A little overwhelmed by what her friends had done for her, and what wonderful friends she had, she waved back. Anyone looking at Ryan and Tanner could tell they were related. Both brothers had thick, dark hair, and the same chiseled jaw. But their eyes were what truly gave them away. Rimmed with dark lashes, they were the bluest shade of blue Alex had ever seen. A woman didn’t forget a man with eyes like that.
Rather like she couldn’t forget the patient in room three-fifty-four.
“Whatever it is you’re frowning about, forget it for now,” Ronni insisted, handing her a frosty glass of iced tea. She clicked her own glass of the same against the rim. “I’ve seen enough long faces today.”
“Me, too.” Kelly lifted her wine before glancing sympathetically toward her fiancé. The concern in her expression was too apparent to hide, though her attempt was commendable. “This is a party.”
If there was anything Alex could spot, it was strain. Now that the shock of surprise had worn off, she could see it clearly in her friends’ faces.
“What’s going on?” she asked, her glance bouncing between the petite redhead and the tall blonde. “I thought Tanner seemed a little quiet tonight. Is everything all right?”
Kelly and Ronni exchanged a glance. As if reaching some tacit agreement, they shifted closer, locking the circle so their voices wouldn’t carry.
“Do you remember that phone call Ryan received during our engagement party?” Kelly asked Alex, her voice low. “From the man who said he was their brother, Andrew Malone?”
“Of course I do. We were talking about who had the most unique engagement surprise, remember? You two with that phone call, or Ryan and Ronni with that huge anonymous cashier’s check for the new wing.”
“We never have figured out where that came from,” Ronni muttered. “But that was a good thing. This turned out awful. They were supposed to meet him last night,” she said, in a near-whisper. “But he never showed up. You can’t believe how disappointed Ryan is.”
“Tanner, too. He’s trying to hide it, but I know it’s eating at him. On the way over, he said he wished the guy had never called in the first place. If he lost his nerve, the least he could have done was phone. As it is,” Kelly continued, sounding as protective as she did irritated, “neither one of them heard from him until this morning. Then, he just left messages on their answering machines that he’d been delayed and said he’d be in touch later.”
Alex’s brow pinched as she watched both women look toward the men again, but she wanted to dismiss the thought that flashed in her brain almost as quickly as it formed. It had to be pure coincidence that Tanner’s eyes were so nearly the same blue as her patient’s. And it had to be coincidence that the rather stubborn line of his jaw had been carved at that same hard angle. Even if the world didn’t know that Chase Harrington was…well, Chase Harrington, he wasn’t built anything like Tanner. The younger Malone had the muscular physique of a man accustomed to physical labor. Chase was a little taller, according to his chart, anyway, and he had the lean, hard body of a runner. His hair wasn’t black like Tanner’s, either. It was more a rich, deep sable. If he looked like anyone, it was…Ryan.
“I don’t remember,” Alex prefaced, not sure she’d ever known the answer to what she was about to ask. “Where was this brother from?”
“Seattle,” they both said an instant before the clink of a spoon on a water glass had everyone quieting for a toast.
Alex tried to let it go.
She couldn’t.
For the next hour, while her friends and associates mingled and laughed and passed platters of pasta and eggplant parmesan, the suspicion that had lodged in her mind nagged with the relentlessness of a toothache.
She could overlook the physical similarities. There were a lot of men with dark, to-die-for looks and wickedly beautiful azure eyes who weren’t related to the Malones. She’d bet half the black Irish in Ireland fell into that category. But Chase had missed a meeting last night, too. One that had been so important to him that he’d come out of anesthesia wanting nothing other than to call the people he was supposed to see.
I need them to know I didn’t stand them up.
If it hadn’t been her own party, she’d have excused herself the moment she recalled the almost desperate undertones in her patient’s voice. Ryan and Tanner were her friends and if there was any chance that Chase Harrington was the man they’d been waiting for, she needed to do what she could to let them know their brother hadn’t simply decided not to show. But her friends had gone to a lot of trouble for her, so she made herself wait until the cake they’d brought had been cut and everyone was busy visiting again before she caved in and turned to Ronni.
“There’s something I need to check with a patient. Will you keep an eye on Tyler for me for a few minutes?”
Knowing Alex was on call, familiar herself with such interruptions, her friend didn’t even hesitate. “Sure. If you get hung up, just let me know and we’ll take him home with us.”
“I shouldn’t be that long,” Alex assured her, then slipped out to run across the street to ask a few questions of her patient.
At eight o’clock on a Saturday evening, the long corridors of the hospital were almost eerily quiet. The business of treatments and therapies and diagnostics that created traffic jams of gurneys and wheelchairs and lab carts was over for the day. Dinner trays had been cleared and sent in their huge stainless-steel carts back to the hospital kitchen.
The only sounds were from the television sets in a couple of the rooms and the muffled conversations of visitors bearing mylar Get Well balloons and tidy bouquets of flowers.
There were no visitors in Chase Harrington’s room. No balloons. And bouquet was too plebeian a term for the half-dozen fabulous arrangements filling the widow ledge and the tray table belonging to the other, empty, bed.
The head of Chase’s bed was raised higher than it had been that morning. He lay back against the pillow with his head turned from the door, his braced leg extended and his uninjured one bent at the knee to make a tent of his blankets. With a business card in his hand, he tapped a slow beat against the raised siderail while he stared out the window at the construction lights glowing in the dark.
When he didn’t notice her in the doorway, she glanced at the florist’s card on the arrangement nearest the door.
The exotic creation of red ginger, bird of paradise and anthurium was sent “with best wishes for a speedy recovery” from the board of Claussen Aerodynamics.
“We just closed a deal,” he said, talking to her reflection in the window. “I’m sure they were relieved all the i’s were dotted before I wound up here.”
“Maybe they just mean what the card says. That they hope you’re better soon.”
He turned toward her, his level expression telling her he didn’t believe that for half a second. The sentiment was business. An obligation. Nothing more.
“It’s a beautiful arrangement, anyway,” she told him.
“It’s a write-off. They all are.”
His cynicism was unmistakable. So was his displeasure with whatever it was he’d been thinking about as he gave the business card an impatient flip onto the document-covered tray-table beside his bed. She’d never seen him upright, let alone moving under his own steam. But the image of a tornado chained in place sprang to mind as she quietly closed the door. She had no trouble picturing him pacing as he worked, his mind racing, his beautifully honed body rarely still. All that leashed energy and power bent on conquering…everything.
She couldn’t help wondering if he regarded women as conquests, too.
She immediately banished the thought, along with the hint of warning that came with it. His sex life was none of her business. It was entirely