He was getting ready to climb into the ambulance.
“I’ll meet you at the hospital,” she said.
Donovan stopped. “Have someone drive you.”
She opened her mouth to protest. “Anna, please. You’re upset and…if you’re not careful…”
“I’ll have someone drive me,” she promised. She would not argue this time, and she wouldn’t cause Donovan to worry about her as well as Frank. He’d had too many personal experiences with auto accidents and their victims.
As he moved into the ambulance, the commanding presence he had been for the past few minutes seemed to disappear. His shoulders sagged. He looked beaten. He hesitated for just a second. Then he took a visible breath, squared his shoulders and moved in to see to Frank.
Hours later, at the hospital, after Anna had talked to a woozy Frank and found out that Frank had suffered a mild concussion, had a broken arm, several gashes and cuts and many bruises along with a broken rib, but that he would be back on his bike in time, Anna finally felt as if she could breathe.
People had been coming and going the entire time she was here. So many people knew and cared about Frank. Tom had shown up. He’d pressed a copy of a flier into her hands.
“They were handing these out at the office. Frank is on the school paper and even though it’s summer, some of the kids managed to get a notice out about Frank’s accident. Everyone was worried about him, and this seemed like a good way to pass the news along.”
Anna read the copy, its words bringing tears to her eyes.
“Thank you,” she told Tom.
“I thought the Doc might want to read it,” he said, looking a bit sheepish. “Hey, it’s only a school rag, but how often do you make the papers?”
It was a lame excuse, but Anna was grateful. She clutched the piece of paper and made her way to a room where one of the interns had told her that Dr. Barrett was resting. The door was open, so she slid inside.
Donovan was on a couch, his big body taking up the whole space. He lay on his side, his lashes resting on his cheeks. Even with his eyes closed, he looked exhausted. He looked wonderful, Anna thought.
She stepped forward. The temptation to just stand here and watch him breathe was too much for her. She took another step. A hand reached out and looped around her wrist. She gasped and looked into Donovan’s eyes.
He started to sit up.
“No, don’t,” she said. “You’re tired.”
He ignored her and sat up anyway.
“You should be home,” he told her.
“You, too.”
He shrugged. “I heard that Frank is going to be fine,” she told him.
“I know. I’m…glad.” His voice was thick with emotion.
“You were pretty wonderful, you know.”
Donovan frowned. He looked down at his hands as if he didn’t know what they were and then he looked at Anna. “I didn’t save him, Anna. He would have survived had I not been there.”
“Not everyone feels that way.” She held out the flier. It was a childish recounting of how Frank had been hit by a car and how Donovan Barrett had saved his life. She explained why Frank’s friends had written the missive. “You’re a hero to them,” she said.
“Go home, Anna,” he said wearily.
She shook her head.
“Anna, I balked. I froze. When we heard that crash, I knew it was Frank. You ran. I didn’t. For a good ten seconds, maybe more, I didn’t even move. And when I got to the scene, I couldn’t do a thing. My hands were like stones. My mind wouldn’t function. At all. If you hadn’t called my name, if you hadn’t been there, if the situation had been worse…”
He shoved one hand back though his hair. “Go home, Anna.”
“Donovan, I—”
“No. Don’t.”
She looked into his eyes and knew there was nothing she could say. Her mind was screaming at her to say something, do something, to stop the tragedy that was happening.
Donovan was drawing back into himself. He was telling her that he had failed Frank, but she didn’t think that was the whole of it. More likely, he wasn’t seeing Frank lying on the street, but Ben, while Donovan froze and let him die.
“Come home,” she said. She touched his arm. She lay a hand on his chest.
Donovan sucked in a deep breath and then he grasped her. He pulled her against him, resting his chin on top of her head.
“I can’t be what you need me to be, Anna. And I won’t be anything less. Go home, sweetheart.”
Anna’s heart broke on the endearment. Donovan was at it again. Protecting her. As he’d protected Frank, even as he’d protected the man who had hit Frank, by making the man lie down and remain still. Anna was equally sure that Donovan had given pieces of his soul to many people, trying to help them, to save them.
He’d probably even lost a time or two, but he’d kept trying…until Ben’s death had turned everything inside out.
“I’m no hero,” he whispered.
She nodded. “You don’t have to be.” She kissed him. But she knew he was so very wrong. He was her hero. He had been from the word go. But he wouldn’t want to hear that. She didn’t intend to tell him.
A chasm stood between her and the man she loved. One that seemed impossible to bridge. It had always been there. She had always accepted it. But as she’d watched Donovan with Frank today, as she’d seen him doing the work he’d been born to do, she’d learned something. Or maybe she’d simply opened her eyes to something she’d already known.
Life would always be full of dangers, frightening situations, the possibility of failure or even death. But if a person didn’t try, failure was a given. Death would win. Life had no chance. Donovan could have walked away from the accident and simply waited for someone else to take charge. He’d probably wanted to, but like it or not, he wasn’t built that way. People like Donovan gave life a chance, and even if they sometimes lost, the fact that they tried mattered.
She couldn’t blame Donovan for quitting his practice. He’d lost the ultimate. He’d lost a child. He’d outlived his baby. That was a life-changing situation. It made trying so much harder, seemingly impossible.
And yet…when it had counted, when there had been only him or no one to help, he had tried. He had given. If he found himself in that same situation again, he would do it again. Because of Ben, it would hurt. Ben would always be the one he hadn’t been able to help, but in the end he would still do what needed doing.
Anna took a deep breath and thought about where that left her. The chasm, the distance between herself and Donovan. She’d thought it was impassable, but just as there would always be chasms in life, there would always be bridge builders, too. Without people making an attempt to cross over, the chasm would remain forever.
Right now Donovan was on an island, separated from her and from life. What he needed was a bridge builder.
Anna closed her eyes. What if she failed?
She could damage him.
But he was already damaged. If she didn’t try, he would be alone forever on his island.
Anna picked up the phone. She said goodbye to her dreams and prayed for hope.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
DONOVAN was alone in the library. He was making lists of things that had to be done before he left Lake Geneva. And he had to leave. He was hurting Anna. He could see it in her eyes.
He had disrupted her life when all she had ever wanted was a child. Now she was worrying about him. That had been clear at the hospital yesterday.
Her friends were trying to match her up with him. He’d known that and he’d allowed it to go on, even encouraged it when he’d known he had nothing to offer a woman like Anna.
You love her. The words seemed to sizzle in the air. He couldn’t deny them. He loved Anna. Desperately. He’d told her he wasn’t a hero, and he wasn’t. Only years of experience had kept him going yesterday when he’d thought Frank’s life might hang in the balance. Yet he wanted to be a hero for her.
He intended to see that she got at least one of those. It was time to talk to Phil again and set things in motion at last.
The sound of the doorbell ringing broke into his thoughts. Anna was somewhere in the house, but the doorbell rang again. And again.
“She must be outside,” he muttered, amazed that he didn’t know exactly where she was. Ever since he’d come here he’d been constantly aware of her. The fact that he didn’t feel her presence now made it seem as if a piece of him was missing. She had to be outside.
He swung the door open. A couple was standing on the doorstep. He recognized the woman as Frank’s mother.
“Come in,” he said, motioning them inside.
The man shuffled his feet, looking slightly uncomfortable, even as he stepped over the threshold. “Thank you. Okay.” He held a baseball cap in his hands and was twisting it around and around. “We just…we wanted to thank you.”
Donovan froze. He frowned and opened his mouth.
“Don’t say you didn’t do anything,” the woman said. “Anna told me that you were denying that you made a difference, but, Dr. Barrett, we were there. Frank was really busted up. Maybe it wasn’t life or death, but it felt like it at the time. You cared, and you knew what you were doing. We could see that. Everyone could see it. Frank was afraid and hurting. You calmed him. You calmed us. You can’t know how much that meant.”
Anna walked in, then. She was accompanied by a man. Donovan recognized him as one of the EMTs from the other day. “Dr. Barrett,” he said. “I just wanted to tell you that it was an honor working alongside you yesterday. Most of the time, it’s just me and my crew, and we’re usually there in a heartbeat, but it was a bad day for accidents and we were running a couple of minutes slower than I would have liked. I can’t tell you how glad I was to see that someone already had things in hand. Anna tells me that you had quite a reputation in Chicago, but I would never have known it.”
Donovan blinked and the man turned red. “By that, I mean that you didn’t get all high-handed just because you’re a Chicago physician. You helped us do our job and you let us do our job without throwing your weight around. I’d be happy to work with you again.”
“I—” Donovan didn’t know what to say. “Thank you. Same here.” He shook the man’s hand. Now was not the time to tell the man he had hung up his stethoscope for good.
Anna smiled and spoke quietly to the man, leading him into the kitchen where Frank’s parents were already ensconced. It seemed that there was a buffet in the kitchen.
“What’s this about?” Donovan asked Anna.
“It’s about truth,” she said. “It’s about heroes.”
He frowned. “I told you—”
She placed her hand over his mouth, then replaced her fingers with her lips. “I know what you told me. But today I want you to listen, to hear, the way you used to hear your patients. You were known as a sympathetic doctor. I know. I’ve looked up everything I could find about you in the newspapers, on the Internet, in blogs.”
“You’re kidding, right. Blogs?”
“Well…I might have posed a question or two. Someone might have written an oratory about you as a result. Your patients and their families loved you, Donovan. Let that happen here.”
“I can’t do that again, Anna. I can’t try to be a hero.”
“Then don’t be. You don’t have to be that if you don’t want to. Just be an ordinary man, one who cares. Because you do care. Be a doctor who uses his skills. Because you do have skills. Ones that make a difference.”
He didn’t know what to say to that. Anna was looking up at him, her eyes shining. And he couldn’t help himself. He kissed her. “I care. Very much,” he said.
“I know.” She smiled again. He knew she didn’t understand that he was talking about his feelings for her, not general feelings about the world or his former patients.
But he lost his chance to tell her. A steady stream of people began to file through his house. Parents. Frank’s friends. People who had been there on the roadside watching that day. The man who had been driving the sports car.
“You gave me hope when I was half out of my mind,” he told Donovan.
“I want my baby to have a doctor like you,” a pregnant woman said.
A man and woman with a little girl came up. “You helped Frankie,” the little girl said. “Frankie’s my friend.”
Another little boy tugged on his sleeve. “Frankie says you have a cool car.”
Donovan couldn’t help grinning. “You like cool cars?”
“Yup.”
He ended up taking the boy out to the garage. People streamed out of the house, the men and many of the women exclaiming over Donovan’s cool car, others strolling through his gardens.
“Thank you for being there,” some said. “Thank you for having us here.” They came; they smiled; they talked; they ate; they began to file out.
“Welcome to the area,” one elderly woman said, taking Donovan’s hand as she readied herself to leave. “I live in Chicago. I’ve heard of you. I know your reputation and I know what I saw the other day. You were given a gift. Not just the gift of healing, but the gift of caring and of soothing those who are hurting. It’s a difficult job, I don’t doubt that, but…to walk away from the gift…please don’t. We need people like you.”
Donovan felt his throat tighten. The woman was smiling at him. He remembered all the people who had come through here today. He remembered Frank. He remembered his patients back in Chicago…and Ben. Could he have saved Ben had he been there? He didn’t know. He would never know, but standing here today, he realized this much. He could help some people, save some children. Not all, but some.
It was a truth he had been hiding from. He looked around, trying to find Anna. Damn woman. She wouldn’t leave a man alone. She never had. Thank goodness.
Donovan smiled at the woman who had been talking to him. He thanked her. He took a deep breath and faced the rest of the truth.
The road back to life was going to be painful and scary, and he might need time to ease back in, but he saw now that he couldn’t really back away. He’d tried and he’d failed to quit. That was something to think about.
Then, suddenly, the last person left. The room went quiet. Donovan and Anna were alone. She’d been smiling at him all day but now she looked nervous. Tense. Uncertain. She walked across the floor, away from him, her heels clicking on the marble.
“Why?” he asked, but she didn’t turn around.
He went to her, slid his arms around her and turned her to face him. She looked down. He placed a finger under her chin and tilted her face up to look at him.
“Why did I invade your privacy and force you into a position like this?” she asked.
He smiled. “Maybe the question I should ask is how? How did you know that I needed this? How did you know that it was inevitable that I would go back to medicine, that I couldn’t walk away?”
She bit her lip. She took a deep breath. “Because I know you. Because I love you.”
He closed his eyes, tightening his hold on her, pulling her so close that she was almost a part of his body. His lips came down on hers. “You wonderful, crazy, stubborn, amazing woman.”
“It’s all right that you don’t love me,” she said. “The truth is that, like it or not, what I saw yesterday was…you need to be a doctor. You could never walk away from an injured child. That’s not the way you’re made. And I—I just wanted you to have what you needed.”
Donovan pulled back. “And you know what I need?”
She nodded slowly. “Yes. To go back to Chicago and take up your practice again.”
Anna stared up at Donovan, her heart both rejoicing and breaking at the same time. Donovan was going to have some semblance of happiness and sanity and serenity again. He was going to be a doctor once more. She was pretty sure of that.
And she? She was going to lose him forever. She tried to keep sm
iling. Why had she admitted that she loved him? Because it was the truth and because it was, indeed, why she understood his needs.
His eyes were dark. He swept her closer. “What if you’re what I need, Anna? What if I love you?”
Her heart beat faster. She placed her hands on his chest and tried to read his expression.
“You don’t. Desire isn’t love.”
“No,” he agreed. “It isn’t, and I do desire you. But I’ve loved you from the day I met you, even if I didn’t want to admit it. How could I not? You stirred up my world, drove me crazy and insisted on doing what was best for me. I came here, recklessly running from my life and ran right into you. It was the luckiest day of my life, Anna.”
Donovan brought his lips down on hers. He tasted, he took, he gave back everything until Anna was shaking so hard she could barely stand.
Leading her to a sofa in the sunroom that overlooked the lake, Donovan pulled her close. “I’ve been running away for too long,” he said. “Now I want to run to something. To you, Anna. Love me. Marry me?”
“You can’t be sure.” She frowned.
He smiled. “I’m positive. I don’t want to live without you in my life.”
She smiled up at him. “Yes, but…”
Alarm flashed in his eyes. “But what?”
She leaned closer. “I don’t have to have a child. I don’t want you to worry about that.”
“It’s been your dream.”
“My dream was to have someone to love unconditionally.” She kissed him again.
When she pulled back, he was smiling. “I think we have enough love to spare for a child.”
“You don’t have to do that.”
He shook his head. “When Frank was hurt, a part of me knew that I couldn’t hold back and still help him. I couldn’t shield my heart without freezing up. And you know something? I dreamed of Ben last night. Maybe it was because his birthday was near and you told me that it should be celebrated. Maybe it was because of what happened yesterday, but…he was smiling. And I think Ben would have loved Frank, too. He would be glad I was with him in the ambulance. If they were the same age they might have become friends. So, I’m betting my son will understand that I’ll never stop loving him even if I have other children to love.”
The Maid and the Millionaire Page 13
