“Hey, I heard that remark about my underwear, and I’d like you to know it isn’t purple. It’s white with red hearts. I think your dad got the same kind for Christmas from your grandfather.”
Jeremy bent over and laughed while his uncle, who was a year younger than his father, strolled into the room. The man’s coal black hair was the opposite of Tanner’s blond head, but most people recognized them as brothers. Their strong chin and proud nose, features most likely inherited from their ancestor the Duke of Elbourne, were quite similar, not to mention their eyes, which were an intense gray, almost steel-like in appearance.
“Uncle Rafe, that’s embarrassing.”
“Embarrassing?” Rafe snapped the elastic waist on his scrubs. “I’ll have you know, they’re the most expensive pair I have! Now, let’s have a look at that arm.”
The boy looked pleased as he showed off his cast. The nurse clicked on the television screen in the corner of the room, shifting Jeremy’s attention from the men to a cartoon.
Tanner turned his amused gaze toward the young nurse’s increasingly red face. The lady finished tapping the keys on the computer screen and left the room.
While Jeremy watched his favorite show, Tanner lifted a questioning brow toward his brother. “Wasn’t she last month’s special?”
Rafe patted Jeremy’s arm and walked a few feet away. “Back off with my love life, big brother. Anyway, I need to speak to you.” He tipped his head toward the hall. “Privately.”
Tanner nodded. “Be with you in a minute.”
“Hey,” Jeremy cried, finally realizing Rafe was leaving. “I want to know about Hannah. Is she all right? No one will tell me anything around here except the color of people’s underwear!”
“She’s going to live,” Rafe said, smiling. “You just wait here and watch your cartoons.” He showed his nephew the remote control, and Jeremy said he no longer needed the two men as long as he had control of the television set.
“Jeremy seems rather attached to that nanny of his,” Rafe said, a few minutes later as he and Tanner headed toward the hospital cafeteria.
Tanner nodded, but said nothing until he grabbed a cup of coffee and took a sip. “She’s a positive influence on the boy.”
“And is she a positive influence on you too?” Rafe asked with a chuckle.
Tanner didn’t bite back. He wasn’t ready to talk about Hannah and him. “My boy’s more than fond of the woman, Rafe. He loves her almost like his own mother. In fact, Jeremy has been talking about his mother more than he ever did before. I think he’s finally healing, and I think it’s because of Hannah.”
Rafe frowned. “The kid had it really tough, Tan. But it’s not Jeremy I want to speak about. He’s going to be fine. It’s Miss Elliot.”
Tanner’s nerves tensed immediately. “What about her? You already said she would live.”
“Let’s go over there.” Rafe carried his coffee to a yellow plastic chair at the far corner of the room. He brought the cup to his mouth, took a sip, then set it down on the Formica table, meeting Tanner’s cool gaze with one of his own.
“Since you were the one who took her in, I’m giving you some of the facts. But as a doctor, legally—”
“Cut the legal mumbo jumbo, Rafe. What the hell’s wrong with her?”
Rafe’s lips thinned. “She gave me permission to tell you about her condition. She has a touch of pneumonia. Added with pure exhaustion that doesn’t put her body on the best of terms. Her fever’s not too high and she’s alert. She can leave in a few hours, but she needs to rest. This wasn’t an immediate illness, Tan. Something has been lingering in her chest before today’s fiasco.”
Pneumonia? The word was like a knife to his chest. “Fiasco? You think I asked for the rain?”
Rafe stared back, his gaze unmoving.
Tanner shook his head in disgust. “All right, so she must have been sick the past week. Maybe a few weeks. But I thought it was just a lingering cough. I didn’t pay much attention. I think she had a cold or something.”
A probing query flashed in Rafe’s eyes. “And?”
Tanner’s brows puckered in annoyance as he glanced over the rim of his cup. “What?”
The corner of Rafe’s lips tipped upward. “And you didn’t catch the cold?”
The cup came slamming down, sloshing hot coffee on Tanner’s wrist. “What does that have to do with anything? She’s Jeremy’s tutor and nanny. If I recall, you told me I was the one who should back off about a certain person’s love life, or should I say lack of it.”
Rafe lifted a black brow. “We’re not talking about me. We’re talking about you. And my only nephew is involved here. I think I have a right to ask.”
“What am I? Some kind of bacteria you’re inspecting under your microscope?”
Rafe shrugged his shoulders and leaned back, throwing his arm around the top of his chair. “Just asking.”
Tanner knew his brother was not just asking. Rafe had some other reason to bring up the possible attachment he had with Hannah. “What are you driving at?”
“This is strictly off the record, but do you know her mother was here?”
Tanner looked surprised. “When?”
There was thin smile on Rafe’s lips as he leaned forward, placing his elbows on the table. “All I know is she was visiting Mrs. Belthorpe...with Dad stuck to her side. He’s been seeing a lot of her, if you get my drift.”
“Mrs. Belthorpe?”
“No, Dad’s been seeing Hannah’s mother. Mrs. Belthorpe just had heart surgery.”
Tanner’s jaw dropped in shock. “That weasel. He had something going on all the time. I’ve never even see the lady. I thought perhaps...but he never made it known.”
“Her name’s Lorraine Harbers. Harbers, not Elliot.” A question flashed in Rafe’s eyes.
Tanner’s mind reeled with confusion. “What are you saying? The woman got married again after she had Hannah?”
Dishes clanked behind them, and the smell of hamburgers lingered in the air.
Rafe pursed his lips. “Nope.”
“Divorced then?”
Rafe didn’t answer for a few seconds, and Tanner struggled to calm the thoughts that ricocheted in his brain. He narrowed his eyes, his hand fisting unconsciously beside his coffee cup.
“Are you telling me Hannah’s married?” Nick’s name came to mind and a feeling of dread swept through him.
Rafe swallowed the last bit of coffee and avoided his brother’s gaze, nodding to a cute nurse a few feet away.
Tanner slapped the table with the palm of his hand, causing more than one head to turn his way. “Listen Rafe,” he snapped. “You started this, now finish it.”
Rafe’s expression grew hard as he turned back to him. “I’m a doctor, Tan. You know what that means? What I see and what I do is confidential regarding my patients. The facts you’ve been given are nothing you couldn’t have figured out on your own by asking Dad. And for some reason, he’s not giving you all the information. Maybe because he’s sweet on Hannah’s mom. I just don’t know.”
“There’s something else you’re not telling me.”
Rafe’s mouth plunged into an even deeper frown as he stood. “I’ve got to get back to work. You can bring Hannah home later tonight, unless she wants to stay here for the night. But make certain she takes it easy and rests. I have her on antibiotics for two weeks.”
He hesitated, then pursed his lips. “I have an obligation to my patients. She’s not at death’s door, but—”
“But it’s pneumonia,” Tanner interrupted coolly, watching the concern in Rafe’s eyes. Or was it pity?
Tanner wanted to shake his brother. Rafe had taken Julie’s death personally. Whether it was because she had died on Rafe’s watch or Rafe felt he was a failure for not getting her to the hospital sooner, Tanner never knew and never asked. But the fact that Julie had pneumonia wasn’t lost on either of them.
Tanner looked about the cafeteria and sighed. “These circum
stances are different, Rafe, but it doesn’t make me feel a whole hell of a lot better.”
Rafe grimaced. “Does the lady have anyone she could stay with? Her mother might have been at the hospital earlier today, but Dad mentioned something about dropping off a friend at the airport. I think it was Hannah’s mother.”
“Now that I remember it,” Tanner drawled, “Hannah mentioned something about her mother leaving to visit with a sick sister in Maine. If that was Hannah’s mother Dad dropped off at the airport, the lady’s gone by now. Hannah has no one to take care of her.”
“Not even a neighbor?” Rafe asked.
Tanner thought about the woman from the library and immediately recalled the gorilla brother of hers. That made the decision for him. He didn’t want Hannah anywhere near that ogling beast. He’d be doing her a favor. “No, I don’t think she has anybody.”
Rafe sent his brother a wry smile. “You never were good at lying, Tan. Take her home with you, if that’s what you want.” He couldn’t help but laugh. “Sorry to disappoint, but Dad will want to act as chaperone, if you know what I mean.”
“A chaperone? We are not in the nineteenth century! She’s just a nanny for Jeremy!”
Rafe shook his head. “Yeah, right. She isn’t a child, but she does need a little care the next few days. And nothing else.” One black brow rose in warning. “So don’t play with fire unless you want to get burned.”
Tanner didn’t have a chance to get a word in before Rafe continued. “By the way, I don’t know about her insurance, copays, deductibles or whatever. Not that it makes a bit of difference to me, but hospitals...well, you are her employer, and maybe you have offered her some medical benefits with her job?”
“So, it will cost her something out-of-pocket?”
“Yeah, that’s what I’m saying. Dad mentioned something about the lady falling on hard times.”
“I’ll take care of it,” Tanner snapped, hating to think of Hannah ill, and really hating to think of his father talking to Rafe about Hannah. But the lady wasn’t about to have this hospital bill hanging over her head, not if he could help it.
“Never thought you wouldn’t take care of it. But speaking of hospitals, how about a new MRI machine from that new company you just took over. Gifts are tax deductible, you know.”
Rafe chuckled when Tanner muttered something about interfering brothers. At that moment, Rafe’s name was paged on the intercom, and the doctor left the room.
Swallowing the last of his coffee, Tanner sighed. He needed to speak with Hannah. Now.
Hannah lifted her gaze from her bed the second she heard Tanner’s deep baritone voice greeting someone in the hall. Seconds later, her eyes froze on his tall, lean form standing in the hospital doorway. He was dressed in dark green scrubs, holding a bouquet of pink roses in his hands, looking like some wildly handsome doctor from her mother’s soap operas.
His gray eyes searched hers. “Feeling better?”
She gave him a weak smile. Her chest hurt and she felt awful. “A bit. I see you changed your clothes?” He looked good in green, too good.
His brows knitted into a frown as he strolled across the floor and handed her the bouquet. “Thought you could use something to brighten up the room. I take it my brother told you about Jeremy. He’ll be fine.”
She tried to ignore the warm tingling in her body as she took the roses from him and smiled. “I’m so glad Jeremy’s going to be okay, and thank you for the flowers.”
“You’re welcome.”
She watched in amusement as he tried to stuff his hands into pockets that were no longer there. His golden hair still shimmered from the wetness of the storm.
A shiver skittered down her spine when she thought about his drugging kisses.
His features were powerful and a bit intimidating. Just like Nick’s. But he wasn’t Nick, she reminded herself. He wasn’t a man who would lie to her. He wasn’t a man who would deliberately withhold something from her for his own selfishness.
The concern in his gaze touched her. She bent her head to study the roses in her hand. They smelled sweet and fresh, like feel of the man’s lips against hers. Oh boy, she was in real trouble here.
“I’m glad Jeremy has such a good doctor to look after him,” she said, feeling flustered.
“Yeah, Rafe’s good all right.”
She lifted her gaze, noting the irritation in Tanner’s voice. His lips were drawn tight across his mouth and a muscle seemed to twitch in his jaw.
Maybe he was still recovering from the scare of his son’s injury. The man was a mixture of emotions that she wasn’t even going to try to understand.
“These flowers are beautiful.”
She lifted the roses and started coughing. His fingers lightly brushed hers. He took his gift from her hands, placing the flowers on the table beside her.
“Maybe it wasn’t such a good idea after all.”
She was still conscious of where his skin touched hers and felt a bit lost when he moved away. “No, no, I adore roses. It’s just this nasty cold.”
She coughed again, and her whole body fought against the weariness that consumed her.
“A cold? It’s a bit more than a cold.” There was a hard edge to his voice as he leaned forward, his nose almost touching hers. “You have pneumonia, Hannah. Fluid in the lungs, a fever. You could die if you didn’t have the right medication or rest.”
She sunk into her pillow, confused at the grim line whitening his mouth. “I’m on antibiotics. Dr. Clearbrook said I can go home today.”
His face froze into a granite-like expression. “You need rest.”
She managed a tremulous smile, knowing she couldn’t stay one more day in the hospital. She couldn’t afford it. “I know. You might have to do without a nanny for a day or two.”
Later, she would call her mother, who was staying at her aunt’s house, and let her know everything was going well. There was no need to make the lady worry. Yet it was obvious Dr. Rafe Clearbrook had told Tanner the truth about her condition. She had told him he could. But as to her mother, she needed to inform the lady about her condition only when she was home and rested.
She tried to sit up, but Tanner kept staring at her as if she were about to break. She froze. What else did the doctor say to him? “What?”
“I don’t think the doctor meant a day or two. You need to rest for at least a week.”
“What ever happened to patient confidentiality?” she snapped, not feeling herself.
“Confidentiality? That went out the window the moment you had pneumonia. Besides you gave Rafe permission to tell me what was wrong.”
“That doesn’t give you a license to tell me what to do,” she said more sharply than intended.
“Why didn’t you tell me you were feeling sick?”
I needed the money, that’s why.
She shrugged. “I wasn’t feeling that bad.”
His hand slid beneath her chin. “I don’t believe you.”
She was caught off guard by the warm effect a simple touch could make. He dragged his finger along her cheek. She visibly shuddered, fighting against the attraction she had for this man. His touch instantly rekindled her memory of the passionate kiss on the mountain.
Her sanity suddenly kicked into gear. No, she couldn’t become involved with this man. Hadn’t she already learned her lesson the hard way? Even though he wasn’t totally like Nick, there was still that determined arrogance about him and that scared her.
“You didn’t tell me you were sick because you needed the money. Right?”
She stiffened. “Is that such a crime? To need money? This economy isn’t exactly booming.”
“No, it’s not a crime.” There was a steely determination in his tone as he hitched himself onto the edge of her mattress and dropped his finger from her cheek, only to slip his hand in hers.
Her heart thumped in alarm. He had kissed her twice. It had been the heat of the moment in the car and on the mountain. But this w
as different. His eyes smoldered with a mixture of passion and concern that shook her. Warning bells started ringing in her brain. She couldn’t let herself go down that path again. He was too sure of himself. Too like—
He brought her hand to his lips and kissed it. He was utterly charming and the tenderness of his action brought tears to her eyes. “You taste as sweet as you look, Miss Hannah Elliot.”
There was that teasing glint of amusement back in his eyes, and she let out a tremulous smile. She was weary, too weary to fight him.
“Mmmmm,” he smacked his lips. “Even better than that gingerbread of yours.”
She chuckled. “You’re impossible. Do you treat all your son’s tutors like this?”
He leaned forward, capturing her face in her hands. “No, I don’t think Mr. Harrison would have cared for it.”
She let out a choked laugh, feeling the strength of his rough hands against her cheeks. Blood pounded in her brain, sending ripples of awareness throughout her entire body.
“And I don’t think of you as just my son’s tutor, Hannah.”
She bit her bottom lip. “You don’t?”
“Hannah, Hannah, Hannah. When will you ever see that you are more than a tutor?”
She felt his unwavering gaze puzzling and looked away. The door was slightly open and anyone coming down the hall could see them. “What exactly do you mean, more than a tutor?”
“You love Jeremy and that’s more than being a tutor.”
Her heart dropped to her stomach. She thought he would declare his love for her or something silly like that. Her fever must have gotten the best of her.
Her face burned with the memory of his passionate embraces. He made her too vulnerable. She had already fallen in love with Jeremy, and now she felt herself falling in love with Tanner. But she wanted Tanner’s love in return.
When she left the two of them for Reach Medicals, it would be so hard. So very hard. “I see.”
“Do you? Maybe you need a little persuasion.”
Almost Midnight (sweet contemporary romance) (Colorado Clearbrooks) Page 10
