Forever Desired: Billionaire Medical Romance (A Chance at Forever Series Book 2)

by Lexy Timms

“Please allow me to introduce myself,” he said, and handed her a card. The cardboard was heavy, with embossed lettering and gilt edges and very little text.

  BERTRAM HASTINGS, M.D.

  “You’re part of Brant’s former office, aren’t you?” Mel remembered him now. The angry man, stomping through the reception room. He’d been part of that meeting.

  “Retired.” He bowed slightly and smiled. “And Brant is still officially a member in good standing for as long as the hospital needs him to be. I took care of that.”

  “So, then, he’s the one doing the surgery after all?”

  Dr. Hastings nodded.

  “Thank you,” she said quietly. The idea of some stranger in there with that child had been tormenting her all morning, yet no one had been able to tell her a thing about who was operating. “And after the surgery?”

  “That is what I would like to discuss with you,” he said, motioning her over to the couch. The grandfatherly grin returned.

  * * *

  The nice thing about hospital coffee was that it didn’t cost three bucks a cup. The bad thing about hospital coffee was that it was hospital coffee. Mel swigged her second cup of the stuff, chasing the over-priced one she’d purchased on the way to the hospital.

  She scolded herself that this would be the last one. Any more than this and she’d turn into a hummingbird. She glanced at her purse for the thousandth time. At least another hour of surgery. Dr. Hastings had been sweet. She wasn’t sure what he’d said was true, but after Maria was well enough to go home it wouldn’t matter.

  “Set up over here!” a voice called as men and equipment crashed through the waiting room doors and shattered her reverie. “This is perfect. Well, well, well…not who I was expecting to see, I must say!”

  Mel grew suddenly cold. The coffee slipped from her nerveless fingers and hit the floor, sending up a wash of hot liquid against her leg. She didn’t feel it. She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t remember that she was supposed to breathe. “Kenneth?”

  “Never mind her, gentlemen…” he was saying but the cameras were already in her face, the lights blinding her, and two men began peppering her with questions.

  “Dr. Bell, is it true that you’re living with Dr. Layton?”

  “Dr. Bell, are you aware of the engagement between Dr. Layton and Gloria Shaffer?”

  “Dr. Bell, are you—”

  “GENTLEMEN!” Kenneth yelled while she was still trying to get her bearings. “Gentlemen, a moment, please.” Kenneth pushed past them and pulled her to one side, almost pinning her to the wall.

  “Melissa, you know it’s not too late. You can go back to your clinic, back to your cozy life, back to Belize with…the girl.”

  “Maria!” Mel hissed. “Learn ‘the girl’s’ name at the very least. It’s MARIA!”

  He paid no attention, but then when had he ever paid attention to anything she’d said? “You don’t have to quit under these circumstances; you can still be a valued member of the Doctors International family.”

  Mel shook off his hand, not liking that he was still holding her arm, that he’d trapped her like this. That the only way out of this waiting room was through a film crew that had to be against hospital policy somehow, yet where was security? For that matter, where was any staff at all? This wing had gone eerily silent.

  “All I have to do is throw Maria under a bus?” she said, pushing past him, needing space even if there was nowhere to go.

  He followed her, leaning in so that his mouth was inches from her ear. She could smell his breath laced with onions and felt sick. “Just be a part of the team, Mel. You don’t have to trot her out, just tell them how proud you are of her and how proud you are of DI for making this all possible.”

  “Kenneth, I learned a few things…” Mel turned, facing him. She wondered if she grabbed his arm and pressed him against the wall, if it would make HIM listen to HER the way he’d tried to bully her moments before. Better not. He’d probably like it.

  “I know, I know, all is forgiven, really. You’re always welcomed back into the family, and once this is all over no one will bother you again. You can go back to your quiet life. Even the first part of the proceeds can go to your clinic, new equipment, better staff—think about it.” He shot a glance over his shoulder, all smiles for the camera. Reminding her that they were being watched.

  Mel closed her eyes. Counted to ten. “She’s going to be in recovery for several hours, Kenneth.”

  “Of course, of course…” He patted the air, when he’d been aiming for her arm. Placating nothing, as she’d sidestepped him again, though it was getting harder to keep up this dance. There were too many chairs and end tables. Not enough room.

  Kenneth followed her, staying too close. “No need to involve the girl at this stage; besides, she’s going to be all swollen and nasty for a week or more, and no one wants to see that! Plenty of time to trot her out later, when she’s pretty again, or as pretty as she gets. Just get her to say sweet things about DI and it’s all over!”

  Mel looked at that fatuous smile and the blubbery lips. She looked to the reporters, who looked bored silly, like they’d rather be anywhere else. On a real story, not some human-interest piece. Whatever five minutes of fame she’d had moments ago was already forgotten when she’d refused to play nice. “All right,” she said to them, not to Kenneth. “I’m ready.”

  Heads turned. The cameras came up again. Reporters came to life.

  “Start rolling; I’ll make a statement.”

  “Let me get out of the way,” Kenneth chortled and raised his hands in a ‘don’t notice me’ gesture that ensured he was the center of attention.

  Giving Mel just the opportunity she needed.

  She decked him.

  Kenneth lay on the floor at the feet of the camera crew. No one said a word. Cameras rolled.

  “You want a statement?” she asked the shocked reporters. “Let’s try using words like GRAFT. How about EMBEZZLEMENT?” She ran to her purse and pulled out the folded printouts she’d made the night before. “How about a requisition for a DAMN YACHT?” She waved that paper in the air and handed it to one of the news crew. “The Pinta no less! Of all the stupid names…bought and paid for by the Foundation. Docked right here in L.A. and fully owned and operated by the director of DI!”

  Kenneth stared wide-eyed and stuttering, attempting to sit up, attempting to grab at the papers that the reporters held just out of reach.

  “How about a $3-million-a-year clinic in South America that doesn’t exist? How’s that for a statement, Kenneth? How about jail time? How about losing everything?”

  Mell handed the rest of the papers over and looked down. Kenneth had quit trying to get up. He lay full length on the floor, blood trickling from his nose making a line across his cheek. His eyes were glazed over in shock, she noted. She looked up at the cameras. “He likely needs medical attention.”

  She’d had enough of doctoring him for one day. Mel stepped over him and hit the nurse call button on the wall, noticing just how suddenly Kenneth had gone from fearsome monster to something rather pathetic and frail. Suddenly, she felt weary. There were only two reporters, two camera men, one…she guessed sound? Production? Five in total, but they were making enough noise, yammering at each other and talking on cell phones to ring off the walls of the little room.

  One reporter was practically wetting himself at being handed the story of the year.

  Mel collapsed in a nearby chair and sighed. Her energy was drained, the righteous anger that had fueled her for the past 24 hours was gone. She was tired, bone-tired, soul-tired, and even the coffee couldn’t fight against the lassitude that consumed her.

  She had never felt more alone in her life.

  She said nothing as the papers were examined. Nothing as the reporters hurled question after question at her. Nothing as the cameramen demanded she look to them, give them a profile, give them a statement, give them a sound bite, give them, give them, give them.

&
nbsp; She said nothing when armed guards came and ushered the whole group out, Kenneth getting a wheelchair and a trip to the ER to pack his nose.

  She stayed where she was despite the way hospital staff looked at her, in impotent rage that the sanctity of their waiting room was so violated by the noise of a man’s life crumbling.

  She had seen the look on Kenneth’s face. The look of horror, of betrayal. She wanted to feel sorry for him. Except she couldn’t.

  “Don’t fuck with the ones I love, Kenneth,” she whispered as he was wheeled out with the rest. She turned her back on him and curled up on the couch, picking at the vinyl, tracing lines in the contours. Betrayal. It was a look she knew well. It was a look she’d been wearing for some time now.

  Nothing made sense, though. What was she? A low-end doctor from a jungle clinic? A busted woman, hiding in the middle of Belize—Belize for Pete’s sake. Maybe Brant would find himself alone and stranded somewhere else someday, and carve another notch into the handle of his scalpel with a girl like her. The reality was she had been there, she spoke English…and she put out.

  But all the rest? The emails, the texts, the phone calls arching into the predawn when they both realized they needed to be seeing patients in a few hours—how did that fit with a playboy millionaire? Or billionaire?

  Yet, despite all her imaginings, the emotions still felt real. As did her breaking heart.

  I only need to stay a little longer. Make sure Maria is fine. Then what?

  She didn’t know. With DI crumbling, what came next for Maria? For the clinic? For herself?

  Mel stuffed her purse under her head for a pillow and curled into a fetal position. What if she had killed Doctors International? They had done good work, they had noble goals, they funded a lot of important clinics like hers. Kenneth needed to fall; she couldn’t feel sorry for that. But at what cost? How many clinics would close, how many people would get no health care because of him? Because of her?

  Oh shit…

  She felt a sob. Then another.

  No. She wasn’t going to cry here.

  Instead she reached for sleep, for answers.

  In her dreams, she reached for Brant.

  Except he was no longer there.

  Chapter 18

  When Brant did his residency, back when he was lowest on the list and had to fight and tussle with long hours, no time to eat, and always on the run, he’d often lose track of whether it was day or night. What day it was. A hospital is a place removed from time. Fluorescent lights replaced the sun and moon, patients slept when they were able and woke every hour, sometimes two for more blood, more samples. Some patients were woken regularly just to find out they’d been sleeping all night.

  As a young resident, he’d curled up on couches in breakrooms, beds in empty patient rooms. Once, in post-op, he’d fallen asleep in a chair while monitoring a patient. Exhaustion. He knew the signs. So, when he walked into the waiting room and found Mel curled into a fetal ball on tough vinyl, sound asleep and still clutching a near empty coffee cup, he saw the resident she must have been.

  He stood a moment and watched her sleep. How could he help but stare?

  For a moment, he saw what she must have looked like to her father, asleep in the back of the family car, carried in and put to bed.

  She was beautiful. Absolutely beautiful. The left pant leg had ridden up into a wrinkled hood around her ankle. The sock had long since given up any semblance of staying on her calf, and had a rumpled bed effect on her stained sneakers. Such a tiny bit of flesh exposed.

  How he longed to touch her.

  Damn, he loved her.

  He stretched, not for the first time, and stepped into the room. She was the only one there. That was surprising; he’d expected a media circus, but he’d take a little silence. In a gesture that was partly born of chivalry and partly born from some latent paternal urge, he slipped off the white lab coat he wore to cover his scrubs and lay it over her sleeping form.

  She stirred and the cup wavered dangerously, threatening to topple back into her face. Brant gently caught it and pulled slowly. It almost worked. It slid through her nerveless fingers without disturbing her, but when it was gone her fingers clacked together and she awoke with a start.

  She sat up so explosively, the back of her head connected with the front of his.

  “OW!” Brant dropped the cup.

  “What?” Mel demanded. “Oh, Brant.” She rubbed her eyes and stretched. “Is it over?”

  “Yes,” Brant managed to say while trying to hold his face together. “Yeah, all done, it went well.”

  “What’s…” Mel said, and then tenderly reached for her forehead. “Oh, I’m sorry, did I hurt…oh, damn, I dropped my coffee. I made a mess. I’m so sorry…Are you okay?”

  “I did that,” Brant admitted, looking around for something to wipe up the small mess.

  “You hit my head with your face?”

  “No, I dropped your coffee.”

  “Wait, why did you have my coffee?”

  “Because I didn’t want you to spill it.”

  “What?” Mel shook her head and reached for the part of her forehead that had connected with his eye. The skin there was reddening slightly and had to hurt. “Tell me about Maria!”

  “Maria’s fine.” With a professional touch he wasn’t feeling Brant decided that his eye and cheekbone would survive waking her, and stretched out that muscle. Yeah, it would hurt later. “She’s fine. It’s only the first of three, maybe four surgeries, but when this heals and the swelling goes down she’ll at least be able to walk around without bandages. There will be some scarring, but nothing we can’t deal with later.”

  “What do you think she’ll be like when it’s all over? Have you been able to determine that?”

  Brant sat down next to her, steadying himself with his hand on her ankle. He didn’t miss the sudden intake of breath from Mel, nor the sudden tenseness of her leg. He pulled his hand back. “She’ll have scars. Probably several, probably one or two large ones, but she’ll smile again. She’ll be whole again. And she’ll be just as pretty with or without them.”

  Mel nodded absently.

  Brant said nothing, but noted how her fingers touched her breast through her shirt. It was an unconscious movement; he doubted she even realized she was doing it.

  “Thank you, Doctor,” Mel said, sitting up abruptly, her tone icy enough to drop the temperature in the room by at least ten degrees. Brant sat back despite himself. Mel slid along the couch until she could get up. It was like looking at an animal crawl out of a trap before running away. “I’ll get some paper towels,” Mel mumbled, backing up and pointing to the pool of coffee on the floor.

  “It’s okay,” Brant said, patting the air, “I’ll get someone to—”

  “NO!” Mel’s voice was diamond-hard and shard-sharp. “I don’t make others clean up my messes.”

  “Mel…” Brant sighed deeply, but he did it to an empty waiting room.

  Mel had already gone.

  * * *

  Mel stalked down the hallway as though she was heading to kill an old enemy. In a way, perhaps she was. It was her attraction to men, the kind of men who used you, lied to you, left you. It was the old her, the one who took his damage, the one who accepted his fate so he could skate away.

  If anyone was her mortal enemy, it was herself. She found a women’s room and paused in front of the mirror. Her hair was tousled. She had vinyl print on one cheek, and suspected that she’d probably been drooling when he’d walked in on her. Damn it all, did she always have to be such a mess around him?

  She savagely tore a dozen towels from the dispenser, sending another half dozen to the floor. With a small scream of frustration she bent to pick those up, all the while cursing the god of klutziness who seemed to follow her at every turn. At least he wasn’t here watching her.

  Why exactly do you care?

  Mel had the paper towels so wadded up in her hands it would be a miracle if they
were still usable by the time she got back to the waiting room. She ignored the figure in the mirror, that woman who was a mess, and yanked open the door to the restroom and stopped without going another step.

  Instead, she stared down the white fluorescent hallway to the swinging doors that said WAITING.

  She had to go back in there. Face him again. He’d touched her and her body had reacted. Her pulse rose, her breath came shallow and fast, and she felt the flush in her face, because he’d touched her ankle. For a minute. Just to steady himself. There hadn’t even been anything remotely sexual in it.

  What if he touched her again?

  WAITING.

  Oh damn, what if he didn’t?

  What if he never touched her again?

  The wad of paper towels compressed in her grip. She thought she’d gotten this out, two days of constant tears, of recriminations, of ice cream and corn chips… She’d thought that there were no more tears hidden behind her eyes.

  She fought those tears now. She fought every one of them that had waited, waited for this moment to ambush her.

  WAITING.

  Screw it. Screw him. To hell with them all, to hell with the spilled coffee. To hell with it.

  She looked around and found a trash can nearby. She strode over and lifted the wad of paper towels, raising her arm to slam them home like a basketball player making a slam dunk at the sound of the buzzer.

  As her fist rose with her ire, one thought crossed her mind.

  Her purse was in there.

  With him.

  “Shit.”

  WAITING.

  Mel sighed. The sound ended suspiciously on what sounded like a whimper.

  She gathered up the paper towels and drew herself up. She was a doctor, dammit. She’d gone through hell to build and create an entire medical clinic in the jungle. She’d found people to staff it, and even convinced the natives to show up when they needed medical help.

  And she couldn’t face down one overly-conceited asshole who had great abs and a smile to die for?

  I didn’t just think that.

  She stared at the doorway at the end of the hall.