by Caro Carson
“It’s nearly five o’clock,” Braden said. “Let’s go somewhere quiet, and I’ll explain.”
“Oh, yes,” Myrna whispered, placing a hand on her heart. She looked toward Lana expectantly, beaming at her.
“I cannot,” Lana said.
Myrna dropped her hand in disappointment.
Braden didn’t deflate so easily. He crossed the small room to stand with her, near her desk. “Why not?”
Lana crossed her arms over her chest, deliberately closing herself off. She wished she hadn’t removed her blazer, but her cream-colored button-down shirt and pencil skirt would suffice as her armor. “Why are you here? We concluded our business, and we had that personal discussion you requested. You’re supposed to be in New York.”
“I did return to New York. I delivered Claudia safely to her hometown of choice. Then I packed a fresh suitcase and returned to my hometown of choice. The rumors became official today. PLI will be expanding its operations in the Austin area. The construction should be complete within the year, and I’ll move my offices here permanently.”
Myrna made a little peep of approval, then started gathering her keys and phone and other personal belongings from her desk. “I think this is my cue to go. You two don’t need me as an audience while you work this out. I’ll see you tomorrow, Dr. Donnoli.”
Then she was gone. Lana was alone with Braden, which felt too intimate. Too exciting.
“May I take you out to dinner?” he asked.
“It’s my first week here, and I have too much to catch up on.”
“I could help.”
“I’m sure the presidents of those other pharmaceutical companies would love to have the president of PLI looking over their data.”
“I could hunt down some dinner to go, then, and come feed you brisket while you do the math.”
Lana tried not to go weak at the knees. To have a hot and delicious dinner brought to her was as romantic as having her car battery replaced. It was her fantasy, to have a man who loved her and cared for her.
It was so Braden.
She’d felt like the luckiest girl in the world when Braden had loved her. After watching her mother take care of everything, cooking every meal, driving to every school function, making sure everyone had toothpaste and toilet paper, Lana had dreaded the drudgery that came with marriage. As early as her freshman year of high school, Lana had vowed she would not spend her life like her mother. Her mother had dealt with the house’s plumbers and electricians, her children’s teachers and doctors, her husband’s laundry and meals.
Marriage to Braden had promised to be different. They would be equals, both doctors. They would be working together in the same practice. There would never have been an expectation from him that she ought to have cleaned the house and cooked the dinner by the time he came home from work, not when she was coming home from work with him. No, they’d stop after work and get something to eat together. Neither one of them would have to cook, not when there were so many great places to eat in Austin, places that specialized in amazing food like brisket...
“I was going to take you out to Rudy’s for brisket, but it’s just as easy to get it wrapped up to go,” Braden said, tempting her terribly. “You need protein for a night of number crunching.”
She dropped her arms and gave up pretending that she had her department under control. She moved to the other side of the desk and flopped in Montgomery’s chair. “I already did the math. It sucks. There’s a reason Dr. Montgomery left so fast. Your pentagab was the most lucrative study he had under way.”
Braden sat on the edge of her desk, sliding a stack of colorful greeting cards a few inches out of his way. “I’m sorry to hear that.”
“It may affect West Central’s bottom line.”
He nodded. “You’ll turn it around, but I’m sorry you’re starting out in a hole you didn’t dig.”
There it was again: Braden MacDowell still cares about me. She’d been so convinced that he hated her for not being more careful when she was pregnant, it was hard to comprehend that he thought of her as...
As what? Perhaps as a friend from the old days?
He was not her enemy, that much was clear. The hostility she’d felt from him—and which she’d felt toward him—on Monday morning had disappeared completely. She wasn’t sure what was in its place.
Whatever it was, Lana couldn’t keep her gaze away from his face. She kept drinking in his expression, appreciating that his genuine sympathy was mixed with confidence that she’d be able to handle the issue. They had made such a good team in medical school.
God, she’d missed him so much. He’d been her dream man, until he’d decided the life they’d spent a year planning and dreaming about—together—wasn’t what he wanted after all. He’d left her behind on his quest to dominate the world of business.
“Are you happy?” she asked, the words out before she’d really completed the thought.
The lift of his brow was so familiar, it ached. He didn’t shrug off her question, though. “I’m working on it. I think moving back to Texas is the right thing for me.”
“But getting married is not?”
“Getting married to Claudia is not.”
“Did she not want to move to Texas?” Lana’s heart was pounding so hard, she was afraid her voice would waver and give away how much she cared about what Braden would say next.
“I didn’t ask her to, because I’m not in love with her. She made a point of telling you that we were in love, but that was an act.”
“You told me you were going to propose to her.”
“I was. She was wonderfully convenient. She looked good on my arm. When we attended events, she always had intelligent things to say. She is charming to all the right people and was generally very pleasant to have around.”
Lana did look away from his face then. She couldn’t stand to hear him speak well of another woman. She just couldn’t. If Braden said Claudia had been pleasantly convenient in bed, Lana would kill him. She picked up a pencil and started rolling it between her fingers.
Braden spoke casually, conversationally, from his seat on the edge of her desk. “When I saw you on Monday, I remembered the way a man should feel when he asks a woman to be his wife. I don’t feel that way about Claudia, and I never will.”
She matched his offhand tone. “When you saw me on Monday, you instructed me to meet with your underling in the future.”
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw him duck his head a little. Score one for her. She wiggled her mouse to wake up her computer, pretending great interest in the spreadsheet that popped up on her monitor.
Braden gave up his perch on the desk to pull a chair around to sit next to her, bringing them more eye-to-eye. “Let me clarify that. When I kissed you in the chapel, I knew that marrying anyone else would be a mistake.”
Anyone else.
She set the pencil down on the desk. “What are you saying?” she whispered.
“It’s you, Lana. It’s always been only you.”
“This is—this is—”
Lana plunked her elbows on her desk and dropped her head into her hands. There was no dancing around this issue, no pushing it off for some other day’s discussion. Jeez, how could Braden just lay a thing like that on the table? Only days after he’d said the exact opposite over a restaurant table, too.
She pressed her fingers into her forehead. “You’re telling me that you kissed me in that chapel and then decided to dump your ‘exclusive’ girlfriend of nine months? Which, by the way, was an impressive amount of information she was able to get across in just a few sentences with me.”
“I told you she was an intelligent asset in social situations.”
Lana sank her fingertips more firmly into her temples at the timing of his dry humor. They were speaking casually, but this was deadly serious. “You shouldn’t have changed your life for me. That kiss meant nothing. It was a kiss for old times’ sake. Nothing more.”
Sile
nce reigned for another moment.
Braden broke it. “I’m sorry to hear that. It looks like I’m starting in a hole, but since I dug it myself, it’s my job to climb back out of it.” He pushed one of the three-ring binders on her desk so that the spine faced him. It was the pentagab binder.
Lana lifted her head. “At least half the hole is mine, and I don’t want to touch it. Don’t do this, Braden. Let’s just leave it as old friends from med school. It’s enough to know you don’t hate me for the miscarriage.”
“Of course I don’t. You did nothing wrong.” Braden stood and took a step away from her. Lana told herself that was good. She’d drawn a line, and he’d stepped back the way she’d wanted him to.
He picked up a card from her desk, one of a small pile of cards she’d received in the mail today. Her former coworker in D.C. had forwarded them, thank-you notes written in childish crayon, colorful notes from children who were happy their migraines had gone away. Lana was abruptly reminded that there was a world out there that depended on her for something more than a kiss.
Patients first.
She nodded toward the card in his hand. “Those cards are from patients forty-eight through eighty. Your pentagab pediatric cohort.”
He gave her a look, but it wasn’t one of annoyance. It was calculating.
It worried her. She was about to be challenged, but whether in a personal or professional way, she didn’t know.
“There is a way to save this study.” He placed the card back on its pile. “We could reclassify it as a safety study, keep it going solely to look for long-term safety. If we found out what effect Montgomery was hoping to gain for my mother, then we could keep this trial going while we designed new studies to test for that mystery effect. By the time we established that pentagab worked for the mystery effect, all of our long-term safety studies would already be completed.”
Lana tapped the pencil on the corner of her mouth, thinking of the implications, feeling her enthusiasm build on the relief that Braden was addressing a professional issue. “You’d be able to bring the drug to market years earlier. It would save your company millions of dollars, not having to wait for safety results.”
Braden tossed the card so that it landed closer to her. “I think most importantly to you, it would give PLI a legitimate reason to keep pentagab available for those kids in D.C.”
Lana slapped the pencil on the desk. “It’s a win-win for everyone. Maybe even a triple win, because you may discover a cure for the mystery condition in the bargain.”
“It’s a definite possibility.”
“Is it definite, or is it only possible? It can’t be both.”
Lana smiled as she said it. Heck, she could’ve kissed Braden for finding a way to save the study. Children would have continued access to their new migraine treatment, and her department wouldn’t lose a source of revenue.
Kissing Braden, however, seemed to always have big consequences. Girlfriends got ditched on the eve of their proposals, for example. Or girlfriends got pregnant...
“There’s only one problem,” Braden said. “My mother won’t talk to me about her health. She informs me that I am not her physician.”
Lana placed her hand on the binder for the pentagab study. “Technically, I am one of her physicians. She’ll have to talk to me when we send out those recall notices. Gathering final side-effect reports at the conclusion of the study is mandatory.”
Braden moved closer. “Except we’re trying not to recall the medicine.”
“Oh. Right.”
“You could pull her complete medical records from all her doctors. She must have signed a HIPAA release when she entered the study. There’s nothing unethical about the study director requesting records.”
She gave him a sideways glance. “But then the president of the company that funds the study can see them, and he happens to be her oldest son. It’s a classic dilemma, and the whole reason our family members shouldn’t be in the studies.”
Our family members sounded too much as if they shared the same family. It wasn’t how she’d meant it, of course, but it seemed a little awkward to say, “I meant your family and my family, not our family.” She bit back the impulse to clarify it.
If she hadn’t miscarried, they would have gotten married. She knew Braden would have insisted, and she would have gone along out of some sense of obligation. If Lana hadn’t miscarried, Marion would be her family now.
The old, familiar guilt returned, but Lana found she could shut those thoughts down more quickly now, with Braden standing here. The fact was, she had miscarried. The course of her life was that of a single woman, no children, and there was nothing wrong with devoting herself to this career. Besides, if she’d had that baby, she and Braden couldn’t be standing here in her office at midnight, working together. Who would be watching the child?
Maybe Marion.
Marion, who was not her mother-in-law, but who did appear to have some medical condition that was worrying her sons and was being treated illicitly by Dr. Montgomery.
The moment of silence stretched until Braden dropped an ultimatum on her, couched in the nicest terms. “I came here to take you out to dinner. Let’s go to Rudy’s, pick up brisket for three and head out to the ranch. You are my mother’s physician for this study. You can get her to talk to you. A working dinner is more your style, anyway.”
“This is about dinner? I asked you not to do this. I don’t want to get involved with you again.”
“But you want to help those children in D.C.”
“And you’re forcing me to spend time with you to do it?”
Braden at least had the grace to wince. “I was thinking more of a delicious meal and a chance to make my mother happy. She was delighted to hear you were back in town.”
Lana crossed her arms over her chest, assuming the defensive posture she’d been unwise to drop when Myrna had left them alone.
Braden picked up a Crayola masterpiece and brandished it before her. “I’m trying to save pentagab for you.”
“For the children.”
“For you.”
Lana dropped her arms with a sigh and plucked her blazer off the back of her chair.
“You win. Brisket it is.”
Chapter Twelve
Lana was a wimp, and she knew it.
She should have put up more of a fight. She shouldn’t have been suckered into returning to the River Mack Ranch by the promise of delicious brisket and pain medicine for children.
She shouldn’t be spending more time with Braden. Driving through Austin, they still noticed the same kinds of things, still laughed at the same kind of humor. He was easy to be with, exciting to work with, but he would be gone soon. This was one project. One week. For at least another year, his office was in Manhattan, and for the rest of his life, his career was in a billion-dollar industry. He was an executive in demand, as his constantly ringing phone attested. They were only a temporary team, and if she didn’t keep reminding herself of that, she was going to be brokenhearted by Monday.
As she silently castigated herself, she reached into the paper bag on the floorboard of Braden’s rented pickup truck. She snitched another bite of brisket. The warm beef, rich with moisture after being slow cooked for hours over smoking wood, tasted like heaven. The food in Austin had always been amazing. She licked her lips as she wiped her fingers on a paper napkin.
“Aren’t you going to take care of the driver?” Braden asked.
Lana froze in the middle of wiping her mouth with the napkin. Feed Braden? From her fingertips?
“Aw, c’mon,” Braden complained. “You’re over there making it look like it’s better than sex.”
“Very funny.” Lana scrambled through the bag of cold coleslaw and totally Texan banana pudding to find a plastic fork. She’d never let the man lick her fingers. Not now.
Now they were business associates.
She fed Braden a bite of brisket with a flimsy fork. He kept the fork in his white t
eeth for a second too long when she tried to pull it away, taking his eyes from the road just long enough to wink at her. Then he scraped all the good brisket off the fork and into his mouth.
“Almost,” he said.
“Almost what?” She was dazzled by his wink, by his mouth, by his smile. The man was too damned handsome.
“Almost better than sex.”
Lana turned away to stare stoically through the windshield at the rapidly darkening view of cedar trees. The sensual pleasure she got from the brisket far exceeded any sex she’d had in the past few years, which wasn’t saying much for the brisket, actually.
It had taken a few years, but she’d finally dated a perfectly acceptable, attractive man and had decided that there was nothing wrong with two consenting adults enjoying a physical relationship. Except...yeah. She had managed it by getting all clinical inside her brain, acknowledging that this or that felt good, and she was an adult, and they were taking all the appropriate safe-sex measures, and so this was fine.
It had sucked.
Unlike sex with Braden, which on a slow day had been hotter and juicier than—
“May I have some more?” Braden asked, his voice quiet in the truck cab as they left the city lights behind them, heading for the ranch where he’d grown up.
Lana fed him another bite of brisket. She probably didn’t remember how to do anything else, anyway.
* * *
The white ranch house came into view, its substantial carriage lights glowing in the early-February darkness. Braden relaxed his grip on the steering wheel. He’d managed to get Lana out here. Goal achieved. He was at the River Mack Ranch, and he felt that somehow this was where he needed to be to make the rest of his plan with Lana succeed.
Unfortunately, he hadn’t planned the next step. This was as far as he’d gotten in between PLI phone conferences during the flight from New York. He’d go to the hospital, get Lana and bring her out to the ranch. Lana had always loved the ranch. She’d always loved him. Maybe being with him on the ranch would kindle something again.