“Shall I carry her to bed?” he whispered to Tara.
Tara’s head bobbed as if she’d been jolted out of a daydream. “Yes, thank you.” She rose and led the way down the hall.
After a week of seeing Tara’s big brown eyes every day and working around cancer patients, he thought he’d gotten his volatile feelings under control. But the sight of Suzie’s room, decorated in soft pinks and frilly lace, sucker punched him.
His wife had begun decorating their spare room about thirty seconds after her pregnancy was confirmed. The cancer diagnosis had come two months later, but she’d continued to pour her heart into that room.
A wave of grief and loss swept through him.
Laying Suzie gently on the bed, he struggled to recover his composure.
Tara tucked a comforter around her sleeping child and gently kissed her on the forehead. “Sweet dreams, honey.”
Watching Tara with Suzie heightened the yearning he didn’t want to feel. He couldn’t explain how the pair had so quickly dug their way through the wall he’d built around his heart, but they had.
He returned to the door lock he’d been working on when Suzie had arrived.
Tara filled the kettle with water. “Tea okay?”
“Great, thanks.” Zach debated how to broach the subject on his mind. His feelings were already more entangled than they should be. He fitted the new lock into place and tightened the screws. “Suzie’s a sweet girl. You’ve done a terrific job raising her.”
Tara’s face lit up. “Thank you. A mother doesn’t hear that too often.”
“She seems to really like the Bible stories. Does she go to Sunday school?”
“Yes, she adores it.”
“And you?”
“Me?” She averted her eyes.
“Earlier today you didn’t seem convinced that there’s something to look forward to after death.”
“Oh.” She hesitated. “I want to,” she said with a hint of reluctance. “It’s just that working at the hospital... It’s hard, you know? I admit that I’ve seen some miraculous recoveries, but I see a lot of patients whose prayers aren’t answered, too.”
Zach returned his tools to his toolbox and joined her at the kitchen table. “That doesn’t make God any less real. Sometimes his answer is no.”
“I’m sorry.” Tara’s voice turned soft. “Kim told me about your wife.”
His heart pitched. Was that why she’d hedged his question? She didn’t want to hurt him by admitting her doubts.
The pity on Tara’s face reminded him why he’d never told Rick or any of his colleagues about his former life. He’d only told Kim so she wouldn’t blame herself for the way things had worked out between them.
“Just as you have reasons for not giving Suzie everything she asks for, I have to believe that God knew what was best.” He rubbed the hollow at the base of his ring finger and cleared his throat. “My wife slipped away peacefully, with the certainty that she was a breath away from heaven. If not for that, I think I would’ve gone crazy with grief.”
“So you’re a believer? Even though God took your wife?”
His eyes slipped shut. “My wife. And...” He swallowed, but the grief remained firmly balled in his throat. “And,” he repeated, his voice hoarse, “our stillborn child.”
Tara’s warm hand covered his, and a funny catch hiccupped in his chest. “I’m so sorry.”
Shoring up his defenses, he drew in a deep breath. “My wife made me promise her that I wouldn’t blame God.”
Tara nodded, withdrew her hand and busied herself pouring tea. “I don’t think I could’ve kept that promise. I’ve seen God let too many people down.”
“Trusting in God doesn’t mean you won’t face troubles. I think my wife understood that better than me. If not for my promise to her, I probably would’ve let my grief turn to anger at God.”
Tara gave him a wry smile. “Yeah, been there.”
“For the longest time, I clung to my faith out of sheer determination to keep my promise,” Zach admitted. “Getting angry would’ve been a whole lot easier, because, yeah, I felt like He let us down. And I got pretty tired of hearing people spout the usual platitudes.”
“So, what changed?”
His mind drifted back to his first week as a cop. “I had to deliver a baby. It was a wet, miserable day. Rush hour. No time to transport, and the cord wrapped around the baby’s neck.” Sudden tears blurred Zach’s vision at the recollection. “There I was on a busy street, holding this precious life in my hands, the same way I’d held my own baby girl the year before.”
Tara’s hand flew to her mouth and her big, brown eyes grew watery, too.
Zach smiled. “Only this child was bawling at the indignity of being brought into the world in the backseat of her dad’s beat-up Chevy. By the time I handed the infant over to an ambulance attendant, my entire body was shaking. The baby’s father threw his arms around me and said thank-you, over and over.”
Zach pressed his fingers to his eyes and swallowed hard. “He said, ‘I prayed for a miracle and God sent you.’ Me. I was his miracle. In that instant, the sun beamed through the clouds as if God was saying, ‘I know you’re hurting, but I still have work for you here.’”
Tara leaned back against the counter, staring at him mutely, her tea apparently forgotten.
He waited, not knowing what to say, worried he’d already said too much. He’d wanted to convince her she could trust God, not fuel her doubts. When she didn’t say anything either, he rose. “It’s getting late. I should get going.”
“Oh.” She shook her head as if her mind had been elsewhere.
Thinking about God, he hoped. “By the way, when did Kim tell you about my wife?”
“After you invited me to lunch.” Tara’s lips twitched at the corners. “She was afraid I might be falling for you.”
“Really?” He gave her a lopsided grin. “Are you?”
She matched his grin with a teasing one of her own, and a warm zing shot through his chest. “Don’t worry. I’m no more interested in starting something than she says you are.”
Zach let his gaze drop to Tara’s lips. Oh, Kim has no idea. “In my line of work, you learn not to believe everything you’re told.”
NINE
Tara shouldn’t have been surprised when her sister showed up at the house at five-thirty the next morning...just in case Suzie’s fever had returned, barring her return to daycare. As soon as Tara accepted the offer to babysit, Susan leaned back on the sofa, her eyes sparkling with curiosity. “So-o-o, tell me about your new guy.”
Tara spread her uniform over the ironing board and swiped at it with the iron. “He’s not my ‘new’ guy.”
Susan pitched forward. “He’s not new? How long have you been holding out on me?”
Tara rolled her eyes. “He’s not my guy at all.”
“Trust me. Any guy who volunteers to change your locks—on hockey night, no less—is totally gaga over you. Did you not see how adorable he was with Suzie?”
Suzie looked up from her cereal bowl.
“It’s okay, honey,” Tara said. “You can keep eating.” To her sister, Tara shot a cool-it-or-else glare and lowered her voice. “I will not put Suzie through another Earl.”
“You can’t go through the rest of your life trying to protect yourself from worst-case scenarios. You’ll never find another guy.”
“I don’t need another guy to be happy.” She snatched up her uniform and slipped into the bathroom to dress.
“You may not need one,” Susan called out from the living room. “But that guy makes you happy. You were practically glowing last night.”
Tara glanced at the mirror, confirming the rush of color Susan’s comment had brought to her cheeks. She had to admit that, since
listening to Zach talk so openly about his wife and daughter, it was getting harder to convince herself that he’d wind up hurting her the way Earl had. And surely anyone with a faith that had weathered as many trials as his wouldn’t walk away from a covenant made before God.
What was she thinking?
Zach wasn’t interested in marrying her. Or anyone, if Kim could be believed. Except...
Tara’s heart fluttered at the memory of Zach’s parting words not to believe everything she was told. Banishing the whimsical daydream, she rejoined her sister.
Susan hugged her knees to her chest and lowered her voice to a whisper. “Has he kissed you yet?”
Tara nibbled on her bottom lip.
“He did. All right, sis!”
“It was just a silly game he was playing with Suzie. It didn’t mean anything.” If it had, he would’ve tried again by now. Wouldn’t he...?
His parting words whispered through her mind yet again, and she had to rein in the smile that tugged at her lips.
“Methinks she protests too much.”
She shot her sister a warning look. “Susan, I mean it. Stop.”
“You’ve got to get Earl’s voice out of your head. You’re not that hard to live with. And I should know. I shared a bedroom with you for sixteen years.”
“I appreciate the vote of confidence, but I like my life the way it is.”
“Routine, predictable, boring.” Susan counted off on her fingers.
“Exactly.” Tara lifted Suzie down from the chair and set the dirty dishes in the sink.
“Come on. So you’re a little organizationally challenged and can’t balance a checkbook to save your life—you’ve got lots of great qualities guys love.”
“Sure, whatever you say.” Tara grabbed her purse and gave Suzie a big kiss goodbye.
“You do. You’re smart. You’re creative. You have more energy than anyone I know. And you whip up delicious five-course meals for our family get-togethers without breaking a sweat.” Susan gazed cajolingly at her. “Come on. Live a little. What happened to my spontaneous big sister who was always up for an adventure?”
“She became a mother. I can’t have men coming into Suzie’s life, building false hopes that they’ll stick around.”
“Are you sure it’s really Suzie you’re trying to protect?” Susan asked.
“I’ve got to run. Thanks so much for staying with Suzie.”
Two hours later, Dr. Whittaker summoned Tara from his office doorway.
Tara held up a finger to signal him to give her a minute and finished ushering her patient to his room. By the time she turned back to Whittaker, he was storming toward her.
“Is there a problem?”
“A big one.” He cupped her elbow and steered her in the direction of his office.
Her thoughts flew to the meds that had gone missing yesterday. Except, how would he know? And he wasn’t her boss anyway. Which meant...
She glanced in the direction she’d last spotted Zach, but he was nowhere in sight. No one was. Her thoughts spiraled through a half-dozen potential problems Whittaker might wish to discuss, even as a tiny voice in the back of her mind said, Run.
Whittaker motioned her to precede him into his office and, despite the added privacy, lowered his voice. “The lab results came in from Ellen Clark’s autopsy.”
Tara blinked. Ellen’s autopsy was the last thing she’d thought Whittaker would want to discuss. “What did they find?”
“High concentrations of bacteria at the site of her IV shunt.”
“Contamination?” she gasped.
“Looks that way. I want all patients checked for signs of infection, and extra precautions taken when administering IVs to guard against further incidents.”
“I can assure you, my nurses take every precaution to—”
“You can assure me all you want, but if this goes to a lawsuit, who do you think they’ll blame?”
* * *
As much as Zach wanted to squirrel himself away in a private office and investigate the names on Whittaker’s list, he divided his time between helping irritated staff members figure out how to navigate the new computer software, and documenting the bugs they uncovered. The work was mind-numbingly tedious, because first he had to figure out whether the user was just doing something wonky, such as hitting the enter key fifty times in two seconds in impatience. But if Barb was the person checking out his cover story, he couldn’t afford to let the work he was “supposed” to be doing slide.
At least working side by side with a number of different staff members gave him the opportunity to soak up the hospital scuttlebutt. He heard about everything from hospital romances to complaints about mismanaged funding, and given the openness with which staff chatted, he wondered how much patients might overhear. Patients like Melanie.
She might be just the person to offer some inside information on Whittaker’s drug trials.
When ten o’clock rolled around, Zach grabbed a couple of coffees and headed to Melanie’s room. Last night he’d been all set to ask Tara what she knew about the drug trials, but after hearing about the oxycodone theft and seeing how intent she was on ferreting out answers, he’d thought better of giving her more ideas that might put her at greater risk.
He tapped on Melanie’s door. “Hey, there, how are you feeling today?”
The young woman sat up in bed and reached for the cup of coffee with a grin. “Better now, thanks.”
“Your doctor know what caused yesterday’s fever?”
Her thin shoulders lifted and fell in a dismissive shrug as she blew at the top of her steaming coffee.
Taking the hint that she didn’t want to talk about her illness, he reclined in the chair next to her bed and sipped his coffee, debating how to work her around to the topic of Whittaker’s drug trials. “I bet you hear all sorts of juicy stories hanging out here all day.”
“You sound like my sister. She wants to know which doctors are available.”
Zach grinned. “I’d settle for a pretty nurse.”
As if thinking about Tara had drawn her to his side, a tap sounded at the door. “Good morning, Mel. I just need to check your IV. It’ll only take a minute.” Her gaze briefly met his, and a smile flitted over her lips before she walked to the opposite side of Mel’s bed with a tote.
Confiding in Tara last night had left him feeling oddly uplifted.
Tara examined Melanie’s arm, paying particular attention to her IV connection, then swabbed the site with a damp cotton ball. “Looks good.” She smiled, her gaze flitting to Zach’s. Next she checked the IV bag, then collected the tote. “All done.” Her gaze briefly met Zach’s one last time before she left.
“She’s pretty,” Melanie said.
Zach’s attention snapped from the doorway back to Melanie. “What?”
“I think she likes you, too.”
He furrowed his forehead. “You think? How can you tell?”
“The way she kept stealing glances at you.”
“Yeah, I noticed that.”
“Of course...” Melanie’s voice trailed off teasingly as she reached for her coffee cup. “It might’ve had something to do with the fact that you couldn’t keep your eyes off her the entire time she was in the room.”
“That obvious, huh?”
Melanie laughed. “Oh, yeah. Why don’t you ask her out?”
Zach gulped the last of his coffee, hoping the heat would dissolve the sudden lump in his throat. The same lump he’d felt last night when his instincts had told him Tara was hedging his question with her “no more interested than you are” retort. A smile tugged at his lips. “You never know, I might do that.”
He tossed his cup into the trash can and segued into their earlier conversation. “So with all the chitchat y
ou’ve overheard, do you know anything about Tara?”
“Enough to know that she might be interested.” Melanie waggled her eyebrows.
Encouraged by her relaxed mood, Zach tried to steer the discussion in the direction he needed it to go. “I got the impression she thinks highly of Dr. Whittaker.” At least until she started thinking he was a murderer.
“Everyone loves Dr. Whittaker.”
“I heard he’s running trials on a new cancer drug. Has he mentioned it to you as an option?”
“He might have. I’ve been on so many drugs, I can’t keep them straight.” A frown creased her forehead. “Except to know they haven’t worked.”
Another dead end. Zach restrained a sigh. Maybe he’d have to quiz Tara about the trials after all. “So what’s next? Have you decided on an alternative protocol?”
Melanie set her barely touched coffee cup on the bedside table and rolled onto her side. “Not really. I’m sorry.... I can’t keep my eyes open. Thanks for bringing the coffee.”
Zach wasn’t sure what to make of the sudden dismissal. When they’d first met, she’d been excited about the prospect of trying an alternative treatment.
Exiting the room, he spotted Dr. McCrae. “Hey, Doc, can I talk to you for a minute?”
McCrae adjusted the stethoscope draped around his neck and straightened the rectangular glasses perched on his nose. “Yes?”
“A couple of days ago, Melanie talked about going to Mexico for some special kind of treatment. Do you think it would help?”
McCrae studied him a moment. “The treatment has had promising results, but I would never recommend traveling abroad.”
“She mentioned that you proposed some other options she might consider.”
“I’m sorry. How are you related to Miss Rivers?”
“Just a friend,” Zach said.
“Well, I’m not at liberty to discuss my patient’s care with friends.”
“No, no. I understand. I just wanted to say that I was impressed to hear a doctor offer other options. Few doctors seem to take any of the alternative therapies seriously.”
“Naturally, we’re concerned about potential interactions between supplements and meds.” McCrae hesitated. “But personally, I think it’s criminal that the only way patients can access some of the options is by traveling overseas.”
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