by Rowe, Julie
Alex hesitated, his gaze searching her face, then bowed as if he were some knight acquiescing to the request of his lady and left the room.
It was only after two full seconds of him being gone that she could finally take a deep, cleansing breath. What was it about him that wound her up so tight? She glanced at the x-ray Alex had been examining with such concentration. Took a closer look at what he’d pointed out.
A greenstick fracture.
Damn lawyer should’ve been a doctor.
He’d been a surprise from the moment she met him, never once doing or saying anything she expected. There was so much more to him than any man she’d ever met, and she was fascinated by the complex emotions flitting across his face.
Faking it as his girlfriend wasn’t going to be all that hard.
She imagined what it would be like to kiss him, his full, firm lips on hers, his long, strong arms around her, his warm body beneath her hands.
Nope, no trouble at all.
That’s what worried her the most, because with her history, it should’ve been darn near impossible.
Chapter Four
The next morning, Alex gave the waiting area of Helen’s House a quick once-over and nodded to himself. It was small, cramped with too many chairs, the paint a faded gray that reminded him of prison walls, and it smelled of sickness. The perfect setting in which to cast the idiot leaking pictures from Seacliffe as an unethical monster. He could almost smell the fire about to roast said monster alive.
The day before he made a call to Detective Sparking on his cell phone while sitting in the parking lot after talking to Calla. Explaining the situation to the detective didn’t take long, and it ended with Sparky wondering aloud the same thing Alex was thinking—who took the picture of Calla and her patient’s son and who sold it to the tabloids?
“Where do you want us?”
Calla stood behind him, her patient and the patient’s son next to her.
“Alicia and Rafael Deleon.” He gave them a little bow. “Please have a seat.” He gestured at the reception desk. The three chairs behind it barely fit. “There’s only one microphone for the three of you, so you’ll have to share.”
“I’m sure the news people would give us another one,” Rafael said.
“I only want you to have one. I want you three to be a team.”
Calla rolled her eyes, but sat in the chair closest to him, her patient and the boy after.
“I’m going to do most of the talking and answer the majority of the questions. If there’s a question that requires one of you to answer—” He paused. “Don’t speak unless I’ve indicated you can. Some of the reporters might yell or ask you questions directly. Ignore them.”
“What kind of questions?” Calla asked.
“If you’re selling or providing illegal drugs to minors. They might ask if you’re doing other illegal things.”
“Great.”
“They could ask about your previous employers or your sexual history.”
She snorted. “What sexual history? I work. I go home. I sleep. Repeat ad nauseam. Before that it was I go to school. I go home. I sleep.”
Alex and the boy stared at Calla.
“What?” she asked them.
“Okay then,” Alex said slowly. “You should have no problems.”
“Doc,” Rafael said. “You need to get out more.”
“Yeah, right. I went as far as the parking lot and look where that got me.” The expression of disgust on her face was one Alex wished he could take a picture of.
He turned his head and tried hard not to laugh.
Rafael and his mother got up, chattering in Spanish. The older woman used a pair of crutches that looked like they’d been passed down from family member to family member since the Second World War. The kid translated, “Mom wants to check her hair before the news people come.”
“She shouldn’t be putting any weight on her hip.”
He grinned. “Don’t worry, Doc, we’re following all your orders.”
“I knew it was a mistake to come here, but no,” she muttered under her breath after the kid and his mom hobbled out of the room. If Alex hadn’t been standing only a foot away, he never would have heard her. “I have to be all responsible and take a job performing procedures on people who don’t need them, so I can perform procedures on people who do.” She shook her head and mumbled, “Ass backward, that’s what life is. Ass backward.”
“Can I quote you?” Alex asked, leaning closer.
“No,” she growled.
“Damn.”
Still, she’d said it when she had to know he could hear her. That had to count for something, didn’t it?
“So, you’re here for money?”
“Isn’t everyone?”
That made him laugh. “Yes, actually.” He glanced at her downturned mouth and angry eyes. An excellent time to ask an intrusive question. She might even answer honestly. “What do you need money for?”
She looked directly at him for the first time in a while. “Do you know how much it costs to go to medical school?”
“A lot?”
“Yes, a lot. I owe enough money to make a loan shark drool.”
“Or go for a hammer to smash some fingers when you’re late with a payment?”
“Or that. And,” she hesitated before finally finishing. “I’m still paying off my brother’s hospital bills. It’s a fortune we don’t have.”
“We? You mean your parents?”
“They died a couple of years ago in a car accident.”
He nodded to her. “My condolences.”
She glanced at him, eyes wide. “Thank you.”
“You seem so surprised.” He frowned. “Your extended family helps, don’t they?”
“No. We don’t really have much of an extended family. A couple of cousins we haven’t seen in years.”
He frowned. “No boyfriend?”
She shook her head.
“Why not?”
She shrugged. “Too much baggage?”
He snorted. “I don’t see how that’s possible. No matter how much baggage you have, you’re smart and one of the most beautiful women I’ve ever met. You must have men hanging off your every word.”
She burst out laughing. “Coming from an LA lawyer, I’m not sure if I should take that as a compliment or not.”
He put his hand over his heart like she wounded him. “Because all LA lawyers lie?”
“It’s a commonly held belief.”
“I always thought so myself. Which is why, when I decided to become a lawyer, I chose to be…” Thinking back, it had taken him a long time to realize he didn’t want to live his life the same way as everyone else. “Different. I tell the truth. Every time. Without fail. The whole truth, including the stuff most people don’t want to know or hear.”
“That’s why you didn’t want to ask me to lie before?”
“Correct.” Now she knew the ugly truth. Would a woman who had made it her life’s work to repair, smooth, and cover up people’s ugliness want to fix him?
A small furrow appeared between her eyes. “Not even a white lie to save someone’s feelings?” She sounded incredulous.
He shook his head and held his breath. He wasn’t sure when or how it had happened, but her opinion mattered.
She thought about it for a few seconds. “What about Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy?”
“No.”
“It doesn’t pose a problem for you?”
He shrugged. “Many people find it irritating. A few won’t talk to me, and three—no four—have sued me.”
“For telling the truth?”
“Most aren’t prepared to deal with the truth.”
She sighed. “I understand how difficult that is.”
“You do?”
“I’m a surgeon. Most of my patients are…were accident victims. Some hope for an outcome from reconstructive surgery that simply isn’t possible. The toughest part of my job was explaining reali
stic expectations.”
Perhaps she did understand. He was about to ask her how she handled those difficult conversations when Alicia and Rafael came back from the washroom and joined Calla at the table.
Alex checked his watch. His question would have to wait. It was time to start the show.
He went to the front door, unlocked it, and opened it wide before stepping back and returning to stand in front of the reception desk.
A stream of media people entered the tiny waiting area and quickly filled up the space.
Alex raised his hands, palms out, and they settled into place. He took a breath and projected his voice. “I feel like an employee at an amusement park.”
A thread of laughter made its way through the small room.
“Thank you for coming,” he said to the crowd. “I’d like to introduce Dr. Calla Roberts, the young man, Rafael, I’m sure you’ll recognize from yesterday morning’s newspaper front page. The lady sitting next to him is his mother, Alicia.”
Reporters began shouting out questions.
Alex had to raise his hands again. “Let me be very clear. Nothing criminal occurred. I’ve already spoken to the police and they’re satisfied with Dr. Roberts’s explanation. As far as they’re concerned, there is no case or investigation, because nothing criminal transpired.”
“Then what did happen?” one reporter asked from the back.
“Dr. Roberts volunteers here at Helen’s House. This lady is one of her patients. The lady required antibiotics, but couldn’t come to pick them up herself, so she sent her son. Dr. Roberts, like all physicians, is given free samples of all kinds of medicines for her to give to her patients if she so chooses. She chose to give some antibiotic samples to her patient’s son. That’s all. I don’t know who took these pictures and sent them to the media. I don’t know what the media paid for them, but if the seller told you they had incriminating photos, it was a lie.”
“Oh come on,” one reporter yelled. “You can’t possibly believe this story?”
“I have a nose,” he tapped his lightly with an index finger. “That can sniff out a fishy story from a mile out.”
Everyone laughed and he grinned along with them. “When I find the person or persons responsible for this gross invasion of privacy, whose sole purpose seems to be to line their own pockets and perhaps tarnish the good name of a valued physician, I’m going to be sure they learn several hard truths.” He waited a second for them to digest that, then said, “Thanks for coming. This press conference is over.”
He gave the shark tank his back and was about to usher Calla, Alicia, and Rafael out of the room, down the hall, and out the back door when someone shouted behind him, “Care to comment on the fact that until last month, the good doctor was desperate for money? According to a collection agency in Chicago, her car and her house were one missed payment away from being repossessed. Now her car is paid off. Where did she get the money for that so fast?”
Chapter Five
Calla froze in the hallway. Became as still as concrete and as cold for about a second. Then she carried on as if she hadn’t heard.
Which was the wrong response.
That lone voice asking about money became a frenzy of shouting, then out of the corner of her eye she saw movement, a lot of it. She glanced behind and saw that the entire room full of reporters was trying to get around the desk and chase after her.
She gasped and Alex looked at her face, and then behind him.
“Go,” he ordered. “Get these two safely out of here.” He gave her a grim smile. “I’ll deal with the vultures.”
Calla nodded and herded Alicia and Rafael toward the rear exit. Her car was parked close.
They reached the doorway. Rafael went first, opening it for his mother, who hobbled through as fast as she could. Calla came next. For a moment there was no one there.
She stepped forward to unlock the car, then opened the passenger door for Alicia who had to take her time and carefully slide across the seat. Calla looked up and nearly screamed.
Three photographers were coming toward them at a sprint.
Her fight or flight response took over and she damn near leaped over the hood to the driver’s side, yanked open the door, got in, and slammed it closed.
She dug through her purse, found her keys after what seemed like two hours, but was probably more like two seconds, and jammed the keys into the ignition. Her foot hit the gas pedal and she peeled out hard enough to leave rubber on the ground. As soon as she was pointed in the right direction, she punched the car into drive and rocketed out of the parking lot.
At no time did the flashes on any of the cameras stop.
A couple of minutes later, Rafael spoke up from the backseat in a careful tone, “Doc, you can slow down now. Those losers aren’t behind us.”
Calla’s death grip on the steering wheel didn’t change. “Are you sure?”
He studied the road behind them. “Yep.”
“Okay.” She blew out a huge breath and eased her foot off the accelerator. “Okay.”
Her hands were shaking now. She took them off the steering wheel one at a time and stretched them. “God, that was scary weird.”
Rafael laughed. “I’ve never seen anyone jump and slide over a car hood like you did. You were fast.”
Realization struck hard and her stomach did a dive. “I did jump over the hood. Oh my God, those jerks took pictures of everything, like some stop-motion movie.” She wanted to pound her head against her dash. “I’m going to be on the front page of the damn papers again and every entertainment news site.”
She thought about that some more. “I’m so stupid and I’m so fired.”
Alicia asked her son a question in rapid Spanish.
He answered, then switched to English. “Mom says we’ll stick up for you. You helped her when no one else would. And you did a really good job on her.”
“Thank you.”
“Don’t worry. Alex will take care of those dicks we left behind.”
She had no doubt that the kid was right. She hadn’t known Alex long, but she knew he never did anything halfway.
She couldn’t decide if she was going to thank him or throw up on his shoes.
Maybe she’d do both.
…
Alex managed to hold off the horde of reporters long enough for Calla and the Deleons to get away. A number of them tried to get him to say something about Calla’s debts, but after a minute, they’d all swarmed out the front door and jumped into their cars. All but one. The one whose questions started the stampede, a bottom feeder named Dwayne “Longshot” Kelso, who often took longshot photos of celebrities half naked in their homes.
Alex loathed the sight of him, and right now, Longshot was standing beside his vehicle, doing something on his phone. Something that put the biggest grin on his face that Alex had ever seen on a man. It wasn’t a good look for him.
Alex picked up a couple of dropped coffee cups from the open front doorway and threw them in the trash. A car pulled up next to Longshot. The window came down and Jeff MacKay himself handed the bottom feeder an envelope. What the hell?
Pictures? Money? Both?
Jeff MacKay had suddenly vaulted to the top of Alex’s suspect list.
Alex pulled out his phone and called his investigator. “I need you to make sure we have all the details regarding the hit-and-run on Alicia Deleon. Has MacKay made a statement regarding the charges against him?”
“Can do.” Something wasn’t right. “Find out. Dig deep.”
“Roger.”
Alex disconnected the call, locked the clinic door, and then went out back to his car.
A black sedan was parked next to him, and a tall man with shaggy hair and a wiry mustache leaned against the side of it.
“Hello, Sparky. Imagine finding you here.”
“After that circus you called a press conference, where else do you think you’d find me?”
“Out hunting criminals like Jeff MacKay?�
�
Sparky pushed away from his vehicle and moved close enough to ask in a quiet tone, “What about Jeff MacKay?”
“I think he paid Longshot to stir things up.”
Sparky paced away, and then back again. “Geez, they’re all bad, but Longshot is one of the worst.”
Sparky was usually a pretty laid-back guy. Calm during a shootout or car chase. He was anything but calm now. “What else is on your mind?” Alex asked.
“Your doctor might be looking at deep trouble.”
“How do you mean?”
“MacKay’s lawyers are saying she’s not a good witness. They say the woman’s injuries aren’t as severe as your doctor says they are.”
“She’s a surgeon and I’ve done my due diligence. I had the number one orthopedic surgeon in the country to review her records, x-rays, the works. He says Dr. Roberts did a fantastic job putting that woman’s leg and hip back together. He’s happy to testify to that.” He pointed a finger at Sparky. “MacKay is full of shit.”
Sparky shrugged. “He has a team of very expensive lawyers. I thought you should know.”
“I realize this goes against everything our city stands for, but when it comes to the law, it’s not you get what you pay for. It’s equal representation under the law.”
Sparky laughed and shook his head. “I don’t think MacKay is going to leave this alone. He mentioned a formal complaint to the American Medical Association.”
Alex snorted. “That’s all she needs.”
Sparky gave Alex a long look. “I’ll let you know what happens. A couple days at the most.” He gave Alex a nod, got into his car, and drove away.
Alex slid into his vehicle and pulled out onto the street. He had a doctor to track down before she saw Jeff MacKay’s accusations on the entertainment websites. The headlines could very likely put her in the mood for murder.
It also didn’t bode well for dinner tomorrow.
…
Calla pulled up to the Boyle Heights apartment where Alicia and Rafael lived. The neighborhood was run down, the buildings in need of paint, and the road in need of repair. “What floor do you live on?” she asked.
