“Hello, dearie.” Thomas’s receptionist looked up from her computer as he walked into the waiting area of his suite in the medical office building and shut the door against the dull roar outside. Sunny as usual, her blue eyes bright and her weathered, peaches-and-cream complexion flushed with the apparent thrill of another afternoon spent fielding patients for him, she slid her beaded bifocals down the bridge of her nose and gave him a critical once-over. “You haven’t eaten lunch again, have you? Determined to wither away to the size of a tadpole, I suppose. Well, you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make the dumb bastard drink, can you?”
Thomas had to smile. “Good to see you, too, Mrs. Brennan.” Though she’d been with him for the eight years since she stepped off the plane from Dublin to live with her daughter’s family here in Alexandria, and he knew her first name full well—Aileen—he’d never dared use it. It seemed disrespectful somehow, and he was pretty sure she’d drop kick his ass into next week if he ever tried it. He, on the other hand, had to submit to dearie, love, young Thomas or whatever other silly nickname that she felt like bestowing on him. Not that he minded. Much. “How was your weekend? How’s the grandbaby?”
“Oh, well, she’s the little heart of my heart, now, isn’t she? Working on one teeny little tooth in the front. Here’s a picture.”
She flipped around the digital frame on her desk, showing him a chubby and smiling green-eyed baby with yellow fuzz and a smear of what looked like spaghetti sauce across her face and, sure enough, the hint of a white tooth on her bottom gum.
Oh, man. What a beauty.
Staring at the child, he felt … a pang. Of … something.
Probably nothing more than hunger, not that he’d admit it to Eagle Eyes here.
“You’re very lucky,” he said.
“That I am.” She spun the frame back into place and nailed him with that concern again. “And don’t think that you’ve managed to distract me from your dietary habits, either, young man. Oh, is that coffee for me? Cream and two sugars?”
“Of course.”
“Let’s have it, then.”
“I don’t think so.” He held the Starbucks cup just out of reach of her grasping hand, determined to get this bargain struck as soon as possible. “By accepting this beverage, you agree not to comment on my personal life. Deal?”
Mrs. Brennan glowered until her white brows ran straight across her forehead. “For how long?”
“The whole week.”
“Go on, then,” she said, snatching the cup out of his hand and drinking long and deep. “Nothing but trouble, you are. Here. Eat a protein bar. Get some nutrition.”
She tossed him a bar from the inner depths of her desk drawer. God alone knew what all she kept in there; one of these times he meant to ask for a walleye fishing lure just to see if she could produce it.
He caught it with gratitude because he was still hungry, although he felt compelled to point out a pertinent fact. “I’ll have you know I ate a turkey croissant on the elevator just now.”
She didn’t look remotely impressed. “A grown man like you? You ought to be ashamed of yourself calling that a meal. Eat the bar, and just say thanks.”
Well, she had him there.
“Thanks. I’m going to see how many calls I can make before the meeting at one.”
“Sign the letters on your desk for me.”
“Aye-aye, Captain.” He started down the hallway, ready to collapse into his chair and rest for a minute. Every one of his thirty-six years was really starting to show. Used to be he could stand and operate all day, see patients, handle meetings, go for a run, do paperwork into the wee hours and then collapse into the bed of his woman of the moment before getting up and doing it all again the next day.
Now all he wanted was a two-week nap.
And, come to think of it, a life.
“How were the residents this morning?” she called after him. “Giving you fits?”
Brown and his hapless stammering flashed through Thomas’s mind, quickly followed by his beautiful defender. She’d been interesting, that one. There’d been something about her that almost distracted him from her unfortunate tendency to butt into the conversations of perfect strangers.
“Giving me fits?” His mind’s eye focused in on the woman’s smoky voice … the breasts that were plumped against the lacy white top she wore under that severe suit … the wide hips and shapely bare legs … the startling intensity in her brown eyes. His skin prickled with remembered awareness, and he could swear that the faint scent of her perfume, which was sophisticated and spicy, had followed him all morning. That was a neat trick, considering all the other, less pleasant smells the hospital had to offer. “You have no idea.”
Inside his office, he collapsed into his chair, rested his elbows on the desk and his face in his hands. Man, he was tired. He’d been on last night, and then removed the diseased left lung of an unrepentant, forty-year smoker, which was the medical equivalent of redecorating the staterooms on the Titanic. Then he’d had rounds and the unfortunate run-in with Brown before he’d had a meeting with some of the other doctors in his practice group.
But that Brown thing … it bothered him.
Partially because the kid had been at the tail end of a thirty-hour stint, a point when it was hard for the best of them, even a perfectionist like himself, to fire on all cylinders. Partially because Brown was a competent physician and Thomas hadn’t meant to let loose his temper and humiliate him like that. Partly because it dinged his ego to be read the riot act for his bad behavior by a stunning and undaunted woman, especially when he was at his most daunting.
Especially when he deserved it.
Who was she? Why was he still thinking about her?
He didn’t know, but there was only one way to find out: he’d ask Dr. Dudley about her and track her down. Something was telling him he’d regret it for a good long time if he didn’t.
His phone beeped, and Mrs. Brennan’s voice came over the intercom. “Your da’s on line one.”
Brilliant. Just what he needed to make his day even more of a nonstop thrill fest.
And why did the woman insist on referring to his father as Da when she knew damn good and well that, as a retired admiral, the man would never appreciate or answer to anything as pedestrian and affectionate as Da, Dad or, God forbid, Pops.
He stared at the phone, wondering if he could pretend he hadn’t heard.
“I know you heard me,” Mrs. Brennan’s voice said.
“Why would you think I’d want to talk to my father?”
“Don’t be a twit, dearie. You can always talk to the man who gave life to you.”
The man who gave life to him. That much was true, Thomas supposed, and the man had reared him—when he wasn’t at sea, anyway—and instilled his relentless discipline in him. So, for that, Thomas was grateful.
On the other hand, they’d always had a prickly relationship punctuated by periodic disownings, most notably when Thomas turned down his commission to the Naval Academy in favor of college and medical school, which were inferior enterprises as far as the Admiral was concerned.
Still. The man was the only blood he had since Mom died two years ago.
“Put him through,” he said grudgingly, and the next thing he knew, the Admiral was booming over the speaker at him. The Admiral always boomed.
“I saw the full exposé in the paper this morning. All the details are finally coming out. Two-inch headline, Hopewell General