He wanted her in his bed. He just didn't want her thinking he expected anything from her because she was staying under his roof.
* * *
Chapter Eight
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"Brent wants a Triple Bacon Cheese Deluxe and Tyler wants a Kiddie Meal," she told Chase when she called him from the Burger Barn's drive-through at six-thirty the next evening. "If you haven't eaten, I'd be happy to bring you something, too. Not necessarily from here." She doubted that a man who stocked vintage wine, made killer linguine and regarded boxed macaroni and cheese with abject skepticism would go for something so plebeian. "I can bring you Chinese food, Italian from Granetti's or there's a Greek place on the way."
Chase's only response was a heavy pause.
Alex hadn't seen him that morning. She didn't know if he'd even been up when she and the boys had left a little after 7:00 a.m. After the way he'd distanced himself last night, it was pretty clear that he intended for them to keep more or less to themselves. Still, there were practicalities to consider. It made no sense to her that he should fend for himself when she had to come up with a meal anyway.
"Alex," she heard him say, ever so patiently. "You don't have to do this. But make it easy on yourself. Bring me whatever you're having. I should be finished by the time you get here."
She assumed he was working on the fund-raising. Or, possibly, on one of the projects in the files in his office. Or, maybe it was on the property he was trying to acquire.
She hadn't considered that he'd be playing handyman.
The boys had already raced through the entry, past the ten-foot potted palms that had to be Gwen's latest handiwork and were in the kitchen when she walked in and dropped purse, sacks and her briefcase on the center island. Brent was just behind her, looking a little uncertain about going any farther. She doubted Tyler had even slowed down. She could see him across the back of the large beige sectional, standing next to Chase who leaned on his crutches in front of a wall of niches and the fireplace. The niche that had held nothing but the cable connection now contained a rather large television. On the floor around them were clear plastic packets of operating instructions, pieces of white molded foam and the empty packing box.
"He got us a television, Mom!"
She would have explained it wasn't for them. Since Chase would be there for a few months, he obviously wanted the place to feel like a home. The sort of home he was apparently accustomed to anyway. But Chase had just glanced over his shoulder, catching her eye long enough for her to glimpse the tension in his chiseled features and the words died in her throat.
Her first thought was that he'd been irritated by her little boy's interruption. But it didn't appear to be impatience shadowing his face. Before she could take a step to move Tyler away from him, he'd turned his attention back to her excited son and calmly ask him if he knew how to operate the remote control.
Nodding vigorously, Tyler assured him that he did. He said he didn't know what made the channels change, though.
"Electronic signals," she heard Chase explain. "They come out here." He patiently pointed to the front of the black plastic rectangle he handed Tyler. "And they're picked up here." Looking as tall and solid as an oak, he motioned to a tiny grill in the television.
"But I can't see anything," Tyler said, squinting at the end of the remote.
"That's because the signals are invisible. It's kind of like a voice. A person opens his mouth and you can hear what he says, but you can't see sound waves traveling to your ear."
"Oh, yeah." Nodding as if he'd known that all along, Tyler looked up at the man looking down at him. Dimples deepened with his grin.
Alex saw Chase smile back. There was a hint of amusement in that otherwise strained smile, but what struck her most was how it relieved her. Whatever was wrong, it didn't appear to have anything to do with their presence.
"How did you get that in there?" she asked carefully, hoping he hadn't actually wrestled the set into place himself.
"The guy who delivered it unpacked it for me." Lean muscle shifted beneath his black T-shirt as he left Tyler searching out cartoons and moved toward her. "I needed something to do with my hands, so I told him I'd wire it myself."
The tension she'd first noticed had been carefully banked, but it was still there. It lurked like a coiled snake beneath his impassive facade as he drew closer.
She wanted to know what was wrong. But she couldn't ask. Even if the boys hadn't been right there, she wasn't sure anymore where to draw the line with her concerns about him. They were just two people helping each other out. Two people who weren't quite friends, and because the doctor-patient roles had somehow blurred, weren't quite anything else, either.
"I thought maybe Gwen had done it," she admitted, turning her attention from his marginally faded bruises. "I'm beginning to think she's superwoman."
A huge basket of fruit, so perfect it looked plastic, occupied the center of the sparkling white surface of the center island. Since focusing on anything else felt safer than focusing on him, she ran a finger lightly over the curve of a perfectly ripe pear. "She's obviously been here again."
"Actually, I needed her at the office in Seattle. She went back yesterday." An edge entered his voice. "That's from my mother."
That edge made her draw her hand away. It also made it hard to know what to say, though her first thought was that a fruit basket seemed an odd thing for a mom to send—unless she'd done it to make sure he ate healthily, in which case it didn't seem odd at all.
"So what's for dinner?" he muttered, saving her from having to say a word.
"Can I eat in my room?" Brent mumbled from behind them.
There was a wealth of self-consciousness in the quiet question.
Turning to see the teenager studying the neon-green laces on his black athletic shoes, Alex forced a smile he didn't even see.
"How about helping me instead?" she asked. She knew exactly what his problem was. It was standing next to her. Six-feet-plus of dark-haired intimidation that towered godlike in the young boy's eyes. "Since we're tossing nutrition to the wind tonight, we might as well blow all the rules and you can watch television while you eat. You can get the milk for me."
A pained looked crossed Brent's thin face. Having to eat in front of a man he could barely speak to was apparently cruel and unusual punishment.
"Why don't you let us do this?" Chase suggested.
Brent's head jerked up. Alex simply looked puzzled.
"Go get comfortable," Chase said to her, giving her a look that asked her to let him take over. "We've got this covered out here."
"Sir?"
"The name's Chase. You're Brent, right?"
"Yes, sir."
"I saw you working your arm with the free weights in therapy this morning. How much are you lifting?"
"Five…" Brent cut himself off when his voice took an embarrassing upward pitch. "Five pounds." He cleared his throat. "I know that's not much."
Five pounds for a boy who'd had no use of his arm at all was a huge accomplishment. The part of Alex that felt protective toward all her patients wanted to remind Brent of that. He worked so hard. But Chase had deliberately ignored the boy's attempt to minimize, much as he was now ignoring her.
"What are you aiming for?" she heard him ask as she picked up her purse and briefcase and, still listening, hesitantly moved toward the hallway by the breakfast bay.
Shoes squeaked against the floor as Brent shuffled his big feet. "Fifty."
"That's what Dr. Larson wants you to do?" She was aware of Brent's uneasy glance slicing toward her.
"She just wants me to get to twenty-five."
"Good man," Chase claimed, sounding as if he might be smiling. "Always set your goals higher than what people expect. When you reach 'em, it baffles the heck out of people who thought you couldn't do it and makes everyone else think you're an expert.
"I'm a long way from where I want to be with the weights, too," he confided, paper cracklin
g as he opened one of the sacks and took out a french fry. "I had no idea how hard lifting a few measly pounds could be. Did you?"
Alex didn't hear Brent's reply. But she suspected Chase was doing more than simply distracting himself from whatever was eating at him. He'd deliberately overridden the introverted young man's timidity, praised him and shown him that he was just like him in some ways himself.
It took a man of considerable compassion to recognize what Brent had needed. Or a man who'd once needed the same understanding himself.
The thought that Chase, confident, dominant and powerful as he was, could once have been as unsure of himself as Brent simply refused to gel. He'd already cancelled the thought anyway. As she turned the corner into the room she was sharing with Tyler, she heard Chase call her little boy to come help them in the kitchen because they needed help getting glasses to the table.
The thought of a four-year-old carrying anything breakable across the unforgiving marble-tiled floors had her working the zipper of her dress back up and turning on her heel. She was back in the kitchen in seconds. But the phone rang just as she turned the corner.
Frowning at her, Chase snatched up the receiver.
"I'm just going to take care of the glasses," she defended, even as he said hello to the caller.
With his glance on the strip of bare skin visible between the six inches of zipper she hadn't managed to fasten, he murmured, "It's for you."
It was a colleague she'd been trying to hook up with all day about a patient. Needing to take the call, she tucked the phone to her shoulder and took care of the glasses. A minute later, listening to Tyler tell Chase that his mom said Vipers go fast, she smoothed her hand over her little boy's head and felt her heart snag when Chase moved behind her and tugged up her zipper.
Dr. Trevor MacAllister was chatting away in her ear about bone graft substitutes. With Chase's fingers brushing the back of her neck, the surgeon might as well have been talking about his dog. She hadn't a clue what the man had just said. But she'd no sooner gone still at the contact than Chase was asking Brent to bring the sacks and Tyler to get the napkins, and he'd moved away.
Requesting that Dr. MacAllister please repeat what he'd just said, she cast a glance toward Chase's back and forced herself to concentrate as she headed to her room and left the males to their meal.
By the time she was finished with her call, they were finished, too—and Chase had retreated to his half of the house.
He'd thought being with her would help. It usually did.
Tonight, it had taken less than thirty minutes to realize that being with them, and especially with her, only made it harder to avoid the thoughts he'd been trying to avoid ever since that damn fruit basket had arrived at nine o'clock that morning. It hadn't helped that he hadn't quite been able to keep his hands to himself, either.
Disgusted, Chase tossed aside the novel he'd been trying to read and carefully swung his injured leg over the side of the king-size bed. Grabbing his crutches from where he'd propped them against the antique Italian renaissance-style nightstand, he levered himself up, swearing at how clumsy he felt, and headed past the long dresser on the opposite wall.
His physical limitations were gnawing at him, too.
Opening the sliding glass door that led to the huge sweep of patio, he angled himself through and headed for the lounge chairs by the pool. The night was a little cool, but feeling the way he did, he needed to be where the walls didn't feel like they were closing in on him.
He was in totally unfamiliar territory. He was becoming more aware of that with every passing day. The world he knew began at six in the morning with a call to his broker and ended with a business dinner, or out at the refitters where his sailing sloop was being readied for a race he didn't care about anymore or, occasionally, in the company of an attractive woman who understood from the beginning that he wasn't interested in anything that so much as hinted at permanence.
He knew absolutely nothing about being part of a family.
He wanted to. He was trying to. But even though his brothers were including him, there was too much of their history he didn't share. There was too much about their lives that he simply couldn't relate to.
Alex had said to take it one day at a time.
He was thinking about making the thought his personal mantra when he eased himself into one of the cushioned chaises near the dark oval pool.
He was still thinking about it when he heard a door open. In the pale glow from the low security lights lining the wide arch of flagstone, he saw Alex's lithe graceful silhouette step from the shadows.
She hadn't turned on the patio lights. Like him, she seemed to prefer the dark. She paused for a moment, seeming more shadow than substance herself as she tipped her head back, then rolled it side-to-side. A few moments later, she crossed her arms over the sweats she'd changed into and walked slowly to the edge of the pool.
"It's not heated."
Alex whipped around, slapping her hand over her heart as if to keep it from jumping through her chest.
"Chase." His name came out with a rush of breath when she saw him stretched out on a lounge chair twenty feet away. "What are you doing out here?"
"Trying to do something my physical therapist told me I should do."
She hesitated, her hand sliding from her heart. "What's that?"
"Relax." The word came out harsher than he'd intended, as if it contained four letters instead of five. "If I thought you knew how to do it, I'd ask for a little advice."
He thought he saw her smile. He just couldn't tell for sure until she moved close enough for the low lights behind him to reach her face.
"I know how," she assured him. "I just can't picture you using my methods."
"And those are?"
"A long soak in a hot tub scented with sweet lavender and mandarin, though that never happens," she conceded with longing. "Or, reading a book to Tyler."
The image of her slipping naked into hot, scented water wasn't relaxing at all. "I tried reading. It didn't work."
It wasn't just reading, Alex thought. It was having her little boy snuggle into her, the motion of feathering his hair through her fingers while he listened to her voice and feeling his little body relax so trustingly against hers. It was smelling his sweet little-boy smell and hearing his breathing soften as he fell asleep, knowing he was safe and loved and the most important being in her life.
Since there was no way she could make him understand that, she let it go with, "It's not quite the same."
Any other time, Chase might have asked for other suggestions. But he was too aware of the softness that had stolen over her to seek any other diversion. He wondered if she even knew how often she touched her little boy, letting him know by that unguarded, nurturing contact that she cared. She listened to him, too, instead of brushing him off as some adults did when a small child was pestering them. The child clearly adored her.
He couldn't remember ever wanting to share anything with his adoptive mother. He couldn't remember her touching him, either, unless it was to straighten a collar or brush a speck of lint from his jacket or to nudge his back to remind him to stand up straight. Never would she have let him have a pet, much less three, and never would he have been allowed to wrap his arms around her the way Tyler had his mom last night. She would have been too afraid of having her dress wrinkled. When he'd been growing up in the museumlike home where nothing was to be touched, he was literally to be seen and not heard.
"Chase?" Caution stole through her voice. "Are you all right?"
No, he thought. He wasn't. He hadn't been since the moment he'd found out he wasn't who he'd thought he was.
"Yeah," he muttered, hating the feelings churning inside him. He was usually in better control than he'd been in lately. He never thought of his childhood. Until a few months ago, if he even felt a hint of the old resentments take hold, he would banish them as a foolish waste of energy and bury them under a mountain of work. Since the accident and meet
ing his brothers, escape had been impossible.
Seeing Alex with her little boy had made it harder still. "Do you want to talk about it?"
"About what?"
"The fruit basket."
In the sheltering light she could see little beyond his sudden stillness—and his quick, dismissing shrug. "What about it?"
His nonchalance didn't fool her. Just because she couldn't see the way his jaw tightened didn't mean she couldn't hear that tautness in his voice.
She'd known something was wrong from the moment she'd seen him tonight. He'd had that same preoccupation about him that he'd had the night she'd asked if he'd come to meet his brothers. She hadn't thought twice about offering to help him then. She shouldn't now.
"You didn't seem too pleased that your mother had sent it."
"I was just surprised to hear from her. I didn't realize she was back from her cruise."
"She just now heard about the accident?"
"I guess so," he murmured. "Gwen said she called the office after a friend asked her about me."
Another chaise paralleled the one Chase occupied. Between them sat a low, wrought-iron table, graced with a small azalea plant. Sitting down to face him, she reached for a blossom that had dropped to the table's glass surface and ran a smooth petal through her fingers. "She had to be relieved to know you're doing so well."
He skimmed a glance over her, watched the motions of her slender fingers.
"You know, Dr. Larson, you're surprisingly naive for someone as smart as you are."
She frowned across the three feet separating them. "I don't suppose you'd care to explain that."
"Don't you ever suspect ulterior motives?"
"Not about fruit baskets."
"Not everyone is like you, Alex," he muttered, remembering a similar attitude about flowers that had been sent by someone's secretary. "People do things because they want something or out of a sense of obligation. If she was relieved, it was because nothing was required of her."
Disbelief washed over Alex. "I don't believe that. About people, I mean. Or, your mother for that matter. There are plenty of people who think of others simply because they care," she defended, feeling attacked even though she supposed he'd somehow just paid her a compliment. "No matter what the circumstances, she wanted you enough to adopt you." His father may have "gotten him for her," but the woman had obviously wanted a child badly. "She raised you from a baby—"
DR. MOM AND THE MILLIONAIRE Page 14