* * *
Chapter Four
« ^ »
Alex smoothed Tyler's hair and kissed his warm little cheek. He lay curled on his side, sound asleep, one arm hooked around a bedraggled purple dinosaur and his fist grasping the satin edge of his blanket. The rest of his stuffed menagerie guarded him from their appointed positions along the bright blue bookcase headboard.
He'd crashed and burned within seconds of his head hitting the pillow. He hadn't even asked for a story.
A soft smile touched Alex's mouth as she ran her fingers lightly over his forehead. The softness of his skin still amazed her, the incredible downiness of it. She remembered when he'd been an infant, thinking how it had felt as soft as air. Back then, she thought, wondering at how much he'd grown, everything about him had seemed so impossibly fragile.
He'd terrified her.
She'd been twenty-eight years old, a promising, some even said gifted, surgical resident with an above-average knowledge of the human body and its gestational processes. And six pounds, twelve ounces of sweet-smelling, mewling baby had left her feeling totally incompetent.
She slowly pulled back, tucking the covers around him. Tyler was no longer that helpless, frighteningly dependent baby. But there were times when she desperately missed the infant she'd hardly had time to hold, the toddler who'd taken his first steps without her. She hadn't really even known him then.
His first word had been Nana.
She'd had to spend his first birthday in surgery.
She turned off his light with a quiet click. Picking up a truck she'd stepped over earlier, she set in on the dresser before pulling his door partially closed. She didn't want to go where her thoughts seemed to be leading her. Those years were behind them now. She and Tyler had struggled through the last of her residency with the help of her parents and they were doing just fine.
If she was feeling a little melancholy about having missed his infancy, it was probably because she was missing Wendy and her baby. The pregnant teenager had lived with them only for a few months, and Wendy had stayed for just two more weeks after she'd delivered before moving in with a relative, but Alex, had bonded with them both.
It was just baby-withdrawal, Alex assured herself, and headed down the hall in her oversized sleep shirt, stretching her neck to relieve the tension tightening it.
She and Tyler had been home for half an hour, long enough for her to supervise the feeding of the gerbil, the fish and the cat and get Tyler through the getting-ready-for-bed routine. All she needed to do now was get coffee ready for the morning, turn off the lights in the rest of the house, and shake the restive feeling haunting her so she could go to bed herself.
Thomas, their wiry ten-pound ex-alley cat trotted by her, his long tail waving like a regal banner, replete on Nine Lives, and disappeared through Tyler's door. In another ten seconds, he'd be curled up in a mottled gray ball at the foot of Tyler's bed.
Everyone was where they were supposed to be. Tucked in. Bedded down. Safe. Secure.
The house suddenly seemed far too quiet.
It didn't feel empty, exactly. Not with all the hearts beating in it. Still, there seemed to be a vague, almost lonely feel to the place as she moved about her little kitchen with its Big Bird cookie jar and the crayon art on the refrigerator.
Alex reminded herself again of Wendy and the baby. She was just going through an adjustment period. She'd suffered the same loose-ended sensation after the female doctor from India who'd stayed with them last year had returned home. She just didn't want to believe the hollow feeling had anything to do with the funny tug she'd felt when she'd watched Ryan and Ronni walk off hand in hand tonight.
Or when she'd seen Tanner drape his arm around Kelly as they'd left the restaurant.
She didn't want to believe it had anything to do with the fact that, except for a quick platonic hug, she hadn't had a man's arms around her in over four years.
And she definitely didn't want to believe it was there because she couldn't shake the loneliness she'd sensed in Chase when she'd left him tonight.
That kind of empathy she could do without.
Warning herself that she'd never get to sleep if she started thinking about him, she flipped off the kitchen light—and heard her pager go off.
A groan escaped a second before she bumped her forehead against the doorjamb.
Knowing better than to acknowledge how tired she should be, she padded barefoot to where she'd dropped her purse on the credenza in the hall and unclipped the little black nuisance from the strap.
She recognized the hospital prefix on the telephone number displayed on the digital readout, but the rest of the numbers were unfamiliar. The call wasn't from the emergency room or the nurses' station on the med-surg floor. Unless one of the other floors had paged the wrong doctor, she could think of only one other person who'd be calling her now.
Picking up the phone from the end table by the sofa, she punched in the numbers.
A male voice, smoky and rich, answered on the first ring.
"That didn't take long. It's Chase. Are you still at the restaurant?"
It was difficult to ignore the familiarity in the way he identified himself, or the sensual slide of that deep voice over her nerves. "I left there a while ago," she replied, trying to overlook the latter, anyway.
"I didn't think you'd be leaving so early. I don't suppose you're anywhere near the hospital, are you?"
"Actually, I'm home. But your timing is fine," she assured him, not wanting to discourage his reason for calling. "Did you change your mind about letting me set up that meeting?"
He hesitated. "I don't know yet." The faint rush of an indrawn breath filtered over the line. "I wanted to talk to you first. About my brothers," he explained, a wealth of unease slipping into his tone. "You said they're friends of yours. I'm hoping you can tell me something about them."
Alex could almost see him propped in his bed, his jaw working, his grip on the phone tighter than he wanted it to be.
She had no idea how he'd found his brothers, or what circumstances had led to him being separated from them. All she knew of the Malone brothers' background was that their parents had died when they were very young. But this wasn't about her curiosity. It was about her patient. And he was doing something she never would have expected of him. He was asking for her help.
With the cordless phone pressed to her ear, she rounded the end table and sank to her teal-blue sofa. In front of her, the big brass trunk that served as a coffee table was stacked with paint color-chip samples, unread gardening magazines and the children's library books she'd intended to return last Thursday. The pretty pottery bowl she'd bought at an outdoor art fair to display flowers or lacquered fruit held Matchbox cars and a stress-reduction tape.
Propping her bare feet on the edge of the trunk, she raised her knees to block her view of the entire lot.
"What do you want to know?"
"Anything you're willing to tell me."
"Do you know anything about them at all?"
"I know where they went to school and what they do for a living. And that Ryan was widowed and remarried not long ago. But that's the sort of thing any investigator can turn up," he told her, revealing how he'd come by what information he had. "That's not what I'm looking for from you. You said you figured out who I was because there are … similarities."
He wanted to know what he might share with his siblings, what it was that identified them as belonging to each other. Those were the things an investigator wouldn't be able to uncover. They were the traits that someone who wanted to fit in would want to know. "There are. I take it you haven't seen any pictures."
"Nothing recent. Only a newspaper photo of Ryan in an article about that funding problem you mentioned. A profile shot. I couldn't tell much."
An image of Chase's own chiseled profile formed in her mind; the hard cheekbones, the noble nose, that firm, sensual mouth.
She cleared her throat. "Actually," she said
, tugging her shirt toward her bare knees, "you all have dark hair and the same color of eyes. And you and Ryan have similar … bone structure," she decided to call it, since telling him they had that same lean, hungry look lacked the professional edge she needed to keep with this man.
"Anything else?"
"Well … there's your personalities…"
"What about them?"
Considering, she slipped the hem of her sleepshirt through her fingers. "How honest do you want me to be?"
"I'm not sure I trust the sound of that."
"You're my patient. I don't want to offend you," she admitted, holding back a smile at the pure male caution that had entered his tone.
"Meaning you wouldn't mind offending me if I wasn't?"
Her fingers stilled, her heart giving an odd little bump at the unexpected hint of teasing in his tone. The man had a voice as intoxicating as hundred-year-old brandy. Smooth, seductive and guaranteed to make a woman slip right out of her inhibitions. There was just something a tad ironic about talking to a man with a voice like that while wearing comfortable cotton that said Save the Chocolate and sitting propped between a Monet-print pillow and a large Nerf ball.
"Meaning just what I said," she murmured, thinking he'd probably never seen a woman in anything other than imported silk.
"For what it's worth, I don't offend easily."
She didn't imagine that he did. Under normal circumstances, that shell of his was probably steel-belted and double-ply.
"Let's just say that you and Tanner both share a certain … cynicism." He was actually light years beyond Tanner on that score. "And Ryan can be charming, but he can be just as stubborn as you can. Don't get me wrong. I think the world of your brothers. They're enormously generous, caring people. But you asked for similarities—"
"And you gave me what I asked for."
Which, as she considered it, probably hadn't been a very good idea. She'd just told him she found him cynical and stubborn. All she'd left out was controlling, disturbing and impossible to forget.
"Tell me," he said, generously letting her off the hook. "Do you have family?"
"Pardon?"
"Do you have family?" he repeated mildly. "Parents? Brothers? Sisters?"
"I'm an only child. And I have both my mom and my dad."
"They're your natural parents?"
She hesitated, but even as she did, she began to suspect what Chase was doing. "Yes," she said quietly. "They are."
But the people who had raised Chase hadn't been his. She just didn't know if he was trying to see if she could relate to him. Or trying to prove that she couldn't.
"What about you?" she asked, wanting to know where she stood. "Any siblings?"
"Not until two months ago."
That was when the investigator had turned them up, he told her. It had actually been four months since he'd learned he was adopted, but it had taken that long for the man he'd hired to find out who his birth parents were and discover that there had been more than one child of the deceased Andrew and Cecilia Malone.
Chase said nothing about his adoptive parents. As Alex listened, it became apparent from the deliberate omission that he was either protecting them or trying not to think about them at all. She wasn't sure why, but she suspected it was more of the latter. Because of that, she didn't ask how he had discovered what had been kept from him for so long. She focused only on how long it had taken him to work up the courage to contact his brothers. And that he seemed to be trying hard to come to grips with the fact that they even existed.
"I'm not going to pretend I know what it's like to be in the position you're in right now," she admitted quietly. "I can't tell you what it's like to have siblings. And I don't know how I'd feel if I discovered my parents weren't really my mom and dad. They're wonderful people, but I imagine I'd feel a sense of betrayal at having something like that kept from me."
"Yeah," he mumbled, as if pondering what she'd said. "Betrayed works."
She wished she were with him. But this wasn't about some physical problem she could help him deal with, and the need she felt to touch him, just to reassure him, didn't feel professional at all. With only the phone to connect them she didn't have to worry about how strong that need felt just then. Her only thought was that he needed to know he had the right to feel as uncertain and uneasy as he did.
"I really can't appreciate what you're facing right now," she reiterated, "but I do understand what it's like to have something I thought was real jerked out from under me. The only thing you can do is take it one day at a time and start building from there. There might be rewards in this that you can't even imagine. You didn't ask for advice," she conceded. "But I am your doctor, and I know it's not doing you any good lying there worrying about what it's going to be like to meet your brothers. They're just as anxious about meeting you as you are about meeting them," she assured him, thinking of how much easier it was for Ryan and Tanner than it was for Chase. They had each other. In this, Chase was truly alone. Except for her.
She had the feeling he knew that, too. He probably didn't like it, either. She could almost see him plowing his fingers through his hair. The hiss of air on the other end of the phone seemed to tell her he'd done just that.
"You shouldn't make abrupt moves," she murmured.
There was another moment's silence before she heard him mutter, "I'm figuring that out."
Sheets rustled. "This puts you in an awkward position, doesn't it?" Chase asked.
His words were more acknowledgement than question, something that surprised her, since she hadn't thought he would have considered how she'd be affected at all.
"Yes," she admitted, careful to keep accusation from her tone. "It does. It's hard to know something that could put their minds at ease and not be able to tell them about it. But that's my problem. You have enough to deal with."
From somewhere above her came the creak of the house settling in for the night and the rattle of pipes as the ancient hot-water heater kicked on. From the telephone, all she heard was a faint tapping. The sound was restless, edgy, like a pen or card being tapped against a table.
"If you can find me an office and get me some clothes, then go ahead and set it up."
She dropped the hem of her shirt as she sat straighter. "They're going to want to know why I'm involved. That means I'll have to tell them who you are and what happened."
The tapping stopped. "Go ahead." Resignation shadowed his tone. "Let's just do it before Ryan decides to pay me a visit."
Chase didn't get a chance to ask what his brothers' reaction to her news had been. When Dr. Alexandra Larson breezed into his room at one o'clock the next afternoon carrying his brown leather travel bag and his briefcase, she slowed down only long enough for him to get the basics. She told him she'd been at the towing lot picking up his bag, which had still been in the back seat of the wrecked rental car, when she'd been paged to surgery. Since she was on her way to OR at that very moment, she'd hurriedly explained that Ryan and Tanner were meeting him in the boardroom on the second floor at two-thirty, that she was leaving instructions with his nurse to take him there and that she'd check with him later when she did her rounds.
She didn't even stick around long enough to let him say thank-you.
He couldn't believe she'd gone to so much trouble for him.
He couldn't believe, either, how badly he'd wanted to grab her hand to stop her from leaving when she'd slowed down long enough to curl her fingers over his arm, steal his breath with her scent, and tell him she was sure everything would be fine.
The fact that he'd felt the need to reach for her for moral support should have disturbed him. He never allowed himself to need anyone on that level. But he was sure the circumstance was temporary. Only a fool would refuse to use a compass in uncharted waters. Once the familiar shoreline came into view, he could rely on his own navigational skills.
Right now, though, he really didn't think he'd mind if she showed up again. His brothers would
be walking through the open conference-room door any minute.
The long polished mahogany conference table reflected the light pouring through the long banks of windows. Just inside the doorway, off to the side, a comfortable arrangement of deep burgundy chairs and a sofa flanked a large square coffee table sporting a model of the newly expanded hospital. From the materials on the table, it appeared that a dedication was being planned for the first of September.
The orderly who'd brought him in had turned his wheelchair to face the door and moved one of the telephones to within Chase's reach. Now, shaved and showered—something that had required far more assistance than he'd liked—and wearing an open-collared dress shirt and slacks, Chase sat with his bandaged leg jutting out and brushed a speck of lint from his charcoal-gray worsteds.
His tailor would sob like a baby if he saw what the nurse had done to his good Armani trousers. To get them on over the external fixation device—EFD in medical shorthand—she'd had to slit the side seam darn near to his hip. Chase didn't care. His khakis had been too wrinkled to wear and there was no way he'd meet his brothers without pants.
The heavy beat of double footsteps caused his insides to pitch. But all anyone saw when he raised his head at the movement in the doorway was the same ruthless control he usually exerted over himself.
Two men, both big, both imposing, formed a united front as they came to a halt just inside the door. Two pairs of eyes as blue as his own fixed on his face.
They didn't have to identify themselves for him to know who they were. Chase's guarded glance moved from the tall, polished man in the impeccably fitted navy blazer and tan slacks to the more muscular, more skeptical-looking one in the denims and a chambray shirt. Neither man seemed able to look from him as they searched for the similarities even Chase himself could see. Every morning, he shaved around the same cleft Ryan had in his chin and the same squared angle of Tanner's jaw.
DR. MOM AND THE MILLIONAIRE Page 6