And then a man had swooped out of nowhere, swept her off her feet and kissed her soundly on the lips. He’d frozen as the man had hugged her to his side with the entitlement of long intimacy, turned her to pose for photos and shouted triumphant statements to reporters about the new era “their” drug would herald in pharmaceuticals.
He’d grabbed the first person near him, asked, “Who’s that?”
He’d gotten the answer he’d dreaded. That, a Kyle Langstrom, had been her fiancé and partner in research.
As the letdown had mushroomed inside him, he’d heard Kyle announcing that with the major hurdle in their work overcome, there’d soon be news of equal importance: a wedding date.
The knowledge of her engagement had doused his blaze of elation at finding her, buried all his intentions. His gaze had still clung to her receding figure as if he could alter reality, make her free to return his interest, to receive his passion.
Just before the tide of companions had swept her out of sight, she’d looked back. Their eyes had met for a moment.
It had felt like a lifetime when the world had ceased to exist and only they had remained. Then she’d been gone.
He’d seen her again during the following end-of-conference party. The perverse desire to see her again even when it oppressed him had made him attend it. He’d stood there unable to take his eyes off her. She’d kept her gaze averted. But he’d known she’d been struggling not to look back. He’d finally felt bad enough about standing there coveting another man’s woman that he’d left with the party at full swing.
He hadn’t returned to the States again until Hesham.
He’d replayed that last glance for months afterward. Each time seeing his own longing and regret reflected in her eyes. And each time he’d told himself he’d imagined it.
He’d long convinced himself he had imagined everything. Most of all, her unprecedented effect on him.
It had taken him one look today to realize he’d completely downplayed it. To realize why he’d been unable to muster interest in other women ever since. He might not have consciously thought it, but he’d found no point in wasting time on a woman who didn’t inspire the white-hot recognition and attraction this woman had.
Now she’d appeared here, out of the blue, had been waiting to see him for a month, her last vigil lasting a day and a half of sleepless starvation. She’d just said she was here because he’d “announced he’d be available to be approached.”
Had she meant his ad? Could it be, of all women, this one he’d wanted on sight, hadn’t only been some stranger’s once, but Hesham’s, too?
If she had been, he must have done something far worse than what she’d accused him of in her agitation. What else would that be but some unimaginably cruel punishment of fate?
He hissed, “Just tell me and be done with it.”
She lurched as if he’d backhanded her. No wonder. He’d sounded like a beast, seconds away from an attack.
Before he could form an apology, she spoke, her voice muffled with tears, “I lied—” She had? About what? “—when I said ten minutes would do. I did keep asking reception for any moments you could spare when they said full appointments were reserved for patients on your list. I now realize they couldn’t have acted on your orders, must have done the same with the endless people who came seeking your services. But I was told you’re leaving in an hour, and that long might not do now either and …”
He raised his hands to stem the flow of her agitation, his previous suspicions crashing in a domino effect.
“You’re here for a consultation?”
She raised eyes brimming with tears and … wariness? Nodded.
Relief stormed through him. She wasn’t here about the ad, about Hesham. She was here seeking his surgical services.
Next moment relief scattered as another suspicion detonated.
“You’re sick?”
Three
She was sick.
That explained everything. The only thing that made sense. Terrible sense. Her desperation. Her mood swings. Her fainting.
She had a neurological condition. According to her symptoms, maybe … a brain tumor. And if she’d sought him out, it had to be advanced. No one sought him specifically except in conditions deemed beyond the most experienced surgeons’ skills. In neurosurgery, he was one of three on earth who’d made a vocation of tackling the inoperable, resolving the incurable.
But a month had passed since she’d first tried to reach him. Her condition could have progressed from minimal hope to none.
Could it be he’d found her, only to lose her again?
No, he wouldn’t. In the past, he’d walked away from her, respecting the commitment she’d made. But disease, even what others termed terminal, especially that, was what he’d dedicated his life to defeating. If he could never have her, at least he would give the world back that vibrant being who’d made giving hope to the hopeless her life’s work….
“I’m not sick.”
The tremulous words hit him with the force of a bullet.
He stared at her, convictions and fears crashing, burning.
Had she said.? Yes, she had. But that could mean nothing. She’d already denied knowledge of why she’d fainted. She could still be undiagnosed, or in denial over the diagnosis she’d gotten, hoping he’d have a different verdict….
“It’s my baby.”
This time, only one thing echoed inside his head. Why?
Why did he keep getting shocked by each new verification that this woman had a life that had nothing to do with him? That she’d planned and lived her life without his being the major part of it?
Often he’d found himself overwhelmed by bitterness without apparent reason. He now admitted to himself what that reason had been. That he still couldn’t believe she hadn’t waited to find him, had accepted a deficient connection with someone else.
But that sense of betrayal was ridiculous, had nothing to do with reality. Her marriage had been imminent when he’d seen her. So why did it shock him so much that she had a baby, the normal outcome of a years-old union?
And that baby was sick. Enough to need his surgical skills.
His heart compressed as he realized the reason, the emotions behind her every word and tear so far. The same desperation he’d once felt, to save someone whose life he valued above his own.
How ironic was it that her intensely personal need for his purely professional services had made her finally seek him out?
He’d long given in to fate that had deemed that their paths diverged before they’d had the chance to converge. But to have her enter his life this way was a punishment, an injury. And he wasn’t in any condition to take more of either.
If it had only meant his own suffering, he would have taken any measure of both. But he held his patients’ lives under the steadiness of his hand, their futures subject to the clarity of his decisions. He couldn’t compromise that.
Now he had to deal her the blow of refusing her baby’s case. He would make sure her baby got the very best care. Just not his.
He inhaled a burning breath. “Ms. McNeal …”
As