While they were in Mr. Spencer’s room together, he had looked at her face and thought she was the most beautiful woman in the world. He’d seen the long dark lashes and how they’d fanned across her face, her beautiful hazel eyes, her chin-length, straight brown hair and creamy fair skin. Although she’d never confirmed or denied it, he’d heard that she was the product of a biracial marriage. Her father’s family hailed from Scotland and her mother was African-American.
After completing his meal, he stood to stretch his body when his cell phone rang. He smiled when he pulled the iPhone from his back pocket and saw the caller was his sister.
“Yeah, kiddo?”
“Everyone, especially Nana, will be particularly glad to hear you’re coming home for Christmas. Tell me it’s true, Lucien.”
He chuckled. Although both he and his sister were naturalized citizens of the United States, “home” was their birthplace of Jamaica. He, his sister, Lori, and a slew of cousins had all left Jamaica about the same time to attend college in the United States and had eventually made it their home. But for the holidays everyone tried returning for what they considered a family reunion. Due to work obligations he’d missed attending the last two years.
“It’s only August, Lori. Any reason you want to know so soon? You’ve got four months.”
“Four months will be here before you know it, Lu. Besides, we need time to plan and to prepare Nana for the disappointment if you aren’t coming again. It will be three years. I wish you can make it this year.”
Lucien didn’t have to be reminded. His grandmother did that every time they spoke. He hadn’t been home since he’d taken the position of chief resident at the hospital. With the job came new obligations as well as a number of sacrifices.
He smiled. “You’ll get your wish, Lori. I’m going home for the holidays. The time off is already on the hospital schedule.”
Not wanting to risk getting a busted eardrum, he held the phone from his ear when she began screaming in excitement. He was older than his sister by a year and they had always been close, although they now lived thousands of miles apart. She was an attorney working and living in Los Angeles.
He placed the phone back to his ear when he felt it was safe to do so. “Doesn’t take much to get you excited, does it?”
“Oh, you,” she admonished softly. “This is great news, so don’t try to downplay it. Nana is going to be counting the days.”
And he would, too. As far as he was concerned his grandmother was the wisest women he knew and always had been. And she was the kindest and most motivating. Not only had she raised Lucien, but she had also supported everything he’d ever wanted to do and had extended this same support to his sister and his two cousins whom she’d also raised. That’s why one of the first things the four of them had done after achieving their goals in America was to build Nana a beautiful and spacious home in Kingston, Jamaica, that had a picturesque view of the Blue Mountains from every room.
A short while later Lucien ended the call with Lori, looking forward to the two weeks he would be home. But he had a lot to do before he left Alexandria for Kingston. He had to get some normalcy in his life. And the way to achieve that goal was to get a handle on his attraction to Jaclyn Campbell. He’d tried it before and it hadn’t worked. This time, no matter what, he couldn’t fail.
Because he knew if he did, he was headed for deep trouble.
Chapter 2
“Have you given any more thought to my suggestion that we get a puppy, Jaclyn?”
Jaclyn glanced across the stretcher at her roommate Isabelle Morales as they quickly rolled a pregnant woman down the hall toward the delivery room. A Jennifer Lopez look-alike, Isabelle wanted to go into pediatrics when her residency ended, and Jaclyn considered her friend one of the brightest interns at Hopewell.
“I honestly don’t think a puppy is a good idea, Isabelle. With the hours we spend at the hospital who’s going to make sure he’s fed properly?” she replied.
Before Isabelle could respond, the patient, who’d been enduring her labor pains quietly, suddenly screamed. She had been in labor for the past ten hours and, last timed, her contractions were less than three minutes apart. Her obstetrician was already in the delivery room waiting.
“The two of you are talking about puppies and I’m about to die here,” the woman snarled at them.
“You’re not dying, Mrs. White, you’re having a baby.”
Ignoring what Jaclyn said, the woman then added, “And where is my husband?”
“He’s washing up. He’ll be in the delivery room when we get there,” Isabelle added.
“I don’t want him there. He’s the one responsible for my condition.”
Jaclyn cast a glance over at Isabelle and fought back a smile. She pitied Mr. White about now.
As soon as they wheeled the mother-to-be through the double doors, several nurses took over. One of them was Jerome. “It took both of you to bring her here?” he asked grinning. “Better not let Miss Thang see you. She’ll think you’re goofing off with nothing better to do.”
“I was on break,” Isabelle said smiling. “Besides, I needed to talk to Jaclyn about something.”
At that moment Dr. De Winter walked out of the operating room and Jaclyn had to quickly compose herself. The man did things to her without even trying. Not that he would try because he didn’t have the same interest in her that she had in him.
He stopped before them. “Dr. Morales and Dr. Campbell. How are you two doing?”
“Fine,” they responded simultaneously.
He looked solely at Isabelle. “Dr. Morales, Dr. Thornton has requested that one of my interns be ready to assist him tomorrow. He’s performing an advanced surgical procedure on the throat of a six-year-old boy. Is that something you’d be interested in?”
Jaclyn thought the smile on Isabelle’s face was priceless. “Yes, sir. Very much so,” she said in an excited voice.
“Then be here ready to scrub up at eight in the morning.”
“Thanks. I will.”
“Good.” And without saying anything else, or giving Jaclyn a second glance, he walked off.
Jaclyn’s gaze followed him until he was no longer in sight. She then switched her attention back to Isabelle who was grinning from ear to ear. Dr. De Winter’s recommendation that one of his interns be present during surgery was a big thing and every intern under him knew it.
“That’s a good opportunity, Isabelle. Congratulations.”
“Thanks. I can’t believe he chose me.”
Jaclyn chuckled. “I can. He recognizes how good you are and knows you’re planning to go into pediatrics. You deserve it.”
The smile slowly faded from Isabelle’s face. “Not everyone will think so.”
Jaclyn knew that to be true. Not all the interns were supportive of each other. Some were competitive and a few were downright cutthroat.
“Hey, don’t worry about it. A few might bitch and moan, but I doubt any of them will question Dr. De Winter about it,” Jaclyn said.
“You’re right, but—”
“No buts, Isabelle.”
Later, when Jaclyn made her rounds, she turned the corner and collided head-on with Dr. De Winter, sending the charts she was carrying flying across the floor. “Oh, I’m sorry. I wasn’t looking where I was going.”
“Apparently, Dr. Campbell,” he said in what she thought was an ultra-sexy voice. It was the same voice that she’d heard in her dreams last night, the night before and the night before that.
He knelt down and began picking up her charts and she knelt to join him. “You don’t have to do that, Dr. De Winter. I can get them.”
“No problem,” he said, handing her the charts he’d collected.
Their gazes connected the moment their fingers touched and she felt a deep stirring in the pit of her stomach. As she stared into his eyes she thought she saw them darken, but when she blinked he’d already straightened and was standing back up.
She stood as well. “Thank you,” she murmured, clutching the charts to her chest like an armor of steel.
“You’re welcome. And how are your patients? Any problems or concerns?”
Because he’d asked… “There is this one thing. We’re still trying to determine the reason behind Mr. Aiken’s high fevers.”
Dr. De Winter nodded. “I understand he had another one this morning.”
“Yes. We took more blood, but there’s nothing abnormal. The fever means there’s infection somewhere in his body, but nothing is showing up in his blood.”
“So you’re dealing with an FUO?”
Fever of unknown origin. “Yes,” she said, clearly disturbed.
“Any other signs and symptoms, Dr. Campbell?”
“None.”
“Let me see his chart for a second.”
She pushed a lock of hair behind her ear and then flipped through the charts to find the one belonging to William Aiken. She handed it to Dr. De Winter, grateful their fingers did not touch this time.
Her pulse thudded as she stood there and watched him peruse the man’s chart. She couldn’t help noticing how his long lashes fanned across his cheeks and how sensuous his mouth looked. He then glanced up and caught her staring at his mouth. Good grief.
“May I make a suggestion, Dr. Campbell?”
“Yes, sir, you may.” The one thing that was different about Dr. De Winter compared to other doctors in an authoritative position was that he didn’t project a brash, all-knowing demeanor. He liked getting input from the interns he supervised and always solicited their opinions.
“Have blood drawn from his toe, preferably the big one, and have it checked.”
She raised a brow. Probably any other intern would have accepted what he said without question, but unfortunately she wasn’t one of them. “Why, if I may ask?”
He chuckled and the sound seemed to whisper across her skin. “Yes, doctor, you may. When I was an intern at a college in Boston, I had a patient with FUO and drawing blood from the big toe was suggested to me by the chief of staff. He explained that often bad blood will find places to settle and can’t easily be detected.”
She nodded as understanding dawned. “Which was the premise behind bloodletting,” she said, thinking out loud and seeing his point. “Which is the draining of bad blood out of a person’s body. And if there’s bad blood not detected, it might be confined in one of the body’s peripheral points. A premise we have now put to sound scientific use.”
“Exactly.”
She smiled. “Thanks, Dr. De Winter. I’ll have that done immediately.” She then quickly walked away.
Lucien watched Jaclyn hurry off and drew in a deep breath. When they had accidentally touched moments ago, it had taken everything within him to control the urge to pull her into his arms and mesh his lips with hers. That encounter had been too close for comfort. Way too close.
No matter how much he tried to control himself around her, he was finding it hard to do so. When they had knelt facing each other and he’d looked into her eyes and gazed upon the lushness of her mouth, heat had flared inside of him. He could imagine them kneeling facing each other, but the setting hadn’t been the hall of the hospital. In his mind they were in the middle of the bed. Naked.
Those were the last kind of thoughts he needed lodged in his brain. He tried forcing them out. The hospital’s nonfraternization policy had been put in place for a reason and he intended to abide by it. But God, he was attracted to her. And if knowing that wasn’t enough to shake his world, then he didn’t know what would. At that moment he thought he could even feel the floor shift under his feet. Yes, he was definitely standing on shaky ground.
Jaclyn nibbled on her bottom lip as she read Mr. Aiken’s most recent lab report. Dr. De Winter had been right in suggesting that blood be drawn from the man’s toe. The report clearly indicated bacteria in Mr. Aiken’s body. Bacteria of an unknown source.
Now she had to determine what was causing it. As she read the report again the main question circling around in her head was why the bacteria hadn’t shown up in a routine lab test.
“You’re too pretty to be frowning.”
Jaclyn glanced up and smiled at Ravi Patel, another intern. With his tall, slender build, long wavy black hair, dark eyes and dark skin, he made a reality of the old cliché tall, dark and handsome.
All the female interns, nurses and patients alike drooled over the American-born East Indian. Even Miss Thang seemed taken with him and would blush like a silly schoolgirl whenever Ravi was near. What Jaclyn most admired and respected about Ravi was that he was quick to let the admiring ladies know that he was an engaged man. His fiancée, a woman from India, was an intern at a hospital in Miami. The two planned to marry in a few years.
“Hi, Ravi. I was going over one of my patient’s charts.”
“His condition is serious?”
“FUO earlier, but thanks to Dr. De Winter I was finally able to find something in his blood. There are bacteria. Now I’m trying to determine the cause.”
“If you need help, this might be something to bring before the others in our group session with Dr. De Winter in the morning.”
Jaclyn nibbled on her bottom lip. She of all people knew when the group of interns would meet with Dr. De Winter in a classroom setting. She looked forward to those once-a-week sessions when he would take center stage at the front of the class. Those were the times when she could sit in the back and ogle him to her heart’s delight and come across only as a very attentive student.
More than once he had glanced her way and caught her staring and she appreciated that he wasn’t a mind reader. He would have been appalled at some of the things she’d been thinking at the time. “I might do that. Thanks for suggesting it, Ravi.”
Ravi glanced over her shoulder and smiled. “There’s Dr. De Winter. We can ask him now.”
Before Jaclyn could stop him, Ravi had gotten Dr. De Winter’s attention. Jaclyn released a deep breath. She hadn’t quite recovered from their earlier meeting when they had touched. Now he was about to get all into her space again.
“Doctors Patel and Campbell. Is there something I can help you with?” he asked, his gaze passing between them.
“Yes, sir,” Jaclyn said. “Thanks to your suggestion I was able to pinpoint bacteria in Mr. Aiken’s blood. But now I’m concerned with the cause. I’ve done tests to rule out several abnormalities, but these bacteria are determined to remain in certain areas. I’m still concerned that we could not detect it in a routine blood test.”
“I thought this would be something she could bring before the group in the morning,” Ravi interjected.
“I agree with Dr. Patel. This is something we can give the group as a think tank question, Dr. Campbell. In the meantime, how is Mr. Aiken? What are we doing for him?”
Before Jaclyn could respond, Ravi glanced at his watch and then said apologetically, “Sorry, I need to go check on one of my patients.”
He then quickly walked off leaving her alone with Dr. De Winter. She forced her gaze from Ravi’s retreating back to Dr. De Winter. For the next few minutes she provided him with the answer to his question. He didn’t interrupt and every so often he would nod slowly. It was hard not to get absorbed in the tingles of awareness that were going through her body from his standing so close to her.
At one point while she was talking, their eyes held for a moment. Her mind went completely blank and it was only when he’d said in a warm tone, “You were saying, Dr. Campbell?” that she realized she had stopped talking in mid-sentence. She swallowed hard and began talking again, knowing with her fair skin that her blush of embarrassment was easy to see.
So okay, now he knew one of his interns was taken with him. The man was sexy and handsome so there was no doubt in her mind she wasn’t the first and wouldn’t be the last. Although flattered, he was a professional who wouldn’t encourage her. He probably considered her one of those silly little interns with hormonal problems.
For her it went beyond that. Oh, she would love to jump his bones if given the chance, but her crush on him was growing by leaps and bounds each day.
When she finally finished her spiel, he met her gaze and asked in what she thought was a husky voice, “Why did you zone out on me a few moments ago?”
She hadn’t expected him to ask her that. Did he honestly expect her to tell him the truth? Even worse, did he suspect the truth? She drew in a deep breath and decided to lie through her teeth. “No reason, sir. I merely lost my train of thought for a second.” And please don’t ask me why.
He slowly nodded and as if he could read her mind and was privy to her last thought, he took a step back. “I’ll see you at the group discussion in the morning, Dr. Campbell.”
And then he walked away.
Chapter 3
Jaclyn had known the moment she entered the meeting room the next morning and saw how everyone was clustered together and talking in whispers that word was out about the Matthews lawsuit.
It had been bad enough when everyone had found out about Terrence’s termination last month. Speculation had run wild as to the reason for it. Now his family was bringing things out in the open and letting everyone know what was going on and that the hospital would pay for what they saw as a grave mistake.
“Hey, what’s going on?” she asked a fellow intern by the name of Tamara St. John as she slid into the seat beside her. She’d liked Tamara from the first day they met and found her to be a down-to-earth person.
Tamara leaned closer and whispered, “Word is out as to the real reason Terrence was kicked out of the program. Rumor has it that he had a drug problem. His family is suing the hospital and saying the charges against him are false.”
Jaclyn swallowed deeply. “What will the hospital do?”
“I hear they feel they have a good case against Terrence. Someone on staff came forward with the goods on him and provided enough proof to make the hospital take action. Now everyone is trying to figure out who among us talked.”
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