by Caro Carson
“They’re just random.” It was significant that they weren’t all red roses. Everyone knew that meant I love you. Claudia probably received red roses.
“No, no, no. Listen, the red one means ‘I love you.’ But white means his intentions are honorable. How about that?”
I’ll bet Claudia would disagree.
“And the orange means,” Myrna said, pausing for dramatic effect, “passion.”
Lana’s smile faltered.
“Isn’t this fun?” Myrna asked.
“Oh, boy.” Lana rubbed her eyes with one hand.
“You could read the card, I suppose,” Myrna suggested. “If you don’t trust my research.”
Lana hoped she didn’t look as nervous as she felt, opening the tiny envelope. It said, Why are you at work? You put in enough hours. Go home.
Lana laughed. He sounded less like a romantic suitor and more like a nagging spouse. “Sorry, Myrna, but it doesn’t say he loves me passionately and honorably.”
Or did it? In a roundabout way, his message showed he knew her well and cared about her well-being, probably more than she did. Than she ever had.
That familiar pang of guilt caught her, but she made the conscious effort to push it away. That miscarriage hadn’t been preventable. She wasn’t to blame. Braden had said so.
“I got called into the E.R. last night, so I’m going to take some books and work from home.” She stared glumly at the large computer on the desk, the one she’d used to compile her list of assets for yesterday’s meeting with Braden. Had it been yesterday? It seemed eons ago. “Too bad I can’t bring that computer home. I can’t believe Dr. Montgomery didn’t have a laptop instead of a big PC.”
Myrna frowned. “I’ve only been here for a few weeks, but I remember he did have a laptop.”
The two looked thoroughly, but there was no laptop in the room. Not in the filing cabinet, the desk drawers or the storage closet. That made up the entire office, so the search didn’t take long.
“Maybe it was his personal laptop,” Lana said. “I’ll call him when he gets back from his vacation.” In the meantime, she’d start reviewing the studies currently under way. Even in the modern era, the paperwork outlining study design, methodology, requirements and results were contained in old-fashioned three-ring binders, neatly labeled and lined up on the floor-to-ceiling shelves. She took the most recent binder for each of the five studies currently under way and staggered for the door.
Myrna beat her to the doorknob with vase in hand. “Give me two of those. I’ll walk you to your car. You almost forgot your roses.”
Lana wasn’t alone this morning after all. She had Myrna.
Braden had Claudia.
Chapter Eleven
“I can’t have a civilized conversation before coffee,” Claudia said as she fluffed her blond hair, then loosened the sash of the hotel spa’s robe. “Wait until room service arrives, hmm?”
It was Wednesday afternoon in the Presidential Suite of the Four Seasons, and Braden did not want to wait for coffee. He’d followed Claudia’s rental car here from the E.R. parking lot, and they’d both fallen asleep by seven in the morning. He’d had six hours of sleep. That was enough. The sooner he ended his relationship with Claudia, the sooner he could put his life back on the path it should never have veered from.
Claudia let the robe slip from her shoulders as she sank onto the mattress next to him. Underneath, she wore a stunning creation of interlocking straps, a gown made of satin and designed to please any male with eyes. Braden had eyes. He also had a sore back from sleeping on a couch’s pullout bed.
The Presidential Suite was a one-bedroom apartment, and Claudia had feigned sleep in the bedroom when Braden had used the bathroom. He could have slept on the far side of the bed. It was king-sized, so he wouldn’t have touched her accidentally in his sleep, but Braden had the feeling Claudia was hoping that she’d be able to use seduction to slip their relationship back to where it had been.
He’d decided the pullout sofa in the suite’s living room was the wise man’s refuge.
Claudia lay back and nuzzled her cheek into his pillow. He was sitting up, shirtless, but wearing the plaid flannel pants that had been in his suitcase. She gave him a sleepy, sultry smile and reached up to run one finger down his bare chest.
“Claudia, I’m serious. We need to talk.”
Her finger barely hesitated. She stretched a little, and the satin straps crisscrossed in daring ways.
“Really, Braden? That’s what we need to do?”
Braden picked the robe up from the foot of the mattress and draped it over Claudia’s body. “Yes, we need to talk.”
The change in her facial expression was alarming because it happened so quickly. One moment, she’d been doing her best purring sex kitten. The next, she looked like a business adversary calculating a counterproposal. Had her sexual desire for him ever been real, or only really fake?
A real fake. Is it real or is it fake? You can’t be both.
This breakup was going to be a challenge. Braden thought Claudia’s feelings for him were as real as they ever got in her life, and she wasn’t going down easily. The fact that she’d flown to Texas was proof enough.
The doorbell rang. “Thank God, it’s the coffee,” she said, rising from the bed, donning the robe and moving toward the suite’s door in one graceful motion. “That pullout sofa is a little embarrassing. Everyone will know we’ve had a lovers’ quarrel.”
Hardly. Since the moment Lana had walked away, Claudia had become the master of avoiding any conversation at all. She didn’t want their relationship to change, so she wasn’t giving Braden a chance to address it. That had to be the reason she’d let him pull out the sofa while she’d feigned sleep. She’d do anything to avoid a fight right now.
Braden gave her the minutes it took to dismiss the waiter and to prepare her sugar-and-cream concoction that Braden found too cloying to drink. She thoughtfully poured him a cup, black, and returned to the bed.
Braden got down to business. “You said last night that you loved me.”
Claudia was startled enough to nearly, very nearly, let her white coffee slop over the side of its cup. “My goodness, that’s jumping in with both feet.”
“I’d like to know what that means to you.”
She took a tentative sip, careful not to commit to a full mouthful if she might get burned. “I knew almost immediately I’d met my match when I’d met you. We want the same things out of life.” She must have felt the lukewarm quality of her own answer, because she sighed and set down her coffee cup on the—ironically enough—coffee table, which he’d pushed out of the way when he’d pulled out the bed.
She turned to face him, climbing squarely on the mattress and sitting with her legs folded underneath herself as if she were going to pour tea in a Japanese home. “I think dramatic lines like ‘you complete me’ are best left to the movies. I prefer to be a little less desperately needy, so I would say ‘you complement me.’ We fit together. We can go farther and accomplish more together than we can apart. I’m good for you, and you are good for me.”
Braden had thought the same thing a few days ago. Then he’d seen Lana and realized how little his heart had been touched by Claudia. How could it have been, when it had belonged to Lana all this time? “You’re right, and it is the basis of an excellent partnership, but it isn’t love. I’m truly sorry, Claudia, but I cannot keep seeing you. You are a beautiful woman, and we’ve had a good time together, but I don’t—”
“You are worth fighting for, Braden. That’s why I’m here, so listen to me, please. Don’t let an old flame from school make you do something crazy. This sudden infatuation is only temporary. You’d be a fool to give me up for a woman who was quite willing to walk away from you without a fight last night.”
Braden was silent. Score one for Claudia: there was no guarantee he’d be able to win a second chance with Lana.
“Or was that this morning? I’m losing track o
f the time.” In a flash of white robe, Claudia was off the mattress and then back again, having retrieved her phone. She slid her finger over the screen in precise motions. “Let’s go home, darling. Your assistant can’t keep covering for you forever. Besides, we’ve got dinner at the Indian embassy tomorrow, and I’m wild to see saris instead of Stella McCartney for a change, aren’t you?”
Clearly, Claudia thought that refusing to take no for an answer meant she would get her way. She was doing a masterful job of pretending she wasn’t furious with him. Braden wanted to give her a quick salute for sheer brazenness, but this was the end of their relationship whether Claudia St. James wanted it that way or not.
“My assistant has not been covering for me. I’m perfectly capable of working remotely, indefinitely. I’ll be moving to Austin permanently by next year.”
For a second time in one conversation, Claudia was startled. “Permanently? But Manhattan is our life. Everything is there.”
“Before running into Lana again, I had convinced myself you’d be perfectly happy by my side in Austin. I imagined you as my wife, helping me navigate the Austin high-society scene.”
“Is there one?”
Braden almost smiled at her sarcasm, delivered with her perfect face set in a perfectly straight expression. “It’s not all cowboys and fringe elements. This is also the seat of the state government. Governor’s balls, that sort of thing.”
“I see.” She gave him a view of her profile as she gazed out the hotel windows to the city on the other side of Lady Bird Lake. “Yes, of course I’d fly in for those events, but we don’t have to make this our full-time residence. You’ve got a jet at your disposal, and PLI’s worldwide headquarters have always been in New York.”
“I think if we loved each other, we’d want to be together. Yet I’m ready to leave New York, and you will not move to Austin. That tells us a lot, don’t you think?”
“There is no reason for you to move to Austin. This is a silly test.”
“One which we’re failing.” He leaned forward and placed his hand on Claudia’s knee. “Don’t you see? We’re only a match at surface level. We don’t belong together.”
She lifted her chin and narrowed her eyes. “Don’t think this old flame of yours will be willing to jump when you say, either. I looked her up. She worked in D.C. She’s obviously moving up some career ladders herself. What if she gets an offer she can’t refuse? What makes you think she’ll turn down her next position to stay in Austin?”
Because she loves Austin. She always dreamed of opening her own family practice here and building relationships with generations of the same families.
The answer came quickly to Braden, but just as quickly, the implications began piling in. Why hadn’t that happened? Their engagement had ended, but that shouldn’t have stopped Lana from opening a family practice in Austin, the city that had captivated her with its cowboys and hipsters, its creative food and varied music. Instead, she’d moved to D.C., a place she’d never expressed an interest in.
She wasn’t even practicing family medicine. Her research positions kept her from caring for patients directly, preventing her from building up relationships with them over time.
That was a loss. Watching her in the E.R. had reminded him just how gifted she was in dealing with patients. He was missing something, because on the surface, it did look as though she was on the fast track to a stellar career as a researcher, not practicing medicine as she’d once idealized.
Braden shoved his hand through his hair tiredly, then drew it down his heavily stubbled face.
“You don’t know if she’d kill her career to follow yours, do you?” Claudia practically crowed, thrilled enough with scoring a hit that she dropped her pretense that she wasn’t furious with him.
“I do know this. The entire time you and I were together, Claudia, I had fooled myself into thinking I was no longer in love with Lana. I thought I was dating you honestly, but I was lying to myself the entire time. I’m sorry for the pain that will now cause you. Although I won’t be attending the embassy event tomorrow, I do need to return to New York. I assume you planned on returning with me in PLI’s jet.”
She glared at him. “As if I’d fly commercial willingly.”
“Please pack quickly. I’m leaving in half an hour.”
* * *
Lana leaned back in Montgomery’s chair, thinking for the hundredth time that it was too big for her. If she wanted a chair that didn’t threaten to swallow her whole, she’d have to buy it herself. Her department was out of money.
It was only Thursday afternoon of her first week on the job, and Lana had already determined that she was sunk. Dr. Montgomery had made some terrible decisions. When choosing which studies to undertake, he obviously hadn’t done the kind of investigating that he’d once taught her to do.
The hospital needed to participate in the most promising medicines, so the studies would run for their full length, and the department could count on the funds for their budget. Montgomery had agreed to too many studies for start-up companies with no track record, and for medicines that had only weak results in their animal trials. If it were a horse race, he would have bet on all the horses that had never run a race before, and had poor time trials, to boot.
PLI was one of the few companies in West Central’s portfolio that had a proven, successful track record. Even so, Dr. Montgomery had chosen their migraine study, when pain studies were notoriously unsuccessful.
Lana’s department would be a drain on West Central if any one of the studies under way failed. Not one, but two were failing. One was a treatment for irritable bowel disease, and the other was PLI’s pentagab. In both cases, Dr. Montgomery’s preliminary analysis had shown the active drugs performing better than the placebos.
They were not.
Lana doubted the man had made an honest math mistake twice. She doubted he’d made it once. Dr. Montgomery had been hiding his failures deliberately, and the stress had probably contributed to his heart attack.
She’d been so honored to be hand chosen as his successor. The reality was, he’d probably hoped she’d be either too ruled by ambition to expose his fraud or too stupid to catch the pattern of his cover-ups. She wasn’t sure which picture of herself was the least flattering.
Lana stood up and sent the chair rolling backward with a push. She grabbed a memento, some piece of tasteless golf tchotchke, off a shelf. Montgomery had left a lot of crappy items behind, along with his bad studies. Lana wouldn’t put up with any of it. She plunked the cheap plaque with its plastic, glued-on golf ball into the trash can. A stopped clock with a drug’s brand-name logo followed. Then another.
“And one more,” she said under her breath, pitching the orange plastic square after its compatriots. The man must have loved promotional clocks.
The office door opened as Myrna returned from her third trip of the day to the mail room. Lana started clearing logo mugs off the windowsill.
“Oh, my,” Myrna said.
Lana said nothing, finding too much satisfaction in getting rid of Montgomery’s garbage.
“I’ve brought you something that might cheer you up.” With a little flourish, Myrna pulled more flowers out from behind her back.
This vase was wide and ceramic and held the large, oval pom-poms of the little blossoms that made up hyacinths.
“I don’t suppose you researched these?” Dang it all, Lana knew she sounded hopeful.
Myrna didn’t disappoint. “First of all, these aren’t cut flowers. You can replant these bulbs outside this spring.”
Lana pictured the cement balcony of her second-story apartment. She would let Myrna have these flowers for her home instead.
Myrna looked ten years younger than she had at the beginning of the week. “I wonder what he’ll send for Valentine’s Day. This is so fun. Are you ready for the meaning?”
“Not really, but go ahead, please.”
“The red hyacinth in the middle? It means he wants yo
u to forgive him.”
For what? For breaking her heart again? She thought she’d done a decent job of hiding her pain when she’d left him in the parking lot with his Claudia. But earlier, she’d stalked out of the restaurant when Braden had started to tell her he was going to make a promise to a new fiancée, so he’d known that he’d hurt her feelings badly. Lord, it all seemed like weeks ago, not two days.
“But it’s surrounded by purple ones,” Myrna continued with a tone of voice that suggested she knew a secret, “and guess what they mean?”
“He likes in-your-face, crazy color schemes?”
“It means ‘play with me.’ He wants you to forgive him and then go out and have some fun. Open the card. I’ll bet it’s an invitation for a date.”
“I doubt that sincerely. He’s engaged.”
Myrna’s smile froze. “No, he isn’t.”
“Yes. I’ve met her.”
Myrna’s eyebrows rose and her mouth formed a shocked “oh.”
Feeling awkward, Lana opened the florist’s envelope.
Myrna snatched it out of her hand. “That bastard!”
“Myrna!”
But Myrna was already yanking open their office door and letting loose a torrent of fluid, angry Spanish on whomever was in the hallway.
Braden.
He backed up as Myrna swung her open palm at his face, then held up his hands in a placating gesture. “I’ve had enough of that this week.”
“You cheating, two-timing lowlife,” Myrna said, switching seamlessly to English. “If I’d known you were engaged, I never would have helped you.”
“I’m not engaged. That’s part of the message, and I thank you for helping me deliver it to Dr. Donnoli.” Braden looked past Myrna to lock his gaze with Lana. He looked so heartbreakingly familiar in the clothes he’d always preferred over scrubs: a button-down shirt, great jeans, leather cowboy boots that were for work, not show. He looked more like the Braden she’d loved than the man in the impeccable business suit on Monday morning.
“You’re not engaged?” Lana asked. The woman in the parking lot had clearly staked her claim on Braden. Lana had tortured herself by imagining Braden and the gorgeous blonde together.
