This time Alex closed her eyes, shaking her head as she straightened. Somehow, certain patients managed to heal in spite of themselves. Certain patients handled discomfort better, too. Except for where his bruises were turning chartreuse and the pink scar high on his cheekbone, his color was already back to normal.
"What did you want to ask me?"
A minute ago, Chase's entire focus had been on business. The pride he'd felt over taking care of the boys the other morning and the protective feelings that had come when he'd found Alex in the kitchen looking like warmed-over death that night, were even more foreign than the emotional upheaval he'd already been dealing with. Those feelings had felt far more dangerous. Far more difficult to understand. He'd needed normalcy. He'd needed familiar ground. He'd needed work.
In the last twenty-four hours, he'd arranged the meetings he needed to move on the project he'd conceived in the hospital. The possibilities, the details, the pure fun of taking all the pieces and merging them into a workable whole filled him with a blessedly familiar energy. The adrenaline of a pending deal pumped in his veins. It was better than a drug. Better than sex.
He'd thought so at one time, anyway.
In the space of seconds, Alex had jarred every productive thought from his head.
It wasn't her fault that she'd nailed him with the door. She hadn't realized he'd come chasing after her. She was totally responsible, however, for the way his body hardened. Her soft, small hand curled around his arm and every breath he drew brought her light, fresh scent. He knew exactly how she could relax with his touch. How she tasted. How her gently rounded breasts fit in the palm of his hand.
The thought nearly made him groan. Mercilessly, he banished it. It shouldn't be possible that she could have such an effect on him seconds after his body had so impolitely reminded him that he couldn't put his weight on his leg. But there was no denying that she did.
Seeing the sudden hesitation in her expression, he had the satisfaction of knowing she couldn't deny his effect on her, either. The quality of her concern seemed to shift, her lips unconsciously parting as awareness snapped between them. He'd made it clear enough that he wanted her. With his cards on the table, she either played her hand or folded.
A fine tension hummed in the air as her fingers slowly slipped away.
"I need the name of a caterer," he said, not caring for the feeling that there might be more to her withdrawal than bad timing. This was neither the time nor the place to continue last night's discussion. Cartoon voices filtered from the family room. Tyler could come tearing in any minute. "I have half a dozen people coming here in half an hour and Gwen's plane is late. I need coffee now and lunch brought in, but she won't be here in time to get it ordered and delivered. Who would you call for something like that?"
Snagging back her hair, she bent to pick up what she'd dropped. When she straightened, tucking her plastic-shrouded paper against her navy sweater to cross her arms, all he could see in her lovely face was concentration. He recognized it by the two tiny lines that formed between the soft wings of her eyebrows.
"For lunch?" The only thing she'd ever had catered was Tyler's last birthday party. Cakes-'n-Clowns wouldn't be what he had in mind. "What do you want served?"
"I don't care. Sandwiches or a couple of salads would be fine. I just want it plated and on the table in the dining room so it's ready when we break for lunch."
He wanted it in the dining room. The table in there was travertine marble. The chairs were upholstered. The room was formal with a capital F. He wasn't talking tuna fish.
"I can go to the deli—"
His eyebrows slammed down. "I'm not asking you to do it," he growled. "Just tell me who to call."
"I'm trying to," she muttered back. "There's a gourmet deli in the shopping center at the bottom of the hill. If you call in your order, I can pick it up."
"I'm not having you running around for me on your day off. I'll have it delivered. But that only solves part of the problem."
"It solves the biggest part," she pointed out, seeing no reason why she couldn't help with the rest of it. "The only thing I have to do today is meet that lady you set me up with to pick out my carpeting. I'm meeting her at my house instead of here. I'll find some linens and put the food on plates and have them on the table before I leave.
"The name of the place is La Charcuterie," she told him, watching him battle with the idea of having her do his assistant's job. "You make the call, and I'll start the coffee. How many people do you have coming?"
It was plain enough that he realized hers was the easiest solution to his problem. It only took him ten seconds of frowning at her before he said there would be eight, including him and Gwen. His lawyer, three members of the city planning commission, the owner of the old Taylor building and the owner's Realtor. Tonight, he'd be meeting again with the architect he'd had dinner with last evening.
"What are you putting together?" she asked as he followed her into the kitchen to make the call from there.
"Medical offices," he told her, then added that he wasn't sure if he would renovate the old building or raze it and put up a new one. And that was only if he could get the property for a decent price.
All he was doing now was seeing if the project was feasible. He told her that while she put on the coffee and he flipped through the phone book to get the number he needed. Then, after he'd made his call, he mentioned that he'd meet tomorrow with an architect Tanner had recommended to get a different perspective on the project. He liked having options.
It was obvious to Alex that the amount of work required just to see if the idea would work was incredible. It was obvious, too, that Chase thrived on it. There was an intensity about him as he spoke, a gleam in his eyes and an aura of energy that probably had the opposition swallowing hard whenever he entered the room. It was an aura of power, confidence and a hint of the warrior cloaked in the guise of a businessman. By the time he got around to telling her that he wanted Tanner's construction company in on the deal, she had no doubt that it was the logistics of the battle he enjoyed as much as the outcome.
He lived for the negotiations. The challenge. He'd even passed on the most basic trick of the trade to the young man who'd gone home yesterday.
She'd set a thermal carafe by the coffeemaker and Chase was beside her closing the bag of coffee when she finally voiced the thoughts that had been nagging at her since the Chalmers family had left her office.
"You know," she began conversationally. "What you did for Brent was awfully nice. I'm just not sure I completely understand why you told him you didn't know where that car came from."
Though he hesitated for an instant, he kept his attention on the tabs he was folding on the narrow brown bag. "Because I don't."
It was her turn to pause. "Chase, there's no way—"
"Listen," he muttered, setting the bag by a row of copper canisters and looking right at her. "I don't know where it came from."
Disbelief flashed in her eyes. A moment later, distrust moved in. It was the distrust that had Chase biting back an oath. He could handle seeing anything in her but that. "My lawyer took care of everything. I told him what I wanted and he handled the details."
"That's semantics."
That was true. But her tone held softness. "Let it go. Okay? The kid needed a car."
So he'd bought it for him, she thought. Just like that.
But then, she reminded herself, just like that, when she'd needed a place to stay, he'd offered the house. And when he'd learned that Ryan needed help raising the rest of his funding, he'd started calling his friends.
Watching the defense tighten his jaw, wondering what else he'd done that he didn't want anyone to know about, she realized she wouldn't be surprised at all to learn now that he was the anonymous benefactor of an orphanage, that he funded scholarships or that he'd decided to bail out the rest of the hospital project himself.
If he hadn't already.
The stray thought suddenly tugge
d at her with the same odd certainty she'd felt when she'd first begun to suspect who Chase was. As far as she knew, Ryan and Ronni still didn't know where the huge anonymous donation for the building fund had come from. She just remembered that a cashier's check for five million dollars had arrived with a note congratulating them on their upcoming marriage—right about the time Chase had learned about his brothers.
He said he'd seen a picture of Ryan in a newspaper article about the lost funding.
"People should start getting here any time now. Thanks for taking care of this for me," he said, having clearly dismissed what they'd been talking about a moment ago. "I don't know what I'd have done without you."
She'd done nothing more than help out the way he had with Tyler and Brent the other morning. She might have told him that, too, had her need to understand him not been so acute. Every layer he so reluctantly revealed was covered by yet another, years of self-protection piling upon themselves like blocks hiding the heart of a tomb.
"Chase?"
"Yeah?" he muttered, just as he started to move away.
"Do you know anything about a donation Ryan received as an engagement present?"
His eyes pinned hers a little too quickly. Standing three feet from her, the sunlight flooding the room picking out the threads of silver near his temples, he looked very much as if he wanted to do what he'd done a moment ago. Look her in the eye and lean on a technicality.
He also looked as if it didn't please him that he couldn't.
"It's easier when people don't know about some things, Alex."
"Easier?" She stepped closer, her glance darting toward the family room. Tyler's feet still dangled over the end of the sofa, forty-eight colorful inches of cartoons keeping him transfixed.
She lowered her voice anyway.
"Chase," she said, in the same flat tone she usually reserved for her son when he was being particularly obtuse. "I can understand why you wouldn't have wanted your brothers to know what you'd done before they met you." He would never have known if they'd accepted him for himself or because of his money. It didn't take a psych rotation to figure that out. "But what harm can come from people knowing how kind you are?"
"Because I didn't do it to be kind. I just did it because the need was there. And that's not the reputation I want."
She blinked up at the mountain of pure masculine conviction staring back at her. The thought that he wanted the reputation the public had of him, that he wanted to be known as ruthless and demanding, was incomprehensible to her. But there was no mistaking his certainty. Or how his guard slipped into place. Though he remained towering over her, she could practically feel the subtle distance edging between them. He was no more comfortable with what she'd just discovered about him than he had been any other time she'd ventured too close to the parts of himself he needed to protect.
It was because he needed to protect himself that what she thought she couldn't understand finally made sense. If people knew what he cared about, that made him vulnerable. And that was the one thing he didn't want to be.
It was his vulnerabilities that she loved.
The realization coincided with the refined peal of the doorbell. The sound was too soft to be startling, but her hand flew up to cover her heart anyway, the motion purely protective.
"I'll get it!"
"That's okay, sport," Chase called out, as Tyler's head popped up over the back of the sofa. "That's for me. I'll take care of it.
"Look," he said, resignation cloaking him when he turned back to her. "For what it's worth, Ryan already figured it out. He and Tanner know. Now you. We keep this between ourselves. Okay?"
"I was beginning to think they were going to keep him all to themselves," Ronni admitted, studying Chase's back as he leaned on his crutches beside Tyler and Griffin at a video game. "Either that, or that he was a figment of Ryan's imagination."
Alex and Ronni sat across from Kelly in the middle of the chaos of Pizza Pete's. A din filled the crowded, colorful room, the cacophony a blend of electronic games, noisy children and a squeaky-voiced teenager booming out pizza pick-up numbers on a microphone. The only reason the women were having a conversation that didn't deal with the hospital, the new wing or Chase's project was because the men had taken off with the kids as soon as everyone had finished eating.
"There was always some excuse not to get together," Ronni continued, "but every day I'd hear that Ryan had lunch with Chase, or that he'd run into him with Tanner, or that Chase had called to tell him he'd lined up another donor for the wing." She shook her head, her moss-green eyes widening. "You can't believe how much Chase has raised," she elaborated, clearly excited for her husband's sake. "It's millions. I mean, he's brought in almost all of what they'll need to finish. And that's after what he…"
Enthusiasm dipped as suddenly as it had escalated. With a quick glance at Kelly, who immediately dropped her attention to the paper plate in front of her, Ronni tried to cover her near-slip with a smile for Alex.
"I mean, after all he's been through," she concluded, turning her save into a total change of subject. "I have no idea where he gets his energy. But I want some of it. He really is making a remarkable recovery, isn't he?"
"Better than I would have anticipated," Alex replied, watching Chase balance himself so he could help Tyler get a better aim at whatever it was they were trying to blast, evade or conquer.
Her heart tightening a little at the way Tyler grinned up at the big man, she turned her attention back to Ronni, who'd finally given up on civvies and was now into maternity wear, and Kelly, holding the blue-eyed, button-nosed infant who would soon become her daughter. It was apparent from their exchange a moment ago that both women were now privy to the source of the mysterious donation.
Considering how close Ronni and Kelly were to their respective men, Alex would have been surprised if they hadn't known. It was just as apparent that they had also been asked to keep quiet about it and, like her, would tuck the information away with the thousand other bits of confidential information physicians knew but never discussed.
"The guys sure seem to be getting along well." Her back to the game area, Kelly lifted Lia's carrier to the table and tucked her in so the baby could see what was going on. "But I was kind of surprised that Chase didn't seem more interested in the pictures. Tanner said he's really been curious about their parents. I don't think he said more than two words the whole time they were looking at that album."
Alex had noticed that, too. Only, to her, it hadn't been lack of interest that had made him seem so distracted. What she'd seen had looked more like withdrawal.
"I think the kids have him a little overwhelmed." She offered the excuse as she pushed back her plate, her appetite nonexistent. "They were all wanting to look, too."
"They just didn't want to miss anything." Busy eyeing the lone slice of pizza to survive the meal, Ronni missed the curious glance Kelly shot Alex. "It seemed odd that there weren't any of Chase in there," she said, clearly debating whether or not she should add the calories. "But he was only six months old. There probably weren't many to begin with."
Reaching down the table, Alex picked up the brown faux-leather photo album from where the men had left it. "Where did this come from?" she asked, opening the cracked cover. The pictures were old and many of the corner mounts had come off, leaving pictures loose. There were a few spots, too, where mounts remained, but snapshots had been removed.
It was the only record of their past the men possessed.
"Ryan's caseworker gave it to him when he turned eighteen." Caving in to her cravings, Ronni picked up the slice of Pete's Supreme and plopped it on her plate. "They'd had so many caseworkers over the years and she … that last one I mean," she clarified, "told Ryan that the file seemed a little incomplete to her. Like things were missing, but she couldn't tell what. He didn't think much of it at the time, but the guys now figure that the Harringtons bribed the original caseworker to remove any trace of Chase when they adopted him." She
picked off a slice of onion. "Ryan had told Chase about the album and Chase wanted to see it. That's why Ryan brought it tonight."
That must have been why Chase decided to come this evening, Alex thought, turning to another page of smiling faces. She hadn't talked to him in days. His meetings had gone on into the nights, and in the mornings it had been Gwen who'd come to the kitchen to take him coffee within minutes after arriving from her hotel.
This is quite typical, the very formal and efficient woman had said: Once Mr. Harrington has decided to move on something, he does nothing else until the details are completed. It can be rather taxing if a person's not used to it, but I can't imagine him working any other way.
He'd been holed up with Tanner and the architect when she and Tyler had left for Pizza Pete's—which was why she'd been so surprised when he'd come in with Tanner shortly after everyone else had arrived. He'd held her glance for only a moment before his attention was claimed by introductions, but that brief contact had affected her as surely as his touch.
"I can't tell if you two had an argument, or if you're still in denial."
At Kelly's observation, Alex's attention shifted from the pages.
"I opt for denial," Ronni piped in, popping a slice of pepperoni. "He doesn't look at her like a man who knows he's messed up. Or one who knows he's right. It's more like he's … I don't know," she murmured, prying up another pepperoni slice, "…imagining her naked or something."
"You're right," Kelly agreed as Alex's mouth fell open. "It's probably denial. I just can't tell if they're denying their relationship to us or to themselves."
Alex frowned. "No one's denying anything to anybody. Chase and I are just … we're sort of…" What? Friends? "We're just helping each other out."
"Excuse me?" Kelly arched an eyebrow. "Look me in the eye and tell me there's no chemistry between the two of you. He zeroed in on you like a heat-seeking missile the minute he walked in here. People don't have to speak to communicate, you know. I've delivered enough evidence of that over the years. Which reminds me," she said, opening her purse and reaching for Alex's. "Here." Taking two small gold packets from her bag, she slipped them between Alex's pager and wallet. "I know you haven't been involved with anyone in a long time, and I can't blame you for wanting to be cautious, if that's what's going on. But it never hurts to be prepared. You know how I preach to everyone to use these things."
DR. MOM AND THE MILLIONAIRE Page 18