“No,” she agreed, banking down another wave of emotion, “I shouldn’t have. But I went on.” She remembered something she’d heard from a popular movie. “Like the man said, you either get busy with the business of dying, or you get busy with the business of living. I had a daughter, a father and a practice. My choice was made for me.” She was breaking her own rules, telling him this. Determined to turn the tables, she looked at Terrance. “What about you? Where did you go after your father’s funeral?”
He thought for a moment. “I’m not even sure at first.”
The month that followed his rude awakening that medicine was not the answer to everything, he’d just driven endlessly, staying at motels along the way, trying to find answers in his head. Bypassing anything that had to do with his heart because that route was far too painful to revisit.
Eventually his journey had taken him to Washington, D.C., to the very agency his father had dedicated his life to.
It was there that his path suddenly became clear. If he and medicine hadn’t been able to save his father, at least he could take his father’s place in the scheme of things. He’d become a DEA agent, picking up his father’s sword where it had been dropped and wielding it against the many-headed hydra monster that illegal drug importation had become.
Terrance’s eyes shifted to Alix’s face. He couldn’t tell her all that. Couldn’t tell her what he was without jeopardizing his operation.
So he told her the lies that some computer wizard at the home office had neatly input into Boston General’s data base, the same records and lies that had gone to Dr. Beauchamp when he had applied for a position with Blair Memorial.
“Eventually I wound up in Boston with Thomas.” His older brother was a partner in a large law firm there, and though he had stopped to see Thomas on his way to Washington, he hadn’t stayed. “Thomas talked me into giving medicine another chance, saying it would be a shame to throw all that effort and education away. He reminded me that for every patient that was lost, there were more that were saved.”
A shiver went down her spine as she recognized the mantra they used to say to each other whenever the rigors of the day got to them and their spirits flagged.
Had he come to her, she would have told him that—and so much more. But he hadn’t come to her. He had gone from her.
“Several of the doctors at Boston General were Thomas’s clients, so he got me an interview with them.” Terrance wrapped it up. He absolutely hated having to lie to her. “I joined their staff and stayed there until I came back here.”
Which led them back full circle to her nagging question. “Why?”
“Nostalgia.” That was what he was feeling, sitting here opposite her. That and a whole lot more that he couldn’t even put a name to. “Maybe to make amends if I could.”
She wasn’t about to go down that slippery slope again, not even with the best set of skis the world had to offer. “Stick with nostalgia.”
He caught her wrist, forcing her to look at him. “Alix, I can’t make it up to you—”
“No, you can’t.” She surprised herself at how firm her voice could sound, even while her insides were turning to jelly.
“But I’d like to try.” Was she wavering just the slightest bit? Or was that just his imagination?
Her eyes frosted over. “There’s no point.”
“There’s every point,” he insisted, refusing to back away. “I didn’t know you were an attending at Blair, but I was hoping to try to look you up once I got settled in Bedford.”
She didn’t want to be looked up or made amends to or anything at all. She wanted to be left alone. It was the only way she could go on coping. “We’ve moved on. Let’s leave it that way.”
He’d held her in his arms and made love with her endlessly. Now that he was here, looking at her, he knew he had to give this a try. “Can we at least be friends?”
“I don’t think so.” You gave up that right a long time ago.
He refused to give up so easily. “Would you at least let me try?”
She glanced at her watch. Her untouched coffee had grown cold. She rose to her feet, picking up her tray. “Our break’s over. I’ll see you in the E.R., Doctor.”
“Right.”
Maybe it was better this way, he thought. Starting something now would only end badly. He couldn’t let her into his life now any more than he’d been able to let her in before.
With a sigh he rose to his feet. Terrance took his tray to the counter, letting Alix get ahead of him and leave first.
Alix watched the lights of passing cars chase each other across her ceiling. It was the middle of the night and she was wide awake.
Damn him, she thought angrily, damn Terrance for coming back, for messing with her mind and throwing her whole world off-kilter. Again. Once should have been the limit.
No one can hurt you if you don’t let them.
That had been her father’s advice to her when her heart had been breaking all those years ago. His advice had been harder to take than he could have dreamed. She hadn’t wanted to be hurt, certainly hadn’t wanted to pine for Terrance when he so obviously hadn’t been pining for her, but it had taken almost a superhuman effort for her to shed both feelings from her life.
That first year without him had been hell. Each year had been a little easier, but it had all taken time and effort.
Blankets tangled up around her legs, she kicked them free as she turned on her side.
Nostalgia, was it?
Well, he damn well knew where he could put his nostalgia. She wasn’t about to allow him to undo six carefully crafted years just because he decided to come strolling back into her life.
Taking a deep breath, she smoothed down the covers on either side of her. She would get through this ordeal, she promised herself. And once Terrance had the lay of the land under his belt, he’d be on his own. Beauchamp had made a point of telling her that the assignment was for a month. That meant she had less than three weeks left. She could do it.
And after that, she thought as she punched her pillow, the man could go to hell.
If not before.
Pleased with her pronouncement, she closed her eyes.
“Mommy…”
Alix’s eyes flew up.
“Mommy…”
She heard her daughter’s voice floating to her from down the hall.
Oh, well, she wasn’t really about to get any sleep tonight, anyway. Which meant that she welcomed the diversion her daughter provided.
Throwing off the covers, Alix got up.
Chapter 6
“Anything bothering you tonight, honey?” Daniel DuCane glanced at his daughter just before he opened his refrigerator for another round of beers. The men sitting around the green felt gaming table in his recreation room had asked for seconds the instant Daniel had gotten up.
“No.”
Alix ripped open a jumbo bag of potato chips a little too forcefully. Chips went flying in every direction before she managed to shut the bag again, containing the rest. Algernon, her father’s twelve-year-old golden retriever, who had been sleeping on the tile floor immediately came to life. He ran across the floor, eager to help himself to the bounty scattered around him before it was cleared away.
Alix sighed as she looked down at the mess. “Why do you ask?”
Daniel nodded his head at the fallout. “That, for one.”
Setting the bottles of beer down on the gray granite kitchen counter, he crossed to where she was standing. Compacting his large frame, he crouched down beside her and began picking up the chips that Algernon hadn’t managed to suck in yet.
“You seem preoccupied. Where’s that famous Alix banter? I’d think after a week’s hiatus,” he said, referring to the fact that she’d passed on their weekly game last week, “you’d be back in royal form, flattering the egos of a roomful of old men who dote on you.” Daniel chuckled, slanting a look at his daughter as he rose to his feet again. “Half of whom can remember d
iapering you.”
“Thanks, Dad,” she cracked. “I needed that image.”
Usually being around her father’s cronies did have a knack of making her feel young and carefree, temporarily removing the weight she normally carried on her shoulders. In her opinion, playing in the weekly poker game that had gone on since she was a little girl was better than spending a weekend at a spa, being massaged and pampered.
But right now, not even fending off Tyler Mack’s flirtation made her forget what was going on in her daily life.
She was surprised her father hadn’t already heard. Granted he was rarely at Blair these days, but still, he had friends there and got together with them on a regular basis. She would have thought that someone would have told him about “the new pediatrician.”
Alix tossed the chips she’d picked up into the garbage beneath the sink and then dusted off her hands. She turned around to look at her father. “You’re not much on hospital gossip, are you?”
She got his attention. He’d always been subtly protective of her.
But before he could say anything, he heard someone enter the kitchen. “Someone gossiping about you, Alley-girl?”
She looked over her shoulder toward the doorway and saw Roy Zane, Bedford’s first retired homicide detective, walking in. Sixty-eight, with snow-white hair and a gut that threatened to snap his struggling size forty belt, there was still a twinkle in his eye when he woke up each morning.
Roy put a fatherly arm around her shoulders. “Just tell me who. I’ll have Roy Jr. bring him in and scare the pants off him.”
Daniel shook his head, taking out another bag of chips from the pantry. He and Roy had been best friends since before either had met their future wives, had been each other’s best man and stood by each other when each had buried his wife. They were closer than brothers.
“More taxpayer money put to good use,” Daniel quipped, tossing the bag to Alix. “Try not to distribute those quite so liberally.”
“Hey, Bedford’s got a homicide detective with no homicides to investigative for the most part,” Roy protested. It was no secret that he was proud enough to burst that his son had followed in his footsteps and joined the force. “Gotta keep himself busy somehow.”
Daniel raised his deep-blue eyes, indicating the doorway. “This was a private conversation, Roy.” Picking up the bottles he’d set down, Daniel handed them to Roy. “Go water the players,” he instructed.
Roy clutched all five bottles against his chest. “Don’t have to tell me twice.” But as he began to leave, he paused to look at Alix. “Remember, you need anything, you know who to ask.”
She smiled, touched at the older man’s concern. “Yes, I do.”
Daniel waited until Roy was well clear of the kitchen. He looked at his only child seriously. “Do you need anything, Alix?”
“Maybe a breather.”
She looked up at her father. Still a handsome man at sixty-five, with a full head of hair and a waistline that had thickened only slightly over the years, he would have been well within his rights to retire like most of the men in the other room. But he still kept his hand in, reducing his patient load and coming in three times a week. He shared his office with a much younger man who was filled with the same enthusiasm Daniel had had when he’d graduated medical school. Warren Kline took up the slack, but her father was always available for consultation. She figured they’d probably bury her dad with his lab coat on and his stethoscope in his hand.
“You were saying about gossip?” he prodded.
She debated not telling him at the last moment, then decided against it. There were no secrets between them. Now would be a poor time to start. “Terrance McCall is back.”
Daniel’s face sobered considerably. He could remember the agony Alix had gone through when Terrance had just disappeared without warning. Never one to complain, she’d surprised him by breaking down in front of him. He’d never felt so helpless, so impotent in his life. Terrance had broken his daughter’s heart and he’d wanted to cut the former’s out as payback. Vengeful stuff for a man who went out of his way not to step on a spider.
“And?” Daniel coaxed gently, swallowing the offer to bring her Terrance’s head on a platter.
And I don’t know if I’m coming or going, Dad. I want to hate him, to block out everything I ever felt about him, but I can’t.
Alix tried to summon a smile. “And Dr. Beauchamp asked me to show him around the hospital, to act as his ‘mentor’ until he gets his ‘hospital legs.’” Her lips barely curved at her own quip.
Daniel searched her face. He knew it better than his own, knew what every nuance on it meant. But she was shutting him out. “What does he have to say for himself?”
She shrugged, looking away. “That he’s sorry.”
Her father laughed shortly. “I’m sure he is. The man walked out on the best thing in his life, the day he left you.”
This time she did smile. Thank God for her father. What would she have done without him all these years? He never judged, always supported. What other father would have taken her to a mother-daughter gathering in junior high school? The man was one of a kind.
“Not that you’re prejudiced or anything.”
“Totally impartial,” he agreed. And then he tried to second-guess her thoughts. “Alix, you want me to talk to Clarence for you? Have him hand off the baby-sitting assignment to someone else?”
That would be running, and she didn’t run. Not ever. “No.”
He smiled. “I didn’t think so. Stubborn, like your mother.” He sighed. After all these years, he still missed her. “Couldn’t get her to listen to reason, either. Is he here for good?”
Again she shrugged. Picking up the kitchen scissors, she cut the bag of potato chips rather than rip it. Algernon gave up waiting for a free handout and trotted back to his corner to sleep.
“He says so.”
Daniel took his cue from her tone. “But you don’t think so.”
She sighed, pouring the chips into the bowl she’d brought in. “I don’t know what to think, not when it comes to Terrance.”
“One day at a time, honey, that’s all we can do. Just one day at a time.” He paused as he picked up the refreshed bowl of chips. Algernon raised his head in a last-ditch attempt for more handouts. The animal looked up at him with mournful brown eyes that seemed to say he hadn’t eaten in two weeks. “You already had yours,” he told the dog.
Algernon lowered his head and laid it on his paws. The animal seemed to sigh.
“Alg,” Daniel called to the pet. The dog was instantly alert. “Catch.” He threw two chips into the air, neither of which ever completed their arc. Instead, they disappeared behind doggy lips as the animal leaped up to catch his own version of fast food. Daniel laughed, then turned his attention back to Alix. “I can talk to Terrance for you if you’d like. Ask him questions you can’t.”
“There’s nothing I can’t ask him, Dad. But he left me,” she pointed out. “The answers don’t matter.”
He looked at her pointedly. “Maybe they should matter.” When she looked at him in surprise, he added, “Just a friendly suggestion.”
Maybe he was right, Alix thought, taking a couple of beers out for herself and her father. But she didn’t want to think about that just now.
“Okay everyone,” she announced, coming back into the room. “I’ve been letting you slide. Now let’s get down to some serious poker playing.”
The hooting comments that met her challenge warmed her heart.
“I heard we had new blood. Thought I’d introduce myself before the grind got to you.”
Terrance was completely aware that the slightly shorter man standing before him in the first-floor hospital corridor was taking measure of him from head to foot. Whenever possible, William Harris covered his more than slight inferiority complex with a rampaging display of superiority.
He extended his hand to him, king to vassal. “Dr. William Harris.”
T
errance took the hand that was offered, shaking it firmly. “Yes, I know. Terrance McCall.”
A quizzical brow rose on the handsome face. “Someone point me out?”
Terrance wondered how much it took to feed the man’s ego and if it was insatiable the way he’d heard. “Dr. DuCane.” He slipped his hands back into his pockets. “She’s overseeing my initialization here.”
At the mention of Alix’s name, an expression that could only be termed a subdued leer slipped over Harris’s lips. It rankled Terrance instantly.
“Ah, yes, Alix.” Harris nodded. “The unscalable citadel.”
Terrance kept his annoyance out of his voice, but it wasn’t easy. “What do you mean by that?”
There was mild disdain in Harris’s voice, as well as disbelief. “She’s one of the few women in the hospital who’s turned me down.”
That just shows she has taste, Terrance thought, maintaining his impassive expression. “Maybe she’s not ready to date yet. I heard that she was just recently widowed.”
“Not all that recently,” Harris contradicted. “Besides,” he hooted, “this isn’t turn-of-the-century India where the wife gets thrown on her dead husband’s funeral pyre. She doesn’t seem to know how to have a good time.”
Terrance bit back the desire to tell Harris that she wouldn’t be seen with scum like him. It wasn’t any business of his who she went out with, even someone like Harris. He reminded himself that he was trying to strike up a friendship with Harris, not have the man drawn and quartered.
Nonetheless, it was a tempting thought.
“Then why bother asking her out?”
Harris looked at him incredulously. “Man, have you seen that body of hers?”
Terrance realized he was clenching his fists within his lab coat. Beauchamp had been too kind when he’d alluded to Harris’s shortcomings. There was something overwhelmingly offensive about the grandson of the founder of the hospital. He was going to thoroughly enjoy bringing him down.
Undercover M.D. Page 6
