"She wanted me like she wanted a new dress or a new car." His voice sliced sharp as a scalpel. "Like anything else, the novelty wears off."
Deliberately, forcibly, he sought to blunt that betraying edge. All he managed to do was lower his tone.
"My mother … the woman I thought was my … Elena," he grated, sounding as if he didn't even know how to think of the woman anymore, "is a collector. She's happiest when she's just acquired something that she can show off or brag about. Art. Jewelry. People. I doubt she's ever believed she had any value herself, so she surrounds herself with things she thinks will give her worth.
"As for her raising me, there's no way she can take credit for that. I was raised by hired help. I'd come home from school for vacations and they'd be gone somewhere else. It was just me and the staff. But that was a blessing," he insisted, the dull edge of pain darkening the silvery shadows of his face. "The thing I'm not sure I'll ever get past is that they knew I had brothers."
The bitter edge of anger tested the control in his voice. The Harringtons hadn't denied him those relationships because they'd wanted to protect him somehow. Walter had wanted to protect his own money. Elena had just been too possessive to share. But Alex knew that Chase's anger had been there long before he'd encountered that last bit of proof of their selfishness. He'd reined it in, denied or ignored it. But it had existed far longer than he'd wanted to acknowledge. Those dark emotions were eating at him, consuming him as surely as a malignancy left unchecked destroyed its host.
It had already nearly destroyed his ability to let people get close. He hadn't even wanted to admit how important it was to him that he meet his brothers. He hadn't wanted to admit that he was staying around because of them, either.
In a way, she couldn't blame him. He probably couldn't honestly tell when someone was genuinely concerned for him. He'd grown up surrounded by people paid to "care" for him.
She was his doctor. On certain levels he was paying for her care, too.
"I see now why you didn't want anyone helping you here."
He pushed his fingers through his hair, the motion screaming with the agitation he ruthlessly banked. "You shouldn't have come out. I can't believe the stuff I unload on you."
She was sure he couldn't. He was a man who needed to be in control, who held himself in, guarded his heart and his thoughts so no one could get close enough to take advantage of him, to hurt him. He was a man who needed to have all the answers because not having them meant he was vulnerable somehow, and that sort of threat scared him to death.
"Maybe you just need to talk."
"You're my orthopedist, not my shrink."
She blinked twice, then looked down at the blossom she'd shredded.
She'd been listening as a friend.
Chase said nothing. He just watched her long enough to realize his disclaimer had stung and let his hand fall.
He'd never dropped his guard with anyone as much as he did with Alex. He'd said things to her that he'd never even admitted to himself until he heard himself growling them at her. He didn't know what it was about her that caused all those feelings to surface when they were together. Maybe it was because he couldn't get within six feet of her without wanting her, and that frustration fueled all the others.
Whatever caused it, he felt exposed and defensive. It was so much easier when people didn't know what mattered to him. It was so much easier when nothing had.
He hadn't intended to hurt her feelings.
Needing to make up for it, lousy at apologizing, he tried to change the subject completely.
"How about I take Brent with me to therapy?" he asked, disturbed by how uneasy she looked as she rose from the chaise. "He said his first session isn't until ten. If he goes with me, he won't have to wait around so long in the morning."
The same strained silence that had filled the air before he'd spoken rushed back to fill it again. The lilac-scented breeze stirred the leaves of the trees. The mating call of crickets melded with the distant bark of a dog. They were peaceful sounds. Calming sounds. Or, they should have been.
Alex was far more conscious of the tension radiating from Chase's long, lean body as he shifted on the chaise and eased his injured leg over the side.
"I'm sure he'd like that."
"I'll be out of there before his afternoon session, but I'll send the driver back for him when he's through so he doesn't have to wait until you're finished. He can hang out here and watch videos or something."
She knew what he was doing. She even appreciated his effort to smooth over his blunt rejection moments ago. The efforts just weren't working all that well. He still sounded as tense as he looked and when he reached for his crutches to pull himself upright, he knocked one from where they rested against the table and swore.
"Let me—"
"I can do this," he muttered, clearly hating the idea of not being able to simply stand up when he wanted to.
"You won't have any leverage," she muttered back. Ignoring his glare, she bent to retrieve what he'd dropped. He had a right to his anger. He had the right to let her know he didn't want her getting any closer than she already was. But he had no business doing something that could require her to go back into surgery tonight. "There aren't any arms on that thing to push yourself up with."
"I said I can do this."
"Possibly," she conceded, not caring that she was about to butt heads with his pride. "But you're not going to want to get halfway up and find you don't have your balance. If those pins hit these flagstones, there's a good possibility you'll add a couple more fractures to the ones you already have. That femur happens to be some of my best work and I don't want it screwed up."
Crouched in front of him, annoyed with his stubbornness and nursing a hurt she didn't want to feel, she planted one crutch beyond his bent leg and the other beyond his extended one.
"Now," she said, trying to ignore the fact that she was right between his heavy thighs, "take these and I'll help you. Push up with your good leg and balance with the grips. I'll put my arms around your waist and pull you up."
He didn't budge. "You can't pull me up. I weigh twice what you do."
"You only weigh seventy-five pounds more," she gamely informed him. "And I can handle you just fine."
"Oh, yeah?"
"Yeah," she muttered, and made the mistake of looking up.
His eyes glittered hard on her face, but his voice went suddenly, deceptively soft. "Prove it."
The quiet statement hung in the suddenly still air. It shimmered like a gilt-edged gauntlet thrown down between them, part challenge, part warning. And it had nothing at all to do with helping him to his feet.
His eyes never moved from hers as he took the crutches and simply let them go.
The clatter would have raised the dead.
Alex wasn't sure she even heard it.
His hands were already moving over her shoulders. The warmth of his palms skimmed the curve of her neck when he slipped his fingers through her hair and cupped the back of her head.
"This is why I didn't want your help." His glance swept her face. "Tell me you haven't thought about this, Alex. Tell me, and I'll let you go."
She opened her mouth, trying to be rational. Rational was good. It was responsible. More than anything else, that was what she was. Responsible. At that moment, she just couldn't remember why it was so necessary.
He drew her closer, lowering his head.
"That's what I thought," he murmured, and closed his mouth over hers.
There was no demand. Just a gentle pressure that increased with the quick hitch of her breath. Or maybe it was his. She felt him draw her closer, the pressure increasing, until he parted her lips with his tongue.
A jolt of heat melded with the sweet, hot taste of him. His scent filled her, his strength drew her. She didn't encourage his touch so much as she allowed it. But what she allowed was utterly devastating.
She felt his warmth seeping inside her, melting her, beckoning her clo
ser. Until that moment, she hadn't honestly realized how very cold she'd felt inside. It had been easier when she hadn't known. But he wasn't letting her regret that discovery. He kissed her slowly, deeply, drugging her with sensations she scarcely remembered. Or, maybe, had never known.
Craving more, she leaned toward him, flattening her hands on the hard wall of his chest and felt him sweep his arm down her back. That arm locked around her like a steel band, drawing her up, easing her forward to her knees. She could feel his heart hammering beneath her palms, sense the restraint tensing his hard body.
With her head bent back, his arm bracing her, he drew her closer, slipping his free hand over her ribs, up along the curve of her breast.
He heard her breath catch, felt the quick stiffening of her supple limbs. When she relaxed in his arms a moment later, a groan came from deep within his chest.
He'd expected heat, though maybe not the intensity of it. He wanted to feel her. All of her. He wanted to lean back, drag her with him and feel her curves cover the length of his body. He wanted to slip his hand beneath her shirt, feel the softness of her skin. He wanted to cup her breast in his palm, learn her shape, feel her bloom against his fingers, his tongue.
He couldn't do what he wanted, wouldn't have even if he could. He couldn't lean back because he couldn't lift his leg to the chaise, much less lead her off to his room. More importantly, he could feel the restraint slipping into her muscles, tensing her, pulling back.
He wouldn't push. She came willingly or not at all.
His thumbs brushed her cheeks, and he drew back before she could. Her eyes were dark as obsidian. Confusion and desire clouded the fragile lines of her face.
"You started to help me up." With the pad of his thumb, he traced her lower lip. "I think maybe that would be a good idea now."
She thought she nodded. She knew she moved back. By the time he was on his feet, she was sure there was enough strength in her voice to say good-night. But before she could, he kissed her again. The devastating assault on her senses made her feel soft, desired and nearly incapable of considering what it was, exactly, that she was doing.
It wasn't until after she'd watched him go inside and she'd headed in herself, that she considered how much better off she'd been before she'd known how it felt to be in his arms.
* * *
Chapter Nine
« ^ »
Alex's first thought when consciousness stirred was that she should have moved away from Chase when he'd given her the chance. Her second was that she'd overslept a full hour. He'd had her so agitated, so preoccupied, that she'd forgotten to set the alarm.
The only good thing about the morning was that Chase was taking Brent to therapy so she didn't have to worry about getting him up and moving. Other than that little silver lining, the day slid steadily downhill.
Every one of her morning appointments, which were backed up anyway because she was late, ran long. Her afternoon arthroscopy went fine, but her synovectomy went V-tach on her halfway through the procedure. The patient's pre-op testing had shown him to be a good surgical candidate, but a sleeper of a heart problem had her performing chest compressions before closing him up and shipping him off to cardiac intensive care instead of surgical recovery.
It was past seven that evening before she found a minute for a call to make sure Brent had made it back to the house. He had. He even answered the phone because he was on the other line talking to his parents and he assured her that he could fix himself something to eat since she was going to be late. While an emergency clavicle was being prepped, she stopped by Child Care to get a quick hug from Tyler and tell him he'd be having supper there, before heading upstairs to scrub.
If it hadn't been for the suffering of the patients involved, she would have been openly grateful for what the day was demanding of her. Having to think of everyone else didn't allow her any time to consider what had happened last night. And thinking about last night was something she simply didn't want to do.
Every time she did, she remembered what Chase had made her feel, the yearning that went soul-deep and tugged at needs that were easier, safer, to ignore than consider.
He was making her face those needs anyway.
He made her feel desired and feminine and it had been so long since she'd felt that way that her heart and her body ached for more. It was like pouring water on a dying plant, she supposed, though the thought that part of her was withering inside disturbed her too much to truly consider, so she thought about him, instead.
He was going through so much. He was in an unfamiliar town, torn between what had been and what now was and, whether he liked the idea or not, he could talk to her.
And he wanted her.
The thought alone was enough to bring back the ache he'd created. What she needed to remember, though, was that he was accustomed to taking what he wanted, then moving on. Love would never enter a relationship with him. He probably couldn't even recognize the emotion, much less return it. As long as she kept that in mind, and kept a little physical distance between them, she'd be fine.
It was always good to have a plan. Even if her plans did have a nasty habit of falling apart. But she was prepared to overlook that particular detail by the time she arrived at the house a little before eleven o'clock that night.
Except for the porch light and the stove light someone had left on in the kitchen, the house was dark. Quietly, so as not to disturb anyone, she slipped inside with a sleeping Tyler propped against her shoulder and quickly tucked him into bed. Within five minutes, she was in bed with him.
She didn't even remember her head hitting the pillow when she roused to the sound of her pager going off two hours later.
The digital clock she'd brought from her house glowed 1:22 in neon-green. The red digits on her pager were for the hospital's emergency room.
"Chase?" Alex dropped her athletic shoes on the thick hallway carpet and knocked quietly on the carved white door. "Chase, I need to talk to you. I need a favor."
Zipping up the gray sweatshirt she'd thrown on over her sweatpants, she listened for any sign of life inside his bedroom. She'd thought she heard a click, but rustling around as she was, she couldn't be sure.
"Chase?" she called again, voice low as she bent to grab a shoe. She pulled it on, balancing on one foot while she tied the laces and kept listening.
One shoe on, she reached for the other and was thinking about opening the door to poke her head inside when the brass latch turned.
The door swung inward. In the soft light from the lamp on the nightstand, she saw Chase lean back on his crutches.
He was wearing nothing but bruises that were fading in places to a sickly shade of green, a pair of burgundy silk boxer shorts and the fixation device on his leg.
Jerking her glance to the six-pack of muscles corrugating his abdomen and past a set of beautifully formed pectoralis majors, she ignored the quick jolt low in her belly and tightened her grip on her shoe.
"I didn't mean for you to get up."
"Doesn't matter." His voice was heavy with sleep, but his blue eyes were sharp as they ran over her sweats and settled on her face. "What's going on?"
"A busload of kids went off the interstate."
"This time of night?"
"The paramedics told ER they were on their way from Canada to Disneyland." Her words were clipped, her professional defenses fighting to keep from thinking of all those children in pain as she pulled on her other shoe. "Sounds like the driver fell asleep."
Crouching to whip the laces into a bow, she glanced up and found herself eye level with the silky boxers. A feathering of dark hair fanned inward over his hard, flat stomach, merging to arrow beneath the silk riding low on his narrow hips.
The man had been far easier to take in a hospital gown.
"Tyler's only been in bed for a couple of hours," she continued, feeling a prickly sensation on the back of her neck as his glance skimmed her nape. "I hate to wake him if I don't have to. Would you min
d listening for him in case he wakes up? He shouldn't," she hastily assured him. "And I'd ask Brent to do it, but he sleeps so hard I'm not sure what I said would even register. I can take him to Child Care. Tyler, I mean. But it would be so much easier on him if he could just stay here and sleep."
Chase could practically see her mind racing as she straightened. Even half-groggy from sleep himself, it was obvious that she wasn't wasting time getting herself together and out the door. A small sleep-crease marred the translucent skin of her cheek, her hair was tousled, looking more as if she'd styled it with her fingers than a comb and she wore no makeup at all.
He doubted she'd been out of bed any longer than it had taken to dress and run down the hall. He knew she hadn't been in bed more than a couple of hours, either. But thinking of Alex in bed conjured images guaranteed to wreck his sleep, and he'd wrestled the sheets enough for one night. Instead, he considered only that if Tyler stayed, it would be easier for the boy—and easier for her, too.
She apparently hadn't even hesitated to come to him. Unexpectedly drawn by the thought, not caring that it had been the only practical thing to do, he watched her give the pull of her sweatshirt zipper another tug.
"What do I need to do?"
"Just leave your door open so you can hear him if he gets up. I'll leave his door and the door to the kitchen open, too." She hesitated, glancing worriedly down the hall, then at her watch. "If he does get up, just tell him where I am and that I'll be back as soon as I can."
"I can handle that."
"I'm sure I'll be gone all night."
"That's okay."
"You'll leave your door open?"
DR. MOM AND THE MILLIONAIRE Page 15
