He remembered the first time they’d stopped him in his tracks. It had been the end of March, ten long years ago. He’d just been putting in time, wanting his senior year over with so he could get away from his adoptive parents’ farm, go to college, make a real life. He’d walked down the high school hall, and he’d seen a girl stuffing books and a jacket into one of the senior lockers. She’d looked up when she heard his footsteps, and those eyes…
He had to admit it wasn’t only her eyes. She’d had long blond hair that had fallen over her shoulders, a curvy figure that had encouraged his eighteen-year-old hormones to run wild. And she’d just looked lost.
He wasn’t sure what had made him stop. He hadn’t dated much. Since he was ten and built his own computer, he’d been interested in creating software programs, challenging himself with ever more difficult computer games, staying away from the crowd that went drinking every Saturday night and acted as if going steady were the be all and end all of life. He had plans to make himself into a man whom even Owen Bartlett would have to respect.
Girls had buzzed around him now and then—in the lunchroom, in the gym where he shot hoops whenever he could get a chance. Although experimenting sexually with them might have been fun, he hadn’t wanted the complications or the responsibility….
Until he’d seen Leigh, and dreams and life and plans had changed. He’d walked up to her and asked her if she was new at the school. She’d seemed so grateful he’d stopped to talk to her. That’s how it had begun. She’d been his first lover, his first confidante, his first hope that a bond with another person wouldn’t cause pain.
But after three months of dating, she’d sent him a note. It had said she couldn’t see him again and explained nothing. When he’d called her, she hadn’t answered. When he’d stopped by, her mother had told him she wasn’t home.
It had taken a few weeks for him to get back on track, but then he’d focused on the future again, life without Leigh, a college education that could hand him the brass ring.
Thunder neighed again and tossed his head.
“Yep, she’s still beautiful,” Adam acknowledged to himself and the horse.
But Leigh had obviously had a reason for walking out of his life back then, and now he didn’t care what it was. He didn’t care that he’d seen her again today. She was off to medical school in June, and he had Jared Cambry to deal with. All Cambry had cared about was Adam getting to the hospital for the appointed tests. They certainly hadn’t had a long-lost father-and-son reunion. Cambry only cared about eight-year-old Mark.
However, Mark Cambry was Adam’s half brother. Real family…blood family. Adam had been told it could be more than a week until the test results came in.
And if he was a match?
Although he despised hospitals and what they represented, he would save his brother’s life.
An hour and a half later, Adam had finished his ride and groomed and fed Thunder. As he mounted the steps and crossed the porch to his log home, he thought about going back to the office to finish the work that hadn’t gotten done today. He’d no sooner opened the front door, inset with a triangular beveled glass window, when his phone rang.
He crossed the wide-planked flooring, scattered with unique brightly colored wool rugs a decorator had found in a small village in Alaska. They were hand-woven, and the greens, browns and blues added color to the room furnished with a supple black leather couch and armchair, as well as a sage-colored recliner. The polished pine lamps with their parchment shades, the wrought-iron tables with their glass tops blended together to make the room homey, comfortable, and tasteful. His state-of-the-art plasma-screen TV and entertainment center looked out of place in the rustic surroundings, but Adam didn’t care about that.
Picking up the cordless phone beside the sofa, he answered, “Bartlett here.”
“Adam, it’s Leigh. Leigh Peters.”
As if he didn’t remember her last name.
She went on. “I managed to set up an appointment for you with the transplant counselor tomorrow.”
He ran his hand through his hair. She’d mentioned she was going to do that. He just hadn’t expected the appointment to be tomorrow. “That was quick.”
“Would you rather I postpone the appointment for a few days? I could set it up at the end of the week instead.”
Whether he was a match or not, he wanted to know more about the transplant process. He’d heard about the donor registry but had never realized what all of it meant. “What time tomorrow?”
“Marietta Watson—that’s who you will be meeting with—has an opening at eleven and another at four. Which would you prefer?”
“Four would be better for me. I can go to the office early and get in a full day. I’m surprised you’re still at work.”
“I was waiting for Marietta to get back to me about appointment times. In the meantime, I visited with some of my patients.”
She really did like her work. He could hear it in her voice. Suddenly he had the urge to know if she was involved with anyone, if she lived by herself or with a lover. “You don’t have anyone at home waiting for you?”
There were a few beats of silence before she replied, “Yes I do—my mom. It’s more economical for me to live with her while I’m saving for med school.”
Relief swept through Adam, then he reminded himself he had no right to feel it. He remembered Leigh’s mother, Claire. She and Leigh looked more like sisters than mother and daughter. He’d envied the close bond the two of them had shared. “I bet your mom’s going to miss you when you leave.”
“I’ll miss her. Though, she might be glad to finally get me out of her hair.”
There was affection and laughter in Leigh’s voice, and Adam felt himself responding to it. He’d been Leigh’s first lover, and she had been his. That was a sense of connection he couldn’t deny. Yet he’d felt betrayed when she’d walked away without a word. He’d been a nobody then with nothing but hopes for a better future. Obviously she hadn’t been willing to take a chance on him or else she hadn’t felt the same depth of caring he had.
“Where is Marietta Watson located?” he asked, getting back to the subject at hand.
“She’s on the first floor, the opposite side of the building from Dr. Mason. I can meet you in the lobby if you’d like.”
“No, that’s not necessary. I’ll find her. What’s the suite number?”
“It’s 107. If she’s left for the day, I’ll leave a note for her that you’re coming in at four.”
“Remember, Leigh, the charges for all of this go on my tab.”
“I spoke with Dr. Chambers about that. He said he’d have a talk with Mr. Cambry…with your father.”
It sounded ironic for Adam to hear those words. He and Cambry had parted this morning without any plans to meet again. Yet no matter what the testing revealed, Adam wanted to know more about this sister Cambry had found, too. He wanted to know more about all of it. For now, though, he’d sit tight and wait to see what happened next.
“Thanks for calling, Leigh. And thanks for setting up the appointment. Now you’d better go home and get some supper.”
“Is that what you’re going to do?” Her question showed obvious interest in his life and he didn’t know what to make of that.
“No, I’m going to change and go back into the city. I’ll pick up Chinese on the way.”
“You don’t live in town?”
“No. I have a ranch southwest of Portland. I needed some space around me.”
“You got used to space growing up on the farm.”
“I guess I did. But Cedar Run Ranch is nothing like Owen Bartlett’s farm. Believe me.”
“I’m glad you found a home,” she said, obviously understanding everything he’d ever felt about Owen Bartlett and his adopted family.
“You enjoy supper with your mom.”
“You enjoy Chinese at your desk.”
“I will. Goodbye, Leigh.”
Then she said goodbye an
d ended the connection.
Adam switched off the phone, set it on its base, and stared at it for a long time.
Finally, shaking off the foggy fingers of time-passed, he headed for his shower, a fresh change of clothes and a night of the work that had become his life.
I’m his liaison, Leigh told herself the following afternoon as she hurried down the corridor toward Marietta Watson’s office.
It was almost five o’clock and knowing from experience that the counseling sessions lasted about an hour, she’d decided to check in on Adam and see how the session had gone.
Stop kidding yourself, her subconscious whispered. You want to see him again.
It wasn’t that she wanted to see him. Well, maybe she did. For reasons that had nothing to do with her being his liaison. They had unfinished business and it was time she apologized for it.
When she opened the door to Suite 107, there was no one in the small waiting room. The door was closed to Marietta’s inner office, so Leigh sat down to wait. She’d no sooner picked up a year-old magazine to page through when Adam opened the door, and he and Marietta walked out. They were laughing, and Marietta—a pretty brunette a few years older than Leigh—was looking up at Adam as if she found him very attractive.
He was.
He’d always been handsome in a rugged sort of way and had never seemed to understand how that and his broad shoulders and piercing green eyes affected women. At twenty-seven, and CEO of his own company, he must have had lots of affairs. She hadn’t. Life had been filled with work and study. Yet to be honest, she’d never found a man she wanted to be intimate with the way she had been with Adam.
“How did it go?” she asked, looking at Marietta’s brightly colored dress, wishing she’d had a change of clothes in her locker.
After Adam gestured to Marietta, he smiled. “She’s great. She could explain the theory of relativity to a first-grader and he’d understand. I now have a basic grasp of HLA typing, conditioning for the transplant recipient and an overview of the harvesting procedure.”
Leigh knew they’d covered aspects other than the technical ones—what the transplant would mean to Mark, how difficult the whole ordeal would be for the boy, as well as Adam’s part in it, if it came to that.
“From your questions, I knew you were processing everything I told you,” Marietta concluded. “Sometimes the donors I counsel get lost in the stress and can’t absorb the information I give them.”
Clasping Adam’s arm as if she’d known him for years, she added, “If you think of anything we didn’t talk about, or if you have any other questions, feel free to call me. Now I have some paperwork to finish before I can leave.”
She raised her hand in a wave to both of them and went back inside her office and closed the door.
Adam was studying Leigh curiously as if wondering why she was there. Feeling a bit self-conscious, she explained, “I wanted to make sure your session went smoothly.”
“So you can report to Dr. Chambers and Cambry?”
“No,” Leigh answered patiently. “I’m not reporting to anyone. I’m just trying to make sure everyone’s needs are met.”
There was a need that suddenly flared in Adam Bartlett’s eyes, and she felt heat creep into her cheeks. “Marietta’s good at her job, too. She means it when she says to call her if you have any further questions.”
“I researched bone marrow transplants on the Internet last night. That’s how I was able to quickly absorb everything she said. It’s certainly cut-and-dried when you get right down to it. She did explain how difficult a decision it is for parents to put their child through the ordeal. I didn’t understand the implications of that before.”
Leigh nodded. “Mr. Cambry and his wife are going through anguish that I hope I never see.”
As they both thought about that, Leigh impulsively asked, “Would you like to come to dinner at my place?”
A few prolonged seconds passed, then Adam asked, “Dinner’s part of your job, too?”
“Dinner has nothing to do with my job. Mom’s working late tonight so we can talk privately.”
He cocked his head to study her. “And what do we have to talk about?”
“I thought maybe we could…catch up. I could make pasta and a salad. I bought a loaf of Italian bread at the bakery yesterday. How about it?”
When Adam withdrew, when he decided to keep thoughts to himself, not one iota of what was going on in his head showed. That used to frustrate her, and it did now, too.
After an interminably long pause, for which she realized she was holding her breath, he finally replied. “All right. A home-cooked meal sounds good. What’s your address?”
Portland General Hospital was located on the outskirts of the city. When it had been built in the 1940s, it had stood apart from the hustle and bustle. Now urban Portland had almost caught up with it. As Leigh checked her rearview mirror, she caught a glimpse of Adam’s BMW as he followed her in the dusk. Her heart raced when she thought about having dinner with him. Her mind went over apologies and explanations that didn’t seem to say what she wanted them to. By the time they reached the apartment complex where she and her mom lived, her palms were damp.
The apartment building, like so many of Portland’s structures, was built of wood. It was small as apartment complexes went, with twelve units on three floors. There was an old Victorian house to the left of the building, a dry cleaner and bakery to the right. Checking again in the mirror to see if Adam was following her, Leigh drove around to the back where the parking lot for the apartments was located.
After Adam pulled his car in beside hers, they both got out. As they walked to the rear entrance of the building, she said, “We’re on the second floor.”
Adam was silent as they mounted the steps, and Leigh suddenly panicked. Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea. When they arrived at the apartment door, she used her key to open it and stepped inside.
She could almost hear what Adam was thinking. The apartment wasn’t any bigger than the one she and her mom had shared when she’d been in high school. It was decorated in a totally feminine way—shades of rose and yellow, flowered chintz slipcovers over an old sofa and chair, cream-and-taupe braided rugs on the painted tan floor. Prints of Monet watercolors hung on two walls in oak frames with a mirror sconce beside one of them. The television, which sat on a bookshelf, was only as large as the computer monitor that was housed with a keyboard on the hutch in the back corner of the living room.
Taking off her coat, Leigh hung it on a peg inside the front door.
After Adam shrugged out of his suit jacket, he tossed it over the armchair. Next he loosened his tie, and Leigh found it hard to swallow. He looked consummately sexy, and his green eyes followed her as she moved into the kitchen.
“You said your mom’s working late tonight. Is she still a medical secretary?” he asked.
Leigh removed a spaghetti pot from a bottom cupboard. “Yes, she is. For a family practice.”
Adam nodded to the computer. “Is that yours or hers?”
“Mostly hers. I used it in nursing school. She takes in word processing and does that in her spare time.” Her mother had worked two jobs since Leigh was twelve, saving money and adding to the medical school kitty. Leigh would never be able to repay her for all she’d done for her.
As Leigh turned on the spigot and held the pot underneath to fill it, Adam was suddenly by her side.
“I’ll lift it out for you,” he said as the pot became heavier with the water.
The kitchen area was small, the work space minuscule. Adam’s arm brushed hers. She could smell his musky scent, a mixture of man and cologne…Adam and cologne. His body heat seemed to surround her. Or was it simply her own body temperature rising?
His sideways glance at her was meant to tell her she should let him handle the heavy pot, but she couldn’t look away from him. The eye contact brought back memories of other small spaces—his old car, the janitor’s closet in the school where sto
len kisses had been exciting and wild.
Water poured over the side of the pot.
She licked her lips.
He seemed to lean closer.
But then he straightened, turned away and flipped off the spigot.
Leigh let go of the pot, moved toward the refrigerator, opened the door and gathered chicken breasts and vegetables. She’d sauté them, then toss them with the pasta, olive oil and garlic.
“What else can I do?” he asked as he set the pot on the burner and turned it on, salting it.
“Do you cook?”
“Now and then. Dylan and I had a range but no oven in our apartment at college. We became adept at opening cans and mixing them. We called all the recipes Adam-and-Dylan’s goulash.”
She laughed. “Did you write any of them down?”
“Are you kidding? That was the mystery of it. We never made the same thing twice.”
“So you and Dylan are good friends?”
Adam shrugged. “We’re friends, we’re partners, we know each other’s likes and dislikes, what buttons not to push. But Dylan and I are very different. He likes the city and the night life and crowds and parties.”
“And you like to work after everyone else is gone and spend your spare time at your ranch.”
“You always were a quick study,” he remarked.
She wasn’t sure that was a compliment. “I don’t know about being a quick study. I’ve learned how to listen to the kids, or try to hear what they don’t say.” She took a sauté pan from another cupboard and set it on the stove.
When Adam unbuttoned his cuffs and rolled up his sleeves, she lost track of what she was doing. His hair roughened forearms were muscled, his gold watch masculine against his tanned wrist.
Silence pulsed awkwardly between them along with the sexual tension that had always been there.
She asked, “So what do you have on the ranch?”
“Lots of trees,” he responded dryly.
Take A Chance On Me (Logan's Legacy) Page 3