surprised and delighted her. There was no doubt about it, there was something electric going on between them, and she fully intended to enjoy it.
She turned her face toward him and replied in a soft whisper, “I give generous tips during the holidays and on birthdays.”
He’d left his Corvette parked near the entrance. “You know the doorman’s birthday?”
“Knowing a little something about the people you come in daily contact with takes away that depersonalizing edge that always exists.” A quirky smile curved her lips. “I learned that at my father’s knee. Not that he bothered to teach me anything, I just learned by observing.”
Reese didn’t know if she was covering up something she viewed as making her vulnerable, or if she was espousing a philosophy she believed in. London Merriweather was a puzzle all right. Warm and open one moment, flippant and distant the next.
He couldn’t help wondering which London was the real one.
The doorman followed them to where the car was parked and insisted on opening the passenger door for her. He’d used his considerable bulk to block Reese’s access to that side.
Reese smiled to himself as he rounded the hood and got in on his side. The lady had admirers in all shapes and sizes.
“Those must be some tips,” he murmured.
London settled in, buckling up. She nodded at the doorman as he stepped away. “Actually, I haven’t given him one yet. He was hired on after Christmas and his birthday isn’t for another month.” She waved to the man as Reese pulled away from the curb. “I think he’s just new and a little zealous in doing his job.”
Reese thought it was a little more than that. He guided his red vehicle into the main flow of traffic. “You seem to make people come alive around you, London. You bring out a zest in them.”
“Do I?” She turned the comment around in her head and found it appealing. Twisting in her seat, she looked at him. “How about you, Reese? Do I make you come alive?”
“Me? I’m always this way,” he told her, keeping his eyes on the road.
But he was lying.
It hurt him to watch her with another man.
To see the smile on her lips, the laughter in her eyes, and know that it was there for someone else.
He never felt more alive than when she turned that magic toward him.
Nor more bereft than when he saw it directed toward someone else.
But that would change soon. He promised himself that. Promised her that.
Soon.
When that day came, she’d smile only for him, laugh only for him. Dress only for him.
Undress only for him.
His palms grew sweaty and his breath grew short. He willed his control back. His breathing became steadier again.
He thought about that sometimes. Late at night in his room, staring at his mural, he thought of that. Of having her.
Sometimes it made a pain twist in his belly, wanting her.
It didn’t matter to him that there’d been others. That she’d loved other men. He didn’t care about her past. He cared only about her future. And that it would be with him.
He followed her with his eyes, thinking of the day that he wouldn’t have to follow her at all anymore. The day that they would be standing side by side. Together.
Forever.
Soon.
Reese held the door open for her as she walked into the dimly lit restaurant. Malone’s was owned by a transplanted Texan who’d brought a little of his former home into the decor of the restaurant he loved so well.
Reese tried to gauge London’s reaction and decided that the woman would make a fair poker player. Still, he could make an educated guess at what was crossing her mind. “Not what you expected, is it?”
“No,” she admitted, “it isn’t.” The floor was wooden, with a high polish to it. There was a bar running along one wall that looked as if it came straight out of a John Wayne Western. The thought made her smile. She’d always loved Westerns. “A lot of men try to impress me because of what they think I’m used to.”
He still couldn’t tell if she was insulted that he’d brought her here, or amused. “What are you used to?”
“Facades.” The rich were very attached to their traditions and to what they felt elevated them above the rest of the world. Her eyes shone as she looked around the small restaurant. There was a charm here, an intimacy that reached out to her and made her feel at home. “I like this.” She turned toward him. “I like this a lot.”
He felt a sense of relief wash over him. He’d taken a chance bringing her here. “Good.”
A hostess came and led them to their table. It was a cozy booth nestled off to the side. “Do you still come here to celebrate?”
Taking a menu from the hostess, he set it in front of him. Reese shook his head in response to London’s question. “I don’t have as much time to do that as I used to.”
She looked at him in amazement. “Not as much time as when you were in medical school? Just how busy do they keep you at that hospital?”
Things were hectic in emergency, but there were lulls, as well. And he was only one of several doctors on rotation. “I keep myself busy. Between the hospital, my own practice and the reservation—”
Reese couldn’t mean what she thought he meant. “Reservation, as in restaurant?”
He liked the way the light from the candle caressed her face. Making him want to do the same. He kept his hands in his lap.
“As in Native American. Navajo,” he added before she could ask.
London’s eyes narrowed as she studied his face. His hair was dark, but his eyes were blue. That didn’t quite fit the image. “You’re not—”
He smiled. Graywolf would get a kick out of this. “No, I’m not.”
“Didn’t think so. You don’t have the cheekbones for it.” Although his hair was certainly the right shade, she thought. Blue black, straight and thick. It made her fingers itch.
The food server, a tall, slender college student in his third year as a drama major, came to take their order for drinks. She asked for red wine to go with the steak she already knew she would be ordering, then waited until the waiter was gone.
Leaning her chin on her hand, she looked up at Reese, finding him more and more intriguing as the minutes passed. “So what are you doing on a reservation if you don’t mind my asking?”
That she thought
he’d mind her probing told him that she had a healthy respect for privacy. He liked that. Reese couldn’t help wondering how much she minded having hers invaded periodically because of the nature of her father’s work.
“It’s in Arizona. One of the other doctors on staff grew up there. Once or twice a year he goes back to offer free medical care to the members of his tribe. Sort of a payback, you might say. A few of the other doctors began going with him. It’s a pretty healthy-size group now.” It was almost his favorite time, he thought. That was what doctoring was all about to him, helping those who were in real need.
The waiter returned with their drinks and placed them on the table. London continued looking at Reese. “Very noble of you.”
He shifted, uncomfortable at the focus her words brought. He looked down at the menu. “Pretty much everything here is good.”
Compliments embarrassed him, she noted. She liked that. So many men she knew loved bragging about their accomplishments and beating their chests like the Neanderthals they claimed to look down on.
But then, she’d already sensed that Reese Bendenetti was different.
She decided to follow his lead. “How are the portions?”
“Large.”
The information pleased her. “Good, I have a big appetite.”
Reese finally raised his eyes from the menu. If he remembered his facts, she only weighed one-hundred and ten pounds. “Oh, really?”
His tone catching her attention, she looked up and saw the skeptical, amused look in his eyes. “Yes, really. If you don’t believe me, just watch.”
He could think of far worse assignments. “I intend to.” Whether she ate anything or not.
She laughed softly as she took a sip of her wine. Glancing around, she tried to see where Wallace had stationed himself. But true to his word, he was invisible.
Taking another sip of her wine, London began to relax—as much as she could with all her nerve endings standing at attention in reaction to the man sitting opposite her.
Chapter 10
As the tables began to fill up, the noise in the cozy restaurant increased. London found herself leaning further toward Reese in order to be heard.
“You know, it’s funny that you’d pick a place like this.”
The glow of the single candle nestled in clear glass found her face and made love to it. He could see her eyes sparkling with humor even in the dim light. Humor that was at no one’s expense. There was no need to brace himself against a put-down.
“Why?”
A fond smile curved her lips as her thoughts took her back across the years to a time when things were so much simpler, to a time when she felt safe and protected. And loved.
“Because I love Westerns.”
Her answer surprised him, and he looked at her. “You don’t seem the type.”
What type do I seem to you, Reese? Cold, calculating, spoiled rotten? I’m not any of those things, not really.
But all she said was, “Looks can be deceiving.” And then, because being here made her smile from within, she elaborated. “When I was a little girl, I hated the kind of life my parents led, moving from one country to another. Half the time, outside of the embassy, I didn’t hear a word of English being spoken. Sometimes in the embassy, as well. I was very, very homesick and desperately hungry for something that would remind me of the sights and sounds of home.”
He seemed genuinely interested, she thought, not because she was the ambassador’s daughter—he’d already proven that meant nothing to him—but because she was a woman he was sharing the evening with. She liked that. A lot.
“I thought of television as the last bastion of Americana, but of course there were only domestic programs on.” She laughed at her own naiveté. “Except for the occasional Western that was thrown in. Half the time it was dubbed, too, but there’s no mistaking John Wayne and his pals for bullfighters, no mistaking Monument Valley,” she named the popular site in Utah where so many Westerns were filmed, “for the Alps. And whenever I did chance upon one in English, I was in seventh heaven. Westerns were my touchstone, my home base.” Her eyes swept over the restaurant. From her vantage point she could see a great deal. “In a way, I feel as if I’ve come home.”
He could almost feel her pleasure. A sense of satisfaction that he rarely experienced away from the operating table filled him. If she hated her parents’ lifestyle, he was guessing she probably made her feelings known.
“So you rebelled right from the start?”
Nothing could have been further from the truth. In the beginning. And even after her mother died.
“Oh no, I was a good little daughter. Went to classes, learned the necessary languages, did everything I could to make my father proud of me.” Because she felt as if he could see right into her, London lowered her gaze to look at the candlelight trapped in her wineglass. “Until I realized that was one of those impossible feats the wicked witch hands out to the heroine in a Grimms’ fairy tale. Rather like being told to move the ocean into a pond using a teaspoon.” She saw the odd look on his face and guessed correctly. “You never read that one?”
He laughed softly and shook his head. “Must have been one of the stories I missed.”
She liked the sound of his laugh. Even soft, it was deep and rich, like black coffee on a cold winter morning. Bracing. “I didn’t. I read everything I could get my hands on. It cut into the loneliness.”
She’d said too much, London realized abruptly. She was going to have to watch that. There was something about this semistoic man that made him easy to talk to, but she’d never believed in talking too much. If you weren’t careful, you gave pieces of yourself away.
Westerns and loneliness. They didn’t jibe with the woman he was looking at. He took a sip of his wine and shook his head.
“I can’t see you as being lonely.”
There was a reason for that. She’d gone into reconstruction mode and carefully rebuilt herself a piece at a time, taking as models people she admired. People she wanted to be like.
Opening the menu again, she perused it in earnest this time. “That’s because I realized one day that no one was going to notice me if I didn’t notice myself.” She raised her chin ever so slightly as she continued talking. “That’s when I decided to grab life with both hands and make the most of it before it was gone for me the way it was for my mother.”
So the very independent London Merriweather was actually a product of both of her parents, he thought. Each had influenced her in his or her own way. She was living for both her mother and herself as she thwarted the father she felt had turned his back on her.
Reese found himself wanting to know things about her. About what she’d been like as a child. About what made her laugh, what made her cry. Things that went far beyond the usual kind of relationship he allowed himself to have, that of a doctor looking out for the well-being of his patient.
She wasn’t his patient anymore.
He wanted to know.
Making his selection, he closed the menu and looked at her. “Tell me more about the dutiful daughter.”
She picked up on the word he’d chosen: dutiful. “Why, do you like obedient women?” She hadn’t pegged him for a martinet, but you never knew. She’d been wrong before, although not often.
The woman who had heretofore made the largest impression on his life—his mother—was as independent as they came. If he were ever to seek a wife, that would be the first quality he’d look for. A woman who could stand on her own. Who was soft but not weak.
He caught himself thinking that his mother might like London, and vice versa. “No, I’m just having a hard time envisioning you as someone who ever played by the rules.”
She wasn’t that much of a rebel, she thought, although she liked the way he was looking at her when he said it. What she didn’t like was being boxed in. “Well, I did, for the most part. I let myself be sent away to boarding school—”
He vaguely remembered she’d mentioned that
to him before. “How old were you?”
“Eight.” It was the last time she allowed herself to be vulnerable, to need someone. Because she had and she’d been ignored. When she had needed comfort the most, her father had turned away from her, leaving her in the care of strangers. It was a slap in the face that had taught her to be self-reliant and never to need anyone.
“Eight,” he repeated. “There wasn’t much you could do about it.”
That was where he was wrong. Even at eight she’d been her mother’s daughter. Headstrong even though she was vulnerable. Headstrong because she was vulnerable. “I thought about running away. And then, briefly, I thought that if I did what he wanted, if I went away to that Swiss boarding school, my father would miss me and come after me.”
The smile on her lips was meant to be flippant, but there was a touch of ruefulness to it. And hurt. Reese could see it, even in the dim light.
“He didn’t, of course.” She curved her fingers around the glass. “He was relieved not to have to deal with me.”
Reese thought her description was probably a little harsh. “I don’t think—”
London cut him off. “You don’t have to. I was there. I know.” Her voice throbbed with emotion. London forced herself to get it under control. “My mother was the only person who truly meant anything to him. With her gone, my father threw himself into the only love he had left, the diplomatic service.” Why was she talking about this? The conversation had gotten so deep so quickly. She scrambled for neutral ground. “To his credit, he is very good at it. My father bought his way into his first ambassadorship with hefty campaign donations—it’s one of those open secrets no one speaks about in Washington—and turned out to have a natural flare for it. My father gets along with everyone in the world—but me.”
She flashed a smile at him that went straight to Reese’s gut and threatened the tranquil state of the food he was consuming.
He had to remind himself to breathe. “Did you stay at the boarding school year-round?”
M.D. Most Wanted Page 11