by Rowe, Julie
“Second,” Rafael answered.
“Elevator works, right?”
“What elevator?”
Oh no. “Absolutely no stairs.”
“Don’t got a choice.”
“Using the stairs will strain the healing bone, tendons, and ligaments. It could cause permanent injury.”
“It’s the only way in or out,” Rafael said.
“There must be a way to get her up to the second floor without her having to climb the stairs.” Calla looked around, racking her brain for an idea. Half a block away, a few young men loitered on the sidewalk, watching her car.
“What about them?” she asked, pointing at the teens.
Rafael glanced over. “What about them?”
“They could carry her.” It could work, they could take turns.
“Not them,” Rafael said. “But, I know some other guys who’ll do it.” He hesitated. “Wait here.”
He turned to his mother and spoke rapidly in Spanish, then got out of the car and ran into the apartment building. Five minutes later, he came out with four young guys following behind him. They were older than Rafael by a few years, but if any of them were over twenty years old, she’d eat her shoes.
Rafael motioned to Calla to get out of the car. As soon as she was on the sidewalk, he made some introductions. “Dr. Roberts, these are my cousins Miguel, Luis, Carlos, and Santos.”
“Hello,” she said with a nod and a smile.
They stared at her with blank faces.
“She’s the doc who fixed up mom,” he told them.
They relaxed slightly.
“Raf says you want us to carry Aunt Alicia up to her apartment?” The one on the left asked in an are-you-kidding tone.
“Yes. Climbing those stairs will damage her hip and leg. It’s going to be weeks before she can put her full weight on it safely.”
“How is she going to see you if she can’t use the stairs?”
Good question. “I’ll come to her in her home.”
They looked at her for a minute, as if trying to figure out if she was serious or not.
“Rafael knows to call me if I’m needed.”
Finally, one of the guys nodded and the whole group approached the car to help Alicia out. Two of them carried her by linking their arms and hanging onto each other’s wrists, forming a chair for her to sit on. With her arms around their necks, they carried her with ease.
“She’s taking her antibiotics?” she asked Rafael as they watched the progress of the young men and Alicia.
“Yep.” He glanced at Calla and patted her arm. “No worries.”
“Call me tomorrow afternoon and let me know how she’s doing, okay?”
“Sure.” He scampered off and followed his mother and her bearers into the building.
Calla shook her head. The kid was twelve going on twenty. She went back to her car and wasted no time in leaving the area. If any of those jerks with cameras knew where she was, there would be more pictures of her in the tabloids tomorrow with God knew what headlines. Plastic Surgeon’s Suspicious House Call or maybe Surgeon Delivering Drugs Door to Door.
Wouldn’t that drive Alex crazy?
…
Alex tried to call Calla over and over, but it went directly to her voicemail, so he texted her and told her to call him as soon as possible. He decided to head over to her place and hope she’d be there soon.
When he arrived, he realized the paparazzi had gotten there first. There were at least four of them staked out in cars either right next to her house or across the street from it. He drove around and parked down the street, then texted her again, telling her not to go home.
Where was she?
Ten minutes later, his phone rang.
“Hello.”
“Alex, it’s Calla. Why shouldn’t I go home?”
“Because the damn reporters are here waiting for you.”
Silence for three long seconds, then she asked in a defeated tone, “What should I do? Go to the clinic for a few hours? Will they leave if I don’t show up soon?”
The reporters would multiply like blowflies if they found her anywhere today. Calla had to go somewhere they wouldn’t expect to find her. Someplace safe.
“Go to my place. They won’t think to look for you there and we can discuss our next steps.”
She sighed. “Okay, give me the address.”
Twenty minutes later, he pulled into his driveway to find Calla waiting for him in her car. He got out and she followed him into his home.
She looked around with interest before asking, “How many reporters were ready to ambush me at my house?”
“At least four.” She didn’t react to the number, but rather continued to survey her surroundings. Did she see the house the way he did? The open concept allowed him to entertain guests while he cooked or mingled with them in the living area. To him, it made the whole main floor welcoming. But with the stark coloring and cold surfaces, he wondered if she might see it as something else—see him as something else.
“Great. Are they going to hang around for me until I come home or will they get bored and leave?”
“It depends on the celebrities in town and what they’re doing. Right now you’re news, but if some celeb gets arrested for a DUI, they’ll drop you like a hot potato.”
“Let’s hope someone famous does something really dumb, then.”
He chuckled and showed her into the kitchen. He held out one of the chairs at the sizable island for her and pushed it in.
“Comfortable?” he asked.
She relaxed a fraction. “Yes, thank you.”
He rummaged around in a cupboard. Hadn’t his mother given him some tea the last time she was over? She always drank tea when she was upset, which was damn near every other day. He found the box at the back and pulled it out. “Tea?”
The rest of the tension flowed out of her shoulders, and something heavy lifted off of his own.
“That sounds lovely,” she said with a tired smile.
“You mentioned bringing a dessert tomorrow night.” Alex filled an electric kettle with water and plugged it in.
“Yes, but I haven’t had time to prepare anything.” She plunked her elbows on the table and rested her head in her hands. “How am I going to make something if I’ve got vultures hanging around my house?” She gave him a weary look. “Will they bang on the door? Call my phone over and over? Peek through my windows?”
“Some of them will. Hell, if you had a chimney, one of them would probably try to slide down it.”
“That’s wrong in more ways than I can count.”
“I think you need to disappear.”
“What do you mean? I have a job and other commitments. I can’t just not show up.”
“Go where no one expects you to go. Like here, like my grandmother’s for dinner tomorrow.”
She laid her head in her arms on the counter top. “What I wouldn’t give for a time machine, so I could go back and give Rafael those antibiotics in my office.”
“I wish I could go back and punch Kevin Hocker in the nose during my senior year in high school,” Alex said. “He told my cousin Bambi’s boyfriend that she’d given him a blow job behind the bleachers.”
That brought Calla’s head up. “Really?”
“Yeah, now there was an ass who needed a nose job.”
A startled laugh from Calla surprised her as much as it did him, given her blush and wide eyes. No one should be that surprised by a laugh. Fun. She needed to have more fun.
“I have an idea,” he said as he moved around the kitchen. He liked having her here in his home, in his space. She fit.
“Please,” she said, looking ridiculously relieved. “Anything.”
“My grandmother loves cupcakes.”
“Oh, I love them, too. I could go to Colin’s Cupcakes,” Calla said. “He’s a baker with a reality TV show. I’ve watched it a few times. Every cupcake is a work of art. What if I got some from there?”
“That’s perfect.”
A smile lit up her face for a moment, but it wasn’t long before a frown brought shadows back to it. “I have another problem. What do I wear to this dinner? My closet is full of scrubs and business casual, nothing glamorous or fancy.”
He examined her outfit. She looked good, more than good. “What you’re wearing now is fine for dinner.”
She glanced down at her beige leggings and sky blue halter shirt. “It’s pretty businesslike.”
Though the shirt covered her up to the neck, it was sleeveless and framed her toned arms. It also diverted the eye to her breasts.
Gorgeous.
He cleared his throat. “We’re expected to wear something like what you’ve got on anyway. No jeans and T-shirts at Grandma Maddy’s.”
Calla frowned. “Is she as eccentric as people say she is?”
“Normally I wouldn’t put any stock at all in what the media says about any celebrity, but in the case of my grandmother they’re right on the money.”
“Is she easy to talk to?”
“If she likes you, yes.”
“Any advice on what I can do to make a positive impression?”
“Be yourself.” He frowned. “Anything else would be a lie.”
“I am lying to her.” Her head tilted to one side. “About us. Aren’t I?”
Her words pulled him to a stop. “So don’t. Tell her the truth. You’ve come with me to the family dinner to keep my relatives, not her, from driving me crazy with their plans to fix my life. rds pulled him to a stop. “Yes. ylish one. :-)here she wanted to presengiven her blush and wide eyes.ack and pulled it out to shSpeak plainly. She likes people who stand up for themselves, not someone who kisses ass.”
“Got any of those in your family?”
“I’ve got way too many of those in my family.”
A small smile lifted the corners of her mouth. “Hmm, sounds complicated.”
He glanced at her as he poured the tea. “Are you a psychiatrist on the side?”
“Nope, just a simple surgeon,” she said matter-of-factly.
He thought about that for a moment. “Why surgery?”
“I hate doing medicals.”
Her answer was too pat, too fast. “No really, why surgery? I assume you could have specialized in any sort of medicine.”
She played with her cup, twisting it around, back and forth. “I wanted to be able to fix people.”
“Fix them?”
“Put them back together…like Humpty Dumpty, I suppose.” She glanced at his face, then stared at her hands. “I don’t think anyone should have to walk down the street and be stared at because of scarring or burns or a bad limp. Everyone has the right to feel whole.”
“That’s what you did in Chicago, right? You worked on accident and burn victims, giving them their faces back or reconstructing whatever was broken?”
She gave a firm nod. “Yes.”
He stared at her in silence for a moment. Her brother lived in a medical facility full time. Did that have something to do with her need to fix people?
“But you can’t repair everything or everyone.”
She paused with her cup in midair. “I know.”
Did she know?
He leaned toward her and said in a low, intense tone, “Trying to be everything to everyone will only get you one thing.”
She knew what he meant; he could see it on her face. Her brows crowded low, her mouth tight and pinched. He’d hit a nerve.
“You’ll kill yourself. Heart attack, stroke, aneurysm. You know better than I do what can happen if you let yourself carry that stress long term.”
She sighed. “I have a problem with the word ‘no.’ If someone comes to me in need…” her voice trailed off. “How do you say no to someone who has nowhere else to go, no one else to turn to? I’m a doctor, it’s my responsibility to help them.”
“It’s your responsibility to take care of yourself, too.”
She made a frustrated noise. “I know that, intellectually.” She hugged her waist like she was trying to comfort herself, closing her off from him.
There was something else, something important she wasn’t telling him.
“How did you manage to get into such a huge amount of debt that your house and car were in danger of being repossessed?”
His question startled her enough that she jerked away and almost fell off her chair.
Chapter Six
“Bad luck.” She glanced away, resettling herself. This was the last thing she wanted to talk about.
“Bad luck?” he repeated, but in a tone that shouted disbelief.
“Really bad. One disaster after another.”
He blinked and said, “Hit me with it.”
She smiled despite herself. At least he could make her laugh.
“Okay, medical school cost me a lot. Like, a couple hundred thousand. I borrowed most of it from the bank, but my parents had money saved up, so they contributed, too. I was working in Chicago and paying it off fairly quickly. Things were good until the car accident.” She took a breath and braced herself mentally. Her next words composed a simple sentence that was never easy to say. “My parents were killed and my brother was severely injured.”
Alex sipped his tea before asking, “Did they have insurance?”
“Enough to cover the funeral costs and about a couple of weeks’ worth of my brother’s medical bills.”
“How long was he in the hospital?”
“He never left.”
Alex put his cup down, a frown dominating his face. “Your brother’s injuries were permanent?”
“Yes, he’s a quadriplegic. His C3 vertebra was crushed and his spinal cord severed. He lives in a health facility where he’s provided twenty-four-hour-a-day care. It’s very expensive and absolutely necessary.” She waited for more, but Alex didn’t ask any other questions. “Now you know why I’m in debt up to my eyeballs.”
“There’s no one else you can ask for help?”
“No.”
He tilted his head to one side. “How did you pay off your car yesterday?”
Her eyebrows lowered over her eyes. “I didn’t.”
“It’s paid off.”
“No, I owe a couple thousand on that car.”
“Calla,” he said with a tone she imagined he used in the courtroom while addressing a judge. “The balance was paid off yesterday. I checked with the collection agency.”
That couldn’t be right. “It wasn’t me.”
“Can you think of anyone who might have done it? A friend or distant relative?”
She shook her head, dumbfounded.
“Hmm. A mysterious benefactor pays off your car loan just in time for a tabloid reporter to make it look like you’d earned the money in a less than legal way,” Alex said, staring off into space.
She could almost see the thoughts darting through his head. Weighing, measuring, judging. Would she come out looking guilty or innocent?
“Let’s give the collection agency another call and see if we can find out who paid the remainder of that loan off.”
He put the call through on his cell phone. She had to give permission for them to release what they called confidential information.
Surprising information.
“My brother?” Her voice rose in disbelief. “Where would he…?” She pulled out her cell phone and began texting while muttering about strange accounting errors. Alex was going to think she was nuts.
As soon as the phone chimed she read Richie’s reply.
“This doesn’t make sense,” she said after reading it a couple of times. “He says the Wishing You Well Foundation gave him three thousand dollars to spend on anything he liked that would make him feel more comfortable. He decided to pay off the car loan, so I’d have one less payment to worry about.” Calla sucked in a deep breath and asked, “I’ve never heard of the Wishing You Well Foundation, have you?”
“No, but I’ll look into it. The timing of the mo
ney seems too convenient.”
“Just like that, huh?”
“Being a lawyer has its perks.”
She pushed her empty plate away and leaned forward. When she spoke her voice was serious, almost stern. “I have a question for you.”
He shrugged. “Shoot.”
“Why did you decide to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth to everyone all the time?”
He smiled, but it was a brittle, ice-covered expression. “I grew up dodging paparazzi, chatting with reporters, and having lunch with celebrities. No one in any of those groups is all that forthcoming with the truth. I got tired of the embellishments, the infighting, and the gossip. I got tired of people always being nice to your face then stabbing you in the back with an entire pitchfork. I really got tired of thinking I found a woman who might be the one, only to discover what she wanted was a way into the world.”
“The world?”
“Hollywood.” He said the word like it was dirty.
“How did you know when that happened?” Calla couldn’t help it if she was confused. He talked about Hollywood like it was another planet.
For all she knew, it was.
“My grandmother has what she calls a personality test.”
Oh no. Not that. “She didn’t.” Calla had a friend in college, smart, gorgeous and well-off, whose father had what he called a personality test for guys. As far as Calla knew, no man had ever passed.
“She did,” Alex said. “She waits to see if they’re dating me for real or so they can use her to meet the right movie people. None of them suspected that a sweet little old lady would turn on them and tear them apart like a great white shark coming off a hunger strike.”
“Ouch.” It must have been hard growing up in a place where style meant more than substance. It took a strong person to take a stand against all that when it was all he knew.
Alex Hardy wasn’t just a handsome face. He was much, much more.
He chuckled. “You’ve got that right. There’d be accusations, screaming, and more drama than a daytime soap during sweeps week. No one wants to be with a man who also tells them the absolute truth all the time. Eventually they get tired of hearing how much I dislike their favorite outfit or their haircut or their friends.”
“Did you ever tell them they looked beautiful when they looked beautiful?”