Eleanor had spent a great portion of her life in the shadows. Fortunately, she liked it there.
She glanced at her watch again. She’d been away from the neonatal unit too long already. “Fine. I’ll deal with this later.”
Eleanor’s heart squeezed as Rochelle Blackwood’s tiny fingers wrapped around her pinky finger. So precious.
Even with the tubes and wires attached to the twenty-six-weeks-gestation little girl, nothing was more beautiful or precious to Eleanor than new life.
Not so many years ago, Rochelle wouldn’t have had any chance of surviving outside her mother’s womb short of a miracle. Thanks to advances in modern medicine, the little girl’s odds had greatly increased, although certainly she was high risk. Still, each day she survived raised those odds.
Eleanor intended to give her tiny patient everything in her favor that she could.
“What do you think, Eleanor?” Scarlet Miller, the head neonatal unit nurse, asked from beside the tiny heated incubator. “Is she going to pull through?”
Rochelle had been born with part of her intestines outside her abdomen, with underdeveloped lungs and eyelids that were paper-thin and not yet open. She couldn’t eat or breathe on her own. But the little girl had a strong will to live. Eleanor felt the strength of her spirit every time she was near the baby.
“I hope so. She’s a fighter, that’s for sure.”
Rochelle’s mother had been sideswiped by a drunk driver and had suffered multiple crush injuries. Rochelle had been in trouble and the decision had been made to deliver by emergency cesarean section. Sadly, her mother hadn’t survived the night.
Eleanor felt a special bond with the baby, perhaps because the five-day-old baby’s father was grieving the loss of his wife and had yet to visit the little girl who’d already undergone multiple surgeries and treatments during her short life. The medical staff of the NICU was the only human contact the baby had.
“Agreed,” a strong masculine Texan voice drawled from behind her. “I hope you don’t mind, but I’ve been keeping tabs on this little darlin’.”
As it always did when Dr. Tyler Donaldson was around, Eleanor’s face caught fire. Not literally, of course, but it may as well have for how hot her skin burned anytime the man was near.
Just as it also always did, her tongue refused to do anything other than stick to the roof of her mouth, leaving her unable to answer him and feeling like an awkward teenager with a first crush.
Urgh. How could one sister be such a consummate flirt and known for the many hunks wrapped around her manicured finger and the other sister be a shy, inept mute just because a good-looking man spoke to her? Not even spoke to her about anything personal but about a patient. Yes, she really was pathetic.
Probably taking her silence as disapproval—or who knew what he thought of her since he usually ignored her—Tyler stepped closer to the incubator. “I was on duty the night she made her entrance into the world. She’s such a sweet little darlin’, ain’t she?”
His Southern accent got to her, just as it did most of Angel’s female staff. In a big way. His voice was so inviting, like a fire on a cold winter’s night. She just wanted to bask in the warmth of everything about the man. Which was crazy. He was a total player who charmed women right out of their pants. Yet all his exes still adored him. Go figure.
She risked a look at him and immediately wished she hadn’t. Just as if she really did stand next to a fire, her face burst into a new wave of flames. If there was a pill to cure blushing she’d be first in line at the pharmacy, because she hated the nervous reaction almost as much as she hated her panic attacks.
“You met her father?” Tyler asked, his warm brown gaze focused on the baby.
Still unable to prise her tongue off the roof of her mouth, Eleanor shook her head.
“Guess he still ain’t been by.” Tyler sighed, making the sound long and as drawn out as his speech, as if every sound that came from his mouth had to stretch the span of his home state of Texas. “Can’t help but feel bad for the guy. Losing his wife that way and afraid that he’ll lose this li’l sweetheart, too.”
Her tongue still not cooperating, Eleanor nodded.
“I’m glad she got assigned to you, Eleanor. She got lucky and got the best.” Without looking up, he brushed his finger gently across where the baby still clung to Eleanor’s finger.
Sparks shot up her arm and her breath caught in her throat.
She’d been so engrossed in the man beside her, in his unexpected compliment, she’d completely forgotten she was still touching the baby until his skin made contact with hers.
Wow.
Just wow.
Thinking she had finally prised her tongue loose, she turned to try to say something witty, but just as she opened her mouth, he flashed that half-crooked grin of his. At someone walking up beside them.
Someone else female.
Because he was Dr. Tyler Donaldson and that’s what he did best.
With every single female in the NICU except for dumpy, boring, mute, too-curvy Eleanor Aston.
Where was the black dress she’d brought with her that morning?
Panic raced through Eleanor as she stared at the contents of her staff locker.
It had been ransacked.
In the place of her gym bag, the black dress that she’d neatly hung that morning and the pair of black flats she’d planned to quickly change into was a note in familiar handwriting.
A note that made smoke billow from her ears.
You’re gonna look so hot, sis. You can thank me later. B.
Thank her? Ha. She was going to strangle her sister. How had Brooke gotten into the doctors’ lounge? Gotten into her locked locker? Not that her sister had been there herself. No way would Brooke risk being seen or photographed with her face red, swollen and peeling.
Yet her sister had wiped her out.
Even her purse was gone.
There were three items in the locker other than the note. The red dress and stilettos that her sister had so thoughtfully sent over and a square white box that covered almost the entire bottom of the locker.
Dare she even open the lid to see what lay inside?
She glanced at her watch, knew she was running out of time and snatched the lid off to stare at the items inside.
Underwear. Eleanor wrinkled her nose. Leave it to her sister to know that if you were going to wear an itty-bitty dress you had to have itty-bitty underwear to go with it.
Plus, a red clutch purse that matched her dress and shoes and a too-big, too-flamboyant hair clip meant more for adornment than to actually be useful.
And makeup. Lots of makeup.
Acid gurgling in her stomach, Eleanor shook her head. This was her place of employment, the hospital where she worked.
Okay, she’d jump in the shower and pray that when she was clean, her belongings would be back.
They weren’t.
“What’s wrong?” Scarlet asked, doing a mad makeover dash of her own to get changed for the ribbon-cutting.
“My sister has gone too far this time.” Eleanor tightened the towel she had wrapped around her body. “How am I ever going to be taken seriously again if I wear that?”
Scarlet’s gaze ran over the dress then over Eleanor from head to toe. “I’m pretty