by Susan Crosby
“Then it sounds like sour grapes to me,” Lisa said. “When you left, their funds dried up.”
“Did you keep copies of all the funding we got there?” Chance asked Ted.
“It’s all on my home computer.”
“I can’t cancel my appointments today,” Chance said. “But let’s meet at your place tonight and go over it.”
“Okay. If Lisa’s right, and they’re just trying to ruin our reputation, then we need to fight fire with fire. Let’s ask Ramona to help, too. We could use a spin doctor’s opinion.”
Chance came back to the table. “If push comes to shove, Ted and I know some things that Breyer wouldn’t want made public.”
Ted shifted uncomfortably. Yes, they knew secrets, which was one of the reasons why they’d left. They hadn’t agreed with Breyer’s methods all the time. “I hope it doesn’t come to that,” Ted said. “I don’t want to be associated with dragging Breyer’s name through the mud, either.”
“The last thing we need is a loss of funding,” Lisa said, her jaw tight. “I’ll talk to Paul and Ramona. Um, I’d like to keep Derek out of the loop for a couple of days. See what we can come up with first.” She looked at Chance, then Ted.
“No problem,” Ted said.
Chance raised a hand in agreement.
“All right. Give me a call at home tonight after you’ve taken a look at your records.” She walked out.
Chance swiped the accusatory letter from the counter, swearing as it drifted to the floor. “We left there to get away from chaos. Since then we’ve dealt with one problem after another. When will it end?”
He yanked open the door and left, angry and frustrated. Ted felt exactly the same. He just tended to internalize his emotions more.
“One scandal door closes and another one opens,” he said to Sara Beth.
“You’ll be cleared.”
“It may not matter. Tarnished reputations are hard to polish.” Like Chase, he was tired of the upheavals. “I’ve never been one to have secrets, Sara Beth.”
Her sympathetic expression became guarded. “Are you still talking about your work?”
He shook his head.
“You want to go public about us,” she said, not as a question, already knowing the answer.
“Not this second, but as soon as you stop working for me.”
“Why?”
“Because right now I’d really like to hold you, and I can’t do that. Anyone could walk by.”
“There’s always the supply closet.”
Her response was so quick and unexpected, he laughed, then he hauled her to the closet, shut them inside and held her, just held her, until his anger dispersed, replaced with need for her, the incredible Sara Beth O’Connell, one of the kindest, most beautiful women he’d ever met.
He didn’t want to keep her a secret anymore.
In the dark, he found her mouth with his, the taste of her familiar now, yet always arousing and exciting. They rarely spent a night apart, often talking into the late hours before falling asleep, her head on his shoulder, his arm around her, hers across his chest, then waking up in the morning with her wrapped in his arms.
One thing they’d avoided talking about was the possibility she could be pregnant. How long could they pretend not to notice?
“We’ll go public,” he said against her lips.
“We’ll talk about it.”
“Ted?” Derek’s voice reached them inside the closet.
They went utterly still. Sara Beth pressed her face to Ted’s chest. Her shoulders shook. Laughing? Seriously? She was the one who was so worried about going public, and she was laughing?
“Where could he have gone?” Derek said, his voice fading, then silence.
After a few seconds, Ted turned the knob slowly and peeked out. The room was empty. “Hurry up,” he said, patting Sara Beth on the backside.
She laughed and scurried out just as Derek looked through the window and frowned. “Uh-oh,” she said when Derek opened the door.
“Where were you? I was just here.”
“Restroom,” Ted and Sara Beth said simultaneously. He didn’t dare look at her.
She headed to the door, not making eye contact, either. “I’ll arrange my schedule so that we can start on the manual tomorrow, Dr. Bonner,” she said.
“That’d be great, Ms. O’Connell, thanks.” He looked down for a second to smooth his expression, and spotted the letter from the Breyer Medical Center lying on the floor, face up. Had Derek seen it when he’d been in a few minutes earlier? Ted figured him for a good poker player. If he’d read it, he would probably wait to see how long Ted took to tell him.
He scooped it up, folded it and stuck it in his back pocket. “What can I do for you, Derek?”
He didn’t answer immediately. “I realized I hadn’t thanked you for the work you did on the stats. Good job.”
Ted figured Derek called it a good job because it had turned out well. If it hadn’t…
“All I did was compile and run the numbers. But I’m glad it’s over.” He grabbed his lab coat from the coat rack near Sara Beth’s desk. The room seemed empty without her. “Anything else?” Ted asked, waiting for the ax to fall.
“Just wanted an update.”
“Nothing’s changed since yesterday. When there’s something to report, I will.”
“I know you think I’m pushing too hard. But just word of the possibility we’re close to a treatment would sustain us for now.”
“Sustain us for now?” Ted repeated. “Is there a problem with keeping the research going?”
Derek shifted a little. “The program is expensive. Setting up the lab to your specifications was costly. Your salaries. So far, there haven’t been any returns.”
“That’s the burden of research.” What was going on? Was Derek saying the institute was having financial problems?
“I realize that. We just have to hope there are no more rumors or scandals. We had some close calls.”
Ted nodded. Lisa had asked him to keep quiet, so he would, for now—and because he didn’t trust Derek himself.
After Derek left, Sara Beth quietly slipped in.
He smiled. “The coast is clear.” Except Derek may have read the letter.
“So, everything is okay?”
“I wouldn’t go that far. But we’ll have to skip seeing each other tonight. Chance and I may pull an all-nighter trying to figure this out.”
“I’ll try to hook up with my mom, since she canceled on me last night.”
“Call me when you’re getting off the bus.”
She cocked her head. “How will you explain that to Chance?”
“I’ll figure out something. Have a nice time with your mom.”
“Thanks. I’ll miss you.”
He didn’t say anything in return. He probably should, because he would miss her, for sure, but his confusion over her unwillingness to let their relationship be public held him back. Maybe she saw what they had as temporary. “Talk to you later,” he said.
A little light went out of her eyes. He was sorry for that, but it was the best he could do for now.
Chapter Thirteen
“You’re different, Mom,” Sara Beth said as they lingered that night over dessert, apple tarts with cinnamon ice cream. The restaurant was one of her favorites, a small café that offered comfort food with a twist. For dinner she’d had chicken and dumplings, prepared with a delicate touch and fresh herbs. “Are you sure you don’t have a man in your life?”
“I’m sure.” Grace sipped her coffee, eyeing Sara Beth over the rim. “I retired months ago, but I hadn’t gotten the hang of it yet. Now I have.”
“Shouldn’t that mean you’d be more relaxed? Because you’re not. In fact, you’re edgier. And you’re not being forthcoming about your trip.”
“There’s just so little to tell, sweetheart. I didn’t do much but read, go for walks, eat and sleep.”
“You didn’t take any tours? Didn’t see the
Mayan ruins? And where are your photographs? You always took a ton of pictures wherever we went.”
“I was recording your life, Sara Beth. Hence, the many scrapbooks of years gone by. And you haven’t said a word about Dr. Bonner.”
“There’s just so little to tell.” Sara Beth flashed a smile.
“Touché.”
For almost a week Sara Beth had lived with what she’d done, taking advantage of the unexpected opportunity in the vault to look for her mother’s file. And for almost a week she’d lived with the results, not telling anyone that she’d looked—and discovered it was missing. Ted had noticed there was something wrong. She’d denied it.
But she also knew she would never come to terms with it unless she talked to her mother.
Sara Beth’s heart lodged in her throat at the thought of asking, but she had to know. “Why is your file not in the vault?” Sara Beth blurted out, the words almost choking her.
For a long time, Grace said nothing. Then, finally, “It took you a long time to look. You’ve worked there for twelve years, six years full-time.”
Which was no answer. Sara Beth’s anxiety about asking turned to frustration—again. “Because I wanted you to be the one to tell me.”
“Tell you what?”
“Who my father is.”
“I’ve told you all your life.”
“An anonymous donor.” Sara Beth shoved her dessert away, unfinished. “But there’s no record of your procedure, not even someone using an alias that came close to matching you, either.”
“Think about that for a moment. I worked there for over thirty years. A lot of people had access to patient files.”
“Meaning you removed it so that no one would know?”
“Everyone knew I’d gotten pregnant with help from the institute. But the details weren’t—and aren’t—anyone else’s business.”
“I don’t count?”
Grace sat back. “What would you do with that information, if you had it?”
“I don’t know. I just have a need to know where I came from. I feel like half of me is missing. Or a third,” she said, correcting herself. “I know you, and I know myself. I’d like to know the missing link. Do I have siblings? What about a health history?” Would he have brought me a Valentine if he’d known about me?
“Many of the donors all those years ago were college students, Sara Beth, who were in it for the money. They were able to walk away without feeling any attachment for a child who might come of that generous donation. Do you think it would matter now, after all this time?”
“It could, perhaps even more so. Maybe he never had other children. Or whatever the reasons might be. I could contact him through an intermediary. If he wants to be left alone, I would respect that.”
Their server approached, a reminder that they were in public. They paid their bill then left the café, heading back to Grace’s house and the bus stop nearby.
“Let me think about it, okay, sweetheart?”
It was the first time her mother had dangled any kind of carrot in front of her. What could she say? It wasn’t the right time to keep pushing. “Thank you.”
Rain began to fall, light but steady, putting an end to their conversation as they each opened an umbrella, creating distance between them. They reached the bus stop.
“You don’t need to wait with me in the rain, Mom. Go on inside.”
“I’m not made of sugar.”
Sara Beth laughed. “No, you’re not. Neither am I, in large part because you made me that way. Thanks for being such a good life coach.”
“I would say you’re welcome, except I haven’t entirely succeeded.”
“I think I turned out okay.”
“Despite my many warnings, you’ve fallen in love with a doctor, and one you work with, at that.”
“I haven’t—”
“Oh, sweetheart. You have. Do you think I don’t know your every expression? That it isn’t always what you say but what you don’t say that speaks the loudest? You haven’t volunteered a word about him all night.”
Sara Beth could feel herself closing up. “Because I know how you feel about him. It. The situation itself.”
“For good reasons. I was a nurse for a long time. I’ve seen it happen again and again. It’s one of the oldest professional fantasies in the world—nurse falls for doctor. Do you know how seldom it works out?”
“I’m having fun, Mom.”
“People will talk. Do you want that? Your coworkers will be whispering behind your back. It can cause irreparable harm to your ability to supervise if they don’t respect you.”
Sara Beth knew all that, had known it all along without saying the words out loud. “We won’t go public with our relationship unless it becomes something more permanent.”
“You mean, marriage?” Grace looked shocked, even horrified. She clamped a hand on Sara Beth’s arm. “Sweetheart, please don’t get your hopes up about such a thing. Ted Bonner is not only a doctor, he’s from one of the oldest, wealthiest families in Boston. If you don’t think his parents have plans for their only son, you’ve totally deluded yourself about him.”
The bus pulled up, splashing an arc of water onto the sidewalk, making them jump back. Manipulating their umbrellas, they managed a quick, tense hug, then Sara Beth climbed onto the steamy vehicle, the windows too fogged up to see her mother as it pulled away from the curb.
Sara Beth drew a circle on the wet, foggy window, adding two dots for eyes, a short line for a nose, then a down-turned mouth. Her mother was right. Sara Beth had gotten her hopes up about Ted, maybe because he was willing to let it be known they were dating, where she’d been cautious because of lifelong warnings from her mother, which had gotten more intense now that Sara Beth was seeing Ted, making it real, not just hypothetical.
Which made Sara Beth also wonder if her mother had experienced what she so fiercely cautioned about. Had she loved a doctor? Been used and dumped? There had to be a reason why she never dated.
As soon as Sara Beth got off the bus, she dialed Ted’s number. He picked up right away.
“How was your evening?” he asked.
“I had an incredible meal.”
He laughed. “See why I don’t make a habit of going out to dinner with my parents?”
She smiled. It was obvious that he liked his parents just fine. “How’s it going with you? Are you finding anything?”
“It’s been interesting. We may have found something. Mostly we think because we’re not there anymore, the renewals on the grants probably didn’t happen. We don’t even know if they replaced us.”
“They ran a lousy business,” Chance shouted in the background, being much less circumspect than Ted. “Now they’re paying for it.”
“Except they want us to pay for it, too,” Ted added. “At least with our reputation.”
Sara Beth dodged a puddle. She picked up speed as the rain started battering her. “What’s next?”
“Is it raining?” He went silent for a few seconds. “It’s pouring. I hadn’t noticed. How close are you to home?”
“I’m running up my walkway right now.” She shoved her key in the lock and rushed inside as a crack of lightning lit up the sky, followed by low, rumbling thunder. “Safe and sound,” she said, then climbed the stairs. “So, again, what’s next?”
“We’re having lunch tomorrow with Ramona, away from the institute. She’s doing some research on her own, as well as talking to a lawyer. We ended up telling Paul about the accusations. I didn’t want to ask Ramona to keep it from her own fiancé.”
“But you’re still keeping Derek in the dark?”
“For now.”
“I’ll let you get back to work, then. My bed’s going to be lonely tonight.” She smiled at his silence, stuck as he was with Chance within earshot.
“Same here,” he said, although not in a sexy way.
She tugged her raincoat off and hung it up outside her front door, toed off her boots, then went
inside. “Remember my tiger-striped nightgown?”
“Down to the last detail.”
“When you go to bed tonight, picture me wearing that.”
“Do you remember the results of that particular experiment?” he asked.
She remembered every erotic detail—the fire in his eyes, the power of his erection, bold and flattering. How he’d looked at her as if she was the only woman in the world. She loved how he could focus like that, and not be distracted.
“I remember,” she said, amazed at how aroused she’d become just from the memories. “If you want to call me after Chance leaves and you’re in bed, we could talk about it. I’ve never had phone sex, but it might be an adventure. Not as good as the real thing, of course, but—”
“Experiments are only as effective as the results.”
“Then we’ll have to test the theory, won’t we?” She was caught between pulse-pounding arousal and an image of him being frustrated at not being free to talk, which made her smile.
“It should prove to be an interesting discussion. I’ll talk to you later, Sara Beth.”
“For sure.” She ended the call, shook herself into awareness again, then got ready for bed, keeping her phone close by.
When it rang finally, she drew a settling breath before she answered—to a dial tone. It rang again, then she realized it wasn’t her phone but her doorbell. She slid her feet into her teddy-bear slippers and hurried down the stairs.
“Liar,” he said, drenched with rain.
He seemed angry. “Ted—”
“I had to park three blocks away, and I ran all the way here, and you’re not wearing the tiger. You’ve got your flannel fire engines on.”
She smiled innocently. “It’s cold without you.”
He picked her up, carried her up the stairs, her pajamas getting wet where they touched him. He went directly into her bedroom, stood her by her bed and unbuttoned her top only enough to yank it over her head.
“I’m not complaining, Sara Beth. I have fond memories of these pajamas.” He shoved her bottoms off, kneeling before her, teasing her by trailing his tongue along her skin as he exposed it. Then she helped him get rid of his wet clothes.
