The Return of Caine O'Halloran: Hard Choices

by JoAnn Ross

  “I know.” Nora sighed. “It’s hard on him. The thought of losing her.”

  “My grandmother’s dying?” She’d confirmed Caine’s worst fears. Pain ripped through him, more brutal and severe than anything the Olson boys could have dished out.

  “We’re all dying, Caine,” Nora reminded him quietly. “It’s just that Maggie’s time is getting close.”

  “What’s wrong with her?”

  She gestured toward a chair on the visitors’ side of the desk. “Please, sit down. Would you like some coffee?”

  “This isn’t a damn tea party, Nora,” Caine growled. “You don’t have to play hostess. I just want to know what’s wrong with my grandmother.”

  “Other than old age?”

  He snorted in a disbelieving way. “She’s not that old, dammit. Both her parents lived into their late nineties. We were talking and she fell asleep in the middle of a conversation. You can’t tell me that’s normal. Even at her age.”

  “No.” His face was as dark and threatening as a thundercloud. Nora tried to decide where to begin. “A few years ago, Maggie was diagnosed as having sideroblastic anemia.”

  “I remember that. Mom wrote me about it. But she said that so long as Gram received regular transfusions, she’d be fine.”

  “And she was. Until recently. Devlin came to me when I first opened my practice, worried because she kept falling asleep. He couldn’t talk her into going to a doctor, so he wanted my help.”

  “Gram always did like you.”

  “I love her,” Nora said simply. “The problem is, as you know, your grandmother’s a fairly stubborn woman.”

  “That’s putting it mildly. When Maggie Murphy O’Halloran digs in her heels, she can put a pit bull terrier to shame.”

  “Exactly. Finally, after a great deal of unprofessional pleading and cajoling, I managed to talk her into going to Seattle for some extensive tests.”

  “And?”

  “She has hemochromatosis, Caine.”

  “What the hell is that?”

  “The diagnosis is complex, but the gist of it is that the iron has built up in her heart and caused too much damage for us to treat. Which is why she can’t stay awake. Her heart can only pump effectively for a short time, then it has to rest.”

  “So get her a new heart.”

  “I wish it were that simple. But it’s not.”

  “Sure, it is. I made seven million dollars last year.”

  “The papers said ten.”

  If he weren’t so worried about Maggie, Caine would have found it interesting that Nora had bothered reading about him.

  “They were wrong. It was seven. But that’s still six zeros, Nora. Surely that’s enough to buy Gram a new heart.”

  “Even if you could just run to a body-parts store and pick up a new heart, which you can’t, a transplant is not an option in Maggie’s case.”

  “Why not?”

  “In the first place, Maggie isn’t well enough to survive the wait for a donor heart, even if we could get her on the list.

  “In the second place, if a heart did become available in time, I doubt she could survive the surgery.”

  “It’s worth a try.”

  “Not to her.”

  “What?”

  “Maggie categorically refuses to consider any dramatic efforts to keep her alive.”

  Caine ground his teeth so hard his jaw ached. “That’s ridiculous.”

  “It’s her decision. And,” Nora added softly, “one Devlin and I happen to agree with.”

  His face took on that familiar, stubborn expression she knew all too well. His eyes turned to flint, his jaw jutted forward.

  “Gram’s always listened to me. I can change her mind.”

  “Caine, don’t do this.”

  Nora rose from her chair and went around the desk to stand in front of him. “Maggie’s made her decision. She’s comfortable with it. Please don’t upset her.”

  Caine was on his feet, as well. “I’m trying to save her life, dammit!”

  “That’s just the point.” Nora put her hand on his arm and felt the muscle tense beneath her fingertips. “You can’t save her, Caine. No one can.”

  Caine muttered a litany of harsh expletives. “I am not going to let her die.”

  Nora remembered the paramedics trying to tell her that Caine had been shouting the same thing while the rescue team cut Dylan out of the mangled red Corvette.

  “I’m sorry, Caine. Truly, I am.”

  “Goddamn it!” He pulled away from her and slammed his fist into the wall, punching a hole in the plasterboard. Unsatisfied, he gave the wall a vicious kick with the toe of his boot. The impact sent a jolt of lightning through his healing ribs.

  “Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine.” He flexed his fingers. “See?” His tired gaze took in the ragged hole. “Send me the bill for your wall.”

  “Don’t worry about it.”

  “I said, send me the damn bill.”

  “Fine, I’ll send you the damn bill.”

  “Good.” He nodded. “I’m going to get a second opinion.”

  “You have every right to do that,” Nora told him. “But I have to warn you, Caine, all the specialists who saw Maggie agreed with the diagnosis. And she doesn’t have the strength to have you dragging her all over the country.”

  “Shit.” He threw his long frame onto the office sofa, put his head against the back cushion and covered his eyes with his hand. “Now what?”

  “I suggested Maggie enter a hospice program so she can stay at home, instead of spending her last months in the hospital.”

  “She’d hate being stuck in some dreary hospital room,” Caine said glumly. “So is she in this program?”

  “She hasn’t made up her mind yet. Perhaps you can help convince her.”

  Caine nodded. “I’ll give it my best shot.” He gave her a long, probing look. “What’s the prognosis?”

  “I told you—”

  “I know.” He cut the air with a swift slice of his hand. “You’ve convinced me that my grandmother is going to die, Nora. I want to know when. And how.”

  She’d seen that expression on his face before. When he’d been waiting for word of their critically injured son. Immersed in her own fear, Nora had refused to acknowledge his pain. This time, she found it impossible to ignore.

  “It’s hard to say,” she said softly. “She could have a heart attack, or a stroke, or some other type of seizure. Or she might simply fall asleep one of these times and not wake up.”

  “Not a lot of nifty options, huh?”

  “I’m sorry.”

  He looked at her, taking in her neat blond hair, her starched white jacket, the little rectangular name tag above her right breast. She seemed both familiar and foreign at the same time. Caine wondered if Nora realized that the severe tailoring of her professional clothing made her appear all the more feminine by contrast. Softer.

  “I never could really think of you as a doctor.”

  “I know.” It was one of the things they’d fought about on a regular basis.

  “But you’re pretty good. I’m impressed.”

  The faintest of smiles played at the corners of her full, serious mouth. “Thank you. I needed a kind word today.”

  He glanced over at the light box she’d left on. “Trouble with one of your patients?”

  “A seven-year-old boy. His mother brought him in with burns she said he’d gotten from pulling a pan off the stove.”

  “I hope they’re not too bad.”

  “Actually, they probably won’t even blister. But I had a funny feeling about it, so I ordered some X-rays.”

  “And?”

  “See these?” Nora
picked up a pencil and began pointing to various faint lines on the gray film.

  Caine pushed himself off the couch and came over to stand beside her. “Those wiggly lines?”

  “Those are old fractures left to heal by themselves.”

  “The kid was beaten?”

  “Apparently. And there’re more.” Nora turned off the light. “There were scars about the size of a pencil eraser.”

  “Or a lighted cigarette.” Caine felt suddenly sick.

  “Or a lighted cigarette,” Nora agreed flatly.

  Caine wondered how it was that he and Nora, who’d loved Dylan so much, had lost him, while some other parents could deliberately hurt their child.

  “Makes you wonder, doesn’t it?”

  She looked up into his face and read her own troubled thoughts in his pained gaze. “Yes.” Her voice came out in a whisper. “It does.”

  They stood there, only inches apart, looking at each other, bittersweet memories swirling in the air between them.

  “Nora.” He ran his palm down the silk of her hair and watched the awareness rise in her eyes.

  “Oh, Caine.” It was little more than a whisper.

  He leaned closer.

  “This is a mistake,” she warned.

  “Probably. But no worse than any of the others I’ve been making lately.” His knuckles caressed her cheek in a slow, seductive sweep. “And I’m willing to bet it’ll be a helluva lot more enjoyable than most.”

  Chapter 7

  As his lips touched hers, the intervening years spun away and all the reasons why this was a mistake dissolved like mist over the treetops.

  Holding Nora brought not the pain of lost love he would have expected, but a rightness—almost a contentment—Caine hadn’t expected to feel. How could he have forgotten how sweet she was? And how responsive.

  He felt her sigh against his mouth—a slow, shuddering breath that echoed his own pleasure. Time tumbled backward, taking them past the pain to a passion that had been even more exquisite because it had been so liberally laced with love.

  “God, I’ve missed this.” Caine drew her closer, then closer still, until the rising heat threatened to fuse their bodies. “I’ve missed you.” Although he’d never realized it, it was true.

  “Don’t talk,” she whispered breathlessly. “Just kiss me. And hold me.” Her arms wrapped possessively around him; her lips fused with his, again and again. “Tight.”

  Dear Lord, he was lost in her. In her touch, her taste, her scent. Nora was everything he’d been wanting, without even knowing he’d been wanting it. She was everything he’d been needing without knowing he’d been needing it. She was heaven.

  She was home.

  Home. The word, which once had represented unwanted strings and unwelcome commitments, now seemed like a prayer.

  Caine skimmed his lips along the line of her jaw, then up her cheek to linger at her temple. Desperate to know how her body had changed during their years apart, he slipped his hands inside her lab coat. When his wide hand cupped her breast, a ragged moan escaped her parted lips.

  He tugged her blouse loose, then her camisole, inching his way beneath the ivory silk. “You feel so good.”

  His fingers moved upward to stroke her breasts, finding them as smooth and firm and fragrant as he remembered.

  He wanted to take those taut peaks in his mouth. He wanted to feel her body, hot and eager and open against his. He wanted to possess her, mind and body and soul, as he’d done on so many nights so long ago.

  He was actually considering the logistics of making love to her here and now in her office, when her intercom buzzed sharply.

  Like a man immersed in a sensual dream, Caine was aware of the intrusion and fought against it.

  The intercom continued to buzz.

  “I have to answer that.” Her flat tone told him it was not her first choice.

  Without removing his hands from beneath her camisole, he tugged her pearl earring off with his teeth and dropped it onto the desk before nibbling at her earlobe. “Don’t tell me this hospital will come to a halt if you don’t answer your intercom?”

  “No, but the E.R. clerk has a habit of just barging in.”

  Knowing that the idea of being caught in a heated clench with her ex-husband was more than Nora could handle, Caine reluctantly released her, then reached out to steady her when she suddenly swayed.

  “You okay?”

  “Of course.” But her hand trembled as she finger-combed her sleek hair.

  “Remind me to stop by Richie Duggan’s hardware store and get a Do Not Disturb sign for your office door.”

  “Please, Caine.” She struggled to tuck her blouse back into her waistband. “Don’t do this.”

  They were on familiar turf again: Nora backing away, Caine pressing her for more than she wanted to give.

  “I didn’t do it alone.”

  “I know.” Her eyes, her voice, revealed her regret.

  There was a sharp knock on the door. A moment later, Mabel entered the office.

  “Is everything all right, Dr. Anderson?”

  The elderly woman’s gaze reminded Caine of a curious bird’s as it flicked from Nora to him and back to Nora.

  “Everything’s fine,” Nora answered in a tone that was not nearly as strong as her usual professional voice.

  “You sure?” Knowing eyes searched Nora’s flushed face.

  “Of course.”

  “You didn’t answer the intercom.”

  “Mr. O’Halloran and I were discussing his grandmother’s case,” Nora said.

  Mabel turned back toward Caine, who was standing with his arms crossed over his broad chest. “I thought I recognized you.”

  “Mabel Erickson, Caine O’Halloran,” Nora introduced them reluctantly. “Mabel runs the emergency room.”

  “No wonder everyone looks so efficient,” Caine said. “Believe me, Ms. Erickson, I’ve been in a lot of emergency rooms over the years and I could tell right away that yours is one of the best.”

  “Call me Mabel.” She beamed. “I’ve got your Vanity Fair issue in my locker,” she surprised Nora by revealing. “If I go get it, will you autograph it for me?”

  Caine grinned. “I’ll stop by your desk on my way out.”

  Mabel’s fleshy, smiling face was the hue of a late-July raspberry. “Don’t you dare leave this hospital without signing it.”

  “I wouldn’t think of it,” Caine said easily.

  “Mabel?” Nora called out to the receptionist’s back.

  The clerk stopped on her way out the door and glanced back over her shoulder. “Yes, Dr. Anderson?”

  “What did you want?”

  “Want?” Mabel’s gaze slid back to Caine.

  “The intercom,” Nora reminded her. “You buzzed.”

  “Oh, that. The Children’s Services social worker is here. About that little boy. I put her in waiting room B.”

  “Thank you.” But Mabel had already bustled off toward the staff locker room, leaving Nora talking to air.

  “You’ve obviously made another conquest,” she snapped.

  Her withdrawal was as familiar as her smoldering sexuality. Caine remembered all too well how Nora had never grown accustomed to having her husband surrounded by baseball groupies. Not that she’d ever needed to worry.

  Recalling her passion that Midsummer Eve in the cabin, Caine hadn’t been terribly surprised when their first encounter as man and wife six months after their marriage confirmed his long-held belief that they were a perfect sexual match.

  What had come as a distinct shock that afternoon years ago, before their son was born, was the realization that somehow, when he wasn’t looking, he’d fallen head over heels in love with his wife.
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br />   “I don’t think this is the time or the place to get into another argument about my alleged infidelities, Nora,” Caine said now. His mouth set in its grim line again; all the heated emotion he’d displayed in his kiss had disappeared from his eyes.

  “It’s a moot point,” Nora said between clenched teeth, “since it’s over between us. I gave up worrying about all your other women a very long time ago, Caine.”

  She brushed her hands down the front of her jacket, smoothing the wrinkles that remained as damning evidence of her uncharacteristically unprofessional behavior.

  Caine rubbed his jaw. “You know, I thought it was over, too. But I’m beginning to have my doubts.”

  She tilted her chin. “I haven’t any doubts.”

  “Not even one?”

  “None at all.”

  He could have murdered her for unleashing so much raw emotion, then behaving as if that shared kiss had never happened. He could have dragged her onto the couch, her desk, hell, the floor, to prove to her how very wrong she was.

  “Well, then, if that’s really the case, we shouldn’t have any problem getting along while you’re treating Maggie.”

  Maggie. Caine couldn’t accept the idea that his grandmother was dying. It was something he would have to think about later. When he was alone. Or better yet, with his new best friend, Jack Daniel’s.

  “No problem at all,” Nora agreed stiffly. “I really do have to leave.” Unwilling to look directly at him, Nora focused on the wall thermostat beside the door.

  “Before you go, can I ask what happens next?”

  “With us? I told you, Caine. Nothing.”

  Caine saw the lingering reluctant desire she hadn’t been able to hide glowing in her eyes. That she wanted him was obvious. That she didn’t want to want him was also all too apparent.

  It was just as well, he decided grimly. He had enough problems right now without getting involved with the only woman he’d ever met who could make him willing to beg.

  “Actually, I was referring to that little boy.”

  “Oh.” Embarrassed that she’d misunderstood him and surprised by his obvious concern for someone other than himself, she said, “Children’s Services will begin an investigation. I could release him this afternoon, but I’d rather keep him here and avoid the risk of the social workers deciding to leave him with his mother while they conduct the investigation.”