The sweet thing that he found himself wanting to go along with his coffee hadn’t come from any oven, but because he was hungry, he forced his thoughts to zero in on the practical.
Ramona was taking the box she’d brought out of the double drawer where she’d put it. Placing it on her desk, she took off the lid and pushed the box closer toward Paul. He took one small muffin and sat down in the chair facing her desk.
She took a seat, as well. “I’m guessing this sort of thing happens to you on a regular basis. Spending the night here,” she added when Armstrong looked at her quizzically.
She was right, but he had no idea where she’d gotten her conclusion from. He doubted that very many people here took note of the fact that sometimes his hours threaded themselves well into the night if the situation called for it.
“What makes you say that?” he wanted to know.
“Your clothes. You changed,” she pointed out when he looked down at what he was wearing. “You keep a change of clothing in your office or locker or whatever. That means you’ve slept in your office.”
He saw no harm in admitting to her that she’d deduced correctly. “It’s happened a few times,” he acknowledged.
Armstrong seemed almost modest. She prided herself on being able to spot a phony. Could he actually be the genuine article?
“You must be very dedicated,” she observed with what she felt was just the right touch of awe.
He didn’t know if he’d call it dedicated. He did feel a sense of responsibility toward the people who came to his father’s institute.
“The people who come here looking for help are desperate,” he told her without any fanfare. “We’re their last hope. You tend to feel responsible for them as well as to them. If I’m only available to them on a strict schedule or when it’s convenient for me, then I have no business working in medicine. Punching a time clock is for people who work on an assembly line. I’m in a different line of work,” he concluded quietly.
She studied him for a moment. “You do extraordinary things here, Paul. You help people conceive babies. Some would say that’s God’s line of work.” She smiled warmly, keeping her tone nonjudgmental. “I guess what I’m wondering is if you sometimes feel, well, godlike.” Her eyes raised to his and pressed innocently. “Well, do you?”
The whole idea was completely absurd.
“Never once,” he informed her firmly. Finishing the pastry, he wiped his fingers on the napkin she’d supplied and finished the last of his coffee, dusted off a crumb from his jacket and then looked at her. “Are you ready to take that tour of the institute now?”
She was on her feet immediately, closing the lid on the pastry box and abandoning her own coffee. She raised her face to his and told him, “I was born ready.”
Paul had no idea why he felt she wasn’t really referring to the tour, but was, instead, putting him on some kind of notice.
But he did.
A warmth, joining forces with anticipation, washed over him. He banked it down, but his pulse continued marking time at a heightened beat that only seemed to increase the closer he walked beside Ramona.
Chapter Seven
The tour through the institute lasted close to an hour. Because he was pressed for time, Paul moved quickly throughout the modern three-story building. Ramona kept pace with him and peppered him with questions every step of the way. Endless, probing questions.
If he didn’t know any better, Paul would have said that it felt as if he was under interrogation. He’d never encountered anyone who was so incredibly and relentlessly curious about the place in which she found herself employed.
He took her to see the various meeting rooms and then on to the boardroom. When they arrived, Ramona walked in before he could move on.
“My God, this is huge,” she breathed, looking around in awe. It felt as if her voice was echoing in the cavernous room.
It made him think of Alice when she first took stock of Wonderland. Ramona even had the long blond hair.
Where had that thought even come from? He shouldn’t be evaluating her looks—just her skills.
Ramona took it all in, moving around slowly. The room was wood paneled and had floor-to-ceiling windows. It was a sunny day and there were prisms of light bouncing off the walls and the very large, elegant oak conference table.
Paul watched, mesmerized despite himself, as Ramona spun around full circle beside the windows before turning to look at him.
“I think my apartment is smaller than this. Why do you need such a large conference room?” Before he could answer her, she made her own guess. “Is it to dwarf the egos that might be here?”
Being caught off guard by this woman was beginning to be an unfortunate habit. “What?”
“A room this large makes a person feel small,” she explained. “That might be handy in getting people to do what you want them to.”
“I have nothing to do with the size of this room,” he told her. “That was my father’s design.”
His father had been the one to choose this location to begin with and he’d been involved in every phase of its construction. Despite the fact that he had not been part of it for a while now, the institute bore Gerald’s indelible stamp and would always be his building, even long after the man was gone.
“I see,” Ramona said thoughtfully as they both exited the room.
He didn’t like the way she said that. “What is it that you see?”
Keep it low-key, Ramona. You don’t want to push the man away or put him on his guard. “Just that your father must be a very forceful man.”
“At the moment, he’s a retired man.” Paul thought about his father, about how withdrawn and, on occasion, bitter the man had become. The senior Armstrong hardly ever left the house now.
She knew that Gerald Armstrong was retired, but she was curious if he still kept a finger on the pulse of “his” clinic. For some men, retirement was just a meaningless word. “Does he ever come in and see how things are going?”
Initially, his mother had tried to get his father involved in the institute again. It seemed rather an ironic turn, seeing as how Gerald’s obsession with the institute had taken such a heavy toll on their marriage in the beginning.
Paul thought Ramona would abort her line of questioning when he told her, “My father’s in a wheelchair.” He realized that he should have known better. The woman just kept going and going.
“That doesn’t stop some people,” Ramona said tactfully.
“It does others,” he countered. They were making their way back to the elevators. He couldn’t keep his curiosity in check any longer. “Why are you asking so many questions?”
She looked at him with an innocent expression that seemed to say that the answer was self-evident. “How else am I going to find things out? By the way,” she continued, stepping into the elevator car, “where are the archives housed?”
He stared at her for a moment, then pressed for the next floor down. “In the basement. Why?”
The answer was tendered in utter innocence. The doors closed. “I thought I’d take a look at them when I got the chance.”
In less than a minute, the elevator doors were opening again on the floor below. “Again, why?”
“To get a sense of the institute’s history,” she told him as they got off.
He had no desire to have her rummaging through the files that were stored down there. For the most part, they were charts and records that belonged to some of the institute’s first patients. “If you have any questions, you can come to me.”
He was walking faster, she noted, and lengthened her own stride. Was he just trying to get this over with, or was he subconsciously running from something?
“You just wanted to know why I’m asking so many questions,” she reminded him. “I don’t want to bother you any more than I have to.”
It might have seemed like a good idea to Derek at the time, but he was back to being sorry that his brother had talked him into letti
ng Ramona stay. That was going to have to change and soon. He didn’t particularly want Ramona Tate digging around, disrupting the rhythm of things.
“As far as I’m concerned,” he told her as they went down the corridor, “this position is a one-shot deal. And you’ve fired the shot, or you will sometime today I imagine.”
It was her turn to be confused, Ramona thought. “Come again?”
“The press release about Bonner and Demetrios joining our staff,” he reminded her. “You wrote it. You’ll deliver it if you haven’t already. That’s why my brother initially hired you.”
“Initially.” She picked up on the word he used and emphasized it. “But that was just the beginning, Dr. Armstrong.”
Paul stopped walking and looked down at her, a man whose overnight guest had just announced she was settling in for the next six months. “Oh?”
Ramona continued walking as if she was oblivious to the fact that he had stopped. “The way I see it, the institute is in a precarious state, like a forest in the middle of a really hot summer. There are bound to be fires. It’s my job to put those fires out.”
He resumed walking. “And what if there are no fires?” he challenged.
“Then I’ll have a very stress-free job.” She slanted a look at him, more than a hint of a smile on her lips. “But do you really think that will be the case?”
He didn’t want to dwell on “fires” or public relations or baseless rumors that were running amok. He just wanted to do his job. “All I want to do is help couples have the families they’ve always wanted.”
She wanted to believe him, to believe that even in this modern, fast-paced world there were still people who wanted to do decent things out of the goodness of their heart. But until she disproved those rumors that she’d come to investigate, she couldn’t allow herself to be taken in by the innocent look in his eyes.
“I understand, Dr. Armstrong, but things are never as simple as we’d like them to be. It’s my job to make sure that you can do yours without being hampered by innuendo or, more important, lawsuits,” she told him, deliberately presenting him with a cheerful demeanor. “Public opinion can either be a wonderful tool, or a weapon.”
He stopped right in front of the lab. “How old are you?”
“Old enough to be good at what I do.” It sounded like an evasive answer, but she didn’t want to give him a direct answer. She knew that Armstrong was thirty-six and to him, she undoubtedly looked as if she was just out of elementary school.
“I was only thinking that you seemed awfully young to sound so cynical.”
She didn’t think of herself as cynical, but she let it go. Instead, she said, “These days, cynicism is built into the DNA.”
With a sigh, Paul shook his head and then pushed open the door to their state-of-the-art lab. He was proud of the equipment, proud of all the advances they’d made in the field because they were able to afford the kind of cutting-edge research to be done here.
Holding the door, he allowed her to walk in ahead of him.
Like the conference room, the lab was one large room. Unlike the conference room, it had two tables instead of one. The tables were waist high, equipped with sinks and a number of microscopes that were hooked up to projection screens and computers. There were several people in the lab at the moment, all dressed in white coats.
She’d heard as well as read a great deal about the newly transplanted research team of Bonner and Demetrios before she ever came to the institute. Consequently, she knew them on sight.
Only Ted Bonner was present at the moment. Chance Demetrios had an office in the building. Her guess was that he was probably there now.
Bonner did strictly research. He had the luxury of divorcing himself from the people who ultimately made use of the end product of his research via one of the doctors on the staff. This allowed him to throw himself wholeheartedly into his work. His failures had no faces on them, but then, neither did his successes.
She heard Paul take in a breath, as if he was bracing himself for some kind of ordeal. The next moment, she realized that she was the ordeal.
“Dr. Bonner,” he addressed the exceedingly tall, exceedingly good-looking dark-haired man who was about to bend over to look into one of the microscopes, “I would like to introduce you to Ramona Tate. She’s our new public-relations manager.”
Shaking her hand, Ted quipped, “I didn’t know you had an old public-relations manager.”
“We didn’t,” Paul answered before he realized that Ted was joking. “This is my brother’s idea. He thinks we need protecting.” He flashed a semiapologetic smile toward Ramona.
Thinking to spare him, she made no comment. She was getting a great many mixed signals from this man and decided it was better to pretend to be oblivious to all of them.
She turned her attention to the man who was still holding her hand enveloped in his. “Nice to meet you, Dr. Bonner. Would you mind if I got back to you later sometime? I’d like to ask you a few questions if I may.”
“I’ll be looking forward to it,” Ted assured her. “Anything I can answer now?”
She slanted a glance toward Paul. “No,” she assured Ted. “Not now.”
“Then I’ll get back to work,” he said, releasing her hand.
“What do you want to talk to him about?” Paul asked her the moment they walked out of the lab. He didn’t bother to try to hide the suspicious look on his face. What was she up to? he wondered. Were all these questions normal? Was he so out of touch with the way things worked outside his small sphere?
She was ready for him. “Well, for one thing, I want to know what enticed Dr. Bonner and his partner to come here to do their research.”
They walked down the corridor, each with a different destination in mind. He to his other office and she back to hers. But for now, they walked together.
“The lab they came from wasn’t exactly third rate or shabby by any means,” Ramona continued. “And there’s a certain amount of inherent prestige being associated with a teaching hospital slash college the caliber of the one they came from.” She stopped walking. He stopped a second after that and looked at her, waiting. “Did you offer them more money?”
He made no answer, trying to gauge what, if anything, he should say. Maybe, if he just waited long enough, she’d go away. Silence ricocheted between them.
Ramona pressed her lips together. “Dr. Armstrong, you need to talk to me if I’m to do my job and do you any good.”
“It was a little more money,” Paul finally admitted to her.
The inflection in his voice told her there was more. “And?”
Paul drew himself up. It was a purely defensive move. Knights running to man the castle parapets. “And I gave them carte blanche.” He shrugged carelessly. “I thought that having them here would negate any bad publicity that might have cropped up.”
“Aggressively heading that publicity off at the pass accomplishes that,” Ramona pointed out. “For starters, I need to get that press release—released,” she concluded, humor curving her generous mouth.
He glanced at his watch, blinking once to focus in on it better. “I have a procedure to get to,” he reminded her—and himself.
“Then I should get out of your way,” Ramona responded amiably. “Thanks for the tour,” she added.
As far as it went, Ramona added silently. She noticed that the good doctor had conspicuously left out the basement with its archives. But she wasn’t put off. She was confident that she’d find a way to get into that one way or another. Ramona had a very strong feeling that was where she’d find what she was really looking for.
At least, she sincerely hoped so.
Nodding at Armstrong, she turned on her heel and quickly headed back to her office. She had work to do: theirs, her editor’s and, the first moment she could find an island of time when no one was around to catch her, her own.
Paul stood like a pillar, watching her leave. With effort, he roused himself. He had no time to
stand here like some pubescent adolescent, watching her hurry away, he silently chastised. He had a reputation to uphold. That reputation included never being late, especially not for a procedure.
How the hell had things gotten so damn out of control?
The question echoed over and over again in Derek’s brain, haunting him.
Taunting him.
It had all started out so innocently. So harmlessly. A simple weekend trip to Atlantic City. He was going to be staying at one of the more luxurious casinos and, if time permitted, he figured that he’d indulge in a little gambling.
How was he to know that things would mushroom into this—an obsession that would threaten to completely ruin his life?
He’d never seen it coming.
In his defense, he’d never even felt the inclination to gamble before. But that had been before the first incredible rush had found him.
There was no other way to describe the feeling that exploded in his veins when turn after turn of the card rendered him the big winner at the table. It was an exhilarating, overwhelming rush. The closest he had ever come to a religious experience.
By the end of that first evening, he was staring at more money than he ever had before. And it was hismoney. Not his father’s, not his family’s or the institute’s, but his. Exclusively.
He wasn’t just one of Gerald Armstrong’s sons, or the CFO of the Armstrong Fertility Institute, an empty title awarded him because of who his father was. At that specific moment in time, he was Derek Armstrong. Winner.
And then, when he returned to the table the next night, as mysteriously as it had found him, his winning streak abandoned him. Hand after hand, he lost. Desperate to recapture that magical feeling, to see that life-affirming envy in the other players’ eyes, he kept betting.
And he kept losing.
At the end of the weekend, he’d not only lost all the money he’d won, but he lost twice as much as he’d brought to Atlantic City.
He began signing notes, barking that he was good for it. His luck remained bad. He only won enough to remind him that it was possible. Just not probable.
Prescription for Romance Page 7
