The soft fabric of her dress whispered faintly as she moved toward the glow of the reading light cocooning the bed. She hadn’t had time to consider how truly unsettling it would be for a person to face siblings he’d never met. Or to ponder the circumstance that had allowed such a relationship to go unknown for so long.
As she’d hurried through the hospital, she’d been more aware of the faint stirrings of guilt. She’d always prided herself on paying attention to her patients so she wouldn’t miss something that could impair their progress. With Chase, she’d simply adopted every one else’s opinion of him as a difficult man and ignored the first stirrings of sympathy she’d felt for him.
“I see you got what you wanted. Are you working now?”
A large packing box sat in the green plastic visitor’s chair by his bed. Its contents, a state-of-the-art fax machine, occupied the bedside table that had been positioned within easy reach. Someone had unplugged the phone for the other bed and run the fax line to it.
He’d gotten what he was after, but he still didn’t look very happy.
With a subdued, “No,” he pushed the tray-table aside, watching her as she stopped beside his bed. “I’m finished.”
“Your color’s improved,” she noted, mildly surprised. Judging from the amount of well-marked paper stacked on the tray-table, he’d been at it for hours. He should have looked exhausted. “How’s the new medication working?”
“Better.”
“Good,” she murmured, more aware than she wanted to be of his intense blue eyes. She nodded toward the night-blacked window, as much to get his focus off her as to ease into her reason for being there.
“I see our new wing had your attention. The construction was delayed for a while because of an embezzlement problem with the foundation funding it, but everything’s back on schedule now. Our administrator…Ryan Malone…” she said cautiously, watching to see if he reacted to the name, “managed to pull more funding together.
“We’re all anxious for the space,” she continued, when all he did was blandly glance back at her. “If the new wing were finished, we might have been able to accommodate the request you made for a larger room. I’m sorry, but we don’t have VIP suites here at Memorial.”
Despite bruises that were working their way from dark cherry to concord grape, he truly did look better than when she’d last seen him. The dull glint of deep pain was gone from his eyes. But his edginess remained. It seemed to linger just beneath the surface, as carefully controlled as the man himself. Bridled as that tension was, it seemed to curl through her, knotting her nerves as his glance slid over the simple navy A-line skimming from her neck to midcalf.
There was no reason she should have felt exposed. He wasn’t looking at her as if he were mentally disrobing her. As his glance lingered on her taut and slender biceps, then moved to where she toyed with the single pearl hanging just below her throat, he was studying her in a way that was almost clinical.
“You don’t strike me as the type who makes idle conversation, Doctor.” His dark head dipped toward the closed door. “And I can’t imagine we’d need privacy if all you came to tell me is that my request for a larger room has been denied. Why don’t you just tell me what’s bothering you so much that you left your party to talk to me?”
Alex didn’t fluster easily. Remaining cool under fire was as much a form of self-preservation as a professional necessity. But this man had a definite knack for knocking her off balance. She suspected he knew it, too.
“How did you know where I was?”
“I imagine everyone within earshot of the nurses’ station knows. I could hear them trying to decide who got to be at the restaurant when you arrived and who had to go over later and bring back cake.” His glance slid to where her ringless fingers grasped her necklace. “They were also speculating about whether or not you’d have a date. As of a few minutes ago, word was that you didn’t.”
“It’s nice to know the hospital grapevine is so accurate.”
“It’s an interesting distraction,” he admitted, sounding as if he’d used it to keep himself from crawling the walls. “So, if you didn’t have a date, who’s this Tyler who was with you?”
“My son,” she replied, and watched the dark slash of Chase’s eyebrows merge.
“You have a son? I thought they were talking about some guy.”
“He is a guy. He’s just a little one.”
That wasn’t what he meant. And she knew it. It was just impossible to know what other thoughts flashed through his mind. There was no denying that her having a child had given him pause. The hesitation itself was enough to nudge her defenses. There were some men who tended to shy from women with such an encumbrance. There were others who regarded children as nothing but burdens that cost money and delayed goals.
She had no idea how this man felt. She just knew that Tyler had nothing to do with why she was there—and that Chase Harrington had an uncanny knack for bumping old bruises.
He’d even managed to do it when he was out cold.
“How did you know something’s bothering me?” she asked, disquieted by that, too.
Sheets rustled as he crossed his arms, his fathomless eyes intent on her face as he considered her. A moment later, the quality of that consideration underwent a subtle shift when he nodded toward her hand. It was curled and resting below the base of her throat.
“Other than the reasons I just gave you, you’ve probably rubbed a full millimeter off that pearl since you walked in here. I wouldn’t say you look nervous. In your line of work, you’ve had to deliver too much bad news to start out by hedging. You’re too professional for that. But you’re not comfortable with whatever’s on your mind, either,” he told her, sizing her up as she suspected he did his allies. Or his adversaries. “I don’t have the feeling you’re here because you’re my doctor, either.”
Unaware of what she’d been doing until he mentioned it, she slowly released her grandma Larson’s pearl. It was disconcerting to be read so easily. Here, on her turf, she was usually the one making the analysis, judging, weighing. She was the one people looked to for answers. Her professional role was the one area of her life where she felt reasonably competent. It was everything else that threw her. Yet, there was no denying the man’s powers of observation, or disputing his conclusions. Most of them, anyway.
“You’re good,” she conceded, wishing she didn’t feel that there was more he’d noticed, but discreetly failed to mention. “And you’re right. I’m not here because of your treatment. But I’m not uncomfortable with what I want to talk to you about. I’m just not sure how to address it.”
“Under the circumstances, why don’t we just try the direct approach?”
He offered the suggestion mildly, encouraging her with a hint of a smile that threatened to be devastating if he ever put his heart into it. He hadn’t reacted to Ryan’s name at all, but she had the feeling he chose to reveal only what he wanted others to see. Since the tactic gave him an extraordinary advantage, she had no doubt he used it shamelessly.
“In that case,” she quietly began, “I need to talk to you about the meeting you missed Friday night. It’s possible that I misjudged its importance.”
He didn’t even blink. But he didn’t move, either. “What about it?”
“By any chance was it personal rather than business? If it was,” she said, before that formidable will of his could snap his guard more firmly into place, “and if it’s about what I think it is, maybe I can help.”
“Just what do you think it’s about?”
“Your brothers. I think you were going to meet them.”
For a moment, the only sounds in the room were