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Contents:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
Epilogue
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Chapter One
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Dr. Alexandra Larson had a fantasy. It was decidedly tame, as fantasies went, but she'd never regarded herself as terribly creative or adventurous. She didn't even have what she considered any real sense of style. She just played it safe. She wore her dark hair short, her make-up soft and her clothes either simply tailored or loose, depending on her mood or what was handy. And she always shied away from the extravagant, the outrageous or the truly indulgent.
She considered her little daydream the ultimate indulgence.
In it, she was alone. In a hot bath. The kind of bath a woman had to carefully ease into while aromatic steam fogged the room, beaded on her chest and filled her lungs. The kind where skin pinked and knotted muscles relaxed in the liquid heat, and the mind emptied of everything but the knowledge that all she had to do was … soak.
She savored that image, lingered over the details, letting her mind drift to it as she ran between surgery, hospital rounds, clinic appointments, day care and, occasionally, the vet.
She'd been caught indulging in it when her pager had gone off as she'd pulled into her driveway forty minutes ago. It was her thirty-second birthday. She should have been able to toy with the thoughts a little longer. Instead, she was scrubbing in for surgery with barrel-chested Ian Whitfield, one of the trauma doctors from emergency, and the fantasy of aromatic steam had given way to the reality of antibacterial scrub.
"What can you tell me?" she asked, working lather from her fingertips to beyond her elbows. "I was only told that we have a thirty-four-year-old male with a compound femur. Are we dealing with anything else?"
"CT shows no concussion or other internal injuries. The compound break in the left leg is the worst of it. That's why I asked for the orthopedic surgeon on call."
Between the green cap covering the man's receding hairline and the band of white mask obliterating the bottom half of his ruddy face, only his bespectacled eyes were visible. They narrowed, light bouncing off his lenses, as he shook his head. "That's one lucky man in there. According to the paramedics, a truck blew a light and nailed him full on the driver's door."
"He was driving?"
"Apparently."
That meant the victim had borne the brunt of the impact. Alex stored that detail as she reached for a brush to work under her short, unpolished nails. The force of that impact also explained how such a strong bone had penetrated the lower thigh.
She'd already seen her patient's X-rays. The femur, the long bone of his upper leg, had fractured in two places. The distal break, the one closest to the knee, had also splintered into a jagged spike.
The good news was that she'd seen far worse. The bad news was that this sort of break often led to nasty complications.
"Was anyone able to get a medical history from him?" she asked.
"They had him full of morphine when they brought him in, but we got enough to determine that he's never had any medical problems. Except for his injuries, he appears to be in excellent shape."
"Excellent is an understatement." A gowned and masked surgical nurse with an awestruck look in her heavily made-up eyes rustled through the bright, white-tiled room in her paper booties. "That has to be the most gorgeous hunk of muscle and testosterone to ever grace an operating table. No man that rich should look that good."
Alex glanced up. As a surgeon, the emergency patient's identity made no difference to her. She helped where she could, in and out of the operating room, and this man definitely needed her assistance. But the female part of her—the part she tended to neglect the most—was suddenly curious to know who she was about to put back together.
The X-rays had been labeled C. Harrington. Beyond that, all that had registered was the damage done to an otherwise impressively healthy bone.
Rita Sanchez, one of Alex's favorite scrub nurses, approached the door of the surgical suite. "He may be gorgeous, Michelle," she conceded, her tone disapproving, "but he'll walk over anyone to get what he wants. That's what I read in the papers, anyway." Her back to the door to push it open, her hands in the air to keep them sterile, she paused. "I wonder what he's doing in Honeygroye."
"There can only be one reason Chase Harrington would be here." Pushing forward on the horseshoe-shaped knee handle to turn off the water, Whitfield snagged a sterile towel. "The man lives, eats and breathes mergers and takeovers. We've had a couple of manufacturing facilities take off here in the last couple of years. I'll bet my golf clubs he's after one of them. I just wish I knew which one it was," he muttered. "The stock is bound to go up."
"What about you, Doctor?" the matronly nurse asked Alex. "Why do you think he's here?"
"I haven't a clue." Alex flashed her a smile, taking a towel herself. "I really don't know that much about him."
All she did know was that Chase Harrington was one of those people whose name popped up on newscasts and in print because what he did and what he owned set him apart from the masses. As she understood it, the man's lust for multi-million-dollar mergers and trades was as legendary as his drive, his ambition and his tendency to run over anyone who stood in his way. Since his image routinely graced the covers of Time and Newsweek in waiting and exam rooms, she even knew what he looked like. She wouldn't go quite as far as the early-twenty-something Michelle had in her sighing description of the man, but he was rather attractive—if one was drawn to the lean, chiseled type.
As for the body the impressionable nurse had described, when Alex, gowned and gloved, backed through the door of the surgical suite, all she could tell was that it was … long.
The familiar beep of the heart monitor underscored the quiet murmur of conversation as she approached the blue-draped form on the operating table. The trauma doctor and the anesthesiologist hovered at the head. At the other end, the surgical nurses and another assistant were setting up stainless-steel trays of barbaric-looking instruments that appeared more suitable for torture than healing.
The only exposed parts of the patient were the facial laceration Whitfield had already starting suturing and the thigh she would repair.
The thigh was what had her attention.
It was a mess.
"Ouch," she whispered, and reached for the large plastic bottle of clear antibiotic wash Rita had anticipated she would want.
"Was he alone?" she heard Michelle ask.
Rita clamped a gauze pad with a hemostat, holding it ready. "You mean, was there a woman with him?"
"This suture's too big." Metal ticked softly against metal when the curved needle Whitfield tossed landed on a tray. "I need a one-point-three."
Michelle was the float nurse, the one who moved about the room taking supplies and materials to and from the team members at the table. "I'm just curious," she defended on her way to the supply cabinet a few paces away. "If he's alone, he might appreciate a little extra TLC when he wakes up."
"I'd give up that idea right now," Alex's assistant chided. "I'm sure he has someone waiting to give him all the TLC he needs. The man dates models."
Paper crackled as Michelle peeled a small packet open and held it out. "Maybe so. But no one's been able to get him near an altar yet. Maybe he's tired of male-fantasy quality women and rich society types."
The bushy-browed anesthesiologist snorted. "I doubt it."
Whitfield held up the fine-threaded and curved suture, eyed it, and went back to work. "I don't think he spends as much time running around as the press says he does. I read an article in Forbes that said he puts in sixteen-hour days. His latest thing is the high-tech market.
And sailing," he added, as he methodically stitched. "It's his passion. That same article said he's putting together a team to race in the next America's Cup."
Checking his patient's vital signs on the monitors, the anesthesiologist tweaked the flow of gas keeping the man under discussion … under. "I thought it was rock climbing he was into. Didn't he climb Mt. McKinley last year?"
"I'd heard that, too." Reverence entered Whitfield's voice. "The man never slows down. I don't know which I envy more. His investment portfolio or his stamina. I hiked the Grand Canyon a few years ago, but I can't imagine climbing a mountain."
Michelle sighed. "I wonder what he'd planned to do next."
"I hope it wasn't anything he had his heart set on," Alex murmured. "The only thing this guy's going to be climbing for a while is the training stairs in the physical therapy department."
Looking from the four-inch gash in his thigh, she critically eyed the X-ray on the monitor beside her to judge the position of the upper, unexposed break. The team was still talking, their voices low, but everything they said only made Chase Harrington sound more and more like a man who played as hard as he worked and who wouldn't have anything left for a relationship even if someone did slow him down long enough to snag him.
No woman in her right mind would want to fall for a man like that. A woman needed a partner, someone to share with. Someone who cared enough to be there even when things got rough. Someone who wouldn't walk away, leaving her to handle everything alone just when she needed him most.
She jerked her glance toward the head of the table, annoyed with herself for becoming distracted, displeased with the unwanted direction of her thoughts.
"Move that retractor higher. Perfect," she murmured, pointedly turning her attention to debriding the open wound. "I need to cauterize these bleeders."
Ian took his last stitch. "I'm ready to assist."
"Would you like your music, Dr. Larson?" Rita asked her.
Alex usually liked to have music while she worked, preferably classical and mostly to keep from inadvertently humming whichever Disney tune her four-year-old son had plugged into the car stereo. But she declined the subliminal diversion tonight. As she set about the painstaking task of manipulating, drilling and pinning to stabilize the breaks, her only other thought was that Chase Harrington was going to slow down for a while, whether he liked the idea or not.
The surgery took over two hours. It took Alex another half hour to dictate nursing instructions and the surgical notes chronicling the procedure that, given the hour, she probably could have put off until morning.
She never put off anything when it came to her patients, though. It was the personal stuff she let slide—which was why her washing machine still leaked, why she hadn't started the renovations on the potentially lovely old house she'd finally plunged in and bought last year. And why, she remembered, grimacing when she did, she was always running out of milk at home.
She'd meant to go to the grocery store after she'd picked up Tyler from child care, but they'd stopped at Hamburger Jack's for dinner because Tyler had really, really needed the newest plastic race car that came with the kiddy meal and she'd flat forgotten about the milk.
Hoping she wouldn't drive right past the Circle K on her way home and forget it again, she headed for the recovery room. If she hadn't been up to her eyebrows in student loans and house and car payments, she'd have hired a personal assistant. Someone to tend to details like picking up the dry cleaning, paying bills and keeping the kitchen stocked with SpaghettiOs and Lean Cuisine.
She'd bet Chase Harrington had one.
She'd bet he had a whole bloody staff.
His long, lean body lay utterly still on one of the wheeled gurneys in the curtainless, utilitarian room. Tubes and monitor lines ran every which way, his body's functions converted to spiking lines and digital numbers on screens and illuminated displays. The surgical drapes that had helped make him more of an anonymous procedure than a person were gone, replaced with a white thermal blanket that covered everything but one arm and his bandaged and braced leg.
Nodding to the nurse in green scrubs who'd just administered the painkiller she'd ordered, Alex stopped beside the gurney. A white gauze bandage covered his upper left cheekbone and a bruise had began to form beneath his left eye. Even battered, broken and with parts of him turning the color of a bing cherry, he was an undeniably attractive man. His features were chiseled, his nose narrow, his mouth sculpted and sensual. Dark eyebrows slashed above curves of spiky, soot-colored lashes. His hair was more brown than black, cut short and barbered with the sort of precision she supposed someone with his wealth might demand of those he paid to tend him.
"Mr. Harrington," she said quietly, knowing he couldn't yet focus but that he could hear her well enough. "Chase," she expanded, offering him the comfort of hearing his name, "you came through surgery just fine. You're in recovery. You'll be here for a while before they take you to a room. Everything went really well." She knew many patients emerged from anesthesia unaware that the procedure was already over. Some returned to consciousness worrying about the outcome. Either way, she never hesitated to relieve whatever anxiety she could as soon as possible. "Are you with me?"
His eyes blinked open, but she'd barely caught a glimpse of breathtaking blue before they drifted closed again.
"What time is it?"
His voice was deep, a low, smoky rasp made thick by drugs and raw from the airway that had been in his throat. "After eleven."
Once more he opened his eyes. Once more they drifted closed.
"Morning or night?"
"Night. You've just come from surgery," she repeated, thinking he was trying to orient himself. "You were brought up here from Emergency. Do you remember what happened?"
His brow furrowed. "I was in an accident," he murmured, trying to lift his broad hand to his forehead. An IV was taped into place in a vein above his wrist. From beneath the open edge of his blue-dotted hospital gown, EKG leads trailed over the corded muscles of his wide shoulders. "I need a … phone."
Too drugged to master the effort, his hand fell. "I missed a meeting. It was … where was it?" he asked, sounding as if he were trying to remember where he was supposed to have been. "Why can't I think?"
"Because the anesthetic is still in your system," she told him, rather surprised he sounded as coherent as he did. It took a while for such heavy anesthesia to loosen its grip. Normally, all a patient wanted to do was sleep. Yet, he refused to give up and let the drugs carry him off again. "That's perfectly normal. Just forget about the phone for now."
"Can't. It was important," he stressed thickly.
"Nothing's as important right now for you as rest."
His hand lifted once more, this time to stop her. "Don't go. Please." The word came out as little more than a whisper. "Don't."
The metal siderails were up on the gurney. Catching his arm to keep him from pulling on a lead or bumping the IV, she lowered it to his side.
His hand caught hers. "I need to let them know."
"Let them know what?" she asked, as surprised by the strength in his grip as by the urgency behind his rasped words. Given the sedation he'd had, that urgency totally confused her. It was the same sort of frantic undertone she'd encountered when accident victims came out of surgery worried about someone who'd been in the accident with them, an overwhelming need that reached beyond any immediate concern for themselves.
But he'd been alone. And he was talking about a meeting.
"They need to know I didn't … stand them up."
The soft click and beep of monitors melded with the quiet shuffle of the nurse moving around Alex as she stood with her hand in his, studying the compelling lines of his face. She couldn't begin to imagine what sort of deal he had going that was so important to him that he'd fight through the fog of drugs to keep from jeopardizing it. It was none of her business anyway.
He was her business though. And she definitely recognized signs of an iron wil
l when she saw one. Right now, that will was definitely working against him.
Shelving an odd hint of dread at the thought of encountering that will when he was conscious, she curved her free hand over his shoulder. She wanted him calm. Better yet, she wanted him sleeping. "What time was your meeting?"
Over the blip of the heart monitor, he whispered, "Seven-thirty."
"As late as it is, I'm sure your party has already figured out that you're not showing up tonight. You can talk to your secretary in the morning and straighten out everything." Practicality joined assurance. "You wouldn't be able to carry on a phone conversation anyway. Your voice is barely audible."
His brow furrowed at that.
"Try to let go of it for now," she urged. "Get some rest."
The muscles beneath her hand felt as hard as stone, but she could feel him relaxing beneath her touch. He said nothing else as she stood there watching the furrows ease from his brow and listening to his breathing grow slow and even.
Letting her hand slip from his, Alex stepped back, her glance cutting to the nurse hanging a fresh bag of saline for his IV. She didn't believe for a moment that he'd accepted her logic or her suggestion. The painkiller he'd been given had just kicked in. With the sedatives still in his system, he couldn't have stayed awake no matter how hard he'd tried.
She glanced at the institutional black-and-white clock high on the wall.
Her day had started nearly twenty hours ago and she was tired. Not exhausted the way she'd so often been during her residency. "Exhausted" came after forty hours with no sleep. But those days of honing her skills in the competitive battlefield of a teaching hospital were over. She had a normal life now. As normal as any practicing surgeon and single mom had, anyway. This kind of tired was a piece of cake.
"I don't imagine any of his family is here yet. Did they want me to call?"
"His family wasn't notified," the soft-spoken nurse replied. "His chart says the only person he wanted contacted was his lawyer."
DR. MOM AND THE MILLIONAIRE Page 1
